The Fighting 44s

Make sure to set your TiVO timers for PBS May 10 for Jeff Adachi’s Slanted Screen, a documentary that goes into the discrimination Asian males encounter in Hollywood. The Slanted Screen is narrated by Daniel Dae Kim (who will also be hosting this year’s AZN Asian Excellence Awards on May 28) and touches on the stereotypes that are either pidgeon-holing asian american actors, or keeping us out of Hollywood films altogether.

TV Review: The Slanted Screen - Asian Men In Film And Television
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/04/29/121202.php
Written by Matthew Milam
Published April 29, 2007

If you are black and named Will Ferrell, no movie. If you are white and named Will Ferrell, the checks can’t come fast enough. What happens when you replace the word “black” and replace it with “Asian”? You will find the results are about the same, especially if you are an Asian male.

The often unspoken discrimination of the culture in Hollywood is the subject of Jeff Adachi’s The Slanted Screen, which is set to air on PBS on May 10 and is narrated by Daniel Dae Kim of Lost fame. The interviews cover both past and present generations of Asian men in and behind the scenes in film, with such notables as Mako (The Sand Pebbles) who died after giving his last on-screen interview here, James Shigeta (The Crimson Kimono), and Bobby Lee (MAD TV), as well as Justin Lin (director of The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift). I personally enjoyed watching it given that we’ve recently had a revival of the discussion of race (thank you, Don Imus).

Being something of a film fanatic, it’s a shame that I didn’t know that Asian men were in silent film. Sessue Hayakawa (The Bridge On The River Kwai) was originally a popular silent film actor who was considered, at least according to Mako, to be a bigger sex symbol than his white counterpart, Rudolph Valentino. He often played villains, but got just as many chances to play romantic characters. Unfortunately he would be one of the few in the silent era of film to achieve such a task. After his tenure, many Asian males were left to the same sort of stereotypical roles that African-American men were given. To make matters even more ironic, white actors in makeup often played characters that were supposed to be Asian.

There would be small patches of a Renaissance here and there in the Golden Age of cinema. James Shigeta would attempt the role of the romantic lead that Hayakawa did in his silent days with The Crimson Kimono, which would find him like the former to be involved in a relationship with a white woman. He would continue this trend of being a lead with Flower Drum Song, which would be the first musical to feature an all Asian-American cast. And then of course there’s Mako, who would earn a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in The Sand Pebbles (which starred Steve McQueen).

This trend would die down in the mid-’60s as Asian men were put once again back in the corner with series such as Star Trek (which featured George Takei), The Green Hornet (which starred a young Bruce Lee as Kato) and Hawaii Five-O. Asian men as heroes wouldn’t come into the foray until the likes of Bruce Lee came around with such films as The Chinese Connection and the film that would make him a legend, Enter The Dragon. But with that emergence of a hero such as Lee, another stereotype was born: the marital arts expert.

Bobby Lee and Mako make interesting observations about the power of Bruce Lee’s popularity. The former believes that because of his popularity as a martial arts master on and off screen, it made it even worse for Asian and Asian-American actors because they now apparently had a built-in gift for karate. The latter sees that popularity as pure accident and thinks that Bruce Lee would have gladly taken more serious and complex roles after the popularity of Enter The Dragon if he had lived (Lee died shortly after the film was finished). I’m more willing to believe Mako’s opinion considering that had Bruce Lee been given Kung Fu, he would have been able to gain experience in a role that didn’t always require martial arts.

Director Gene Cajayon discusses the film Romeo Must Die, which was a remake of Romeo and Juliet done with Jet Li in the Romeo role and Aaliyah (in her acting debut) as Juliet. When a screening was done with the end showing Li and Aaliyah kissing, the audience rejected it in favor of the one that was put into the actual film — a mere embrace between the two. I would have actually been shocked if they kissed, considering that Aaliyah and Jet barely had any on-screen chemistry to begin with. Perhaps that conflict with what an audience would accept was the reason the screenplay’s more “romantic” moments came off so forced.

Justin Lin had to fight to bring in an Asian male co-star in The Fast and The Furious: Toyko Drift. The studio (as he tells it) originally wanted the role of Han to be played by an African-American. It probably was right of Lin to fight for that considering they had already done that in 2 Fast 2 Furious. Then again, I didn’t really like that film that much. But everyone has to start somewhere.

Lois Salisbury, a former director of a program known as Children Now, and Heidi Levitt, a casting director, chime in in this documentary, one in regard to how Asian children feel about the images they are given on television and film and the other with revelations on casting choices in Hollywood for Asian men. I personally would have liked to hear from the Asian children who aren’t in Hollywood on how they feel about being short-changed in the media. To give me a representation of their thoughts through Salisbury is good, but there’s something telling about the impressionable minds of children.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who is best known as the evil baddie of Mortal Kombat doesn’t mind playing stereotypical roles as he feels it’s moving a step forward in the right direction toward diversity in Hollywood for Asian males. I don’t completely agree with that and take Mako’s side about getting beyond such roles to achieving more meat to the bone in one’s performances. Unfortunately Tagawa’s attitude is not only possibly the attitude among a lot of young Asian actors, but that of black actors as well. After all, you either pay the rent, or go home. And a lot of folks want it too bad to do the latter.

The Slanted Screen would have benefited from including the point of view of Asian-American women, who probably feel just as stereotyped as the men in the media. But perhaps, like black women in my culture, they aren’t left out of so much in Hollywood because of a certain exotic appeal. Still it would have been worth covering in this documentary just to show it’s not only just the men who are suffering.

I would have also liked to have seen an interview with the late Pat Morita, who took a lot of flack for playing a martial arts teacher in the popular Karate Kid franchise. He especially is interesting as he had a stand-up career as well as a television and film career. It would have been interesting to hear from Russell Wong, who starred in the TV movie series and subsequent short-lived action drama Vanishing Son. It would have been even more insightful to hear his thoughts about the Charlie Chan movie remake, which was shut down due to the stereotyped history of the character.

The Slanted Screen is a good point of reference to start from when researching the racism against Asian-Americans in Hollywood.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Entertainment & Media, News, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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