Ed: February 2008 Archives
Just a quick post to link to an interesting and thought provoking article I ran across:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0646,chang,74988,2.html
The article over a year old, but it's highly relevant. It's about the Yellow Fever phenomenon, only from the perspective of the Asian female. It addresses many of the points I've ranted/blogged about before - the objectification, the myth of the Asian female as submissive and perfect, etc. Vickie also mentions some music references about stuff that's been on my mind but I haven't written about - stuff like Gwen Stefani's ridiculous "Harajuku Girls" (like she says, if it had been four black women called I dunno, the "Compton Girls", you can be damn sure that Jesse Jackson would've been on her ass in no time flat) or Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo's Yellow Fever anthem "El Scorcho" - Cuomo, incidentally, ended up marrying a Japanese girl last I heard.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0646,chang,74988,2.html
The article over a year old, but it's highly relevant. It's about the Yellow Fever phenomenon, only from the perspective of the Asian female. It addresses many of the points I've ranted/blogged about before - the objectification, the myth of the Asian female as submissive and perfect, etc. Vickie also mentions some music references about stuff that's been on my mind but I haven't written about - stuff like Gwen Stefani's ridiculous "Harajuku Girls" (like she says, if it had been four black women called I dunno, the "Compton Girls", you can be damn sure that Jesse Jackson would've been on her ass in no time flat) or Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo's Yellow Fever anthem "El Scorcho" - Cuomo, incidentally, ended up marrying a Japanese girl last I heard.
First a quick apology to all those who have left comments on the blog; I didn't realize that they were being 'screened' and so weren't showing up on the actual website. I've passed all of them through and they should now be showing up.
Anyway, today's post brings us to another Hollywood abomination, this time Dreamworks' upcoming Kung Fu Panda. It's an animated feature starring Jack Black as a panda who wants to learn Kung Fu. It does have actual Asians like Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, and James Hong, but really, it's just another movie equating Asia = martial arts in the public consciousness.
Chan, Liu, and Hong are all actually Chinese, so that's kind of an accomplishment when you consider Hollywood's track record of sticking Chinese actress in Japanese roles etc. etc. But then I heard that the theme song for the movie would be sung by Korean pop star (and mortal enemy of Stephen Colbert), Rain. Really? Rain? I guess it makes no difference for a movie set in China to have a Korean singer doing the main theme, right? I mean we all look alike anyway, right?
It could be especially damaging considering as an animated feature it's likely going to be marketed mostly to kids, who don't know any better. I mean, if I had my way, and if it weren't for all the penis-and-marijuana jokes, I'd make kids watch Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo instead of this. The first Harold and Kumar was still one of the more authentic depictions of American-born Asians growing up and living in the US. Penis-and-marijuana jokes aside.
Other than that... I didn't make any posts about Valentine's Day this year. Ah well.
Anyway, today's post brings us to another Hollywood abomination, this time Dreamworks' upcoming Kung Fu Panda. It's an animated feature starring Jack Black as a panda who wants to learn Kung Fu. It does have actual Asians like Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, and James Hong, but really, it's just another movie equating Asia = martial arts in the public consciousness.
Chan, Liu, and Hong are all actually Chinese, so that's kind of an accomplishment when you consider Hollywood's track record of sticking Chinese actress in Japanese roles etc. etc. But then I heard that the theme song for the movie would be sung by Korean pop star (and mortal enemy of Stephen Colbert), Rain. Really? Rain? I guess it makes no difference for a movie set in China to have a Korean singer doing the main theme, right? I mean we all look alike anyway, right?
It could be especially damaging considering as an animated feature it's likely going to be marketed mostly to kids, who don't know any better. I mean, if I had my way, and if it weren't for all the penis-and-marijuana jokes, I'd make kids watch Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo instead of this. The first Harold and Kumar was still one of the more authentic depictions of American-born Asians growing up and living in the US. Penis-and-marijuana jokes aside.
Other than that... I didn't make any posts about Valentine's Day this year. Ah well.
First I would be remiss not to say: Happy Lunar New Year (AKA Chinese
New Year, since evidently some people don't know that countries other
than China celebrate it). I hope you all have a prosperous Year of the
Rat.
A few posts ago I talked about Heavenly Kingdom, which is a long-awaited collaboration featuring Jet Li and Jackie Chan... and randomly has a white dude as the main character. Of course, I'm not at all surprised that there's now this upcoming movie, 21.
The basic premise of the movie is simple - it's based on the true story of a handful of MIT computer/math students who analyzed the casino odds, came up with ways to predict when face cards would be coming up, and basically took a bunch of casinos for millions of dollars. They even wrote a book about it called "Bringing Down the House", and now it's being made into the movie.
So what's the big deal? Well, the majority of these students were Asians. Blah blah blah insert stereotyping about how well duh, math and computer students at MIT are almost by definition Asian. But now take a look at the movie poster. Or the movie trailer. Huh, that's funny... the main characters are now white. There's still some Asians left, but they're just window dressing. It's not like they wanted to make a role for a blockbuster actor like Brad Pitt or anything, either - I've never heard of this Jim Strugess dude. No, it's pretty much clear that the only reason this whitewash was done is that Hollywood still thinks it's unpalatable to have a movie where the leading men are Asian. Asian Week noted that there would be much more outcry if it were the true story of a black guy that was changed to a white guy in the film adaptation; I guess just like I noted previously about politics, Asians don't complain enough and thus just get run over by the Hollywood machine.
There's also the upcoming Speed Racer adaptation from the Wachowski brothers which of course changes the entire Racer family to whites, but that's more forgiveable considering that when the anime was brought over to the US in the first place they changed all the names. Few people know that Speed Racer's original name was the very Japanese Mifune Gou. I still don't understand why there are random ninjas throwing around shuriken in the new Speed Racer trailer, though. I hope it's not just because the Wachowski brothers think "hey, kids love ninjas as much as they love kung fu, let's just toss some in there!"
A few posts ago I talked about Heavenly Kingdom, which is a long-awaited collaboration featuring Jet Li and Jackie Chan... and randomly has a white dude as the main character. Of course, I'm not at all surprised that there's now this upcoming movie, 21.
The basic premise of the movie is simple - it's based on the true story of a handful of MIT computer/math students who analyzed the casino odds, came up with ways to predict when face cards would be coming up, and basically took a bunch of casinos for millions of dollars. They even wrote a book about it called "Bringing Down the House", and now it's being made into the movie.
So what's the big deal? Well, the majority of these students were Asians. Blah blah blah insert stereotyping about how well duh, math and computer students at MIT are almost by definition Asian. But now take a look at the movie poster. Or the movie trailer. Huh, that's funny... the main characters are now white. There's still some Asians left, but they're just window dressing. It's not like they wanted to make a role for a blockbuster actor like Brad Pitt or anything, either - I've never heard of this Jim Strugess dude. No, it's pretty much clear that the only reason this whitewash was done is that Hollywood still thinks it's unpalatable to have a movie where the leading men are Asian. Asian Week noted that there would be much more outcry if it were the true story of a black guy that was changed to a white guy in the film adaptation; I guess just like I noted previously about politics, Asians don't complain enough and thus just get run over by the Hollywood machine.
There's also the upcoming Speed Racer adaptation from the Wachowski brothers which of course changes the entire Racer family to whites, but that's more forgiveable considering that when the anime was brought over to the US in the first place they changed all the names. Few people know that Speed Racer's original name was the very Japanese Mifune Gou. I still don't understand why there are random ninjas throwing around shuriken in the new Speed Racer trailer, though. I hope it's not just because the Wachowski brothers think "hey, kids love ninjas as much as they love kung fu, let's just toss some in there!"
I'm sitting here watching the Super Bowl, mostly for the commercials as
I do every year. Well, I just saw one from some website I've never
heard of called SalesGenie.com that literally left me speechless. You
can check it out yourself by going to their website and clicking on the commercial with the panda in the sidebar.
Suffice to say, it's one of the most offensive things I've yet seen. If you didn't bother to watch it, it features two pandas talking in stereotypical, heavy Asian accents, talking about trying to raise their sales with the website. Part of what makes it so offensive is that the website itself has absolutely nothing to do with pandas, Asia, or anything else; it's apparently just a gimmick to make the commercial memorable. I guess a larger company would have some sort of internal check to make sure this kind of crap doesn't happen, but what this company was thinking totally eludes me as it is.
Suffice to say, it's one of the most offensive things I've yet seen. If you didn't bother to watch it, it features two pandas talking in stereotypical, heavy Asian accents, talking about trying to raise their sales with the website. Part of what makes it so offensive is that the website itself has absolutely nothing to do with pandas, Asia, or anything else; it's apparently just a gimmick to make the commercial memorable. I guess a larger company would have some sort of internal check to make sure this kind of crap doesn't happen, but what this company was thinking totally eludes me as it is.
