Over 500 gathered in Roone Arledge Auditorium Friday night for the Asian American Alliance’s annual CultureSHOCK showcase, which included performances by both Columbia groups and off-campus talents, such as the hip-hop duo Magnetic North.
“The last three years of CultureSHOCK, when the crowd came, it was very quiet,” AAA President Calvin Sun, CC ’08, said. “This year, the entire show—I don’t know if they were drunk or what—the entire floor was shouting and screaming for the entire show.”
The show opened and closed with AAA-made videos exploring the event’s purpose, and included a third video, a spoof called “America’s Next Top Model: Minority,” designed to mock stereotypes about Asian-Americans. The video’s “contestants,” whose antics drew rueful laughter from the audience, included Nerd Boy, Frat Boy, and Innocent Asian Girl.
“We are well aware of those stereotypes,” Sun said, “and we want to show it’s stupid.”
With an increased South Asian presence and a broader advertising campaign, the event focused on “exposing” the Asian-American community in new ways, especially in relation to the performing arts.
“Exposure, to me, is twofold,” an interviewee in the opening documentary explained.
“The first part is that the community is ready to, you know, reveal the taboo issues that we normally don’t talk about. And also, that it makes us more human, more natural. It kind of defies the idea of the model minority, because we’re not models—we don’t need to be anymore."
mary.kohlmann@columbiaspectator.com