This is a very special episode and the second of our 3-part conversation about Black Lives Matter. Longtime listeners of Loud Murmurs know that we have talked about “Black Panther” and “Green Book” when they first came out—about white savior complex in “Green Book” and the significance of Black futurism in “Black Panther.” 

But we want to bring back the two movies that are familiar to our listeners, and use them as an opportunity to have a conversation about race and racism in China, with the help of our guests. 

In this episode, Juan and Diaodiao invited Esham and Joshua to join us. Esham (Twitter: @eshammacauley) is a first-gen African immigrant raised in the U.S. but has roots in West Africa, the Middle East, and Scandinavia. Joshua (Instagram: @joshytaughtyou) grew up on the south side of Chicago and currently works at a tech company in Shenzhen. Both of them have studied in China. 

In this episode, they talk candidly about racist encounters they’ve had being Black men in China and how they make sense of Hollywood’s reckoning with its decades of racism as part of the ongoing BLM movement in the U.S. 

A common argument is that “racism doesn’t exist in China because most Chinese people have never met a Black person.” In reality, hundreds of thousands of Black people currently live and work in China. Their experience decidedly differs from that of white expats. One doesn’t have to look so hard to find blatantly racist and hateful speech on Weibo today. Sooner or later, we need to have a tough conversation about anti-Black racism in China. 

In this episode: 

• What do our guests think about “Green Book” and “Black Panther” and their different reception in China? 
• What similarities did Joshua find between “The Wandering Earth” and “Black Panther”?
• How has “respectability politics'' shaped our two guests' lives growing up? What does “respectability politics” look like in China? 
• What is their experience with racism in China and can we categorize those encounters as “innocent ignorance”?
• Why are American movies and TV shows we grew up watching in China so white? 
• The importance of letting people tell their own stories about racism.

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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The Hollywood classic "Gone With The Wind" has recently been removed from HBO Max, and returned to its cinematic library a mere two weeks later with additional content: an optional intro that gives “frank assessment of both the film’s own racist content and the racism of the times and environment into which it was released” and another hour-long recording of a panel discussion on the complicated legacy of "Gone With The Wind." 

In this episode, our hosts Afra and Ina, joined by an old friend @Flyingpku, look into the film’s complicated legacy, the whitewashing, and romanticizing of the horrors of slavery. We discuss the following:

• How the movie differs from the book and a deeper dive into several characters 
• The iconography of the “Southern Belle” and the long-lasting effects of glamourizing the Southern Antebellum (why plantation weddings are still a thing)
• The problematic portrayal of slave characters, especially female slaves, in the movie, and how those stereotypes still perpetuate today’s pop culture (e.g. Aunt Jemima)
• The romanticization of slavery and the inaccurate depiction of the Civil War
• The “iconic” status of Gone With The Wind in Hollywood history and its unique reception in China (Greenlit by Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin) 

Links of articles we reference in the show：

• How I Bought Into Gone with the Wind’s Mythology of Whiteness  https://electricliterature.com/how-i-bought-into-gone-with-the-winds-mythology-of-whiteness/ 
• The Southern Belle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/removing-the-southern-belle-from-her-inglorious-perch/2015/08/14/ea929b2a-3f96-11e5-9561-4b3dc93e3b9a_story.html 
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
• 《飘到哪里去》by Lin Fang, Jan 20, 1980, Liberation Daily

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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This is one of the most anticipated episodes on Loud Murmurs for Afra, Juan, and Ina, who share a (un)healthy obsession with the Nickelodeon cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” We’ve also invited a special guest, Eris Qian (Zhuoyang), New York-based director and playwright, to talk about why we love the show so much.

It’s not just us. The 15-year-old cartoon is having a moment, a “stunning second life” as a recent New Yorker article put it. In May, “Avatar the Last Airbender” became the most-watched show on Netflix. 

The show’s adventures, friendships, failures, redemptions, and the characters’ struggle for morality in a chaotic world feel more real than real life in 2020. 

If you haven’t watched the show, go watch it before listening to this episode because lots of ~spoilers~ and simping a certain character whose name starts with “z.” 

May ATLA be your secret tunnel through 2020. 

In this episode, we talked about:

1. Avatar’s world-building: Pan-Asian culture 
2. Cultural appropriation vs. appreciation 
3. Our favorite characters and scenes 
4. What we love and don’t love about ATLA’s portrayal of women (the “ideal woman” trap)
5. Why does ATLA remind us of Wuxia （武侠） novels and “Journey to the West” and 明清章回小说
6. Explanatory comma or no explanatory comma? Eris Qian talks about what it’s like to tell an intimate, personal story when your audience finds it “foreign” 

Links：

The Stunning Second Life of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-stunning-second-life-of-avatar-the-last-airbender

Official timeline of ATLA and comic books:

https://card.weibo.com/article/m/show/id/2309404470397344022728?_wb_client_=1&object_id=1022%3A2309404470397344022728&extparam=lmid--4470397346939216&luicode=10000011&lfid=231522type%3D1%26t%3D10%26q%3D%23%E9%99%8D%E4%B8%96%E7%A5%9E%E9%80%9A%EF%BC%9A%E6%9C%80%E5%90%8E%E7%9A%84%E6%B0%94%E5%AE%97%23&featurecode=10000084

Zuzu’s rap debut (no)

https://www.weibo.com/u/5525387911 

Promo：

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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Email us: [email protected] 

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Michelle Obama is one of the most iconic women of our time and one of the most beloved First Lady in U.S. history. Her memoir “Becoming” has been a book that is giving us life in a year filled with crises. 

For this episode, hosts Ina and Afra invited Dr. Guo Ting at the University of Hong Kong to talk about Michell Obama’s memoir—the lessons we can and cannot learn from her journey. 

We talked about: 

• What’s Michelle’s source of power and faith that allowed her to defy societal expectations every step of the way? 
• Financial wealth vs. wealth in human capital in Black families 
• What’s the role of lifelong female friendships? Why is female friendship almost absent in so much of our cultural conversation and collective consciousness? 
• What does the role of First Lady mean in American politics, society? How has that role changed over the decades? 
• How did the Obamas manage to push the society’s understanding of race? How have they adjusted their goals throughout the eight years? 
• Has the book fallen short of addressing systemic, societal problems that affect individual accomplishments?

This episode is edited by: Joshua Ogden-Davis

Links：

The Social Sex: History of Female Friendship by Marilyn Yalom

郭婷︱闺蜜史：友情是磅礴的革命

田安（Anna Shields）：《知我者：中唐的文人友谊与文学文化》（One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang）

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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Hosts Diaodiao, Afra, and Juan talk about Mindy Kailing’s new Netflix series “Never Have I Ever,” a coming-of-age comedy about Devi, a second-generation Indian American girl in California.

We talk about our own past as overachieving high school nerds (more than one of us were also in Model UN ahem), the feeling of othering when you move to a new country, why the show only manages to tell one specific story from Devi’s perspective, and last but not least, the show’s unabashed female gaze. (Afra actually sought out Paxton’s fan page.)

We also included an interview segment with our special guest: Saisha, who grew up in India, studied and worked in China, and currently lives in New York City. 

Saisha talks about what she loves about the show and why she finds the show to be more like India in the 90s. She feels nervous about some of the ways the show portrays Indian Americans’ attitude towards marriage and religion: “There’s a war over identity going on in India right now. You want to show that story very carefully in India and America. To Indian Americans, it might just be nostalgic, but that has implications back home. If you are telling people you will still be struggling with this whether you’re in India or America, that’s problematic.”

links：https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/arts/television/mindy-kaling-never-have-I-ever-netflix.html

Promo：

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This episode is dedicated to one of our quarantine favorites -- Netflix’s The Half of it, a quirky coming-of-age romantic comedy written and directed by Asian American director, Alice Wu. We unpacked the literary references of the film, and discussed why the references perfectly captured the mindset of a teenager literature reader. We also talked about the four key characters in the film -- Ellie, Astor, Paul and Dr. Chu -- what they represent and what they mean for us in our own coming-of-age experiences.

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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In this episode, our hosts Afra and Diaodiao are joined by a group of AI practitioners to unpack the new season of HBO’s Westworld. They talked about the show’s fuzzy rendition of the role of engineering in AI technology, explained how the real-world versions of Incite create your user profile, and shared stories and researches that illustrate the disturbing reality we live in -- the dual Leviathan of surveillance capitalism and surveillance state. Meanwhile, as COVID created a new reality where every citizen can be a security threat to the collective, they shared their thoughts, worries and observations on how surveillance can ride the tide, and why it is particularly important to be okay with being “radical”.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/

Suji’s Anti-996 License: https://github.com/kattgu7/Anti-996-License

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This episode is basically an hour-long of us singing the praises of sitcom “Schitt’s Creek,” written and produced by Dan Levy and Eugene Levy. Its season finale aired in April so now is the perfect time to talk about this show, which went from a little-known series when it first aired in Canada 5 years ago to a breakout success with a ferocious fan base (us included.) 

The show tells the story of a rich family who lost all of their wealth overnight and had to move to a small town called “Schitt’s Creek,” which they bought originally as a joke. It’s a classic “fish out of water” story but infused with authenticity, warm and funny dialogues and characters who are so specific yet so relatable. 

Juan and Ina invited a new friend, Walton, to talk about what this show means to him. Having yet to come out to his parents, Walton said the wedding scene in the finale where two male characters celebrated their love in front of their parents gave him hope that he never knew he needed. 

Unlike some of our more dense episodes, this one doesn’t deviate from the show much. This is an entire hour of unadulterated joy where we talk about how much we love the wonderful world Dan Levy created. We also talk about TV representation of pansexuality and comedy as a collective creative format. 

Wherever you are, we hope you stay well, physically and mentally. Enjoy the show! 

Links：

https://ew.com/tv/2019/03/20/schitts-creek-dan-levy-interview-david-pansexual-patrick-coming-out/?amp=true 

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/4/2/21203985/mike-schur-dwight-schrute-michael-scott-ron-swanson-leslie-knope 

https://people.com/tv/catherine-ohara-reveals-where-schitts-creek-character-moria-accent-comes-from/

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Dear listeners, we hope you’re doing well wherever you may be. The hosts of Loud Murmurs have all been staying at home to help curb the epidemic and we thought what better way to retain our sanity than to talk about death, the meaning of life and ethics? 

In this episode, we invited our old friend Santu to talk about NBC’s comedy “The Good Place.” The comedy explores the above-mentioned large themes but still manages to be smart, moving and funny through its four seasons. We can’t talk about this show without spoiling it so consider yourself warned. 

Some stuff we talked about: 

• How did writers of the show incorporate philosophical concepts and make jokes about them?
• Is Chidi a true Kantian? Or is the character’s understanding of Kant’s categorical imperative a flawed one?  
• What’s up with people’s obsession with Janet? Santu thinks we see similar characters in wuxia stories. 
• Is Jason reinforcing or combating the Asian male stereotype on American TV? 

Last but not least, we recommend some books we mentioned in the show for y’all. Spend your time in solidarity to ponder important questions such as “what we owe to each other” and “death.” 

links：

1. What we owe to each other by T.M Scanlon

2. Death by Todd May

3. This article by Vox https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2019/9/26/20874217/the-good-place-series-finale-season-4-moral-philosophy

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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This week hosts Afra and Juan nerd out about Edward Norton’s 2019 film “Motherless Brooklyn” with our special first-time guest, DK-an architect based in New York. 

The neo-noir film touches on a lot of topics we love to talk about: the fight for racial equality in the U.S., the urban plan3ning history of NYC, housing rights in the past and at present. The movie may not be the most famous one coming out of the last award season, but it’s a lovingly crafted story with a lot of ambition and heart. Please find it and watch it if possible. 

In this episode, you will hear about:

• Why noir films have a gender problem, and how Motherless Brooklyn approaches that
• Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses, death and life of great American cities 
• What happened to Penn Station?
• Housing rights then and now (this sounds like a one-semester course, oops)
• What’s lost in China’s frenzy of housing development/urbanization? 
• Is Edward Norton living by his principles? A rhetorical question.
• The impossible choice between Ed Norton and Brad Pitt, both at the height of their beauty. (Afra and Juan disagree.)

Links：

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394720245

DK: Book Recommendations

1. Stemen, Sara. Projects and Their Consequences. Princeton Architectural Press, 2019.
2. Miles, Mike E., et al. Real Estate Development: Principles and Process. Urban Land Institute, 2015.
3. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. 1980.
4. JACOBS, JANE. DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES. THE BODLEY HEAD LTD, 2020.

Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. 

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