Korean American Creations and Discontents: Korean American Cultural Productions, Los Angeles, and Post-1992
2020-12
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Korean American Creations and Discontents: Korean American Cultural Productions, Los Angeles, and Post-1992
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2020-12
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Korean American Creations and Discontents looks at Korean American subjectivity in Los Angeles after the 1992 Riots/Uprisings. This project begins with the LAPD beating of Rodney King and ends with the fatal Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. This dissertation is necessarily rooted in 1992 and 2020. Using Korean American cultural producers, this project examines the figure of the Korean American entrepreneur and Korean American subjectivity within the boundaries of model minority narratives, neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and post-racial rhetoric. Situated in Los Angeles, this project is grounded in the Riots/Uprisings as an event that shaped, transformed, and reified new cultural, racial, economic, and gendered assumptions of multiple categories, identities, and bodies. While some events leading up to the Riots/Uprisings are covered, this project looks more specifically at media representation and the consequences of a media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Moreover, while this project shifts away from the Riots/Uprisings, it remains rooted in them as a spectral haunting, influencing racial dynamics in the contemporary moment, as well as Korean American cultural productions. I look at how 1992 was a pivotal moment that influenced and continues to inform how Korean American cultural producers view themselves and their work, whether consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, my own perspective as a 2nd generation Korean American instrumentally informs my work, appearing most explicitly in personal anecdotes and vignettes, inserted throughout the dissertation. Chapter one takes a broader look at the shifting Asian American figure, looking at how Asian American representation has shifted between yellow peril and model minority narratives, given the historical moment and events that are unfolding. Taking a contemporary look at the increase of Asian American representation in popular culture, I situate this idea of representation as a paradox. Chapter two then looks at the history of Korean immigrants/Americans in Los Angeles, and how generalized tropes of Asian Americans impacted Korean American figures. The second part of this dissertation takes a look at 1.5 or 2nd generation Korean American cultural producers, Justin Chon and his 2017 film Gook, Roy Choi, the creator of the Kogi Truck and the Korean BBQ taco, and Dumbfoundead, a Koreatown-based rapper and media creator. Chapter three looks at Justin Chon and Gook, alongside the 1992 Riots/Uprisings, news media representations, and the media-constructed Black-Korean conflict. Chapter four and five examine Roy Choi’s Korean BBQ taco and the Kogi truck and Dumbfoundead, respectiviely, within the context of rising multiculturalism, neoliberalism, and post-racial rhetoric.
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University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. December 2020. Major: American Studies. Advisors: Josephine Lee, Elliott Powell. 1 computer file (PDF)vi, 356 pages.
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Chang, Michelle. (2020). Korean American Creations and Discontents: Korean American Cultural Productions, Los Angeles, and Post-1992. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/218729.
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