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Borders? I'll Wipe 'Em Out - Friday, April 25, 2008 at 10:58 AM

Go for freedom. Go for love. Go for fight.

I've already regretted starting this entry off with a cheesy movie tagline with bastardised English, but... I guess I already did. "Go" is a Japanese movie which is part of my intro to japanese studies exam, which i'm totally not complaing about. How often can you kick back, relax, watch a movie and claim that, no, KNOW that you're studying for an upcoming exam? The last time that happened was intro to Literature, where I decided to skip reading "the Great Gatsby", tried to watch the movie but was too painful to watch to the end, and ended up reading the book anyways.

Anyway, I haven't mentioned it yet, but the show was brilliant. It's basically a coming-of-age movie about a japanese born korean, who looked like any other Japanese ('cos they mostly came from Korea, ironically) but is discriminated for having "dirty blood". Baffles the mind, but not hard to imagine. So the movie carries on about his struggles, him falling in love with a Japanese girl and her coming to terms with his race/nationality etc. It isn't a weepy drama, but more of a part dark humoured comedy, part drama genre. I never knew the discrimination against Koreans was this jialat though.

Before I reveal anything else, i say, go watch it.

After the movie, I decided to take a break from the "gruelling" 2 hour "studying" marathon (not too subtle with the inverted commas eh?) and take in a game of facebook texas hold 'em.

Not to my surprise, as I raised wildly on first hands, there was a white guy who got pretty pissed and started calling me racist names, the usual "chink", and a new one for me, "donkey". I almost never get pissed by insults online (sidenote: only occasionally in dota, hence the deleting of the game) and this time wasn't different either. I simply replied him something along the lines of "my money, my rules, bugger off", which he eventually did 'cos i won the hand with 4 of a kind aces. This was followed by a psuedo apology from mr racist, who went "fairplay. nh (nice hand)". I ignored. Want to apologise, do it properly, don't give me a DPM*.

At this point, surprise surprise, another guy entered the table, another Chinese, and pumped in 7k on the first hand on a 25/50 blinds table. For 2 rounds in succession. I mean, that's just asking for it. Even i was pretty irritated. At the 3rd round, as he pulled off his retarded-under-the-thin-guise-of-being-fearless stunt, mr racist just typed out "you're screwed. this round's mine". Which he did win, by the skin of his teeth, effectively bankrupting mr crazy bidder. Being more irritated with mr crazy bidder than mr racist, i typed out "stu, as much as i hate racists, nice one". The nice surprise was that he actually went "thanks. hey, sorry about the racist remarks before", in a MPD* manner.

Now that got me thinking quite a bit. The little experience made the show Go so much more brilliant, 'cos the racism in the movie is portrayed exactly as what it is in real life. I'm not talking about the extreme race hating groups like the KKK, but about general racism in society. Not everyone is a true blue racist at heart, but with society telling us very subtley certain races are "bad" as we grow up, it's hard not to have racist feelings against other races sometimes. As much as our lovely, proud to be succesfully multi-racial country hates to admit it, i can say the majority of us are racists not by choice, but by nature. Put aside the politically correct front for a while people and think about it, how many times have we not secretly stereotyped people of having certain characteristics due to their race/nationality? I'm not slamming anyone. I know I have, just look at my previous entries.

I've got to say, stereotyping people before knowing them is certainly unfair, but that doesn't mean that they are a total myth, and no one of a certain race can have that characteristic. That's bullshit. Certain racial stereotypes do hold, and in my experience in engineering, it holds frequently. But we're so hung about being politically correct that it's more important not to verbally or explicitly stereotype people than to actually admit their stereotypical characteristics, if present, and come to accept them as they are. It takes 2 hands to clap sometimes. Have we ever thought that maybe our silent apathy towards certain races might have actually fuelled them to take on these characteristics, just because "everyone thinks i'm like that, so i'll just be like that"?

The little moment from mr "racist" probably points toward a change in our generation at least. He makes racist remarks without understanding the severity of it, but is big enough to apologise for it. Realistically, it'll be hard to eradicate such feelings overnight. I don't have any experience in sociology, psychology what-not, but maybe acceptance is key. What we're doing now is making it taboo to talk about stereotypes, sweep it under the rug and only discuss it among people of the same race/nationality. That's the perfect formula for a ticking social time bomb.

And i'm not going to blame the government for it, 'cos it's obviously an extremely sensitive topic that can swing votes easily in the next election. My solution for it?

Go watch "Go".

*: Doing a DPM is making an apology in a manner which... ahh... i shall not fully explain. I've got enough parking fines to worry about, won't want a lawsuit coming my way. Big Daddy's watching.

Go watch the last in parliamant episode regarding a certain escape, watch out for the apology (if you can actually catch the blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment) and you'll see what i mean.

And a MPD is simply... opposite, if you haven't already figured that one out.

1 Comments:

how come ppl think i'm korean on facebook hold'em? haha

By JayJay, at 10:00 PM