Museum of Chinese in America goes Lin-sane
This Wednesday, March 28, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) will present a live NBA screening between the New York Knicks and the Orlando Magic, titled BAL-LIN: Beer and Basketball.
This Wednesday, March 28, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) will present a live NBA screening between the New York Knicks and the Orlando Magic, titled BAL-LIN: Beer and Basketball. The program celebrates New York Knicks starting point guard Jeremy Lin. You know, the undrafted, six-foot-three Asian-American baller from Harvard — cut by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets — who was couch-surfing in his brother’s one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side up until a few weeks ago. But that was before he dropped 38 points on King Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, his fourth amazing performance in a row, all of which resulted in Knicks victories.
Many critics said Jeremy Lin would be relegated to the bench after Mike D’Antoni resigned, but they were wrong. According to a New York Times article on March 24, Lin is not dead and buried, but alive and well and thriving under interim coach Mike Woodson. He has continued to start every game, and he thrives in the clutch. (Anyone see him score 16 of 18 points in the 4th quarter last Wednesday, helping the Knicks down the 76ers, 82-79?) According to Forbes, Lin’s No. 17 jersey continues to be the league’s top seller. Also a week ago, he inked an international marketing deal with Swedish carmaker Volvo. And per-Rick Ross’s Twitter feed, Lin has a marijuana strain named after him.
I was fortunate to attend MOCA’s first live screening of the Knicks vs. Bulls game on March 12. It wasn’t the Garden, but it was pretty damn close. There was energy in the museum that night, a real feel-good enthusiasm. The boisterous crowd included hardcore Knicks fans, Jeremy Lin supporters and MOCA regulars.
As panelists Dustin Chin and Ursula Liang discussed racism in the media, an Asian-American man, in his mid-fifties, asked me if my fiance dragged me to MOCA to see Jeremy Lin. (She’s Vietnamese-American; I am a pink, paled-faced white guy from Jersey.) I said “no,” she did not drag me — we caught Linsanity simultaneously. Plus, I played ball as a kid, and I live and die by the underdog. I asked him if his wife dragged him to the museum, and he said yes. “My wife is LINSANE. She records every game, watching them two or three times. I was a Knicks fan, but stopped watching them in the mid-90s. I’ve started watching them again. It’s fun.”
Jeremy Lin is a phenomenon, yes. But what does he have to do with art and culture, and why is MOCA screening six Knicks games?
Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions of the Museum of Chinese in America, provided this statement to Hyperallergic on what Jeremy Lin has to do with MOCA, and what Jeremy Lin means to him:
A lot of us at the museum wanted to do this. Nancy Bulalacao, who’s our public programs person, really pushed for it and conceived of the event.
I knew we had to do the screening. It obviously isn’t just a sports phenomenon, but a cultural one. It’s brought up all these interesting discussions about race in America; the screening and related discussion was a way for us to bring various audiences together to try and understand what this phenomenon means, and to prompt more discussion about racial sensitivities.
He’s really a great contemporary embodiment of the museum because we’re constantly looking for instances in culture where stereotypes about Chinese or Asian-Americans are being debunked. He’s expressive, athletic and assertive on the court-aspects of his character that go against a lot of stereotypes about Asian-American males.
At the same time, he went to Harvard and is very religious, reinforcing some other stereotypes about “model minorities.” He’s an interesting figure onto which we can project a lot of ideas about identity and the way in which it is constructed and processed in society.
For Tam, Lin’s triumphs also feel personal. He explains, “For me, this is a penultimate moment where everything is converging: a love of sports, my work in the museum, and my concerns about multiculturalism and ethnicity. I think for a lot of Asian basketball players, we’re living vicariously through him and I’m personally on an emotional roller-coaster ride with his success and failures. For many of us, it’s our ‘Obama moment.’”
BAL-LIN will take place on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, at 6:30 pm at Museum of Chinese in America (215 Centre Street, Manhattan). Sports and cultural critics will provide commentary in the style of Mystery Science Theater. This event is free. Space is limited. RSVP required to programs@mocanyc.org.
