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Summary

In my multimedia journal, I explored Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s FX show Reservation Dogs, Lee Issac Chung’s family film Minari, and activist Malala Yousafzai’s Instagram page. In viewing Reservation Dogs, I learned of the modern repercussions of Native American genocide, connecting them to their historical counterparts. Meanwhile, a viewing of Minari depicts a much more nuanced case of cultural integration, quietly questioning the forces, inward and outward, that drive it. Finally, Malala Yousafzai’s Instagram page actively fights against such forced assimilation and other discriminatory policies by promoting equal rights for all. Collectively, these three selections create a complex portrayal of cross-cultural relations, making them very much relevant in a class that revolves around the philosophy of multiculturalism. 

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Post 3: Instagram.com/Malala

Malala Yousafzai in November 2023 (2023), from Getty Images.

Malala Yousafzai is a “Pakistani girls education activist, co-founder of the Malala Fund, and a Nobel laureate” (Instagram.com/Malala). Malala became famous for standing up for women’s educational rights at a young age, speaking out against the militant Taliban government which took over her town and shut down her school. In response to her protests, Malala was shot in the head on her way home from school. Fortunately, she was rescued and flown to a hospital in Birmingham, England, where she recovered and now resides. Following her recovery, Malala continued her activism, using her enhanced platform to start a non-profit called the Malala Fund, which advocates for equal educational rights for girls globally. Shortly after founding the fund in 2014, Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest-ever recipient (Malala.org). Malala’s fight for female leadership development and education continues today with her public speaking, charity work, and social media presence. 

I relearned about Malala through her Instagram page. It was a convenient find given the assignment but one I was glad to read up on as it brought back fond memories of a middle school modern history lesson. Upon browsing her page, I noticed lots of artivism, with the page even displaying a recently completed Malala mural. For those who need refreshing, “the term artivism is a hybrid neologism that signifies work created by individuals who see an organic relationship between art and activism” (Sandoval 82). I think Malala is definitely someone who sees the value of artivism, having promoted and funded many grassroots arts projects and organizations through her foundation.

(https://www.instagram.com/p/C9kXww7JJtl/ )

Malala Mural (2024) ,from Malala Yousafzai’s Instagram, by Artlords.

I also learned she is the president of a new movie production company called Extracurricular Productions, which produced the Oscar-nominated short film Stranger at the Gate, about an ex-marine with PTSD whose plan to attack a mosque is subverted upon meeting its members. As a film major who likes to keep up, I did hear about this film a few years back when the nomination came out and am now intrigued to learn that Malala was attached to the project.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbbl1S6foM&t=41s )

Stranger at the Gate (The New Yorker, 2022), Directed by Joshua Seftel.

Malala’s work is very relevant to the course material as she is actively making a direct impact in getting equal rights and promoting multiculturalist policies. Additionally, she is a great advocate for educational equality, having experienced educational discrimination herself. Such subject matter is directly relevant to our textbook, A Different Mirror, which describes how a segregated school system was used in the early 20th century to dissuade Mexicans from becoming lawyers and instead teach them that they were “needed for cotton picking and to work on railroads” (Takai 303).

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Post 2: Minari

Minari (A24, 2020), Written and Driected by Lee Issac Chung

To put it simply, Lee Issac Chung’s Minari is a modern reinvestigation of the American dream. Set in the 1980s, Minari follows a Korean American family who moves from California to a farm in Arkansas and their search for “their own American Dream” (A24-Films). The family is propelled to Arkansas by the dreams of its father, Jacob, who purchases and increasingly invests in the farm hoping to establish independence and self-sufficiency. Meanwhile, the mother, Monica, is begrudging companion in Jacob’s farm venture, often questioning Jacob’s motives and risk-taking, asking him why their family isn’t enough by itself and even threatening to leave for the city. The two parents also work at a chicken-farm as sexers, a job the couple finds grueling in its tedium and one that forces them to bring their children, David and Anne, with them to work. Knowing they can’t continue bringing David and Anne to the coop every day, Jacob and Monica enlist the help of Monica’s mother Soonja, who immigrates from Korea, to watch the kids. Despite initially struggling with the cultural differences between her and her American-born grandchildren, Soonja, slowly befriends them, particularly David, with her free-spirited ways. David, the son and youngest child, acts as our audience surrogate, with his heart condition embodying the fragility of the childhood perspective and the fleetingness of the family’s dreams and security. 

But what threatens these dreams you may ask?? It’s hard to say exactly under Issac Chung’s episodic and naturalistic tone, but to me it seems to be a lack of opportunity for Korean Americans. Unable to afford land closer to a major city or Korean American community, the families Korean vegetable farm struggles to find distribution. However, Jacob continues to fight, reluctant to spend the rest of his life working a dead-end laborer job. 

Still from Minari (A24, 2020), Directed by Lee Issac Chung

Jacob’s dilemma is reminiscent to that of many American minorities in the early 20th-century, who struggled to establish independence without conforming their ambitions to the status quo, an example of this being the Blacks in the north who were initially shut out of factory jobs and “restricted to employment as servants” (Takaki 320). Many of these laborers responded to the racial division by creating their own communities and a culture of “black solidarity” (Takai 322). Contrarily and rather paradoxically, Jacob assumes the fashion of an American farm-owner by wearing a red baseball hat and overalls, indicating a willingness to assimilate in exchange for social mobility. To me, this assimilation seems to be oppressive and pressured, similar to the “melt or get out the pot” mentality described in Greg Jay’s essay What is Multiculturalism (Jay 2). However, in the End, this debate between assimilation and stubborn social climbing, is left on a cliffhanger, leaving it up to the audience to decide whether this dream is worth pursuing. 

The Mortar of Assimilation (1889), by C.J, Taylor, from National Museum of American History.

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Reservation Dogs (FX, 2021-2023)

Created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi 

For my first post, I watched an episode of Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s FX show Reservation Dogs, which is about “four Native American teenagers growing up on a reservation in eastern Oklahoma (IMDB)”. In the first episode, the four “dogs”, Bear, Elora, Willie, and Cheese, are introduced as rebellious thieves, seeking to escape the reservation, a place of placidity and little economic opportunity, for the opportunistic land of California.

The group’s California goal serves as an interesting historical parallel to Western Expansion and represents the group’s individualistic, distinctly American ambitions. However, the dogs are self-conscious about their greed and destruction, expressing remorse after stealing a food truck costs the driver his job, family, and home (Harjo and Waititi). It seems in the show’s pilot, Harjo and Waititi are setting up an identity conflict for its characters, fought between Native American communalism and American assimilation.

American Progress (1872)

By John Gast

                  Reservation Dog’s subject matter is relevant to our course material, involving topics of assimilation, racial independence, and the intersectionality of such subjects. 

First and foremost, the show’s setting is a depiction of the reservation system’s effect on Native American culture, depicting the end game of the earlier, historical events discussed in A Different Mirror. For example, in A Different Mirror, author and historian Ronald Takaki, cites the original goal of the reservation system, being “the eventual assimilation of Indians” through enforced learning of industrial skills and reformatory education (Takaki 220). Consequentially, Reservation Dogs depicts a reservation in which American culture, including rap and cheap snack products, has been intertwined with Native American culture. Furthermore, Reservation Dogs depicts assimilation that has led to economic disenfranchisement, with the promised factory jobs of reservation life absent from the town entirely. Such disenfranchisement is also explained in the history of A Different Mirror, in which Takaki discusses the New Deal’s promise of self-governance and how such self-governance was promised to lead to Native American self-sufficiency (Takaki 224-231). However, later in this section, Takaki also talks about how the U.S. government undercut this self-governance when it was economically viable for them to do so, destroying Native American livelihood (Takaki 224-231).

Still from Reservation Dogs Episode 1 (Reservoir Dogs Homage)

Reservation Dogs (FX, 2021-2023)

Created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi

While both Reservation Dogs and A Different Mirror depict how the reservation system weakened Native American culture and independence, the modernity of Reservation Dogs makes it a better exemplifier of the assimilation and intersectionality of Native American and White American cultures. In one scene a lighter-skinned Native is mistaken for white which he rebukes saying he is “a Native American” (Harjo and Waititi). This case of mistaken identity reminds me of the short New York Times documentary, U.S. Young and Mixed in America, which discussed how others made wrong assumptions about race by judging solely on appearance. Either way, this theme of intersectionality seems to be a key question that will continue to be explored throughout the rest of the series by our main group of characters, who will discover where they align and what they identify with. 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnO1--sRow)

U.S.: Young and Mixed in America

Video published by The New York Times (2011)