Hollywood’s lack of Asian-American… | Little White Lies

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Hollywood’s lack of Asian-Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and how to fix it

18 Jan 2017

Words by Greg Noone

A close-up of a person's face, partially obscured by swirling blue and purple lighting effects, creating a mysterious and ethereal atmosphere.
A close-up of a person's face, partially obscured by swirling blue and purple lighting effects, creating a mysterious and ethereal atmosphere.
The hosts of the Asian Oscar Bait pod­cast dis­cuss the need for greater diver­si­ty on screen.

When Matthew Eng received the text from his friend and class­mate Melis­sa Pow­ers pitch­ing the pod­cast that would even­tu­al­ly become Asian Oscar Bait, he instant­ly recalled a trou­bling inci­dent that occurred many years ago, back in first grade. Eng iden­ti­fies as mixed race, a fact that he says is missed in his appear­ance thanks to his Ital­ian ances­try on his mother’s side. Peo­ple rarely twig that his father is Chi­nese, some­thing which became appar­ent when Matthew was dropped off at school one morn­ing. I guess no-one had ever seen my Dad before,” Eng remem­bers. My friend turned to nudge me and asked who the Kung-Fu guy’ was.”

For many years Matthew and his father felt they could laugh about the episode, but today that mem­o­ry is loaded with all sorts of impli­ca­tions about how the impact of film and tele­vi­sion defines our every­day assump­tions about Asian-Amer­i­cans. There’s a bit of dubi­ous­ness to the notion that this Asian man,” says Eng, who was dressed in a suit and tie and had no bear­ings of any mar­tial arts-trained appar­el, just brought about mem­o­ries of Jack­ie Chan and Bruce Lee.”

It’s a sen­ti­ment that Asian Oscar Bait intends, in its own way, to rem­e­dy. In each half-hour week­ly show, hosts Pow­ers and Eng spend the first 10 min­utes dis­cussing the lat­est news in Asian-Amer­i­can cin­e­ma before div­ing into their own pitch – com­plete with cast­ing sug­ges­tions – for his­tor­i­cal films about, and by, peo­ple of Asian descent. Sub­jects have includ­ed Mer­le Oberon, most famous for her role as Cathy in William Wyler’s 1939 adap­tion of Wuther­ing Heights’; Andrew Cunanan, the Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can assas­sin of Gian­ni Ver­sace and oth­ers in 1997; and Fred Kore­mat­su, the Japan­ese-Amer­i­can cit­i­zen who fought the prac­tice of intern­ment all the way to the Supreme Court.

The mes­sage is sim­ple: with such mate­r­i­al to hand, Hol­ly­wood has no excuse not to pro­duce sto­ries rel­e­vant to the Asian-Amer­i­can experience. 

Arguably, the show couldn’t have come soon­er. I do think that 2016 served as a water­shed moment for not only Asians,” says Eng. but a lot of peo­ple who enjoy film and TV, to take a step back and just look at the way that Asians are being rep­re­sent­ed on a larg­er scale, which is either offen­sive­ly or invis­i­bly.” Take, for exam­ple, the cast­ing of Til­da Swin­ton in Doc­tor Strange, a role that should by rights have belonged to a Tibetan man – at least accord­ing to the source mate­r­i­al. Or the announce­ment that Scar­lett Johans­son is play­ing the lead in a major Hol­ly­wood adap­tion of the Japan­ese man­ga Ghost in the Shell’, orig­i­nal­ly named Motoko Kusana­gi in the comics but con­ve­nient­ly renamed The Major’. 

The prac­tice of assign­ing roles that log­ic dic­tates should be played by Asian-Amer­i­can actors, or eras­ing them alto­geth­er, is known as white­wash­ing’, and it has had an iso­lat­ing affect on Asian-Amer­i­can audi­ences. It’s a prac­tice Melis­sa first noticed as a teenag­er, when she wit­nessed Ger­ard But­ler butch­er a con­ver­sa­tion in Man­darin in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cra­dle of Life. I just think about how many hours I spent replay­ing that scene on my DVD play­er at home,” says Pow­ers. I grew up in Chi­na, so it was kind of extra sad that I was so amazed that there’s this per­son speak­ing Chi­nese in a film from Hol­ly­wood. It was nev­er real­ly rec­om­mend­ed that I watch Chi­nese films or Asian cin­e­ma, even in Asia. I think Hol­ly­wood was still con­sid­ered the gold stan­dard for art.”

For Eng and Pow­ers, the lack of Asian-Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tion is a sys­temic prob­lem. Much of the wider debate has been con­cerned about the assump­tion by senior film exec­u­tives that Asian-Amer­i­can actors are sim­ply not bank­able’ – a phe­nom­e­non deft­ly satirised by the twit­ter cam­paign #Star­ringJohn­Cho – but a great deal of it also derives from sheer igno­rance, some­thing that became clear to Eng while research­ing for Asian Oscar Bait’s episode on Andrew Cunanan: I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle in GQ that dream casts Stan­ley Tuc­ci as Ver­sace and sug­gests Justin Long for the part of Cunanan, even though he is not Asian what­so­ev­er. They put him side by side with a pho­to of some­one who they believed to be Cunanan, who actu­al­ly turned out to be an actor who had played him in a straight-to-DVD version.”

Eng and Pow­ers are firm­ly of the opin­ion that this is, by and large, a symp­tom of the endur­ing his­tor­i­cal exclu­sion of Asian-Amer­i­can actors and tech­ni­cians from Hol­ly­wood. They are less sym­pa­thet­ic to the view, as expressed by Mas­ter of None Alan Yang at the 2016 Emmys, that Asian-Amer­i­can par­ents should buy their chil­dren cam­eras instead of vio­lins. I laughed when I heard that,” says Eng, because it’s fun­ny on the sur­face, but also I wouldn’t say the prob­lem at its heart is about young Asian peo­ple not hav­ing the desire to become film­mak­ers. It is more that it’s just an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult indus­try to break into, regard­less of your colour, but espe­cial­ly so if you’re an artist of colour.”

As far as solu­tions are con­cerned, Eng and Pow­ers believe there is less poten­tial in pro­mot­ing colour­blind cast­ing – a nice idea in the­o­ry but one rarely imple­ment­ed cor­rect­ly – but more in improv­ing the finan­cial prac­tices in film and tele­vi­sion. Anoth­er issue is Hol­ly­wood not giv­ing enough mon­ey to peo­ple of colour who are prov­ing their show’s suc­cess, because if you’re already in the indus­try, you’ll want to fund your own projects,” says Pow­ers. You can’t fund your own projects if you’re not get­ting the mon­ey.” Fur­ther down the scale, the prac­tice of unpaid intern­ships through­out the film indus­try also serves to shut out poor­er appli­cants who are more like­ly to be non-white. 

The pair also feel that the prob­lem is atti­tu­di­nal in nature, evi­denced in part by Eng and Pow­ers’ mem­o­ries of a hand­ful of iso­lat­ed inci­dents that occurred dur­ing class script read­ings at NYU and a Lon­don uni­ver­si­ty they both briefly attend­ed dur­ing a study abroad pro­gramme. These include a debate over why one stu­dent made ref­er­ence to a character’s eyes light[ing] up with the fury of a hun­dred whis­per­ing Geishas”; a read­ing where­in two char­ac­ters parad­ed in African trib­al masks in an Asian-style man­sion,’ with the writer refus­ing to be any more spe­cif­ic than that; and anoth­er class where a stu­dent read out the lines of a Chi­nese male char­ac­ter in what Pow­ers describes as a whis­pery racist accent”.

While Eng and Pow­ers are keen to stress the over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive and reward­ing expe­ri­ence they had at both insti­tu­tions, these inci­dents served to high­light the hur­dles fac­ing peo­ple of colour in the film indus­try from the very begin­ning of their careers. I also think there weren’t that many in-class con­ver­sa­tions cen­tred around Asian her­itage,” says Eng. pre­cise­ly because there were hard­ly any Asian char­ac­ters being writ­ten by stu­dents, aside from Melis­sa, who made sure to fea­ture Asians in all of her scripts. In ret­ro­spect, I should have also made more of an active effort to do this. I remem­ber a sur­pris­ing amount of my class­mates’ scripts and, Melissa’s aside, there are hard­ly any that I remem­ber as revolv­ing around or even fea­tur­ing Asian char­ac­ters. And that’s eye-open­ing in of itself.”

As the hosts look ahead to what 2017 holds for Asian-Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cin­e­ma, they see progress in the cast­ing of sev­er­al Asians in cen­tral roles in the Star Wars fran­chise and the deci­sion of BAF­TA in the UK to only con­sid­er award­ing films with diverse casts and crew. As far as rais­ing aware­ness goes, they’re also quick to point out that they belong to a grow­ing net­work of activists work­ing hard across the arts to high­light and pro­mote the con­tri­bu­tion of Asian-Amer­i­cans to cin­e­ma, from come­di­ans like Jen­ny Yang and Kristi­na Wong, to com­ic book writer Greg Pak and blog­ger and activist Angry Asian Man. These fig­ures may prove vital in what Eng believes will like­ly be a year in which a lot of peo­ple will need to be more insis­tent that Asian-Amer­i­cans have the right to see our­selves on screen in a way that’s real­ly gratifying.” 

Asian Oscar Bait is avail­able to down­load via iTunes. You can also join in the con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter.

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