America's disproportionate reporting on white, attractive, female victims of crime has been a topic I've wanted to cover in a film for a few years now. Below is the mess of thoughts and observations I hope to someday put together into a cohesive documentary. Brutally honest feedback would be appreciated.

IF I WAS A GIRL
...I never would've even been born, literally. My parents really wanted a boy and tried three times unsuccessfully. After my three sisters, I was on the way, but due to China's anti-overpopulation policies, my parents weren't even supposed to be having any more children. My mom told me that the nurses let her slide because I turned out to be a boy. So Chinese attitudes (not now but back then) around boys versus girls make up the main reason I was conceived and delivered, and thus gender issues are sort of personal to me.

PROSTITUTION, THE WORLD'S OLDEST PROFESSION
In high school I developed an interest in the criminology and psychology of serial killers. A statistic that always stood out for me was the high percentage of victims being prostitutes. One reason street hookers make easy targets is because the illegality and stigma of their work prevents them from approaching police, reporters, and doctors like other victims. Furthermore, do law enforcers and the media treat serial murder cases with less urgency if they involve victims with unconventional lifestyles or jobs? And how is being a woman different in a country such as Amsterdam where sex work is regulated like any other business and where rates of rape, assault, and STD infections on prostitutes are much lower?

DRUGS
Decades ago, opium, cocaine, and marijuana became illegal because, according to the media, Chinese, black, and Mexican men - respectively - were using the substances to seduce or sexually assault white women. Protecting white females as a catalyst for drug prohibition persists to this day, in far more subtle ways. Before Bill Clinton left office, he signed an anti-GHB bill in honor of teenager Hillory Farias who had fell into a fatal coma after having drank something spiked with the depressant chemical. Had Farias not been white, could her overdose have sparked so much attention in the media and led to the criminalization of GHB?

Come to think of it, what is the rate of teenagers of color experiencing such tragedies around drug misuse or abuse? I certainly don't know because reporters don't bring it up. Following the news for my work with DanceSafe.org, every story I saw about anyone who became addicted to or overdosed on ecstasy had the same profile: a middle-class white kid whose life in school and home was perfect before drugs ruined everything. How these reports highlighted the kids goes to show that the definition of an all-American teenager is still a very narrow and false one. According to the media, you should be happy if you're white and on the football team and getting crowned at your prom.


YOUNG, PRETTY, AND ALL-AMERICAN
My sisters were discussing the discovery of Laci Peterson's body one evening and I asked who they were talking about. Sarah asked if I had been asleep the past year to not know about this girl. The reason was that I never watch television or follow the news except for work. I don't see the point in obsessing with such cases - as tragic as they are - because every story is the same. And this brings me to a few more questions:

1) What populations of American women are being ignored by the media?
2) Why does this happen from a news industry perspective?
3) Does more coverage equal better investigations of cases?

Is the focus on the all-American damsel in distress promoting a certain idea of what girls are or should be? Firstly, reporters eulogize each victim as a successful student, loving housewife, or some other socially acceptable role model. Secondly, attractive images of the victim are circulated throughout headlines. What sickened me most about the coverage of Laci Peterson was that the shot of her cute dimple-faced smile was published repeatedly even though her head wasn't even attached to her body anymore. I'm sorry, but this is exploitation, not sympathy. If the media only values sexually appealing, well-behaved females, then is their reporting trend executed out of respect and sorrow, or out of a desire to objectify women and keep them in their place?

COMPARED TO MEN...
The focus on pretty white girls doesn't just exclude the majority of real female victims, but also the majority of male victims. Violent crime reporting in general reflects the urge to promote traditional gender roles - females as complacent, passive victims and males as aggressive perpetrators. The only major coverage on the assault or murder of a man occurs when the assailant is a woman. Because the context of women supposedly being well-behaved has already been established, a case like this will seem especially sensational and unique.

This ideology is shared by our justice system. Women are now being imprisoned at a much faster rate than men, and their crimes - like the ones of their male counterparts - are often drug-related. The sentences they serve are often longer and harsher for the exact same offenses. Why is this? Take any judge or prosecutor or juror who believes women are supposed to be nurturing, gentle mothers and caregivers, and present them with a woman charged of drugs or violence, and how do you think they'll react? In essence, when men commit assault or abuse their children, it is natural and acceptable compared to when women do it, and American courts are acting accordingly.

Anyway, another documentary I want to write and direct someday is one on Asian-Americans in hip hop. In honor of that, here are some of the artists who are contributing to the movement. This is the Myspace blog link cuz Imeem is lame and doesn't let you post html images, or does it? I don't know. I just joined yesterday!!!

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=116932167&blogID=230602282

The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream and Pi: Faith in Chaos. Starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, The Fountain spans over a thousand years through three parallel tales of love, loss, and the search for eternal life. My friends and I were all confused in our own ways by the end of the show. Although breathtaking to watch on the big screen, the stories were hard to follow and connect together. After a few hours of thought, I've come up with this interpretation of Aronofsky's latest work. So the three stories are...

1) The Spanish Inquisition - Jackman is a patriotic Conquistador willing to do anything the Queen (Weisz) demands of him in the name of Spain. She sends him off on a mission to find the Tree of Life which shall free their country and allow the two of them to live forever. However, the mythological plant is hidden and protected by indigenous tribesmen in the mountainous jungle.

This presentation is very much a religious and mythological one. The Tree of Life is a sacred object described in the Bible, according to the Queen. It is protected by a tribe deep in the dense mountains atop an ancient pyramid. And the search is contextualized within the Spanish Inquisition, a time and place that determined life and death almost exclusively through religion.

http://blogsimages.skynet.be/images_v2/000/028/502/20060710/dyn002_original_476_268_jpeg_28502_6e29cd1f37c35381667363dee2d9306a.jpg

2) Present day - Jackman is a researcher putting all his efforts at the lab into finding a cure for brain tumor to save his dying wife. As her illness gets stronger, Jackman's team reveals that botanical samples used surgically on a monkey has profound healing effects on the animal.

This second and main story follows a scientific theme. The protagonist is a lab researcher. The search for saving his wife is based on biological studies, and her pending death is due to a terminal illness. Even the Tree of Life shows up in a very physical manner: as a botanical sample they use to operate on an infected monkey.

http://media.movieweb.com/galleries/2827/1966/lo/DF-486.jpg

3) Outer space - Not sure what time period this one is cuz Jackman is floating in the middle of the galaxy inside a huge bubble carrying him and the Tree of Life. He is apparently on a journey to the Star of Nebula to achieve eternal life. His wife appears occassionally as he has flashbacks and visions of her, perhaps from the past?

The third story takes an aesthetic and spiritual approach to perceiving death. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happens in this part. It's still quite abstract and open-ended, but maybe that was the intention. The Tree of Life's role as the only living object floating in space, the visions of his wife (are they memories, is he dead, is she dead?), and the beautiful, climatic arrival at the Stars of Nebula form an experience of death as somewhat painful and scary but still uplifting and free.

Not to claim that I fully understand the film, but thinking back about the themes in the three stories, I think Aronofsky is trying to present three different ways in which death has been dealt with throughout human history. In past societies, gods and relentless faith determined everything. In today's world, science and politics have joined religion in debates over what is life and what is death and how we should handle things. But one of the friends I saw the movie with said something about dying being an experience that should be accepted when the time has come, and that Jackman's character shouldn't have perceived mortality as a disease which required a cure. I wonder if this understanding of death is most often carried by artists, or people who perceive existence in a very aesthetic or spiritual way.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/11/22/arts/22foun.600.jpg

As for life in LA, no I haven't found a job yet cuz I'm gonna milk the gvt for every dime it has before I work again. Yes I am already on unemployment, and also applying for food stamps. Wow if I can go to Whole Foods (which I never shop at cuz it's so damn expensive) and buy organic groceries with gvt aid, hahahaaha I will be so proud!

See the first day the war broke out on the news in 2003, I got arrested sitting on an SF intersection at 7am in the morning. Oh how passionate I was back then. Now I'm just old and apathetic and getting to the point where nothing seems to make a difference (that's what LA does to you). So it really feels good to be able to take back some of the money that's been going to Iraq. At my last job, I got taxed $98 out of a $650/wk check. That's some bullshit right there and now it's time for my payback.

So you might be asking what I'm gonna do with my free time. Well for one, I'm trying to get a short documentary off the ground about sexual & romantic xxxperiences between Asian men and non-Asian women. How to go about developing it and what should be done with it upon CUMpletion is something I need to research, which will be a full-time job in and of itself. I got some other creative endeavors in mind, but i'm too lazy to talk about it all now. Just ask if you care to know.