Emma Kwok
Media Studies / Anthropology / Folklore
VISUAL ART 2017 - 2018
During my first year of undergraduate studies, I learned to make meaningful art that was not simply for appearances.
IS THIS MY VOICE?
2018. Video. 30 seconds.​
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A video appropriation project for a course at UBC.
Resource:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Directed by Blake Edwards, performance by Mickey Rooney, Paramount Pictures, 1961.
When marking this artwork, I decided to focus on the (mis)representation of East-Asians in Hollywood—an issue extremely important to me, a Chinese American.
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Researching for my project, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's and read amateur reviews of the film online. Often, people call Breakfast at Tiffany’s one of the best movies ever—if Mickey Rooney’s yellowface performance as Mr. Yunioshi can be ignored. Ignoring characters such as Yunioshi overlooks their wrongness, allowing the misrepresentation of East-Asian Americans to continue.
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To criticize this attitude and draw attention to Yunioshi, I made his introductory scene the core visual for my video. I also chose this scene since in the film, it's meant to be funny; it adheres to the practice of using humor to excuse racism. I then used Yunioshi's lines from throughout the film to create a found poem condemning yellowface.
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The title of my work is meant to reference how Breakfast at Tiffany's, by misrepresenting East-Asian Americans, took my voice and twisted it. It also nods to how I'm trying to take back that voice using appropriation.