The podsquad returns for a wide-ranging chat on all things, sort of, broadly, sometimes diasporically China.
Awkwafina made the rounds on social media, with a screenshot semi-apology(?) regarding her use of Black speech. We offer a hermeneutic reading.
It’s the 10th anniversary of Linsanity. What did, and what does, Jeremy mean to Asian America? Jay and Andy revisit analyses from the time.
Chinese government bros have upped their game, offense and defense, on English-language Twitter. What’s the use of an official reply guy?
And finally, we’re watching the Olympics in Beijing! Yes, all Olympics are terrible (insert leftist critique), but so are the short track judges, says Tammy. Plus: Andy on the opening ceremonies and Jay on Eileen Gu.
We have an IRL picnic coming up in Seattle and an ongoing book club. Subscribe and join our Discord community to find out more.
The film features scenes of quotidian working life in a period when the government has begun to promote the “Chinese Dream,” spanning textile and sex doll factories to etiquette school and social media influencers all the way to luxurious water parks and tropical vacation resorts. Together, these scenes raise provocative questions about China’s blindingly rapid development, the uneven pace of upward mobility, and whether China is an exotic outlier or a recognizably modern society, comparable with life in the US and other societies worldwide (all to music by Dan Deacon).
Jessica and Kira took the time to chat with us and many from our Discord community about the film’s initial conception, the origins of the title and Jessica’s own exploration of family history, the strangeness of the major award circuit, and the ethics of making a commercial documentary. They also break down many of the more memorable scenes, including a dinner party among the ultra-rich and a crypto farm in the middle of the countryside.
But for most of us, the easiest way to watch it at home is to subscribe to and stream from Paramount+ (look for trial offers!).
The second half of this episode consists of questions from our Discord members. If you’re interested in joining the conversation with us and tons of other cool people, please think about subscribing! Check us out via Patreon and Substack, contact us via email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), Twitter, and the Discord!
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It’s Jay and Tammy this week, talking trash about Andy.
Plus:
* Pandemic alcoholism and human bonds: We read and discuss an essay in Jezebel, “I Got Sober in the Pandemic. It Saved My Life.” What has this tragic time clarified and obscured? What’s the off-ramp?
* Does a day-trader’s lunch budget say anything about inflation? People were mad about this New York Times story, but the Big Mac Index remains durable (Tammy gets the description about half-right). The tech stock market (read: Peloton, Netflix, Amazon) seems less durable.
* The Supreme Court will hear the Harvard / University of North Carolina case on affirmative action, with Asian American plaintiffs front and center. We assess the history of race and class in admissions and consider the wedge that is Asian America.
1:08:00 – If you’re on China/international relations/war/basketball/tech Twitter, you’ll have seen that Chamath went full-on tankie… which relates to the debate over a recent article in The Nation: “What Should the Left Do About China?” by David Klion. The piece explores the lefty political spectrum, and features input from Andy and several friends of the pod. We dig in on the question of how complicit we are as “Americans.” In a time of (cold-)warring hegemons, what kind of dissenters should we be?
There seems to be a panic over school closures—and a backlash against teachers and their unions. But how many US public schools have had to “go remote” because of Covid? Are these physical closures reasonable? Why are people blaming educators for everything from “learning loss” to the downfall of the Democratic party? What “shock doctrine” tactics do we need to look out for?
44:40 – Why is the Netflix climate change film, “Don’t Look Up,” so polarizing? Written by Adam McKay and Bernie pal David Sirota, and starring basically all of Hollywood, it has inspired a lot of commentary. Is it a good leftist film? Is it funny? Effective? What about its portrayal of the media and academia? (Check out these think-pieces from “Money on the Left” and Current Affairs.)
This week, we are joined by Gary Shteyngart, creator of the brilliant new novel, Our Country Friends. We talk about immigrant fiction, elite high schools, exile feelings, the Asian pop-cultural future, and Gary’s run-in with a fascist elementary school teacher.
Today we’re talking with Democratic pollster and Andy’s high school friend Brian Stryker of ALG research.
Recently, the Democratic Party circulated a memo Brian wrote about the Democrats’ poor showing in some of the November elections and their uneven prospects for the 2022 midterms. You can read his interview with The New York Times here.
The main topics we hit on are: how much do cultural wedge issues like critical race theory matter over bread-and-butter questions like jobs, wages, and inflation; the balance between a focus on economic versus social issues; whether emphasizing “social justice” concerns could (ironically) deter Asian and Latino/a voters; and Brian’s crystal ball for the 2024 election.
0:00 – Tammy in Korea update
6:40 – Brian explains his polling research on the Virginia elections and what it tells us about the state of the Democrats: CRT, school closures, the economy and Covid stimulus plans, and supply chains.
17:40 – The prospect of Asian and Latino voters going Republican (see Jay’s pieces on this topic) and why the Democrats struggle to convey economic messages.
34:30 – The gap between the Democrats’ “white woke consultants” and the reality and diversity of “voters of color.” Is there common ground between patriotic Democrats and the left?
45:30 – How can the Democrats speak to different racial groups in a more nuanced way? What’s the role of organized labor in the Party? Is the future of the Dems just a lot of moderate POC candidates? Is the average POC more conservative than the average wealthy white liberal? And some scary thoughts about Trump 2024.
This week, Jay and Tammy talk with Alex Rivera, a filmmaker, media artist, immigrant rights activist, and MacArthur genius, about crypto.
What is crypto currency? How does it work? And why is it often cast as a right-wing, libertarian, carbon-depleting project?
Can the left reclaim crypto for the people? How might decentralized financial networks power social movements? Post-national transactions? Worker cooperatives? Global decision-making?
The gold rushes occasioned the first mass contact between Chinese and Euro-Americans. Unlike other encounters in Asian port cities and on Caribbean plantations, they met on the goldfields both in large numbers and on relatively equal terms, that is, as voluntary emigrants and independent prospectors. Race relations were not always conflictual, but the perception of competition gave rise to a racial politics expressed as the ‘Chinese Question.’
This is a history of labor and migration, but it is also a book about race and racial ideology. Ngai traces the origins of politics organized around Chinese, and eventually Asian, exclusion at the turn of the twentieth century in the world’s white settler colonies. It’s a story most popularly known by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the US, but it also had many parallels worldwide — a “global anti-Chinese ideology” that “gave rise to a global race theory,” as Ngai puts it.
We discuss the fine details of her research and then try to tease out some bigger implications of the “Chinese Question” for today.
(0:00): Mae’s own trajectory in migration and Asian American history and how she came to undertake this project.
(15:30): We dig into the Chinese Question: how did Mae wind up writing about Australia and South Africa? what was the “coolie myth” that dogged Chinese migrants in the 19th century? how did “free soil” and “anti-slavery” politics dovetail with racist exclusion laws? if Chinese migrants were not “coolies,” then what was life really like on the gold mines?
(44:15): The theoretical stakes of the Chinese Question: how to think about ‘race’ historically and the political value of doing so; Mae’s intervention into the headlines about anti-Asian violence during Covid; thoughts on the “racial pessimism” trend in academia and popular media and the relationship between “anti-Black” and “anti-Asian” racism; the “Chinese Question” today, e.g., the China initiative at universities, ongoing US-China tensions, and the flexible class politics of its racial ideology.
