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)
