Stereotypes in American Born Chinese and Wuthering Heights

I can't believe that it would be this possible to hate an archaic book character (in the context of both the novel and today's world) until I met Joseph from Wuthering Heights.  I don't think this'll ever be a full literary and critical thesis of why I hate Joseph but it definitely has the potential to be so.  However if Emily Brontë crafted Joseph to be a despicable character, then she has certainly accomplished that.

I know that some people won't mind him or even skip what he's saying in the novel.  I like to read every word, even if there's no translator for Yorkshire accents.  (This is starting to bring up my inablility of deciphering Liverpool accents in my mind as well.)  Despite being accepting of differences in people, I feel that Joseph's accent is kind of disparagingly stereotypical.  I don't know why but it seems like Joseph is portrayed in the same streotypical way as Chin-Kee is portrayed in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Though out American Born Chinese, Chin-Kee (shown below) is the manifestation of Asian stereotypes.  He is portrayed as very annoying and insulting in Danny's story.  The unfitting sitcom laughter placed in the racist situations Chin-Kee brings about would be absolutely biting dark comedy if it wasn't for the book's extremely bright color palette.

 I feel like Brontë is doing the same with Joseph.  For example in Chapter XVII, Hindley ends up hurting himself when trying to shoot Heathcliff through the window.  When Hindley starts bleeding everywhere, Joseph gets pushed onto the ground by Heathcliff to clean up the blood.  Ironically Joseph starts praying instead of being like every other normal servant (let alone human being) who would clean just up the blood.

After some consideration, I think that Brontë is trying to put down older people of her time who are conservative and traditional in their religious views.  Joseph's portrayal of ridiculous and impractical zeal really puts shame onto the character.  Joseph is pretty much a scumbag as far as I can tell.  Plus his actions in Chapter XVII provides situational irony when put side by side with his religious zeal.  Also despite his religiousness, Joseph is a pretty useless human being.  I don't mean to jump to such broad conclusions but how can I stop myself from saying that when Joseph cannot even interact normally with other people?  I'm not even going to go into the instances where Joseph is useless.

I guess connecting to other novels isn't a bad choice when trying to understand other pieces of literature...
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Picture source:
http://mickkrongchon.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/american-born-chinese-chin-kee/

Wuthering Heights, Nice Guys, and Bad Boys

Representing books with songs seems like a garish fad.  It just reminds me how teens with lots of angst try to identify themselves with songs or bands because the song just reminds them of how they feel and not what they really are. Anyways, all of this reminded me of an 9th grade activity that I did, where a song had to picked that described some significant aspect of a book.  In that activity I had picked "Every Breath You Take" to describe Pip's relationship with Estella in Great Expectations.

I remembered this when in class Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" was played to go along with the current book.  This was probably one of the weirdest music videos I've ever seen.  Surprisingly Kate Bush hasn't taken drugs as far as Wikipedia knows, contrary to possible first reactions.  (I was told that the music video was weird because it was released when music videos were being made for the first time.)  Her video is here:

 

Using the same thinking from song and book activity, I thought that "Nice Guys" is very fitting for Wuthering Heights.  The song is sung by Kevin Wu, Ryan Higa, and Chester See.  It's about how the "bad boys" is cooler than the "nice" ones when it comes to dating.  Not that I think being a bad boy is the way to go when dating.  "Nice Giys" is here:

 

I thought it was appropriate for Wuthering Heights because Heathcliff is the "bad boy" of the novel and has the true emotional love for Catherine Earnshaw.  Heathcliff could be viewed as someone who was influenced to become a "bad boy."  Firstly Hindley abused Heathcliff as a child and as an adult. Secondly the Lintons were repulsed by Heathcliff, especially Edgar. On the other hand, On the contrast, Edgar Linton is the “nice guy” who has everything else right but the emotional passion for Catherine. Although I'm not promoting revenge or treating women badly on dates, Heathcliff does "finish" before Edgar, since Heathcliff took away Edgar's family legacy of Thrushcross Grange and the life of his love Catherine Earnshaw.  However all of this ends up as a double-edge sword unto Heathcliff, since he dies in a deprived emotional state.

Somehow this  mentality of "'bad boys' or 'alpha males' are the best" when dating is really silly because usually those most of those types of guys are really douchebags and worthless human beings.  Then again I don't count this against people who get caught up in this kind of stuff because they usually don't know better.