Not Your Fetish:

The Takedown of Day Above Ground and Asian Girlz

August 15, 2015

By now, anyone plugged into any social media network has heard that Los Angeles-based band Day Above Ground (DAG) has removed Asian Girlz, the music video Angry Asian Man founder Phil Yu concluded as the “the worst thing ever made.” The band took the video down from their YouTube channel two weekends ago after a maelstrom of protests by bloggers, comedians, netizens, and most notably, by transnational feminist organization, the Association of Filipinas, Feminists Fighting Imperialism, Refeudalization and Marginalization (AF3IRM). 

For those who have not seen the video, consider yourselves lucky. I only watched a few seconds before shutting it off. It made me almost want to watch the Human Centipede franchise—a trilogy I forged in stone never to watch—over a 5 minute YouTube clip. 

Yes, Asian Girlz is that kind of offensive.

DAG, a juvenile motley crew whom comedian David So describes as “One Direction after a coke addiction” mansplained that the song is a satire, a parody, a tribute. Tribute? More like a sexual smear campaign. 

Now, Gulliver’s Travels is a satire and so is Brave New World.  Even American Psycho, with its copious bloodbaths and violent snap-shot of 1980’s decadence, is a satire. These literary examples, of course, may be too farfetched for a band who chicken-scratched a catalogue of racist and sexist stereotypes. And no, no matter how DAG spins it, Asian Girlz is not a collection of haikus or limericks or odes to Asian women. If they wanted satire, they could have perused the Onion, flipped through the pages of Mad Magazine, or even watch just 30 seconds of the Colbert Report to expand their knowledge of satire.

The lyrical wizardry of “Asian Girlz” includes fan dislikes I love your sticky rice / Butt f**king all night / B***h I love you / I love your creamy yellow thighs / Ooh your slanted eyes / It's the Year of the Dragon / Ninja pussy I'm stabbin'/ So baby marry me / Come on sit on my lap / Or we'll send you back. Many of the lines sound as if they’ve been lifted right from the Brazzers porno website. 

Or maybe it’s a poor attempt to maintain an iambic pentameter rhythm.  Poetic devices aside, the lyrics depict sexual violence and breaking immigration laws by way of mail-order marriages. 

These are not issues to lampoon, since 1) Rape culture has imploded at a frantic rate. Steubenville, Rehtaeh Parsons and the victims of Aerial Castro should still be in our minds; and 2) Taking into account the aggressive man-hunting and the tightening of immigration reforms in the United States and Canada, immigration for many women of colour and their children is an issue of life and death, a matter of surveillance and racial profiling. Further, mail-order marriages are always brokered by a third party such as an agency, and facilitated entirely by the consumer—the husband—and NOT by the product, aka, the wife. 

I won’t go into the pedophilic nature of And you age so well / I can barely tell / 17 or 23? / Baby doesn't matter to me. The point, I think, has been made.

This brings us to DAG’s one Indonesian band member, the token dandy for their multiculturalism, the champion for their non-racist behaviour. If this is so, two things come to mind: 1) this actual Indonesian member has not said a single word since lead singer Jo Anselm has been doing all the mouthing, sticking to the script that DAG can’t be racist because they “have an Indonesian band member!” The mere fact that they keep referring to him as the “Indonesian” and not by his name says something of the racial and power imbalance within the band; and 2) This Indonesian member was born from an Asian woman, therefore, I dare him to sing Asian Girlz to his mom on Mother’s day. It is after all, a tribute song.

Defenders of the band, including Levy Tran, the star of the video—who has apologized for her involvement and for setting “Asian women back by 50 years,”—are wielding the freedom of speech rhetoric. Freedom of speech in this context has rotted into an exclusive white privilege, since most of the clamour against DAG and Asian Girlz have been from the Asian-American community—yes, that’s right, the Asian-AMERICAN community, as in, citizens of the country. 

Disturbing still, is DAG’s assertion that they are just a bunch of nice average Joes whose song reflects how most men view Asian women.  I’m going to give the average North American straight man the benefit of the doubt, because if DAG is truly a representation of the average Joe, then straight, North American men are racist, sexist cretins who actually believe a thrilling night in Bangkok—or Tokyo, or Manila, take your pick—is nestled between the legs of Asian women.

To historically contextualize, DAG and Asian Girlz is a pop culture by-product of America’s military invasion and colonization of almost every continent in the world since the early 19th century. The rape and pillage of Asian countries from the Philippines in 1899 to the killing fields of the Vietnam war—coincidentally, the US military used the Philippines as a strategic battle front to launch offensives against the Vietnamese people—laid the blueprint to exoticize and commodify the sexual identities of Asian women. Miss Saigon, for all its twirly-whirly dances and pretty songs, not only erased America’s invasion of Vietnam, but distorted the gruesome prostitution and rape of Vietnamese women. For this historical amnesia, I say, well done, America. Well done.

For all of DAG’s grunting and mansplaining, what they did not expect was the war cry and battle formation lead by AF3IRM. Within 24 hours of launching a petition through Change.org, the House of Blues in L.A. dropped DAG from their August 10th concert lineup.  Shortly after, On-Stage Stands personally contacted AF3IRM National Chairperson Jollene Levid, informing her that they were dropping sponsorship of DAG, pronto. DAG removed Asian Girlz from their YouTube channel and mansplained—again—that it was for the safety of the band, their close contacts, and for Levy Tran. AF3IRM’s successful campaign has included support from eminent American feminist Johanna Brenner as well as Levy Tran herself, who signed the petition, noting that she “made a poor judgement.”  Immediately after the video takedown, AF3IRM formally launched #notyourfetish, an “educational campaign to show the true face of transnational and women of color.” 

DAG has refused to publicly apologize—one of AF3IRM’s petition demands—using Tran as their front and fall woman for the entire train wreck. 

Instead, DAG rebutted with American Dream a slap-dash brodude video they “recorded, mixed, shot, edited and uploaded in 1 day”.  

Moreover, DAG has NOT mentioned AF3IRM in any of their interviews, the driving force behind the protests—this, despite the fact that lead singer Joel Anselm has received ALL 1,900 signatures and counting, since Change.org dumps each and every endorser in his inbox. Perhaps Day Above Ground’s silentium est aurum approach is due to the fact that the very women they were sexually degrading and exploiting are the very women that are tearing them down.

Now.  How’s that for satire?