Mobile cultures: New Media in Queer Asia AND Kelly Loves Tony

Brandy Zeng
May 18, 2017


In the film Kelly loves Tony, we see a lot of the themes from the reading from last week about young Laotian women. Teenage pregnancy is one of the main themes of the film which can be seen because Kelly gets pregnant while she is in high school. She is also pushed to get married to the boy because she is pregnant, which is also explained in the article we read. In order to save face for the family, if the girl gets pregnant, she is told to keep the baby and just get married to the man. We also see the different thoughts of different people, because Kelly really wants to go to college and get a degree and a job, but Tony questions why she wants to go to school. This also brings up the issue about access to education because oftentimes children from lower class families do not end up going to college because there are not enough resources for them to learn about their opportunities and also financial difficulties. Both Tony and Kelly seem close to their families and they spend a lot of time with them, which is also described in the article.

In the second article, Mobile cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, the author talks about gay groups across the internet. He describes whether the internet takes out different cultural aspects of different gay movements around the world. In South Asia, India has the most prominent lgbt movement. In India, they coined the term "Khush" to describe gay people. Internet groups are formed to try to connect queer south asians. Many groups in India are different than groups in the US, because many groups in India push for visibility, since most gay groups are male and white. Women often have difficulty accessing many forums because they are male dominated, and women in India have difficulty accessing technology. Another idea described the internet anonymity. This is good and helpful because many people who are not ready to come out yet can talk to people who are similar to themselves, with a secret identity. But with anonymity, there are also negative aspects. People are held less accountable for their actions because people don't know their real identity.