Category: Asian-American

Digital Critique #5: “To Be or Not To Be”

The experience of adversity can come from different cultural perspectives at various times in history.  From StoryCenter comes a tale from Alan Fong entitled, “To Be or Not To Be.”   It tells the perspective of an Asian-American conscientious objector during the Vietnam War era.   The video was posted in April 2013.  For this analysis, I chose to judge the digital story on the following evaluation traits:

  1. Story – Fong has a very clear voice that guides the viewer through the series of images.  Most of the historical stills give the viewer a sense of the students discontent at the University of California-Berkley during that time.  Fong includes images of Asian-American students, protest buttons, and also archival footage of Chinese railroad workers and Japanese internment camps to give the viewer his cultural perspective.  One thing I wished to hear, however, was what Fong is doing today.   Perhaps seeing a present-day picture of him in Berkley.
  2. Project planning – Fong does a fair job of presenting the narration and images in chronological order.  Much of the emphasis was on his time at UC-Berkley in the 1960s and 70s, but he refers back to Asian-American history from the 19th and mid-20th century closer to the end.   It feels a bit out of order, but I can understand the logic.  If a digital storytelling creates the narration first, then the visuals will compliment the audio.
  3. Citations & permission – Fong cites the Ike & Tina Turner music playing in the background, but he fails to credit the historical images he included.  Even if this project is purely for educational purposes with public domain material, a storyteller must properly give credit to content creators like newspaper photographers, magazine artists and historical archive collections.

On a side note, I was hoping that Fong would have made a greater effort to personalize this story about Asian-American history.  He could have included pictures of himself or his family to give some more context.   I enjoy tales of cultural adversity like this, but I wish Fong could talked a little more from the heart.