Chinatown Stereotypes

In a collaboration between Céline and Stella McCartney, Chinatown Plaid was released as part of a 2013 Fall collection. The tailored coats of bright plaid bares resemblance to large, plastic woven tote bags, having appropriated not only its red, white, and blue print but also its rigid form and frayed trimming. However, in contrast to the garments’ name, the visibility of these bags extends beyond the working class immigrants in Chinatown and other districts characterised by large migrant worker communities in the U.S.. In actuality, its inexpensiveness and strong durability attest that these bags hold a global association with middle-class migrants as furthered by the colloquial names that they’ve adopted in communities whereby in England, they’re informally dubbed “Bangladeshi bags” or “refugee bags.” However, this “remixing” extends beyond the binaries of low and high culture and the dangerous implications of “Western capitalist institution” and “slum” it carries.

Despite criticism for selling “migrant worker chic” to the high class from a high-end European label, these plaid patterns, …show more content…
Opening with a sequence that parodies that of Universal Pictures with the digital film’s core message of "UNIVERSAL PIRACY” asserted in bolded gold text within the last few seconds, the work reminiscent of an old Hollywood epic is a “part trash cinema and part remix manifesto” that argues against copyright, instead advocating freedom for media piracy. Its collage-narrative tells of a grand quest of a 1955 Elvis Presley rebel clone brought back from the past by video pirates to transform the present and its anti-piracy beliefs upheld by a villainous Moses from the 1956 film, The Ten