Firefly universe

[Sundown]

Many minorities probably don't make it onto shows because they seem like they would be extremely difficult to write for.

It's not easy to write certain minorities, unless one is motivated and invests themselves into knowing their cultures and writing characters that love as we love, fear as we fear, care as we care, but express themselves in their own unique manner. In the end, the audience has to connect with the characters as people-- and not just as a smattering of stereotypes.

It's much easier to write to type (Token Asian Martial Artist or Scientist guy) or write against type (Asian slacker who's actually a skateboarding druggie guy). But neither make for a very compelling character.

Unfortunately Hollywood hasn't been very progressive about creating mainstream Asian based shows or characters. Consider that the most popular US based Asian stand up comic is probably Margaret Cho, who makes her money making fun of her Asian mother, her Asian heritage and draws her half audience by appealing to the gay/bisexual crowd. Yan Can Cook, the guy makes up his Chinese accent just for the show.

Cho's at least more authentic than certain other "representatives" for the Asian community, like Amy Tan, who repackages Chinese culture in a quaint Panda-Express box that tastes all sorts of funny to real Chinese folks. Not to mention that she's largely disowned Asian men as fitting romantic material for being too weak and passive, and if I remember correctly, has stated that white men is where it's really at now. While I don't have a problem with inter-racial dating and someone having personal preferences, she hardly represents the Asian community or even Asian women as a whole. And I take issue with her being a supposed face for the Asian community when she disowns half of it.

Things you will never see an Asian do on mainstream US television -

Be a lead character UNLESS everyone else on the show is Asian as well

Steal a white girlfriend from her rich white QB boyfriend

Authentic and compelling Asian characters in American media are few and far between, but I am seeing some being written and portrayed with sensitivity, fairness and thought recently.

In movies, we have Harold and Kumar. Harold fits the Asian stereotype to a tee, at first inspection. He's conflict-avoidant, law abiding, hard working, and gets dumped on by the white folks at the financial firm he works for and readily takes it. The movie owns up to the fact that these stereotypes are often true... but it goes on to show that there's more to him than these surface stereotypes. In some ways, it portrays an Asian character more authentically than films that just feature token characters playing to type, because Harold resembles more closely a real Asian American male someone might interact with than whoever Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, or Jackie Chan is supposed to be portraying.

Harold even gets the non-Asian girl in the end, even if she's not technically and completely "white". And unlike Jet Li, he actually gets to kiss her.

Jin and Sun, the Korean couple in Lost, are portrayed extremely well. While Jin seems at first the typical wife-beating, domineering, xeno-phobic Korean man, and Sun appears to be yet another submissive, docile, reserved and demure Asian woman, you find out as the show progresses that they are much more than that-- and that some of their stereotypical behaviors are the result of their unique situation. The writers pulled a fast one on me, and I didn't see that one coming at all. Jin and Sun's flashbacks look almost as if they belong in a Korean soap opera or movie, and the show allows Asian characters to express themselves as they really would without trying to pander to a non-Asian audience. Somehow, it still all works.

The Last Samurai is silly in concept to the extreme-- a white guy is the last in the line of Japan's most esteemed warriors. But it does again portray Asian characters with a certain sensitivity and authenticity that allows them to come across as people with their own way of expressing what matters to them, instead of using them as mere plot devices and props.

The irony is that in the movie Crash (which I love tons), a movie that focuses on racial tensions and for all the characters are able to do what the above movies and shows have done-- show that surface stereotypes are based on a good deal of truth, but that each person is much more beneath-- it fails to do that with an Asian character. The movie's writer appears motivated and capable enough-- he can write convincing white folks, black folks, hispanic folks, and even Persian folks. But somehow, he's not able to write a compelling Asian or East Indian character character despite the fact that the film is supposed to take place in Los Angeles where both ethnicities abound. What Asian characters we have are merely plot devices and props-- they're either run over by a car, packed in the back of a van, or should be run over by a car for how totally annoying they are. Ultimately, no Asian character grows in the manner other ethnic representatives in the movie do, and one is even deconstructed at the movie's end, losing much of the sympathy you had for him.

But what can you do... Asians by large don't complain and raise enough of a ruckuss in real life to make for very interesting characters in a movie that's centered on tension and violent confrontation. They're so integrated and assimilated that all they can do is whine about unequal representation in the media, a little like I'm doing here now. =) But the only way to make progress in this area is for Asians to simply start producing and start entertaining. If Asians can entertain those outside of their ethnicities, they will be sought after and they will be written and worked into movies, shows, and the media at large. Even though Hollywood should keep an open mind and look for opportunities to portray differing ethnicities in a way that allows audiences to connect with them in a genuine manner, Asians simply cannot demand representation and demand that Americans find them suddenly entertaining as if it was an entitlement they were owed, and think that somehow, if they're angry enough they'll get a TV show or main character of their own.

Well, heres an angle on it -

Whedon said the design of the show was to show the backwaters of the universe. The impoverished and the bottom rungs of the social status spectrum.

Maybe all the Asians are on the better planets, in the better neighborhoods and don't associate with the pain, suffering and violence of the outer rim of the universe. Or they just keep to their own.

I have a more plausible explaination. As Russel Peters (an Indian comic) says, in the future, there won't be any races. No black folks, no asian folks, no white folks. Just beige. There are so many asians and indians that were all just going to interbreed with everyone else... so we might as well get started on that now.

You can run, but sooner or later... we're gonna hump you.

-Al

Edited October 3, 2005 by Sundown