The man responsible for Rebecca Black's now-infamous "Friday," ARK Music's Patrice Wilson, posted a new video this week, this time by another tween girl named Alison Gold. It's called "Chinese Food" and its lyrics are just as inane as its forbears, leading blogs and publications across the board to call it "The 'Friday' of 2013." But that's not quite correct, because guess what? Unlike "Friday," it's also racist.
"Chinese Food" follows the signature blueprint for musical failure that has became the hallmark of ARK Music, a production company known for its work with young would-be pop stars and the stage parents who spoil them. It depicts young Alison Gold in a variety of environments: frolicking in a (supposedly) Chinese restaurant; in a field with a guy in a panda suit; in her bedroom playing Monopoly. It's just as cheesy as "Friday," and just as annoyingly easy to sing along with thanks to the catchy rhythm of lines like "I love chow chow muh-muh-muh-muh-mein." There's even a "rap" breakdown, supplied by Wilson, that rhymes "broccoli" with "Monopoly," and "busy bee" and "fantasy." By the time this is posted, "Chinese Food" will likely have been viewed several million times. It's exactly the type of video that people can't wait to show their friends -- the key element of viral content -- which is exactly what makes it so disturbing.
If you’ve seen the racist horror that is "Asian Girlz," think of "Chinese Food" as a sort of junior version of that monstrosity. It's almost comical how obvious and archaic the racial stereotypes are; they seem too absurd to be true. Here are a few of the explicitly problematic parts:
When Gold and her panda friend watch noodles float through the sky like clouds, those noodles are udon. Udon is Japanese food, not Chinese food.
Later in the video, Gold and her friends dance around a barbecue. The dancers are made up to resemble geisha and they're wearing kimonos; geisha and kimonos are Japanese, not Chinese.
At one point, Gold and the panda play Monopoly, and the camera zooms in on "Oriental Avenue."
Oh, and there's a gong at the end.
The fact that many Chinese restaurants in America serve foods from more than one Asian country will probably be used in a defense of the video, but that's a straw-man argument. "Chinese Food" is not racist because it depicts pan-Asian cuisine; it's racist because it lazily traffics in racial stereotypes and paints over the distinctions between vastly different Asian cultures with the same "it's all Chinese to me!" brush.
It's difficult to tell whether Wilson understands that the song he wrote deals in harmful misinformation, but judging by his earnest responses to Rebecca Black's success, it's likely that's not the case. "Chinese Food" is another example of the kind of cultural tribute that's harmful even when it lacks malicious intent -- the reason many Americans still don't understand why, for example, the song "What Made the Red Man Red" from Peter Pan is racist, or why calling Washington D.C.'s NFL team the Redskins is not okay. They're not explicitly hateful, of course, or even vicious, but they are ignorant and diminishing towards huge swathes of people, reinforcing ideas about them that are vastly overgeneralized and demeaning.
A communication breakdown still exists in the space between the celebration of multiculturalism and the commitment of hate crimes, a space where people "mean well" and certainly don't consider themselves racist, but still obliviously inflict damage and then refuse to acknowledge its existence or impact. Yesterday, Gawker's Cord Jefferson wrote a thoughtful article that explained how racism exists not just in overtly hateful thoughts and comments, but in "the framework of plausible deniability that builds up around racism" and "how insane that plausible deniability can make people feel."
Like those terrible Asian schoolgirl jokes on Seth MacFarlane's new sitcom Dads, "Chinese Food" can attempt to hide behind the "post-racial America" argument, the one that says that it's okay to exploit stereotypes because they can't do us any harm, not anymore — but it will fail. That's the real danger behind the myth of colorblindness, the myth of post-racial America: the potential for the racism embedded in this confectionery video to be denied -- and enjoyed anyway.
The problem, particularly with a viral video like this one, is that everyone sees it, but not everyone sees the damage implicitly wrought by it. Earlier today, a YouTube commenter wrote on the video's page, "This is why kids become racist." She could be right; I can hear this song echoing down the halls of my high school as readily as I could "The Fox." Viral videos like "Chinese Food," when they're widely viewed, become a part of our shared culture; they're what millions of people talk about, reference in conversation, share with their friends. When those video depict other groups of people in inaccurate and demeaning ways for entertainment -- as exotic, monolithic, or otherwise fictionalized -- they encourage us to internalize those ideas, or at the very least to laugh them off.
"Chinese Food" is, in a sense, a frillier, less overt manifestation of the same kind of minstrelsy that Miley Cyrus gets away with. It uses food the way Miley uses a dance – incorrectly, with little concern for either accuracy or why it's important to be accurate about other cultures – to create celebrity, social capital or a desired image. This video will certainly follow Gold around for the rest of her life in far more consequential ways than Cyrus's celebrity permits. But I wouldn't worry about her. In fact, "Chinese Food" will likely become a learning experience; over the next few days, Gold will almost certainly come to know the differences between Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese cultures better than most people passing the song around. But will she come to know about why it matters? That understanding -- the one that prevents more "Chinese Food"s from getting made in the future -- is what it's all about.
Correction [8:47 A.M. PST, 10/16/13]: A previous version of this story stated that the noodles being grilled were Mongolian barbecue; in fact, some Chinese noodles are grilled in the same way; additionally, Mongolian barbecue is originally a Taiwanese, not Mongolian, invention. (Thanks to KCET food columnist Clarissa Wei for the tips.) An update about the video's use of "Oriental Avenue" was also included.
