Tag Archives: hollywood

Susane Lee’s “Dream Big” video is a funny, biting, truthful look at how Hollywood sees Asians (NSFW)

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dreambig-still

Asian American actress Susane Lee has had a number of roles mostly in theater and television, including series such as “Gilmore Girls” and “Young and Restless.” She’s also performed in a handful of indie films and had a supporting role in “The Soloist,” the 2009 feature film starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.

Now, she’s made a very funny and in-your-face rap video, “Dream Big,” that calls out the Hollywood stereotypes that hold back Asians from stardom.

Asian faces are much more common than even just a decade ago (thank you Sandra Oh, John Cho, Grace Park, Ming Na Wen, Kenneth Choi, Maggie Q, Daniel Dae Kim, Lucy Liu, Kal Penn, Mindy Kaling, Ken Jeong and many others), and those roles (mostly) don’t have to be played with thick accents and they’re not just martial artists or exotic sex kittens.

But we’re still in the minority in lead roles. We’re still too often the sidekicks and assistants.

And, it’s far too easy for the mainstream to marginalize us as the butt of ethnic jokes, like the racist stereotypes of the new Fox show “Dads.”

So hooray for Susane Lee for releasing this uncompromising and hilarious diatribe against Hollywood’s tunnel vision of Asians. Enjoy!

(Note: “uncompromising” and “in your face” means she drops the “F-bomb” a lot, so you probably don’t want to be playing this video loud at your office. If you wanna see it sans F-bombs, here’s a sanitized version of the video)

MANAA criticizes the yellowface depiction of Asians in “Cloud Atlas”

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Here’s an update to my post of a few weeks ago, about the use of yellowface to have white actors playing Asian characters in “Cloud Atlas.” MANAA, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, adds its voice to the chorus criticizing the big-budget Hollywood sci-fi for its ridiculous and laughable depiction of Asians:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Guy Aoki (818) 241-7817

MANAA ASSERTS OFFENSIVE USE OF YELLOWFACE MAKE-UP AND
EXCLUSION OF ASIAN ACTORS IN THE FILM “CLOUD ATLAS”

LOS ANGELES-The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) is criticizing the new Warner Brothers motion picture “Cloud Atlas”—promoted as artistically groundbreaking because its actors swap racial and sexual identities—as business-as-usual in its exclusion and offensive yellow-faced renditions of Asian people.

A multi-ethnic epic spanning 500 years and around the globe, “it’s an artistically ambitious approach to filmmaking,” according to the organization’s Founding President Guy Aoki.

“Unfortunately, it reflects the same old racial pecking order that the entertainment industry has been practicing for decades.”
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Yellowface redux: Why is it OK for Hollywood to cast white people as Asians?

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Yellowface is back in Hollywood, and it’s as big, ugly, blatant and offensive as ever.

Racebending wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in “The Cloud Atlas Conversation: Yellowface, Prejudice, and Artistic License,” but as more and more people see the trailer for the new sci-fi flick “Cloud Atlas” (the film just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival) the outrage over the casting of white actors as Asian characters is beginning to boil over. I get pretty upset myself, just looking at Hugo Weaving (of “Lord of the Rings” and “Matrix”) shown here with his lids Asianized.

Now, one of the movie’s stars, British actor Jim Sturgess, pokes fun at the controversy by comparing yellowface to a frozen yogurt topping. Really:

Yellowface? Blackface? Pinkface? Pinkberry? Blackberry? Crackberry? Blueberry? Strawberry? Bananas? Frozen Yogurt? All the toppings?.Lovely

It’s easy for Sturgess to make light of this issue — he’s white. But yellowface is deeply offensive to me as an Asian American, and to a whole lot of Asians.
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Transformers 3D ride is the ultimate evolution of a Japanese-American hybrid franchise

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Optimus Prime in Transformers The Ride-3D

During a recent trip to Los Angeles, Erin and I took the time to visit Universal Studios and play the part of tourists. The highlight — hands down — was “Transformers The Ride-3D,” an immersive thrill ride that took our breath away with its realism and extreme excitement.

The ride takes the characters from the hit series of sci-fi action films and adds a big boost of steroids to get your adrenalin pumping. Riders climb aboard an enclosed transport car that tilts and rolls on command, and once the ride begins, you put on 3-D glasses to become enveloped in the action. Because most of the ride is virtually presented, it’s hard to tell how far you’re traveling in the car — it’s not like a roller coaster or other typical amusement park attraction, where you can see the tracks and know where you’ve been and where you’re going.

The car (which is essentially a state-of-the-art flight simulator), goes around a 60,000 square feet building along 2000 feet of track amidst 3D scenes presented on 14 different screens showing panoramic images from 34 projectors. Being immersed in the set, the 3D effects don’t stop in front of you like they would in a movie theater or on your TV at home. They wrap around you, adding to the immediacy of the experience.
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Asian Americans are making progress in mainstream American pop culture

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I Am Bruce Lee

I happened to catch a terrific documentary the other night, “I Am Bruce Lee,” which combines a well-researched biography of the late great martial arts star Bruce Lee with interviews with everyone from his wife Linda Lee Caldwell, to LA Lakers star (and martial artist) Kobe Bryant who discuss Lee’s legacy and enormous influence on American pop culture.

Much of the documentary focuses on Lee’s efforts to overcome racial stereotypes of Asians that were prevalent in the 1960s and ’70s (many are still with us), and his struggles against a system that was stacked against featuring a male Asian in a leading role.

One segment got me thinking, where the film asserts that the system is still stacked against Asians – even today, there has been no major Asian male star who has the draw of, say, a Brad Pitt.

Sure, Jet Li for a time took up the martial arts mantle, and so did Jackie Chan. But Li’s talent never transcended his action roles, and Chan’s brand in Hollywood is as a comedic lightweight even though he can act in dramatic parts. Plus, once niched into martial arts, you’re always a martial artist. Even Bruce Lee might not have overcome that hurdle, had he lived.

There are some potential future contenders, though: John Cho can hopefully rise above the youth market appeal of the “Harold and Kumar” films and build on his butt-kicking role as Sulu in the new “Star Trek” movies, and it’s possible to imagine Tim Kang (TV’s “The Mentalist”) and Sung Kang (the “Fast and Furious” movies) cast as big-budget leads someday.

But I can’t monku (complain) too much about the lack of Asian men in star positions. The fact is, we’re doing so much better than just a few years ago in Hollywood, that we should be celebrating.

Less than a decade ago, I was giving speeches on the lack of Asian faces on TV and in movies.
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