Capital Scandal, ep. 16

( Spoilers had to take an emotional break for a while )

In conclusion: I am not sure what to say at all! I very much dislike the final episode and have a billion rewrites in my head, and yet, so much of the rest of the show feed into all the things I love.

Some of my lack of throwing things is also because I have yet to watch a kdrama that sticks the landing: most have ranged from very disappointing to mildly annoying to "Kind of weird, but not bad!"

So with that caveat, I loved most of this series. It has anti-imperialist politics, albeit not too in depth; my favorite female character in a drama so far; what the costumers seem to think are 1930s fashion but actually are not (I love it anyway); swing-influenced kpop; and did I mention all the LONGING and ANGST and NOT-TOUCHING? And yet, I am tacking on that really big caveat!

Nakamura, Lisa - Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet

As with the other Lisa Nakamura books, I read this months ago and don't remember it well.

This was published in 2008, so it's much more recent than the other two books. It still feels a little dated given the gap between research and publication, but less so at least!

The book covers race and the use of AIM icons, the Alllooksame test, UIs and race in Matrix and Minority Report, the creation of forum avatars for pregnant women and their babies, and finally, how we count race on the Internet and how it could be improved.

I was extremely puzzled by the inclusion of the forum avatars for pregnant women, as the women in question are almost all white and I do not remember Nakamura talking about the construction of whiteness very much in the chapter. The study fits into the book's subtitle of visual cultures, but not much with digitizing race. The chapter was an interesting read, but confusing when I tried to connect it to the other chapters in the book.

The look at race in the Matrix trilogy and Minority Report weren't as new to me, given the amount of media studies critique in the other two books I've read on race and the Internet. And I sadly do not remember much at all about the AIM icons chapter, the Alllooksame chapter, or the final chapter. However, a quick glance at the final chapter on Amazon has a better discussion of how to think about the "digital divide," particularly how Asian Americans are probably underrepresented in censuses due to potential language difficulties. Nakamura also discusses how censuses on technology use fail to take into account how many Asians are there behind the scenes, manufacturing the technology being used. I think most of her writing focuses on Asians; there's mention of the online petitions against Abercrombie and Fitch, as well as talk of outsourcing manufacturing so that the risks involved are taken by Asian bodies. I don't remember enough to say how much she discusses other POC though.

Mostly I remember thinking this was interesting although not necessarily always exciting in its conclusions.