Announcing: “Reimagined” Instagram Series April 13th
Hello there! Happy to see you’ve found your way back to the blog after a few months hiatus for us. Big news for you all! In September I moved in with my lovely girlfriend Brenda, and we’ve spent the last few months getting our place together (I will admit Brenda is much better at this than me, I am more of a support role) while exploring the new city we’re in (shout out to the Malden, MA folks!).
Malden is a city in the Greater Boston area with a relatively high Asian population, along with Quincy, Lexington, Lowell, and Cambridge. It’s cool for me to live in a city like this. Because of the high Asian population, there are a lot of “things” geared towards an Asian clientele that you don’t get in other cities:
Things like the downtown area having a high number of Asian restaurants that serve more traditional food I used to have to go all the way to Chinatown for (no no, chicken fingers from your local takeout spot don’t count, but if you live in Newton, MA definitely give Lobster Wok a call).
Things like having several Asian supermarkets in the area that sell ingredients needed to make Asian dishes my family used to make.
Things like ads and posters featuring Asian folks.
And one last thing I’m actually still adjusting to - seeing people that look like me nearly every time I leave the house. It’s a constant feed of people that look like me doing things I’ve never seen people that look like me do (let’s refer to this as “representation” for the rest of this post. It’s not exactly the same but it’ll get by for this). It’s like that scene in Rush Hour 3 where Chris Tucker interrogates one of the Chinese assassins in France and is shocked to see a Chinese person speaking French. I laughed at that scene a lot the first time I saw the movie (and still do, Rush Hour is a GOATed franchise) because, like many people growing up in America, I too had never seen a Chinese person whose native language was French and it was silly how much my brain was trying to understand what was going on.
Living here in Malden has had me thinking about representation a little more than usual. In my head thinking “that’s cool” over and over again, thoughts developed into an idea after two things happened…
I started following an account on Instagram called Afro.Anime.Ent. Basically, it’s an account that highlights Afrocentric Artists, Cosplay, Comics, and Animation.
I followed the Afro Anime account because, well, I like Anime and it’s cool to have more anime stuff in my feed. Often, the account will share illustrations of an anime character redrawn as a member of the Black community. Strictly from a fan perspective, I thought it was super cool to see a different spin on my favorite characters. It’s almost like those “What If…?” storylines from the MCU. I was talking about the account with a friend of mine who is Black, and they mentioned the confidence, pride, and sometimes pure emotion they felt to see the characters they love so much in a way that looks more like them.
Shang-Chi entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and it was awesome).
After Shang-Chi came out, I remember seeing a bunch of little Asian kids who were excited to be Shang-Chi for Halloween. Getting all the gear and having a costume where they actually looked similar to the real thing. It made me think about when I was a kid playing with my friends, pretending to be superheroes. We would assign heroes to ourselves, and often the white kids were able to quickly claim a hero because of a physical trait they shared. Makes sense. After those were assigned out, I typically got to take whichever hero was left over. I didn’t think too much of it when I was a kid of course, I was only annoyed if the hero that I inherited was one I wasn’t a fan of, but thinking about it now it would have been really cool if there was a popular hero that looked like me that I could jump out and claim with the same urgency and confidence as my peers (Shang-Chi did exist at that time, just was not super famous yet!).
Isn’t it amazing the ripple effects certain things can have? Both of these have incredible impact on the individuals who see them. While the Afro Anime account is able to provide their viewers content on a near daily basis, I’m left wondering how often Hollywood will have highly promoted, highly anticipated, positively represented Asian lead for our people to see themselves in? Takes awhile obviously. So now what? Do we sit back in our villages and sip our tea until they get it done? Or is there something we could do to bridge the gap? What if we learned from the impact of the Afro Anime account? What if people didn’t care if it was from Hollywood or if it was from an Instagram account with around 300 followers, as long as they saw role models they could identify with? That’d be cool! So cool in fact, that we’re going to see if we can provide that for the people.
The Familiar Feeling is excited to launch a series called “Reimagined” that will live primarily on our Instagram page (smash that follow button).
What is it?
We are working with Artists to take their favorite pop culture characters and “reimagine” that character as if they were of the same ethnicity as themselves.
What’s the point?
Echoing the sentiment on the Afro Anime account, how a person can see someone they idolized redone to look more like themselves, we’re hoping this series brings more joy, confidence, pride, and inspiration to those who see it.
We’re also hoping it allows the Artists who participate some time to reflect and appreciate their own heritage as well. Sometimes you don’t realize how much a tiny little part of your heritage can be forgotten without a little reminder, and then all of a sudden a million other little things come rushing back.
Where can I find pieces in the “Reimagined” series?
Reimagine will kick off the week of April 13th, 2022. You can find the posts on our Instagram account HERE. Give us a follow!
How often will this be posted?
To be honest, there is no regular schedule for releases. It’ll depend on how many pieces we have in our backlog and how many Artist are involved at any single point in time. But it’ll be something we hope becomes a regular staple of our Instagram account.
I’m an Artist and I’d love to be a part of this! How do I get involved? Do I have to be Asian?
No, you don’t have to be Asian. We’d love to get in touch with all Artists!
If you’d like to get involved or learn more about this, please Direct Message us on Instagram!
That’s all I have for today. Thanks again for finding your way here. Even if you didn’t read this post, we at least got a boost in web traffic :-)
