Last weekend, a friend of mine introduced me to Just Kidding News founded by Los Angeles based comedy duo Bart Kwan and Joe Jo. I’m not familiar with their entire body of work but I like what I saw in the video below.
In this session, we hear about artist Yang Liu who has gained international attention for her book where she grouped all the people in what she viewed as the west and all the people in what she viewed as the east, and figuring herself experienced enough to represent the views of 100% of everyone on both sides she contrasted ideas through pictograms rendered cute and innocuous by their simplicity.
It’s a fun discussion piece and I do think she’s on point with some things, but generalizations can be dangerous and annoying when they’re wrong and I think sometimes Liu is (Problem Solving Approach). In the video, comedian David So astutely points out how material like this can be especially problematic when it gains popularity. Then you don’t just have one or two people accepting it as truth and applying it to real, very real, encounters, you have entire nations (millions of people) acting the same dumb way. The book also seems to suffer from some Sino-centrism as Liu assumes that what happens in China happens in the rest of Asia (eg. lines, birds). Nice try, Liu, but travel more. Looking forward to a second, more informed edition.
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