Core Response #2

Benjamin Han's article "Ethnic/Diasporic/Transnational: The Rise and Fall of ImaginAsian TV" offers some interesting insights into a television channel that aims to cater to a specific demographic at its very conception, though some of the more overarching points perhaps need further fleshing out. It feels apparent that Han aims to describe the main reasons for ImaginAsian's failure at its outset, and varies his argument to accommodate the evidence to only a slight degree. The ultimate crux of his thesis — that the use of English as the supposedly unifying commonality was the main factor in the channel's demise — feels a little inadequate in face of his invocation of, for instance, the existence of local channels in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Such channels, while certainly existing in various forms from before the creation of ImaginAsian, feel slightly undercharacterized by the piece, considering the possibility of the necessary differences in addressing those from vastly different regions of the respective "home" countries. While Han is right to call into question the culturally homogenous approach that ImaginAsian used, his assessment is still too monolithic to address this potential sense of regionalism, especially as pertains to the use of dialects. Furthermore, competition between ImaginAsian and the local channels, and as a corollary ImaginAsian's popularity in non-metropolitan areas, are important factors that go unaddressed by the article.

Then again, Han might be approaching the issue from the wrong angle, focusing on language when he could have given more focus to the actual kinds of imported shows that ImaginAsian was bringing. To use a personal anecdote, when I was growing up I would watch Korean shows dubbed into Mandarin and subtitled in English with my (Taiwanese) mother and sister; however, I assumed at the time that they were Chinese shows, and was convinced of this fact about a decade on. Compounding this notion, at least in my recollection, was the relative lack of cultural specificity present in those shows, which ranged from standard-issue romantic comedies to period dramas. An expanded version of Han's article could perhaps seek to address the exact nature of the shows that ImaginAsian imported, and whether that had a significant effect on the channel's failure.