From the days of yore
(pic from here)
What I love most about the web is the fact that it enables people to communicate with each other. I’ve sent and received e-mails from top NY Times columnists, as well as random people in places as distant as Korea and the UK. The internet knows few boundaries of social class or place. The net has also enabled us to see a lot of the world, much of which we would not see without it. Case in point is this post by the good people at Bicoastal Bitchin’. They saw a piece of Orientalist nonsense playing at a local theater, and they did what red blooded young Asian American bloggers do–they called the Orientalists out. It’s evident from that show’s trailer that it’s just an Asian version of Step’n Fetchit where the white guy saves the day and rises above the comical colored minorities.
Well, the Orientalists came back with a retort of their own. The producer Blake Faucette (and we know it’s him because Mr. Jacobus linked back to BcB on his stuntEDpeople site) discusses the Asian female lead and says:
“Yeah, we could only get her to do the hair pull thing. We tried to get her to wear a school girl outfit and scream “me love you long time” but she wasn’t having it. Apparently you have to treat Asian girls with a tiny bit of respect. They get all uppity when you put them in a movie. “
It’s just amazing what people do and say when they get a little bit of power. These guys are third rate nobodies–Eric Jacobus, for example, googled his own name and came up to BcB, a site that doesn’t even specialize in reviewing movies and was written by people too smart to waste their time watching it. Still, just hiring these Asian people on the cheap gives them some kind of feeling that it’s okay to talk about minority women in a derogatory manner disguised as a lame attempt at humor.
Anyway, I checked out their site [edit 4/22/09: see footnote below], and it looks like they’ve got some Asian people working with them–Asian people in the San Francisco area. In the San Francisco area! Why would Asian people do this, especially in an area with such a high concentration of Asian Americans? I would think that even if the racism isn’t evident to the white people, it would be evident to these Asian people. I’m curious. I’m going to ask. I’m not trying to wreck careers, I just want to know. If there’s a good explanantion, I may even print it here. I didn’t understand why Chuck Willis did what he did, nor did I understand Gedde Watanabe’s motivations. Nobody who produces this stuff ever explains their actions, and I think people should. Or else they should join another group. Seriously, it’s time Asian Americans started to think about why we do what we do.
4/22/09 footnote: Per Eric’s request, I will clarify this statement. “They” is the Stunt People, which is Eric’s group, not Blake’s group. Since the Stunt People is promoting the film and represents the two main actors (other than the half naked damsel-in-distress), I still stand by my view that it’s acceptable to question the group. However, with respect to Eric, I will state that they are two different groups, and the Stunt People is not the producer of the film.
I still think it’s acceptable to question why no one said anything about the racial undertones of the film.
I will retract my description of Blake and Eric as third rate nobodies right here.
Related posts:
“It’s evident from that show’s trailer that it’s just an Asian version of Step’n Fetchit where the white guy saves the day and rises above the comical colored minorities.”
- Perhaps you should actually watch the movie and some of the Stunt People’s work before you make a snap judgment about their morality/racial prejudices? It might help you a bit in understanding why many people work with and greatly respect them. But no, it’s more important for you to call total strangers Uncle Toms and race traitors, based on a movie trailer for a film you’ve never seen, made by people you’ve never met.
Oh and guess what? Spoiler warning: The White Guy doesn’t save the day, doesn’t get the girl, and doesn’t live happily ever after.
WOW. As I watched the embedded video, I kept waiting for the punchline, for the moment that someone scratches the opera music and the Harold-and-Kumar-esque characters appear. Dogs of Chinatown? This afternoon when you linked me to this story, I was at the office and busy, so made some split-second assumptions of the movie based on its title. Dogs of Chinatown. I totally assumed it would be a tongue-in-cheek gaffe movie for potheads. And. Well. Turns out it is.
Puppyparfait raises some good and valid points, though. (Sorry for the redundant posting. I read the comment after I submitted mine.)
I’m a film critic and a fan of the Stunt People. I have been for awhile. They work incredibly hard and show great respect to legendary Asian fight choreographers and stunt men in their short films. And they have a very good time doing it, which is infectious to watch. The dedication they’ve put into attempting to do fight choreography on next to no budget has taken them to a level above most people in expensive Hollywood pictures and gained them acclaim from Hong Kong film critics and other stunt men.
Taking the above comments regarding the lead actress as a ‘serious’ opinion is ridiculous. They obviously felt they were being made fun of in a light-hearted manner, and being good sports went along with it. I don’t think they realized they were dealing with very upset people who had taken offense to the ‘sex’ in the trailer. Not that I blame the people who saw the trailer. I thought it was pretty raunchy and tasteless, and I don’t like the fetishization of Oriental women in mainstream culture. But I don’t like the exploitation of any women in general and I think in this case it comes more from the fact that the film is ‘cheesy’ than bigoted.
I felt the movie’s problems were more the fault of amateur writing and poor plot choices. All of the characters in Dogs are equally self-destructive, immoral and generally awful (Eric’s character is an unrepentant murder/torturer for most of the movie) and nobody ‘rises’ above anybody or looks like a ‘great person’ or saves the day. It’s set up like a fantasy crime tragedy with the predictably Shakespeare-style finish and is directed with a definite ‘comic book’ surrealism, where everything is clearly a fiction, and not meant to be a social analysis of any group/class/etc.
Puppyparfait and Akrypti: Thanks for your comments!
My view on “you need to see it to have an opinion” is this–I can make a judgement based on what is apparent to me. I expanded on this in a podcast last year when we were talking about a movie by an Asian American filmmaker called Falling for Grace. You can hear it here. Basically my view is this: I can’t watch a movie in order to see if it’s worth supporting because if I’ve paid for my ticket to see it, then I’ve already supported it. It eliminates the filmmaker’s incentive for quality.
What I know about this movie is this:
1. The main protagonist is a White guy.
2. The love interest is an Asian woman who gets rescued by that White guy.
3. It seems like all the other guys, including the comic relief and villains, are Asian.
4. When confronted with this typecasting, the producer’s and lead actor’s responses were sexist and racial jokes. I don’t think it was lighthearted either; check out Jacobus’s own site; he’s quite defensive. Hell, he’s quite defensive on BcB.
#1, 2, 3, and 4 often happen altogether at the same time in American films. I’m not the only one who recognizes the racial typecasting. I’m sure Eric himself realizes it; it’s beyond the realm of believability to say that it’s just coincidence.
Kind of like this:
http://www.reddoorsthemovie.com/cast.html
Is this typecasting a coincidence? There are tons of Asian American male actors looking for work, but somehow all the main young male roles went to white guys?
I do appreciate your honest review of the film, Puppyparfait. If you know any of the Asian guys who work for The Stuntmen, please feel free to have them come here to post their views on why they signed up with a company that would produce something like this. If it makes it easier, I’ll even limit my participation on the comments so that they can speak freely. Sometimes the most horrible anti-Asian works come from Asian people–and I truly am curious to find out why. (By the way, I’m not criticizing their stuntwork. I’m just criticizing the racial messages they’re sending.)
I haven’t see this guy’s flick. But I understand where Jaehwan is coming from in terms of the general sensibility or cultural style he’s calling out.
It’s called White Hipster Racism. I read a lot about it on Racialicious and similar websites. It’s like the plague.
First off, I’ll introduce myself as Ed Kahana. I’m part of the Stunt People which is a group of indie filmmakers and martial artists/non-union stuntmen.
My first immediate comment is Jaehwan’s defense regarding not having to see a movie before making a judgment is that he is “correct”. He can make a judgment based on what he sees in the trailer and checks out on the website. He can do anything he wants, but obviously, calling out supposed “orientalists” without any real knowledge of what and who he is criticizing is pretty irresponsible, dare I say, stupid. If he was a newspaper columnist he wouldn’t write things like that for fear of being sued for defamation (libel in the case of print) but on the Internet, it’s easy for writers like Jaehwan to post such things without verifying facts, even if it’s a judgment. It’s basically like that bully at school that opens his big mouth. But whatever, it’s his blog, he can call it out and not be responsible or tact in his remarks.
AS FOR MY BACKGROUND, well, I just like making martial arts action movies/movies in general. That’s why I joined the Stunt People. I met Eric in a martial arts class at SFSU. I did wushu, and Eric was one of the few serious people that actually tried to learn Shaolin Tantui, read the course reader, and practiced the forms relentlessly. He saw that I could do some decent moves and asked me and another guy from the class to come to the Stunt People open gym practices. I went, was introduced to the other “Asian” guys practicing there like Andy Leung (Eric’s Taekwandoe instructor at the time) who I had seen in one of the Stunt People demo reels. We shot a short fight scene that day. I LOVED to shoot “films” especially martial arts action ones. I had made one in high school and it remains to be one of my fondest memories of high school, so of course I have an immediate connection and respect for guys like Eric and Andy and we became fast friends.
From there, we worked together on a variety of short action films. I, a “pacific islander”, even win in one (beating Eric and Andy) of our most interesting short film/fight featured somewhere in this fan’s compilation of Stunt People fights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t7D6YKowII
Why do we bother producing such racist materials like Dogs of Chinatown? Well, first off, we didn’t. The facts are, the director, Micah Moore, loves to make films too. He also loves and practices martial arts. He made a couple short films and finally got some money (less than 30,000 dollars to make a feature film and hire some people for Dogs) and having been a fan of the Stunt People’s work led primarily by Eric’s directorial vision, promotion, and choreography, he wanted Eric to be a big part of his first big project visually inspired by Sin City and his love of anime and his inspiration by the classic Shakespearean play, “Romeo and Juliet”. You do have to realize that kids in film school spend 30,000 dollars on a short film or a commercial, but Micah was putting it all, in addition to insurmountable amount of hours of his own life into a film that would become 90 minutes or so in length. Anyway, he hired Eric, and while I don’t know the exact reasons, he also hired Ray. In fact, that might actually have been at Eric’s suggestion to Micah. Both Eric and Ray flew over to North Carolina, were given a script, and shot night day for a few weeks (I know Eric did). After that, it was left to Micah to edit the film.
I’ll let your brain think for a second as to why Eric and Ray would go over to work on Dogs of Chinatown . . .
Your second is up. Micah is a fellow filmmaker that we consider a friend. OF COURSE we’re going to help him with his first big project. How would you feel if someone loved your work so much and wanted YOUR help and was even willing to pay you some cash to make it worth your while? Would you even read the script first and see if the script passes your “Asian American red-flag sensibilities” test? These are normal guys that love martial arts and filmmaking and rarely get paid for the work they do. That is essentially the only life they have outside of their 9-5 job and hanging out with friends who are largely in some way or another involved in martial arts or the Stunt People itself. This is where you really have no idea of who you are blasting on the internet, Jaehwan.
Where else does this support come from? Well, you have to see, that Eric comes from a pretty “hickish” place called Redding, California. He moved to San Francisco to go study cinema at SFSU. He always jokes how it was only when he moved to San Francisco and started having more Asian people in the group that Stunt People videos actually got more attention and people started taking the group seriously. That’s a sad fact showcasing reverse discrimination right there because the guys from Redding have worked very hard to develop their martial arts screen fighting performances and choreography and I know that are quite a few people that will look at their work and say, “they just don’t look right” (i.e. because their white and not Asian doing Hong-Kong styled fight scenes). But that’s a different issue altogether. I came into the group not knowing Eric for even a year before he cast me with a lead role in Eric’s first BIG project, “Contour”. Eric was always like that. If you had the martial arts skills, on-screen presence, and some decent acting, Eric would want to feature you in a film. In fact he would shape film plots to fit various people from the group into his movies. No matter if he knew you for a day or a minute, if he liked your work and sensed that other people would want to see what you could do, he would feature you. That’s how he was. In fact, go watch Stunt People Reel 6. It was made when Eric first landed in San Francisco. It features his teacher, Andy Leung, as the main ass-kicker, and for damn good reason: Andy’s an insane kicker. You’ll also see some shots of Eric’s first friend he made at SFSU, Yasu Fujiwara, an international student from Japan. Eric’s somewhere in there, but he is clearly not the main focus. He defers that to Andy.
We’re filmmakers with our own vision. Our visions are certainly not intentionally racist by any means. If you manage to analyze our work and call it racist, for God sakes, we’re sorry the Asian guy didn’t win or that they were cast as villains. You’re asking guys with extremely limited time, money, and social skills to go out, organize and make friends with people we don’t know just so we can make our little indie films appear politically correct? Please. We’re the nicest guys around and friendly to everyone. We like to pride ourselves as a non-exclusive group. We HATE other groups of people that give off that aura of “if you’re not one of us, we’re not going to try to include you”, you know, that sense you get when you’re at a friend’s party and he has his all his work friend there? We’re geeks. We welcome anyone, and enjoy the company of others unless their rude, arrogant, or insane. Chances are, they won’t stick around unless they are geeks like us.
If you start seeing “orientalist” plot lines, themes, etc. in our work. You can ask us about every single film and we will tell you the exact story behind it. But to save you some time, you should be aware of this: guys like Eric, he’s a director. He has worked extremely hard to improve his filmmaking vision, sensibilities, writing skills, acting skills, choreography skills, the list goes on. And he did all this on his own dime. He never hired anyone to teach him these things. He doesn’t have much money period. He just has a passion for films, especially martial arts action ones with awesome fight choreography. The kind of person that can drive themselves to learn all this crap and become proficient at it probably has a pretty strong ego about them. So you think he’s going to envision some other dude as the hero of his movies? Please. He’s front and center, and so by that very nature, if that makes the white guy win, it’s not because of racism, it’s out of human nature. Do you really expect him to excuse the very motivational drive behind his short films and recast someone Asian in the role so as not to appear racist? It’s people like you, Jaehwan, that make misinformed judgment calls that label Eric’s self-fulfilling nature as racism based purely on the fact that he’s white.
And of course you know, Jaehwan, that because you judged someone, in fact, an entire group, The Stunt People, solely based on race, well, you’ve just promoted racism.
This whole time I thought this was about the negative stereotypes that [may or may not be portrayed in the movie but ] are portrayed in the movie trailer.
Could – I – ever – be – more – wrong.
Ed,
Thanks for coming. I posted specifically because I wanted to hear from API friends of these two guys, and I thank you for coming here. If any of you other fellow API friends want to drop comments here, please invite them.
You wrote:
He can do anything he wants, but obviously, calling out supposed “orientalists” without any real knowledge of what and who he is criticizing is pretty irresponsible, dare I say, stupid. If he was a newspaper columnist he wouldn’t write things like that for fear of being sued for defamation (libel in the case of print) but on the Internet, it’s easy for writers like Jaehwan to post such things without verifying facts, even if it’s a judgment.
One could just as easily say that it’s pretty irresponsible to pay money and support something you know is Orientalist. Really, how far from the trailer do movies usually deviate? I called this Orientalist, and according to people whose judgment I trust, it was even worse than we thought. See here. If I see everything that I know will be bad, where’s the financial incentive to create something better? If I’ve said anything factually untrue (“libel”), correct me. Otherwise, I stand by my designation of Blake and Eric as “Orientalists.” It’s a value judgment that so far has proven even more correct given their statements on BcB.
Anyway, Ed, we’ve been talking about it, and we’d like to invite you to a podcast. It’ll be me moderating, along with one or two people who have seen this movie. We’ve never had the opportunity to talk to someone who actually participates in making such movies, and we’d love to speak with you. Our podcasts are, for the most part, unedited. You can see some of our past work here.
Let me know. If you’re interested, I’ll e-mail you, and we’ll set up a time to record.
Thanks again.
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As another “Asian guy” in the Stunt People troupe, I did get annoyed by this post and the link that sparked it. I dislike the way the bloggers attempt to speak for “Asians”, as if that was one cogent “race” in the first place. I also disliked the fact that Eric stars in one film and all of a sudden it provides all sorts of self-righteous ammunition towards all the other Asian people that have anything to do with Eric. He made one film that was treated like a criminal record and became the new face of “orientalism” – which itself is a dated concept that certain circles of angry people are just now catching up on. Racism has adapted and evolved so much and so fluidly that we can’t afford to have people fighting their masturbatory battles at artifacts that barely make a dent in anyone’s life anymore.
I don’t see the “orientalists” gentrifying Chinatowns, I don’t see Eric fucking up the school systems (in fact, he teaches and works with the underprivileged and at-risked kids at Oakland and Tenderloin), and I don’t see hair-pulling in a trailer that is seen by maybe 100 people can result in any type of harm towards the “Asian race”, no matter how abstract.
It seems like all of this anger came from people feeling powerless AS Asian-Americans, which is a problem way bigger than seeing things on youtube and not liking it. And then hiding behind outmoded concepts to mask the aimless angst. I mean, what are you doing that is so different from the angry kids on IMDB? A couple of unsubstantiated academic buzzwords maybe.
The movie might be the worst movie that you ever see, I didn’t work on it and I’m not going to try to persuade you into enjoying it. The problem is your demonization of a big group of people of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds and experiences, based on your own racial fear. It bothers me as someone you’ve clumped into “your team” (an “Asian-American”) would speak for/patronize someone like me (and to answer your question: yes, there are other Asian folks in the Bay Area) and de-humanize a couple of good guys based on an extremely reactionary litmus test. It also bothers me as a filmmaker that you’re giving yourself credential to talk about things you know nothing about just because you’ve read someone else’s blog. And finally it bothers me as an American that while I’m working with the city, the federal programs and the non-profits to plow our way through a systematic injustice by doing my small part (that’s my day job), someone thinks he’s doing the same thing by posting youtube links and shitting on them. Vicitimizing yourself is not the same as intellectualizing, no matter how pretty your words are.
As an Asian person who knows The Stunt People’s work, many of the members from The Stunt People, likes to keep himself updated on sites like Angry Asian Man, and has read Orientalism by Edward Said I think I’m in a good position to give some insight here.
I’ve seen Dogs of Chinatown and really, there’s no denying that it’s the sort of thing Edward Said would have considered Orientalist. I said it myself from the the premise and trailer alone, but I saw it anyways because I wanted to support fellow indie filmmakers and because I like martial arts movies.
I think it’s easy to get worked up over it from an outsider perspective and believe that Eric, Micah Moore and Blake Flaucette are evil plotting imperialists. The other site did a very good job of demonizing them, but it’s all a load of crock. These guys are not Rudyard Kipling, they’re not making a career off of creating Orientalist works. Another thing is that people have unfairly gone after Eric like he had a part in the planning of the film, when all he was hired to do was act and choreograph. Keep in mind that The Stunt People did not make Dogs of Chinatown, only that 2 members were in it.
Dogs of Chinatown is admittedly not a great film, it was Micah’s first feature length film and it achieves what it needs to do. It has good action and it looks stylish. It’s a pretty cliche film, but I think most involved with it knew that more or less. At a $30k budget, you do what you need to do just to make the film work, and you aren’t concerned with the possible racial subtext the filmmaker may or may not be aware about. Hell, I get people mentioning race in little 2 minute fight scenes I make, just because the Asian guy or White guy lost.
A filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino has a hell of a lot more responsibility (and money) than Micah to make something that is the most socially aware film. This is why people got in a fuss over the video game Resident Evil 5 for basically being a modern day Heart of Darkness. A major video game company, even if it is Japanese should be aware that making a game that depicts a white guy killing hordes of fast African zombies is going to piss people off.
Haha, I’m surprised nobody mentioned that you have all sorts of Asians playing Chinese characters in the film. Did Micah cast them this way because he can’t tell Asians apart? Considering the film was made in North Carolina, Micah just had to make do with casting any Asians he could get, but he probably put more Asian American actors in his film than most other independent films made in North Carolina or even the United States do. Are they greatest roles for Asians? Not really, but they’re not the worse ones I’ve ever seen by any measurement. I think I get more pissed watching the depiction of the Asian men in The Joy Luck Club. In fact, many of the Asian characters in Dogs are a lot less stereotypical than the ones seen in most other martial arts films. Most Asian men in martial arts films have accents, are stoic and are mostly sexless, which is the complete opposite of one of good guys from Dogs.
I think naivete is your answer for Dogs of Chinatown, not conspiracies and imperialistic world views. Quentin Tarantino on the other hand is a guy I can’t stand because he is the entire embodiment of a modern day Orientalist or what one poster called white hipster racism. He is someone who purports knowledge and authority, yet is devoid of true understanding. I don’t think Micah is that sort of guy. He just wanted to make a stylish action film that had a sort of Romeo and Juliet type story, which is sort of a more serious approach to his Pirates vs. Ninja short.
wow, Seriously? Are you so absurdly dense that you can’t recognize sarcasm and parody when you see it? We’re parodying racism and racists. Half the crew is Asian, and you know what? We think it’s pretty damn funny. It’s SUPPOSED to be completely over the top to the point of complete absurdity. Sorry to break it to you, but us slanty-eyed yellow coolies are not actually being enslaved over here. IT’S CALLED DEADPAN ABSURDITY.
You are just perpetuating the stereotype that Asians are humorless sticks-in-the-mud. Humor what? I have no idea what that is.
If you haven’t noticed, there are many examples of humor bordering offensiveness for the sake of parody and tongue-in-cheek. For example, Family Guy, SouthPark, and everything that’s on Adult Swim.
Get a fucking clue.
Sincerely,
yet another Chinese girl in the masses
P.S. and no, I’m not one of those deluded and meek little girls that bows to the whims of others, whether it is to men or Caucasians. Maybe if you went to college, you would have learned something about the world.
go read a book.
However, I must admit that I cannot make any comment on projects not fully written and produced by The Stunt People. and eh, who cares if Dogs of Chinatown perpetuates racial and gender stereotypes as long as people are aware that they are racial stereotypes used for the sake of art. run with it.
I was a bit disappointed that the female lead didn’t have any fight scenes, but what are you gonna do? That would have disrupted the cliche damsel-in-distress theme.
Hey ya’ll, Eric Jacobus here, the white guy. I’m gonna try to comment once more and see if it goes through. It’s being wonky for me for some reason.
I’ve spent hours upon hours defending my bad acting and lackluster kung fu skills at the Bi-coastal Bitchin’ site, so I’ll keep it brief here. First off, thanks for the pointed criticism regarding the video. We dig it, plus you send us incoming links.
But then Jaehwan made this blatantly wrong statement:
“When confronted with this typecasting, the producer’s and lead actor’s responses were sexist and racial jokes. I don’t think it was lighthearted either; check out Jacobus’s own site; he’s quite defensive. Hell, he’s quite defensive on BcB.”
Everyone, please read the comments I made on the BcB website (http://bicoastalbitchin.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/chad-and-cody-make-an-action-flick/). You’ll find that nothing I (READ: username Eric Jacobus) said was racist or sexist or Orientalist. I merely made fun of myself and others in the production, and I went on to point out that Asians weren’t the only groups stereotyped in the film. All groups (Russians and Italians too) are stereotyped in Dogs of Chinatown. Even my big ass is stereotyped, as it comes across as unnaturally big and it plans to file a lawsuit against the filmmakers. Currently pending litigation.
Jaehwan: your grouping of my comments with other comments deemed ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ simply because those comments came from another person in the same production is wrong-headed. I hope you see that this is why I’m defensive on the topic. I had no hand in the writing or dialog or anything creative aside from fight choreography and some fight editing.
I am not a racist, sexist, nor an Orientalist, and nothing I have created myself could make me out to be any of those. Please visit my site http://www.thestuntpeople.com to see for yourself (if you care to watch 110 or so short films). Yes we work with Asian people, but we don’t advertise it so blatantly and “white-ly” as Jaehwan insinuates.
I’m not even going to defend Dogs against the “Orientalism” attacks. It’s not my movie, and I personally have no idea if it constitutes “racist” or “sexist” or what. I’m just a white guy and my opinion on that stuff really doesn’t matter. I’m just defending myself, so don’t get huffy over it. I don’t mind being called a third-rate nobody. I agree actually. I get noticed less often than my own clothes. “Hey, didn’t Eric Jacobus wear that Hawaiian shirt in ‘Contour’?” “Yes he did. Wanna buy it?” And then I make a couple bucks.
If you want me to explain WHY I worked on Dogs of Chinatown so you can post it here, then I’ll be happy to explain:
I am an amateur actor and stuntman who’s trying to make a living off doing what I love. Micah Moore (director) sent me the script, paid me to be the lead actor and fight choreographer (I’m poor, FYI), and flew me out to North Carolina to do the film. It’s an amateur film with some good fight scenes and pretty colors that will find its niche in martial arts fans and possibly fans of my terrible dancing. I took the job because I knew I could have free reign over the fight scenes and I love doing films. I feel extremely fortunate that I was chosen as the lead, and I plan on working with Micah and Blake again in the future.
That said, I look forward to another long-winded, tiresome argument that will end with nobody responding to me except some angry gay-basher who claims minority status.
“Anyway, I checked out their site, and it looks like they’ve got some Asian people working with them–Asian people in the San Francisco area. In the San Francisco area! Why would Asian people do this, especially in an area with such a high concentration of Asian Americans?”
I think it’s pretty obvious. It’s because Eric isn’t racist, and The Stunt People are a friendly multi-ethnic group devoid of so-called sinister orientalist intent. Your choice red quote certainly isn’t something a distinguished public official should say, but he was just being ironic to get a rise out of you. Oops publicity!
Believe it or not, I actually just read all the comments on this post.
Derek,
I pretty much agree with you. It’s ignorance. I wasn’t accusing them of being KKK members, just saying that they’re part of a tradition that is, at its core, grounded in racism, and that their comments themselves displayed sexism and racism. The only thing I would add is although Tarantino has more responsibility than Blake, Blake still has some responsibility. People still have to walk by his signs when walking through SF Chinatown. Being a “third rate nobody” (hahah…sorry…I can’t stop…!) doesn’t mean that he can do whatever he wants and not expect criticism.
Pete:
It’s funny how whenever someone makes a criticism of a work, the very first defensive response is “Well, look how much the creators do for their community.” My response is this: how is that relevant? We’re calling this work Orientalist. The fact (or claim) that he teaches underprivileged kids doesn’t make the movie any more or less so.
We don’t live in a bubble. We live in the electronic media age, and when people produce stuff that perpetuates stereotypes, I think it’s perfectly fair to call them out on it. Are there more serious problems in the world? Yes, but just because there are more serious problems doesn’t alleviate this particular problem. It would be like me saying to you, “What? You work with federal programs to help people in the US? Don’t you know that the AIDS rate is 25% in some countries?” Factually it may be true, but just because someone else has it worse doesn’t make another person’s work any less important.
Am I off base here? Should I not be questioning this?
I realize also that there are different people across the spectrum within all races, but since we usually don’t get any responses from the Gedde Watanabes or Chuck Willises of the world, I posed the question. I think it’s a fair question, given the fact that so many people see the perpetuation of stereotypes here.
Eric:
Clearly your movie perpetuates stereotypes, some of which are more damaging than others. Despite Ed Kahana’s crazy claim that your group faced discrimination until Asians joined up, unless the social environment changes, Ed will be always play the scrub in Van Damme type movies–and that’s if he becomes “successful.”
If you’re making the claim that you’re just the hired gun, then fine, you’re just the hired gun. I really don’t know what else to say about this other than there are real ceilings that Asian Americans face, both in the media and in public perception. It sounds to me like you’re just pushing this off as something that isn’t your problem, which is fine–I’m not saying that you have to do anything about it, just saying that it’s reflective of something that Asian Americans deal with all the time.
By the way, one thing that we mentioned in the podcast (which it looks like you listened to) is that this is an excellent opportunity for you to learn a different perspective, one that is not represented well in the mainstream media or with the Asian Americans who work with/for you.
Tyler:
You wrote: “Maybe if you went to college, you would have learned something about the world.”
College? What dat? Like Electoral College? You saying I need to vote? You saying I part of the least likely?
Haha…well, I just checked your site and saw that you went to U.C. Berkeley and will be going to law school, so I won’t (or can’t..haha)mess with you. That being said, it certainly didn’t seem like a comedy from the trailer or from Azn’s description, nor did it seem so from the trailer. Am I missing something that college edu-mu-cated people be seein’? Larry’s got a PhD from an Ivy League university and did his dissertation on Frank Chin, so maybe I should ask him.
You also wrote: “I was a bit disappointed that the female lead didn’t have any fight scenes, but what are you gonna do? That would have disrupted the cliche damsel-in-distress theme.”
Well, in the female lead’s defense, it’s hard to fight when you’re half naked the whole time (or at least from what it looked like from the trailer.). Just between me and you, I don’t think Blake or Micah hired her for her ability to do stunts, unless you consider this a “publicity stunt.”
On the bright side, a remake of Red Dawn is coming out, and it looks like there’s an Asian female main character. If people want to see Asian women slaughtering Asian men by the handful, they’ll probably have that opportunity. Woo hoo!
Shaun:
No problem with publicity. As I’ve said, I’m not calling for a boycott, just trying to raise awareness of what we Asian people experience (and in some cases, what we create). If Eric and Blake’s publicity results in more Asian Americans being aware of stereotypes, I’d say it’s a good tradeoff for this blog.
I wasn’t saying what you were doing was less important. I was saying what you do is NOT important. It’s a personal attack with college words. It’s especially true when you’re basing it not on anything you’ve seen, but on something else you’d read, that’s gossip. You weren’t “questioning” anything, you were calling people names. There’s no academic or intellectual rigor involved aside from dropping in academic words in the midst of your name-calling. And hiding behind those words to fuel your own feelings of powerlessness (which you’ve conveniently associated with the plight of millions of people who have nothing to do with you) makes you cowardly. It’s nasty, internalized anger that you’re taking out onto the lives of the others.
I just realized you thought you posed a question when I saw it as a ruse to shit on somebody else, but whatever, I’ll bite. Eric’s as gifted filmmaker with the action sequences as any, and he’s hard-working and fun to be around. It actually can be said about the Stunt People in general.
But you’re not really curious and you’re not posing the question fairly – because you’ve already let on that you might consider posting it if it’s good enough, meaning that you’re not questioning, you’re looking for an opportunity to judge, based on whatever other falsehoods you hold so dearly to justify your mysterious anger. It becomes a game of circular logic – you presume that an entire group of people is orientalist, therefore everything they say and put out must be orientalist, therefore they’re a bunch of orientalists – to the degree that Asian people who’ve seen Eric’s works and have worked with him and have had themselves unique experiences dealing with racism and other issues in this vast country are somehow not good enough or less Asian. That their words can only be posted if you’ve deemed them valid enough.
So yeah.
I doubt this film warrants the attention that it’s getting. It will likely will be soon forgotten–if it hasn’t already–as it deserves.
Don’t waste time giving it some underserved free publicity with “controversy” that these people can cynically manipulate.
More important are broader issues of White media racism and power in America.
Mainstream America likes to downplay or minimize racism as primarily about the KKK, hate groups, or even overt discrimination.
That’s a cop out and alibi.
These days, White racism increasingly is disguised–though it’s ultimately still about maintaining European-American power and control.
It’s not the guy wearing a sheet on his head that is the only problem. The KKK after all doesn’t have institutional power.
The problem is the guy wearing a suit and tie (or jeans and t-shirt) who regurgitates half-assed alibis about how he “doesn’t see race” or “some of my friends and co-workers are minorities”–all the while upholding White dominance and control like in the media.
In other words, Main Street USA is the problem.
The reason why you see the same tired White racist/Orientalist trash (from Charlie Chan to Suzy Wong to fill-in-the-blank crap about Asians) in the media is because of WHO owns, dominates, and controls this institution in the first place.
Like everything in the vaunted “Land of the Free,” the media largely reflects a White America worldview and value system–no matter how fucked up this value system may be.
In fact, diversity programs are essentially used by Whites as minority window dressing and tokenism to hide behind.
And here’s more about (White) Hipster Racism that I mentioned earlier. Using sarcasm or irony to rationalize racism is all the rage, it seems.
Hipster Racism
http://racerelations.about.com/b/2008/07/19/hipster-racism.htm
The New Yorker and Hipster Racism
http://www.racialicious.com/2008/07/14/the-new-yorker-and-hipster-racism/
“act like a racist in order to demonstrate that you’re not a racist”
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/02/act-like-racist-in-order-to-demonstrate.html
The Asian Hipster: Racism Isn’t Ironic
http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2009/04/the-asian-hipster-racism-isnt.html
Good article about the myth of “liberal” Hollywood:
Fade In Magazine Talks Racism in Hollywood
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/21/fade-in-magazine-talks-racism-in-hollywood/
Hey Guys,
I’ll be brief as possible. I think if you read the comments section on Bi-coastal Bitchin’ that you’ll get the whole story. To simply say that their were racists remarks is a little ridiculous at least from me. I made a few comments that were ridiculous because I thought people would understand that it was sarcasm. To my dismay, they did not. So here’s some of what I posted on BCB:
I saw what I thought were some ridiculous comments and responded in kind (definitely not serious responses). I just assumed some of these comments had to be a joke because we in no way intended our film to represent any person in a bad light other than there are criminal elements amongst Asian and white people, I think you would agree. We were just judged to be these racist hate mongers before anyone saw the film or anyone had even met us. Cultural differences don’t mean anything to me. It’s obvious that you and others here are very proud of your culture as you should be. When I meet someone, I don’t see any of that. People are just people to me, not black, white, yellow, purple, etc. I get to know a person and form an opinion of them based on that and their actions. I do appreciate the intelligent response though and I see what you are saying. If we happen to meet and you get to know us then hopefully you’ll have a better opinion of us.
Is Dogs Of Chinatown racist? Absolutely not. Does it have stereotypical characters? Absolutely. The film contains Asian males and white males being portrayed as criminals. I don’t feel that one race is portrayed as better or worse than the other. They are all criminal scumbags and they all get what’s coming to them in the end including the lead actor. Is it stereotypical to portray Asian guys as Triads and white guys as Mafia? Sure, I guess but it certainly is a reality. It’s not meant to belittle anyone. I think if anything the overall message in the film is that Karma’s a bitch and all the bad people in this film meet a terrible end. So call it what you like. I don’t want to go on and on defending the film. It is what it is. Stereotypes do exist. I’m smart enough to know that all Asian guys aren’t Triads and all white guys aren’t in the mafia and I think most of the audience will be smarter than that as well. I have Asian friends and White friends who are lawyers, dentists, etc, etc but that doesn’t make for a very exciting movie.
I am not racist and I don’t associate with racist people. My pool of friends is very ethnically diverse and I like it. Hopefully my daughter will benefit from being exposed to so many different cultures and so many wonderful people. As far as the Bi-coastal Bitchin site goes, it seemed like the people who run it are pretty cool. They were at least open to letting us plead our side of the story and they even went to check out the film, which is very cool. I don’t feel that anyone associated with the site itself is racist but certainly there were a few comments from some ignorant people (like the one who kept calling me a faggot). I’m sure I’ll get worse. I just ask that you have your readers read the whole comments section as opposed to just picking a few select sentences to reprint on this site for them to read. Get the whole story before just jumping on the hate bandwagon before you even know what you’re hating.
I definitely expect plenty of people to not like our film. Fortunately, there’s been a lot of good response to it and mostly good reviews with our share of so, so reviews as well as some bad ones too. We did the best we could with what we had and really hope to improve with our next one. If you like the film cool, if you don’t like it then that’s cool too.
Sorry, I guess that wasn’t brief.
Blake
A quick note: Dogs of Chinatown is not my film. I don’t know how I’m supposed to make this any clearer. It’s just not my film. Not my film. I didn’t make it. I starred in it and choreographed it, didn’t make it. Didn’t write it or plan it. http://www.thestuntpeople.com is where my films are (Films Section -> Stunt People Films on top).
“It sounds to me like you’re just pushing this off as something that isn’t your problem, which is fine. I’m not saying that you have to do anything about it, just saying that it’s reflective of something that Asian Americans deal with all the time.”
Now that we’ve cleared it all up, maybe you can change your blog post so that it doesn’t read as though I myself or The Stunt People are “orientalists.” The Stunt People had nothing to do with Dogs of Chinatown except Ray and I were hired to act, choreograph, and do stunts. You tried to make a massive logical leap by simply not researching my position in the film and tying me to comments I never made.
I know that Asian Americans have a ceiling in many things. Dare I say I’m helping things by making films with non-whites without a racial focus? By trying to normalize action films so for once it’s not about ethnicity, a blight of martial art films since their inception? Anne, Tyler, and Pete (all from our crew) are the most outspoken critics of white male sex/racism I’ve ever known. I’ve heard all this from them in far more persuasive words. Oh man, have I heard it.
dear Larry:
thanks for the links. Now lets try to say something relevant next time, yeah?
Dear Pete:
Lose your attitude. Or is that the only talent that you hipsters have–besides dancing around racism issues?
still not relevant, don’t give up!
Pete:
Did I somehow open a sore wound with you? Did Larry? You seem a little…tense…a little…uptight.
“It’s a personal attack with college words. It’s especially true when you’re basing it not on anything you’ve seen, but on something else you’d read, that’s gossip. You weren’t “questioning” anything, you were calling people names. There’s no academic or intellectual rigor involved aside from dropping in academic words in the midst of your name-calling. And hiding behind those words to fuel your own feelings of powerlessness (which you’ve conveniently associated with the plight of millions of people who have nothing to do with you) makes you cowardly. It’s nasty, internalized anger that you’re taking out onto the lives of the others.”
You see, this makes our job difficult. Tyler says I need to open a book and educate myself, and you say I use “college words.” She wants me to smarten it up, while you seem to want me to dumb it down. I think there’s a hierarchy where educated is higher than non-educated, so maybe it might make sense for us all to do what Tyler recommends and lift our level of conversation to a higher “college” type of level.
What Larry linked is totally relevant to this discussion. Some of the people here are using the “lighten up” argument, which was exactly the same argument used with that New Yorker Obama cover. Do you have an opinion on the blog post?
As far as me being “cowardly,” I don’t know how the Stunt People solve problems. I usually do it with words, so if you solve your problems with a Shaolin kung-fu style fight to the death, I’ll respectfully decline, not because I’m a coward but because I don’t have 2 years of Tae Kwon Do, one year of Southern Shaolin, and one year of Long Fist.
I’m glad you Asian American Stunt People have come here, but honestly, the only people who has really said anything relevant to the discussion of whether or not it’s orientalist are Derek and Blake (who’s not Asian). As I said before, it doesn’t matter what Eric does during his spare time. We’re just talking about the movie and the comments that he and Blake left on both this site and BcB. I obviously am not going to post something that’s totally irrelevant–that would ruin the quality of this blog.
Eric,
I was being half rhetorical when I said that you can push it off as “not your problem.” Of course you can, but c’mon, man, asking me to edit my post? You’re the lead actor, for crying out loud. It’s one thing for the camera grip to say he’s just a powerless hired gun. It’s perfectly fine if the makeup guy says that he’s just a hired hand or if the guy who throws you a towel to clean up after an intense scene says he’s nobody.
But dude, you’re the main actor. Blake, at least, is taking responsibility for this, even though I think he’s wrong on many counts. I respect his position because at least he’s answering the questions and taking ownership of his role in the production of this…um…movie.
I usually don’t correct posts in order to keep a historical record, but if you’d like, I’ll put a footnote referencing your post that you agree you’re only a hired gun. But do you really want me to do this? Wouldn’t you personally feel a lot better if you took responsibility for this?
“Anne, Tyler, and Pete (all from our crew) are the most outspoken critics of white male sex/racism I’ve ever known.
I would really like to hear their opinions on this. So far, it’s just been a “defend Eric” party.
I’ll tell you again: I had no creative control over the content of the movie aside from fight choreography and some editing of the fights. No editing of the script was allowed from me.
Call me a “hired gun” or whatever you want, but don’t blame me for the content, don’t group me with other people you deem “Orientalist”, racist, or sexist, and don’t bring The Stunt People into the mix. Here’s one very misleading line:
“Eric Jacobus, for example, googled his own name and came up to BcB, a site that doesn’t even specialize in reviewing movies and was written by people too smart to waste their time watching it. Still, just hiring these Asian people on the cheap gives them some kind of feeling that it’s okay to talk about minority women in a derogatory manner disguised as a lame attempt at humor.”
You loop me into the group that made certain comments, but I made no such comments. Had you read my comments on the BcB blog closely, you would’ve found nothing offensive. People turned a blind eye to my comments there until I was left to debate with someone calling me a vanilla fagg*t. Now you’re reprocessing my comments so they sound like they were racist and sexist. Not cool. You still wonder why I’m so defensive?
The last paragraph of your post is especially bad. I’ll break it down:
“Anyway, I checked out their site”
‘Their’ meaning ‘The Stunt People’s'? SP did not make the film. Ray and I are members, that’s the only connection with SP. You should have discovered that “Dogs of Chinatown” was done by All Aces Media. They’re in North Carolina, we’re in San Francisco. It’s not hard to find this information on our website, especially since “Dogs of Chinatown” is listed under Non-SP films on our Films page.
“and it looks like they’ve got some Asian people working with them. Asian people in the San Francisco area. In the San Francisco area! Why would Asian people do this, especially in an area with such a high concentration of Asian Americans? I would think that even if the racism isn’t evident to the white people, it would be evident to these Asian people.”
Bringing up the racism of a film Ray and I worked on and being baffled that the Asian people in our group are still in our group after seeing the film that they had nothing to do with was foolish and wrong. You should have researched this. You should have looked up who did what, who The Stunt People are, and how it all connected. Instead you insulted The Stunt People and its members directly. Still wonder why I’m so defensive?
Your implication is that the film was racist and was done by The Stunt People, a blatant error. You call it activism. I call it lazy, bad journalism, a big bruise on the overall mission of your website.
“if you’d like, I’ll put a footnote referencing your post that you agree you’re only a hired gun. But do you really want me to do this? Wouldn’t you personally feel a lot better if you took responsibility for this?”
No, I won’t take responsibility for something I had no control over. I got hired to do a low-budget, amateur first-feature-film-for-the-director martial arts film, that used any and all available local resources to the point where they had to fly me and Ray out, that’s getting almost zero attention outside of these blogs. Any male would’ve done it. Maybe THEY would be impish enough take responsibility for the message of something they had no control over out of fear that they’ll be branded a racist or “Orientalist”, but I won’t.
If you read my comments and decide not to change this entry then, well, that says about everything.
I’ve already said what I’ve said about the film, but I do think The Stunt People and Eric do deserve an apology. Sure Eric could have rejected the role, but this is not a Hollywood star we’re talking about here. The director Micah has been a long time poster of The Stunt People forum, and most people on the board who are friends always jump on any opportunity to work together. Where does the need to be super PC stop? Like I’ve said, I’ve gotten comments about race just in my own 2 minute videos alone. Should I never lose an onscreen fight to a white guy just because Chinese people receive racism still?
When Eric’s trying to distance himself from the content of the film, he definitely has legitimate reason to do so, since he had nothing to do with the story. I paid money to see the film despite what I thought about it, so does that make me just as bad? For me, Micah’s next film is a good enough reason for doing so. It will probably be one of the most racially diverse martial arts films ever made, and in a good way, and not in a Crash sort of way.
Furthermore, The Stunt People as a team has even less to do with the film than you’ve made them out to. You pretty much wrote that the Asian members (the ones who make up like half of the team) should abandon the team solely because Eric was in Dogs of Chinatown. You’ve also made them out to be confused race traitors because you mistakenly thought that The Stunt People as a team are involved with the film.
You don’t have to apologize for what you may think about the film, but leave Eric and The Stunt People out of it.
Pingback: Actors’ “Why” Post | big WOWO
Derek and Eric,
I just posted up the Asian American views on “Why” in order to fulfill my promises to the Asian American Stunt People who posted their views here.
I hear you both on your complaints, and I’ll address your requests for an apology/correction in a subsequent post, as well as link this post to the new one.
Ed,
I forgot about your post. I thought it was very relevant to the question as well, and I said so in my latest blog post.
Maybe , I can clear things up. Dogs Of Chinatown is owned by Micah Moore and myself. We hired Eric and Ray to come be in the film because we were big fans of both of them.
I’m really still at a loss to understand what people are upset about. I mean this site and the BCB site. Most people that have seen it like the film. I can understand you thinking it’s a bad film and poking fun at it. What I don’t get is what you think is racist. The filmmakers or the film itself? Are there Asian people portrayed as criminals in the film who treat others poorly and commit criminal acts? Yes. The exact same things can be said about the white people in the film. I think the review from aznheartthrob on the BCB site is a little misleading. He said:
Blake, honestly, watching the movie doesn’t change all my previous comments, the big plot twist actually made it worse than I originally thought it would be. You and Micah basically made every Asian person in the movie evil. They are either buying sex slaves, drunks starting off gang wars, killing without remorse, or hookers. Did you notice that every Asian female was a concubine of the mob boss? Every Asian female actress in the movie was basically a sex slave. Including the lead Asian actress.
He describes all the Asian characters in the film as doing all this bad stuff but what he fails to mention is that all the white people in this film are doing exactly the same thing. I think aznheartthrob would agree. He says we made all the Asian people evil in the film. He failed to say that we also made all the white people in the movie evil as well. I appreciate aznheartthrob being open minded enough to go see the film. I’m sorry he had to pay. I did try to get him in for free and I did offer him a refund once I found out he did have to pay. Feel free to ask him. I think people are seeing what they want to see. To say that we made Asians evil in the film is true. But to say it in a way that makes your readers think that only the Asians are portrayed as evil and are the only race in the film that is represented in such a bad light is misleading and I think trying to push the idea that the film is picking on Asian people. That is false. The white males in the film are equally vile and despicable and treat their women as objects in the same way their Asain counterparts do. That’s kind of the point of the film. Everyone is bad and they all meet their deserved end. Only through one good deed is the only character worth saving spared. I’m sure if you ask aznheartthrob (since he’s the only one who has actually seen the film here that everyone is bashing), he’ll tell you that all the characters in the film are evil, whites included. I understand that maybe people didn’t get our points in the film, probably means we need to improve as filmmakers. I would agree.
As for this site: it was stated that I said:
“Yeah, we could only get her to do the hair pull thing. We tried to get her to wear a school girl outfit and scream “me love you long time” but she wasn’t having it. Apparently you have to treat Asian girls with a tiny bit of respect. They get all uppity when you put them in a movie. “
This site failed to mention that this statement was intended as sarcasm, which should be obvious but you chose to only take a couple of lines from the BCB site and print it here like I was some racist hate monger. Did I make that statement? Yes. Did I mean it as sarcasm reflecting what I felt was sarcasm on the BCB site? Absolutely. I think anyone who reads all the comments (the whole story) can make up their own mind about me. I’ve already posted here that I am very fortunate to have a group of friends that is so ethnically diverse. I value all their friendships and would do nothing to hurt that. I think that by just printing those couple of lines it was maybe the site’s intention to get people in a frenzy about that statement. Mission accomplished. If that statement were the way someone actually felt then it should get the criticism it deserves. It’s perhaps misleading though when this site doesn’t give the readers the entire story and let them make their own minds up. It’s kind of the same thing that Fox news does when they take things out of context with the intention of getting their viewers pissed without giving them the whole story.
It was also stated :
It’s just amazing what people do and say when they get a little bit of power. These guys are third rate nobodies–Eric Jacobus, for example, googled his own name and came up to BcB, a site that doesn’t even specialize in reviewing movies and was written by people too smart to waste their time watching it. Still, just hiring these Asian people on the cheap gives them some kind of feeling that it’s okay to talk about minority women in a derogatory manner disguised as a lame attempt at humor.
We are third rate nobodies. It was a lame attempt at humor. Here again, it is made to seem like we are saying it’s okay to treat minority women poorly. It’s never okay to treat any woman poorly. It is what the male characters do in the film and they pay for it in the end. Again, kind of the point.
Lastly, I like the BCB site and have had some good dialogue with aznheartthrob on and off the site. I respect his opinions and I hope he’s gotten to know me a little better through our conversations. He chose to criticize the film and I can respect his criticism since he saw the film and was able to give a more educated opinion of it. I don’t necessarily agree with him on all things but he is certainly entitled to his opinion and I’ll be very happy to send him our next film because I do appreciate his opinion. We don’t expect everyone to like the film but don’t just say we have it in for the Asian characters in the film. All the characters are evil in the film and they are all made to pay the price for their actions. That’s the point we keep driving home. It doesn’t matter what race you are, if you are doing evil shit then Karma will bite you in the ass.
jaehwan:
“you seem a little tense” reminds me of the old Onion headline “Pervert Thinks You Seem Tense”, which is one of my favorites. I also dunno what open wound you think you’ve stumbled upon, but that is a good ol’ trick (which I’m not sure if you’re aware of) – you keep on accusing a person of one thing – if he ignores it then you say he admits, if he denies it then you say “suuuuuuure”, the accuser, if snide enough, will always get away with it, as long as he’s playing home court to his audience.
You’ve got quite a few other tricks in the works, most of them pretty obvious, lets take a look!
You did the grouping of Asian people again by lumping my comments with Tyler’s. Forcing a contradiction that only exists in your “Good Asian vs. Bad Asian” dichotomy. And then followed by a “whoa, don’t hurt me” joke, which I guess was delivered for ironic reasons or whatever but does remind me a lot of the cunty remarks from the Bros of Boston. And then finally, more angry long-winded stuff.
You’re doing the Bill O’Reilly thing by posting one or two “simple questions”, mainly for the “Asian Americans” and then dogging the white kids by asking them to “take some responsibility.” They might not be useful in a real discussion but they do put you in the comfortable position to condescend anyone and everyone. People who see filmmaking as an effort bigger and more complicated than your questions are “dodging”and anyone who finds fault in your line of questioning and the relevance of your indignation is in the “defending party”. And funny enough, none of this really goes towards empowering the “Asians”, instead they’ll only fuel the egos of those who read your blog and share the same powerless contempt that you do.
But all of this is predicated on your racialization of people. White people are wrong, Asian people who are friends with white people are misguided, and you are the purest Asian. It is a silly hierarchy that you need to prop up in order to dish out insults with authority. Because, in the face of honesty or an actually spirited discussion, all you have is your self-imposed authority. It’s still working though, I mean, look at how eager everyone is to talk to you. Aren’t you big?
What we haven’t seen yet is the “see I made you jump through my hoops” trick which you might resort to so lets just call you out on it right now, makes me a prophet and makes you a martyr everyone wins.
But don’t worry, I probably hated “Lost in Translation” more than you did.
Pete: Use your stuntman-damaged brain and explain how issues of White media racism and power are not relevant to this discussion.
Jaehwan: I wouldn’t sweat these guys or their film masterpiece too much. Like I said earlier, this flick is probably not worth too much time and energy–even to mock.
These self-promoters got their 15 seconds of fame. Too bad it’s for all the wrong reasons. And their “fame” does not even reach the importance of Paris-Hilton-Goes-to-Jail in the bigger scheme of things. But that’s what they seem to be about.
It’s the bigger issues that are important.
All this White racist shit about Asians that you see in the American media don’t come out of a vacuum. They are a product of a tradition, a culture, and a value system–a European American heritage.
Denigrating racial minorities is a time-honored American tradition, almost a US national past-time right up there with baseball and apple pie. Stephin Fetchit, Sambo, Charlie Chan, Suzy Wong, Tonto, and Minstrelsy in general are some of the more famous examples.
Today, however, this racist tradition is more disguised, less obvious. It often times comes rationalized with a heavy dose of supposed sarcasm and irony.
In fact, that’s one of the argument made in this discussion. They are being sarcastic or ironic–not racist.
Maybe. Maybe not.
It’s a fine line, and sarcasm is often cynically used by Whites to promote their racist trash–but with this ready-made alibi to hide behind: “You don’t get it. I’m not racist. I’m being so witty and ironic.”
Sure. Whatever.
This kind of thing is one of the defining attributes of Hipster Racism, as defined in some of the links above (just for Pete):
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/02/act-like-racist-in-order-to-demonstrate.html
Secondly, when most of Mainstream America thinks of racism, they define it narrowly as the KKK or some so-called extremist (i.e. non-Mainstream) group.
This definition is a limited one and lets Mainstream America off the hook. That’s essentially another one of the arguments made above: “I’m not racist because I am not a wild-eyed intentional bigot like some Klan member.”
But modern White racism is not the KKK only.
It’s more complex and more subtle like Hipster racism–though the agenda is basically the same: Racially denigrate or subordinate non-Whites for the amusement of a White majority.
It’s old wine but in new bottles.
Here’s a few facts about the film:
It’s a crime noir – a genre that focuses on shady underworld characters. (Ex: Lock Stock Two Smoking Barrels, Brother, SPL, Layer Cake, Road to Perdition, Snatch, etc).
All the characters – white, Asian, and black – are amoral criminals. They are all racists. They all believe in their own stereotypes and traditions, as well as the stereotypes of their chosen enemies. They all suffer great because of these character flaws. If you only noticed that the Asian characters were villains, you are looking through filtered glasses.
The war going on between the Triad and Mafia started because of one stupid person’s personal actions and a misunderstanding that quickly (through mob mentality) escalates into a big racist feud.
The film is also a hack reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet, meaning two disparate lovers from different social sets would come together against all odds. Considering Huyen is a great actor and Eric is a great screenfighter, this is the practical pairing. Italian and Chinese organized crime families were used as cliche backdrops. It was a pretty safe film cliche since I’m admittedly neither in the Mafia or Triad and can’t write from experience. Anyway, the anti-hero, Jack, is employed to infiltrate the mafia because his looks won’t raise alarms. It’s a logical choice.
The film is also chiefly a martial arts flick, and caters to an extreme premise and characters which can lead to a lot of dramatic confrontations. If you think it’s a statement that all Italians are mafiosos and all Asians know kung fu, the same can be said for a majority of films around the world. We like action, and wouldn’t be able to make a good film about Vinnie Barberelli the marketing director and Ming Su the pediatritian or track star or any other average person.
As fans of old Shaw Brothers films, we did throw in some conventions as homage, like a wise drunken teacher. Some critics may say we have no right to imitate elements of those films because our heritage isn’t the same as the pioneers who made them. I think that’s bullocks. I got no problem with Japan and Korea having DMC-winning b-boys, Yao-ming pwning people on the basketball court, or a black British guy winning a samba competition, or a white Canadian guy winning a martial arts tournament. Because to me it’s all the stories of individuals who either personally excel, or are competing against opponents with more characters flaws (thus the protagonists win by default).
Jack does not have Aryan super-powers. But a handful of elements allows him as an individual to keep going.
1. The power of love and his will to help the girl.
2. He does not dismiss any opponents due to prejudice or presumption. Therefore he has one less character flaw than his opponents.
3. Jack’s mentor schools him on overall strategic philosophy, not just fighting techniques. And knowing is half the battle.
Lastly, the hair pulling thing. Quite simply, some women love having their hair pulled in the throes of passion. Doesn’t matter their heritage. The film is very adult and the love sequence shows the physical passion and one lover momentarily giving themself up to their partner. If you watch it and the first thing that pops into your head is manifest destiny and European imperialism…well I’m just glad I don’t have that problem.
The film makes logical sense if you view the characters as individuals, and not as cultural ambassadors, which they aren’t. But that would require watching it and paying attention – easier to just call it racist propaganda.
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Dogs of Chinatown is filled with stereotypes and racism from the fictional characters within. The moral of the story is that such outdated thinking leads to doom. I’d be careful about mistaking thoughts of the films CHARACTERS for the thoughts and ideals of the filmmakers and especially the actors. The actors saw the characters as slimy criminal individuals, which is usually a intriguing and different role. They had no ability to shape the editing and eventual product of the film, if they thought it was offensive.
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Here’s a few facts I will say about the filmmakers and actors.
We and our friends comprise a network of indy action film groups around the world, in big cities and little towns, are all multi-cultural and all best friends. We’re martial artists and with all respect to origins and especially Shaolin, martial arts are now globalized. Martial artists cannot afford prejudice and expectation – it flies in the face of survivability. We know the individual who has the best training, mentality, and a perhaps a little luck will win fights, not the black guy or Asian or Latino or the white guy, etc.
We know racism still exists big-time in the world; it always has and I fear it always will. Most of our circle has just moved on, choosing to focus on our own indiscriminate network to our own mutual benefit. Some activists might fault us for not spending time arguing with the dumbasses of the world, but that’s not where our purpose lies. The truth is if everyone in the world was as racially-apathetic as the talent we work with, you might not have much left to validly complain about.
A lot of the talent we work is very sensitive to the still-ongoing racism in the world. Eric is one of those who has moved beyond race in his own pluralistic social life but understands the world we live in and takes care not to offend, knowing there is a lot of hurt out there. He doesn’t presume to be anything he isn’t. Obviously as an actor he wasn’t able to control the film’s content or final product.
I, on the other hand, am an asshole, and am as ignorant and imperfect as everyone else here. But my ego is too small to deny my imperfection. I am an equal opportunity pessimist who is skeptical of all groups equally. I hate mob mentality. I’m unimpressed by anyone who allows a group -be it religious, cultural, socio-geographic, political- to determine their philosophy and actions for them. Every nation and religion and culture on earth has a dark regrettable past – and I’d rather we all be individuals and free of the mob mentality that helps us justify those ugly actions. If you take out all the religious and political slaughter, what’s left in culture is art – and I believe art is good and can be shared globally and used to influence other artists around the world.
The idea of racism is as ridiculous as the earth being flat (both also being an embarrassment for the Church). There is no such thing as race amongst humans. There is not enough genetic difference between any two humans to comprise race. So sorry to tell you -we’re pretty much all the same. I guess we can’t be too offended now when Hideki Matsui hits a home run or Eric beats Ray in a screenfight. Because the only real difference in people is what you’ve allowed people to teach you all your life – that you are in a group that is different from another group – despite what the DNA says.
I just see a bunch of humans who are genetically-the-same making up labels to discriminate and commit crimes against each other, and people willing to embrace those labels and be offended. To me it’s utterly ridiculous, and unlike all the sensitive nice people I roll with (I sincerely mean this; I’m the only asshole they put up with), I got no patience for anyone on any side of racism. You hate some particular tone of skin? I’m sorry for all the joys you will preclude yourself from in this world. You want to bitch for hours about the racism in the world? Let me know if you figure out how to fix the human condition, or invent a poison that only kills racist people.
As far as any people of Asian heritage calling out other people of Asian heritage, I can’t comment on that, as I can’t put myself in your shoes. So I can’t tell if you really are more “Asian” than the actors, or if their identity and heritage should be dismissed. But I do think it must be ironic to decry stereotypes then set up strict guidelines for what roles are acceptable and question the free decisions of the actors – as if stereotypes are OK, as long as they are the positive ones you put into place.
There is a lot of real activism to be done. There is a need for education in this world, and if you serve that purpose, good on you.
On the other hand their are those who take up argument and offense as a hobby. Like a sport or social club. When they have nothing strong to latch onto, they will twist something through their own race-based filter.
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Anyway, I don’t care what people call me. It’s either truthful and deserved, or ignorant and thus meaningless, or likely a little from column A and a little from column B. I’m pretty happy with my long-time friends from all walks of life.
But I have a feeling if you met people like Blake and Eric and Ray (or the rest of their circles) and really got to know them, you might feel bad about some of your accusations. Because if there was ever a moment where you were in need of help, you’d soon realize that they are some of the most generous friendly people out there, and would help you regardless of who you are.
By the way, speaking as an evil media person bent on herding the sheep:
I must applaud your ability to take selective bytes out of context from the BCB board and “creatively” rearrange the sources and facts, all the while refusing to actually see the film of which you speak.
While this is journalistic fail, your propaganda skills are excellent!
You could have given Leni Riefenstahl a run for her money back in 1935.
Grats!
hey! it’s the cast of idiots from that shitty movie! Wouldn’t think you guys would show up here too!
Eric: Eric Defend Party, assemble! You too, Pete. Just continue to suck my dick after you post! Let’s go everyone!
Pete,
You wrote: “But all of this is predicated on your racialization of people. White people are wrong, Asian people who are friends with white people are misguided, and you are the purest Asian. It is a silly hierarchy that you need to prop up in order to dish out insults with authority. Because, in the face of honesty or an actually spirited discussion, all you have is your self-imposed authority. It’s still working though, I mean, look at how eager everyone is to talk to you. Aren’t you big?”
Dude, if I wanted to clown you, I would’ve posted this article here. The 44s has got literally ten times the traffic of my personal site, and there are tons of really intelligent Asian Americans who would tear you to shreds. Take my “college words” and multiply them by a hundred…you catch my drift. But instead, I opted to put it on my personal site, where there are fewer people and could maybe spare you some embarrassment. Look, even here I’m outnumbered by you people. Only Larry and I have posted on this topic; all my other regulars are already bored. I’m the underdog here, so post away. The tide is still in your favor.
That Bill O’Reilly “trick” is just standard debate. It’s not a trick. Ask Tyler–she knows because she’ll be studying law. When you ask a question, you expect the answerer to answer that question. Derek’s answer made sense–he basically said that it’s not perfect, but there is some good that comes of it. Ed’s answer makes sense–he just likes martial arts. You, on the other hand, started talking about whether or not orientalists gentrify Chinatown. It’s like I say, “I’m wasn’t a fan of President Bush’s stance of deregulation,” and you say, “Well, he’s not slaughtering people in Darfur.” Okay…true…but..what does that have to do with whether or not deregulation works in this economy?
Anyway, maybe we can step back. What did you think of Derek’s comment? What do you think of the links that Larry posted about Hipster racism and media racism?
Micah:
“I must applaud your ability to take selective bytes out of context from the BCB board and “creatively” rearrange the sources and facts, all the while refusing to actually see the film of which you speak.”
In the last part, are you applauding my time management skills or my discriminating taste in films? Yeah, sorry, this movie failed to spark my curiosity. Even though I haven’t seen it before, I’ve seen it before, many times. Trust me.
I understand. “Even though you haven’t seen it before, you’ve seen it before, many times. ” Good point. When you’ve seen one thing, you can assume you know all similar things. Like types of people for instance. No need to actually challenge yourself to get to know one on an individual basis. Just use your generalization. Sorry, wasn’t that what you’re trying to fight?
Toucan Sam illustrates an excellent point.
It is obvious many of the members of this blog have no intentions of educating the masses and changing the hearts and minds of people when they constantly resort to name-calling and juvenile insults, instead of participating in mature discourse that examining all sides of a subject with ethos, logos and pathos.
This very thread seems like an attempt to troll and flame, after observation of the traffic BCB received for covering the film. I noticed on this blog how a story about one of the world’s biggest icons (Jackie) making controversial statements on Chinese people, industry, and politics, barely gets an uncommitted shrug, yet a shoe-string budget MA flick with CHARACTERS who are racist – some of them Asian – gets an explosion of pretend-outrage and a doctored/spun story.
No offense to anyone from this blog who is actually trying to have a thoughtful discussion, as I always like to hear intellectual insight from different perspectives – but it’s hard to sift through the static of the other members who are simply spewing fear, hatred, and insults. And unfortunately this blog caters to those individuals, which is unfortunate for the serious contributors and their obstructed messages.
The visitors seem to keep a little tighter ship, not really wanting anyone to defend us by themselves hurling ugly names and base language. We appreciate everyone being respectful and would welcome a real mature discussion to find how we can better understand each other, if not for now, for the future.
But the inflammatory members here are not interested in spreading understanding, only on playing offended and insulting everyone who is not like them, or shares their point of view. They thrive in drama, in being miserable and upset. It’s a terrible way to live, and I fear for the health of their hearts and stomachs. When I was a kid I was also a miserable little brat who painted myself as a victim every chance I got, whether I was or wasn’t at the time – I just wanted sympathy and love. Then I grew up and realized you can’t expect either of those things from this world.
There’s some real racism in this world to be addressed. Maybe you’ll find it at some point. But if those specific members were truly interested in ending racism, instead of spreading their own personal hatred and ugly attitudes, they could find a much better use of their time than attacking a tiny film for having CHARACTERS who are racists and buy into stereotypes. They would also probably be against all racism of all people, instead of just that which can get them sympathy and attention – while denouncing other groups of people and their own who don’t agree with them. So let’s see what outcry I find in this blog for films like Baby Boy or Friday.
The truth is any one Asian-American on here is no more connected or responsible for all the culture and history of Asia as I am to all the culture and history of Europe – whether or not you want to take it on yourself to defend all of Asia, and blame me – an apathetic starving artist individual – for all of European history.
I hope one day you find a little peace in this imperfect world, and realize that at least a few individuals don’t wake up every day plotting an elaborate conspiracy against you, and you can take a break from being the sole defenders of foul-mouthed righteousness on this planet.
Again I apologize to the few posters who want real discourse for the purpose of UNDERSTANDING, not to see “who can tear who to shreds” or some such other egoist competitive game.
Since I need to move on, I do wish everyone here peace, and mutual happiness.
“I understand. “Even though you haven’t seen it before, you’ve seen it before, many times. ” Good point. When you’ve seen one thing, you can assume you know all similar things. Like types of people for instance. No need to actually challenge yourself to get to know one on an individual basis. Just use your generalization. ”
That’s basically it in a nutshell. Aznheartthrob knew what it was going to be before he went, but he went anyway out of respect for Blake and Eric. Azn said it was worse than what he thought it’d be. I just decided not to go. No need to waste my time; it’s everything Asian Americans are used to.
Sheesh, if I spent all my time seeing movies that I know will suck and perpetuate stereotypes, I’d have no time for this awesome blog. I’d have no time to read in order to learn. Plus, there’d be no incentive for producers to create better movies.
“I noticed on this blog how a story about one of the world’s biggest icons (Jackie) making controversial statements on Chinese people, industry, and politics, barely gets an uncommitted shrug, yet a shoe-string budget MA flick with CHARACTERS who are racist – some of them Asian – gets an explosion of pretend-outrage and a doctored/spun story.”
Before you leave, please remember this one word: INSTITUTION. Jackie has said some crazy things before, and most people around him, including this time, disown his words. He’s one guy, supported by basically no one. If you honestly understood Asia and Asian people as well as you think you do, you’d realize this is nothing new. Look, he’s even facing a boycott. A lot of Asian people don’t take him seriously, the same way American people don’t take Mel Gibson seriously. So there’s my uncommitted shrug.
A movie production, with its actors, writers, promoters, etc., is a product of an institution. I never called for a boycott or anything like that. Just called it as it is.
“But the inflammatory members here are not interested in spreading understanding, only on playing offended and insulting everyone who is not like them, or shares their point of view. They thrive in drama, in being miserable and upset. It’s a terrible way to live, and I fear for the health of their hearts and stomachs. When I was a kid I was also a miserable little brat who painted myself as a victim every chance I got, whether I was or wasn’t at the time – I just wanted sympathy and love. Then I grew up and realized you can’t expect either of those things from this world.”
Well, it’s only really been me and Larry. Most of the activity on this post come from your people, not mine. So if you have a bone to pick with the “members” here, I think I’m probably who you’re talking about. Or you might be talking about Larry, although you didn’t address any of the points he made about hipster racism.
“There’s some real racism in this world to be addressed. Maybe you’ll find it at some point. But if those specific members were truly interested in ending racism, instead of spreading their own personal hatred and ugly attitudes, they could find a much better use of their time than attacking a tiny film for having CHARACTERS who are racists and buy into stereotypes. They would also probably be against all racism of all people, instead of just that which can get them sympathy and attention – while denouncing other groups of people and their own who don’t agree with them. So let’s see what outcry I find in this blog for films like Baby Boy or Friday.”
Okay, please tell me what real racism is, since you seem to believe you know more than the racial minorities here or on this blog. The floor is yours if you want it. No pressure though. I’ll also settle for “peace, and mutual happiness.”
“if you honestly understood Asia and Asian people as well as you think you do”
Woah there buddy. I never said anything of the like. In fact the only thing I’ve said about my knowledge of what it’s like to be anything but me is that I’m as ignorant as everyone else here, and don’t have a problem with people calling me such. I definitely know even less, if that’s possible, about Sicily and Italian Americans.
As far as Asia I can only assume there are as many unique individuals and points of view as any other huge collected group of diverse nations, histories, cultures, geographies religions, ideologies, etc. I don’t presume to understand or speak for any “people as a whole.” All I know is individuals. I don’t know “The people of China” or “white dudes” or the “women of Laos” or “Asian Americans” or “Aborigine-Americans.” I know some guys and some girls who are cool individuals. Some might come from Asian countries or have parents that did. Regardless, they gotta be pretty rad for me to hang out with, and then be willing to lower their standards and hang out with me.
I have no idea what it’s like to be anyone else, or from anywhere I’m not. Does this make me a bogus author? Should writers have nothing but clones of themselves in their stories? Should Douglas Adams resist books about aliens, being only a human himself?
While I’m a polite appreciator of the arts and generally welcome in diverse ethnic art-based circles (which is only art, nothing else), I claim no group identity for myself or deep understanding of any culture including those of European heritage. I would feel foolish representing other people I don’t know well, or allowing them to represent myself. I’m just an individual. I eat what makes my tongue feel good, not what anyone says I should, especially not some geezer that lived a thousand years ago in England of Africa or China. I see the long-term problem with getting over on other people’s misery, and the long term benefit of mutual progress.
As far your last bit of response, I stated those comments were only directed at specific individuals who were muck-raking, name-calling, and seemingly reacting with outrage to everything, whether it’s a racist product or not. It is up to you to decide who you are and whether that applies.
Personally I don’t think that comment was directed at you. I think you probably have an understanding of the racism out there. White individuals might not be targeted or hurt much, but they witness it, first being doled out at random times by random people, and secondly, having racist white strangers suddenly confide in them, because white racists are just like all racists – they think all whites are racist- obviously these confrontations lead to static. Anyway, I’m not saying I’m largely affected. I’m saying I’m aware. But all you have to do is open your eyes and go outside and read history books and turn on BBC to be aware of racism. I hear from friends with different cultural backgrounds that racism exists amongst other cultures as well. That seems believable, but I’m not in those shoes, so I have no certainty.
What I am saying is that a crime noir movie with characters that are racist and buy into stereotypes and hollow tradition isn’t what I consider “real racism.” Especially when those characters suffer because of their beliefs. I’m not saying real racism has to be the genocide that is taking place in various parts of the world. Or anything as overtly evil as the history of torture and genocide and sanctioning of slavery that is the Catholic Church. I do realize we’re in America and racism and prejudice can be subtle and sneaky, but there’s still a lot of what I would call “overt racism” and prejudice here that could be a more applicable subject of focus, from the religious right, to the klan to the skinheads, to within different immigrant groups amongst each other, to fundamentalists of all religions, and especially the ban on gay marriage.
I am not sure why a little film with characters who are racist, **who all die because of their racism and violent lifestyles**, made by a multicultural group of indiscriminate friends, has become such a priority to you, to dedicate this much time to. Is it such an important part of your battle for justice in the world? How high is Dogs of Chinatown at the top of your list? And could I get some examples of other things you are being active about to compare just how wicked we are.
The thing about me is I’m not an activist, so I don’t have to make those priority decisions. Sure I’m a good guy. I’d help a stranger change a flat tire, and stick up for someone being bullied, and if need be, risk certain death to save others (though that’s actually unhealthy and more of a psychological issue). But my chief concern is my own artistic progress.
If I was an activist, I’d probably put starving kids before Dogs of Chinatown. And uneducated kids. Probably all education stuff before Dogs of Chinatown. Then cancer, AIDS, and other diseases that still need cures. I’d probably put them first. I’d probably march in the street for gay rights to marriage before Dogs of Chinatown. I mean, gays are getting open and prejudice outright from politicians and tv personalities – direct and uncut, not just stuffed into stereotypical characters. They get beat up in alleys too, like other victims of hate crimes, but then have to suffer the indignity of it actually being “politically correct” to dehumanize them publicly. Then the whole congo genocide thing. Anyway, you see where I’m going with this.
That’s why I’d suck at being an activist. I’d wouldn’t know the “good fight” or how to prioritize properly.
By the way, I will consider your comment about institutions vs iconic individuals. I don’t know if I’d find it applicable to our particular production if I gave it some thought, which I will do, but its a great point and way to look at things.
I do respect Aznheartthrob for checking out the movie. And I think he’s got a valuable point of view. But it was obvious when what he got out of it was that “all the Asian characters were vile and villainous” while remaining totally oblivious to the fact that all the white and black characters were the EXACT SAME brand of vile and villainous, that he was watching through biased glasses. In his case, the glasses of a reactionary whose thoughts are predisposed to receiving racism. He was unable to see that ALL the characters regardless of ethnic identity represented the worse traits of men. He was unable to put the genre or the literary logic ahead of his predisposition. He was unable to fairly consider the Asian characters in context with the story and in relation to the other characters.
Just as our MA guys watch the film with our own biased glasses, whether its rooting for a particular style of fighter, or basing our likeability of characters on their moves. Or me, rooting for the fighter willing to broaden his horizon of techniques, tools, and strategy the most.
Just out of curiosity, have you seen Beat Takeshi’s “Brother” and what do you think? It’s a stereotypical Japanese gangster, and a steretypical black American gangster. But I thought it was a nice film, and I didn’t take any of the characters to be cultural representatives, or representative of anyone but their own selves.
I had a really long response written, even saved on my desktop at work so that I could continue and post, but it would be pointless. People like Jaehwan, the original poster at Bi-Coastal, etc. like Miach said, you’re looking through filtered glass. There’s nothing anyone could say to make you change your view of things. As they say, it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
Whether Dogs of Chinatown is a “racist” movie really all depends on your perception and definition of what films are to be considered “racist/Orientalist” or not. There’s no real benchmark, and no one’s posted a definition of what is “Orientalist”, etc. so that we could compare the film to such a definition and so it’s really two sides viewing the same product which is doomed to go in circles. If you argue that Dogs of Chinatown is racist because it has Asian stereotypes like Asians doing martial arts, Asians being villains, Asian damsel in distress, etc. then I guess every movie out of Hong Kong is racist by those measures. If you really want to argue whether or not the film racist/orientalist, write it like a good essay. Define the “racist/orientalist” so that we have as best an objective standard by which we can compare the film, too. Then, state your points and allow rebuttal. That’s it. I’m done with that.
The only reason everyone replied from The Stunt People is because you called us all racists/Orientalist. And I’ll tell you why: in your initial post, you were “surprised” that Asians in the crew apparently didn’t see the racism in Dogs of Chinatown (which again, haha, is a film that two members worked on; we don’t have a voting committee where we decide to send ambassadors to represent our views, etc. we’re not that kind of “institution”) and if they did, you were befuddled why we, as Asians in the group, fight the Stunt People “institution”, etc. You then make a call to say, “seriously, it’s time Asian Americans started to think about why we do what we do”. Furthermore, you title the blog “Birds of a Feather” which implies the old saying “birds of a feather flock together”, and since you make a point of saying Eric is “orientalist” and then begin talking about the other Asians on the team, then you are thereby making an association that the Asians on the team must be Orientalist as well based on our support for the institution that is the Stunt People.
I’m not even going to comment on that. Not to a guy that claims that Jackie Chan, owner of a movie studio, hotels, director of various charitable foundations, is NOT an institution and is supported by NO ONE, “He’s one guy, supported by basically no one”. I just gave up the ship at that point. Supported by no one? And you claim that by not seeing movies you are showing your lack of support to producers of products you don’t approve of? How many tickets to a Jackie Chan movie have you bought? How many Jackie Chan DVDs have you bought? Do you see why I just have to give up? People like you are so caught up in your own righteousness, you play both sides of the coin depending on whether that side can be used in an argument or not. There is no point.
And on that final note. To reply to Larry’s “white hipster racism”. Okay we get it. When a “white” person makes a sarcastic “racist” comment for the sake of humor based on the absurd notion that you are actually “racist”, thereby showing people you’re aware of being not racist, said “white” person is generating humor among other “white” people at the expense of the race that is the butt of the joke.
Well, then I guess because you are all AVID supporters of blogs like Bi Coastal “Bitchin”, and think so highly of that poster, and support his views, etc. I guess you could say that you are by association “sexists”. Why? Because you are supporting a blog that has, at it’s namesake, the word “bitchin” which is a pretty derogatory term most associated with a stereotype of women; in fact it’s clearly labeled as “offensive” when you look it up on the web and return the following definitions
“a. A woman considered to be spiteful or overbearing.
b. A lewd woman”
I’m sure that the title is a reference to the above descriptions and not of a “female dog” and if you want to limit the reference to “complaint”, well, let’s be honest, you don’t need a theory about a sublime socio-political system with an agenda to subjugate women to see how “complaint” became associated with the word “bitching”, which then reveals the blog title as quite an example displaying subjugation of the entire female sex, eh Larry? What should we call that? “Asian Activist Hipster Sexism”? Or do you want to play the “we were only being sarcastic for the sake of communicating our ideas” card? I mean, be realistic, would you say “bitchin” to your girlfriend, your Mom? Somehow it’s okay to title an “Activist” blog with a word that is damn offensive. Guess that reveals what you and all your activist friends think of women right? Because you did use the term “bitching” and you support them, and you go to the blog and read it and support it, and you think it’s all fine and dandy.
Again, filtered glass. By looking at your glass, 90% of the films we make, enjoy are going to probably be racist in your view. Sad to say, this view is probably the same for not just us by many of your friends and family, etc. Sorry, can’t help that.
And through my glass, I see a laughably hypocritical group of activists that support a public blog referencing the word “bitch”, which I and MANY people would agree is offensive to women, blast and independent film made on a shoestring budget devoid of CONSCIOUS RACIST INTENTIONS for being racist and call the people that support those filmmakers racist.
Ed
At the end of the day…what the world will see it this:
The Stunt People forum is a multi-ethnic multi-cultural pluralistic group of good friends comprised of Asians and Asian-Americans, black Americans, Europeans, and Canadians, white Americans, Europeans, Canadians, and Australians, Latino-Americans, and Native Americans who all work together and play together without a single negative thought to our differences.
We don’t care who the protagonist of a film is so long as he or she’s a great screenfighter. It can be Dacascas, Jackie, Ray Park, Jim Kelly, Marko Zaror, whoever. We don’t care if they get the girl, even if she’s from another culture – we feel LOVE is bigger than cultural divides. We don’t care where the fighting opponents come from, as long as they have motives and moves. We all like having Eric as a lead because his commitment and ability in choreography and performance is tops – he’s desired for his individual skill and dedication. If his skin was a different color, he’d be just as desired.
Blake and I made a film filled with CHARACTERS who are criminals and racists who all died horribly due to their ignorance, reliance on hollow tradition, and violent lifestyles.
The posters from this blog, on the other hand, so far have only identified themselves as a group of Asian-American friends, mistrustful other cultures and points of view, and are fast to give their opinion on what roles Asians should and should not play in films and what roles white people should be allowed to play in films. They have dismissed the validity of other diverse Asian-American viewpoints (as if this blog is the chosen representative for all of Asian-American people, and everyone else is wrong), purposefully cherry-picked and misconstrued comments from another blog, presented satire as straight prose, attributed statements to Eric that he never said, confused the position of actor with that of writer and editor, selectively reviewed fractions of a film as a whole while totally ignoring the context, and that reviewer was the only single individual who chose to actually watch the film at all before the other posters started labeling everyone involved with it racists – one of the ugliest accusations you can hurl – and Orientalists, then had the audacity to defend generalizing things to save them time and effort.
Now I’m not calling either group prejudiced. But I think between those two, the world can make a judgment.
My boyfriend was going to make a post here, but he has work to do, and since I’m meaner and Asian I felt I should do it instead.
But I should let you know, I’m not meaner because I’m Asian. I’m just meaner because a lifetime of growing up in rural Canada, being the only Asian in a small town, and getting the cops called on my family every time someone’s cat went missing, can make you something of a curmudgeon.
So lets get down to the complaints.
I’ll address the points here.
1. “The main protagonist is a White guy.”
- And you’d rather see one of your Asian brothers wearing that hideous hawaiian t-shirt?! Eeeeeeek! The director should be ashamed of himself. Where’s your costume designer when you need him? Hire me for your next feature. I’ll get that foppy looking Jacobus fella straight into a decent men’s clothing store and he’ll come out looking as spiffy as a new car. Spiffier!
On the upside, the lead guy’s not completely hideous like most action heroes and he’s getting laid instead of being the 80s conservative “no touchy, no feely” sexless Republican action figure.
That’s a plus.
“2. The love interest is an Asian woman who gets rescued by that White guy.”
- My boyfriend’s a white guy and he’s my hero. Does that make me an Orientalist? Who gives a shit if a white man sleeps with an Asian woman? This is the 21st Century.
“But she’s depicted as being a slut? Remember Full Metal Jacket?!” Yeah, I do. The Asian girl uses a cultural stereotype to gain intel on American soldiers and then slaughters them like cattle with a sniper rifle. Totally awesome movie! And half the racist white guys who quote it have never seen it or don’t get it and are aping an intentional generalization in the film that paints Americans as being ignorant redneck bigots with the mental intelligence of a four year old. See satire’s not dead, its just become the status quo!
“But in this movie the slut isn’t empowered because she gets her hair pulled during sex.” Say what? I get my hair pulled during sex and I’m plenty empowered. There’s actually a patch of hair at the back of your head that feels really good when it gets pulled. You’d probably like it. Lighten up. Should sex only be missionary, gentle kisses, no foreplay, only after marriage and strictly for the sake of procreation? When I get spanked by my boyfriend, am I committing a grievous insult to my ethnicity? Puhl-eaze! Lets not look for Orientalists in our assholes. Sometimes a booty call is just a booty call.
And is the white guy sleeping with her and finding her attractive because she’s a slut? (Ooooo! Saucy!) Or is it because he loves her and she loves him? (Awwwww!! Boring.) I’ll bet it’s the later. And that means it’s a very progressive movie, because most movies only got one role for the slut (in particular Asian sluts), and it isn’t the romantic love interest lead. It’s more along the lines of “get attacked with chainsaw while giving head to boyfriend and then spend next twenty years touring horror movie conventions to take pictures with fat guys”. Characterization kinda matters, when we’re talking about a story, right? I mean Oedipus bangs his mom, but the point of the story isn’t that all Greeks were into incest. Kapeesh?
Besides you haven’t seen the film, there could be a huge multi-ethnic gangbang in the end (oh please, oh please, oh please).
Also lets not pretend that just because Lucy Liu got to be in Charlie’s Angels it means that Asian women are universally depicted as being so beautiful and are made into nothing but sex objects by mainstream magazines like Cosmo and Maxim and Playboy. There’s a reason why tons of Asian women have such low self-esteem and get surgeries to make their eyes look bigger and their faces changed and their boobs huge, and their nose smaller and their skin color lightened. I’m sorry, but I’m happy that mainstream culture is finally waking the fuck up and beginning to realize that different ethnic groups and different looking people with different body types are attractive. When every fashion magazine in the fucking world almost never features ANY Asian models or Asian women at all, even if they’re a hundred times sexier than some breast-enhanced, butt-ugly Lindsay Lohan type or the thousand other generic Hollywood gingers that look exactly like Lindsay Lohan? It’s a good thing that at least this movie wants to treat Asian women as attractive. So what if it is exploitative? Yes it’d be great if we lived in a world with equality of the sexes (although seeing foppy guy’s boner doesn’t interest me much), but it’d also be great if I could ride on top of a rainbow on a magical unicorn named Glass-Walker. In the meantime, lets focus on the real and the victories that can be won today in the current culture and not hyper focus on everything becoming some magical utopia tomorrow through random dues ex rhetoric.
Besides, you wanna see a movie where the Asian guy gets the Asian girl? There’s thousands of examples of that. Start with My Sassy Girl and make your way to Wong Kar Wai. Because speaking as someone who worked at a video store for three years, it would be really nice to see people support great Asian cinema, great Asian actors and Great Asian directors. You know, besides the nerdy white guys who are into anime.
“3. It seems like all the other guys, including the comic relief and villains, are Asian.”
- Yeah that doesn’t bother me. If the Asians were just random hench-dudes in the background saying ‘yessir’ to some evil white overlord? I’d think it was ass. But main villains are usually cool, even if they’re bastards, and admittedly the guy who plays the main villain doesn’t look stupid or goofy or like Fu Man Chu or the Japanese getting his butt kicked by Bugs Bunny. He looks pretty damn bad-ass and cool in the trailers. He seems to outsmart and kick the foppy white guy around something fierce and doesn’t look even remotely weaker than him in the fights. As long as the Asian guys are still allowed to be hot, cool and awesome, I don’t care if they’re good, bad or from Holland. A hot Asian (male or female) is still a massive progression in cinema. Because in a lot of cases, Asians aren’t even allowed to play Asians. Let alone be seen as cool. Again, victories that can be won today. Baby steps.
“4. When confronted with this typecasting, the producer’s and lead actor’s responses were sexist and racial jokes.”
And when Tyler commented on the lead actress in the comments, you spoke about the actress in a very insulting, sexist and condescending tone as well.
I’m quoting: “Just between me and you, I don’t think Blake or Micah hired her for her ability to do stunts”.
Rough translation: She’s just a piece of meat and was only hired for her looks. All slander is projective slander, hun. Yeah, you’re trying to say that’s what Micah and Blake were thinking, but it’s a pretty hurtful and petty insult to make about a struggling Asian Actress. Besides, how can you diss her acting skills? She looks mighty convincing in those sex scenes with the foppy white guy (despite him looking like a timid little virgin getting his cherry plucked). I think she’s a fantastic actress! Great casting choice.
As for Micah? Relax. Chill out. Nice long breaths. I think everybody needs to calm down and just take a load off and stop squabbling over who’s the most ‘ethnic’ or who’s the most ‘progressive’. Agree to disagree like adults and be adults.
And Micah after seeing Ed in some of the shorts on the Stunt People site, I have to say, he is cuuuuuuuuuuute, I think you should get him naked in sex scenes for your next film.
ED KAHANA, NAKED IN 09.
Make it happen Miccie!
And no more Hawaiian Shirts. Just say no to that fucking shit.
Sincerely,
Gail
Teacher, Asian Stuntwoman, Kickboxer and Friend to all Children and most animals, except kittens. I kill those with bats.
dear jw, thanks for not “clowning” me on your other site with 10 times the traffic. that would’ve been a disaster! I hope my gratitude doesn’t tempt ya!
you asked me what I thought of Derek’s comments, but guess what, I didn’t read them! same goes for larry’s links on hipster racism ’cause I don’t really care about hipster racism. I’ve been to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com though, I like how he used that as an actual source to educate people on racism, even though the site itself was for white hipsters to feel vindicated and empowered through multiple and impenetrable layers of irony. if the other links are as funny as that one then maybe i’ll click on them too.
I saw some of that last month as I walked through SF’s Tenderloin where I work, and it was critical mass, and all these dudes on bikes came through town heckling drug slingers and crackheads in the streets with ironic comments. I also saw some outside my house: they were being loud at 2:30am so my black and white roommates and I started throwing pennies at them from a floor up. then they started quoting chappelle, starting with “I’m rich bitch”, then “I’m rick james bitch”, and so on and so forth. I went to the kitchen to grab the house’s last and only egg and asked my roommate if he wanted to chuck it at them, he said no, then one guy outside the window got carried away with chappelle quotes and started throwing the n word around freely, so my roommate turned to me and said “Pete, give me the egg”, which I did, which landed, and it bummed him out and it was awesome. I hope larry’s comments are more relevant than my story, but I don’t really care. this thread has always been about your unfounded accusations of my crew and me, and always will be, so I will not argue your points. I mean, you think “institutional racism” is a white guy being friends with Asian guys and their making a short film on a Sunday afternoon with the white dude who did the special effects for Sin City, for free, and just because you have a blog, we have to know that people like you exist now, and have to take MINUTES out of our days to call you out on your attempts to gossip and shit on people.
I apologize for trying to enlighten you earlier by bringing up actual instances of racism I’ve seen in my life. This is clearly your hobby and entertainment, and I thought I was talking to a young college dude or something, but clicking on your links tell me otherwise. You’re a guy too old for flame wars but you do it anyways, under the guise of fighting institutional racism, which is toppling right now in our stunt people headquarters as we speak.
and it’s curious that you said you were interested in talking to actual activists not armchair ones but when I told you about my dayjob and Eric’s involvement with my youths you’d barely nodded. it hurts a little to get shot down like that, ’cause it gets lonely fighting racism over here, with all of my friends and loved ones all over the Bay Area. I bet I’d met some of those bicoastal people at protests and conferences without ever recognizing each other and with the nastiness of last blog entry, I probably wanna keep the two lives separate at this point.
my favorite book on institutional racism towards Asian people (amongst other peoples) is Everybody was Kung fu Fighting by vijay prashad, something you must have read. the book lost steam towards the end and his analysis of pop culture seemed confused and muddled, but I did love his framework and his theory of polyculturalism which asserted that culture is a fluid entity, not a product, and only bigots try to prevent it from changing. I also appreciate his analysis of the definition of the different races that are tied to their socio-political standings since race is defined by different cultures and peoples differently throughout the times, you can only examine the definitions through their usefulness to the society. so while I lament at the treatment of massive groups of people in this country, I do not pride myself in being “Asian” or “more Asian”. That label means nothing to me, especially when my upbringing in Taiwan can be more different to a Turk than the Cameroonian drummer in my band. So why don’t you let that get to your head, I know who I love, whom I fight for, and now you do too, and no amount of hate can take away the satisfaction I get when I connect with the vast communities of Bay Area.
So yeah, I thought your mind could be molded, but now I just pray that your children don’t grow up to be like you. And you can see how much fun the Stunt People are having every week on our website.
Too many comments to reply to everyone.
Micah,
Institution: Look what happened to James Watson. That’s the deal with Jackie. People say, “That’s bad,” and then that’s it. If he’s in charge of an organization, remove him. Then just let him be. In this case, though, what Jackie said really isn’t as bad as James Watson, especially given the context; he’s been spouting dumb stuff for a long time. We come to accept it. It’s kind of like we did with Bobby Fischer (yes, I’ve bought his books too). If you understand these situations in depth, you realize there’s a big difference.
Those fights (Aids, starving kids) you mention are all good fights, but they’re not the only fights. Respect is important too.
Beat Takeshi’s brother: Your movie has a racial hierarchy built in. Takeshi’s didn’t.
Ed:
“If you argue that Dogs of Chinatown is racist because it has Asian stereotypes like Asians doing martial arts, Asians being villains, Asian damsel in distress, etc. then I guess every movie out of Hong Kong is racist by those measures”
See my Takeshi post above to Micah.
“Not to a guy that claims that Jackie Chan, owner of a movie studio, hotels, director of various charitable foundations, is NOT an institution and is supported by NO ONE,”
See my post above to Micah. Geez, it’s like Micah has a parrot on his shoulder.
“Why? Because you are supporting a blog that has, at it’s namesake, the word “bitchin” which is a pretty derogatory term most associated with a stereotype of women; in fact it’s clearly labeled as “offensive” when you look it up on the web and return the following definitions
Hahaha…dude…Ed…you’re trying to create a strawman, and you’re doing a poor job at it.
a) Listen to the podcast. The blog was founded by two WOMEN.
b) Women use the term “bitch” all the time. Ever watch Sex and the City? Ever talk to women?
c) I’ve never seen anyone refer to “bitch” as a sexist term.
Straw man. Strawwwww man. Straaaawwwwwww man.
gailyip
What took you so long to get here? Seriously. I’ve been waiting for you. I knew that somewhere, sometime, some Asian woman affiliated with the Stunt People was going to come and say, “My white boyfriend…” this or that.
“Rough translation: She’s just a piece of meat and was only hired for her looks. All slander is projective slander, hun. Yeah, you’re trying to say that’s what Micah and Blake were thinking, but it’s a pretty hurtful and petty insult to make about a struggling Asian Actress. Besides, how can you diss her acting skills? She looks mighty convincing in those sex scenes with the foppy white guy (despite him looking like a timid little virgin getting his cherry plucked).”
What kind of actress are you making her out to be?
Pete,
Umm…what? The point about the 44s was that I didn’t want to clown you. I was respecting your opinion. I even posted it up on the front page, even though you dodged the question completely. I’m trying to be nice here. You’re the one tossing around personal insults like “coward” and cracks about my age.
I’m not sure why you didn’t read Derek’s comments–they were short, AND he was defending you guys. You may not have clicked on Larry’s links, but I hope you read his comments–they were pretty funny (and I hope you saw the humor in that stuntman-damaged brain comment he made given the context of your “college words” comment–even Ed Kahana quoted it!). You’re dodging questions, and you’re refusing to educate yourself on what everyone else is talking about. I don’t know why, but…this is a blog, not a social services clinic. I may have some college in my background, but my field isn’t psychology.
Anyway, don’t have your feelings hurt. Seriously. I’m not sure why you seem why you’re so offended and still won’t address the question. You’re right; everyone else is having fun, but you really seem a bit tense–I wasn’t kidding when I said that, nor was I trying to get under your skin with some “trick.” You were so tense that you didn’t even read the comments of a good guy who defended you. Chill. It’s not worth fretting over. Peace.
Jaehwan,
What is the racial hierarchy built into Dogs of Chinatown? The Italians lose the mob war to the Asian gang. One white person kills the entire Asian gang and dies in the process. The only person left is the Asian actress. If there’s a racial hierarchy, the Asians were left on top.
Parrot. You think you’re funny Jaehwan? I’ll tell you what’s funny, your lisp over crackling telephone line from your podcasts. That’s funny. I believe you’re the one who originally called me a lapdog in the bi-coastal blog:
“Ed Kahana,
Quit being Blake and Eric’s little minority lapdog. There’s already a racial hierarchy to protect their interests; we don’t need colored faces in subservient places to continue reinforcing their privilege. Okay? From one minority to another, I KNOW you see the racial typecasting that aznheartthrob describes. It’s the reason that leading roles go to people who look like David Carradine instead of people who look like you. So stop. Please? Thank you.”
My defense to Eric’s character and the film prompted you to say this thing first. You didn’t address anything I said, you merely got angry that a “fellow minority” was supporting them. That sort of thing angers you! No matter what reasoning, it just angers you. That means there’s something in YOU, Jaehwan, that you cannot stand that is reflected in your views towards others because you are so disturbed by something deeply internalized that you cannot even play in the same field of reason and respond to things I said in that original post. You just can’t. Part of that is also this feeling of “racial hierarchy”. Whether you are CORRECT in your assumptions and theories of racial subjugation and the mechanisms that exist to keep racial subjugation of Asians in place or whether you are INCORRECT, your behavior, your words, your actions are all just filled with emotional, illogical disdain that some will say is just really “hate”.
You think it’s because I’m part of an “institution” that I don’t get a chance to make my own movies? It’s only because I haven’t taken the powers and tools to do so myself, even though they are readily available. Everyone on the Stunt People are willing to jump on a big project that I have and support me, Eric Jacobus especially. I told you all already in the other posting that I’m writing my own feature that’s going to be an awesome fun win for Chamorros; me and my Chamorro/Filipino cousin will be the leads. Europeans will be the losers in this one (well, Spanish mercenaries anyway). I even have a test fight online. And guess who’s all in it? The Stunt People. They’re going to help me make it awesome. Eric’s going to bust his ass trying to help me and listen to me give him orders. Every minority Pacific Islander’s wet dream, right? Absolute fool. If we thought about each other in those respects we would’ve parted ways along time ago.
As for the straw man? Haha, Jaehwan I’m about to show you how you fell for that straw man just like a crow.
a) You think I’m like you and don’t check my facts before I post things? I’m not a writer but I watch what I say. I checked that podcast before making that statement. I KNOW two of the founders in the group are women, one is a male. How does that change the fact that “bitch” is a an offensive word to women? OBVIOUSLY, anyone who titles the blog “bitchin” isn’t going to find that word OFFENSIVE to themselves otherwise they wouldn’t do it, duh. And if anything, there is still one male. Maybe the women don’t mind, but the male writing there? It could be speculated that he thinks it’s cool to write complaints on a blog and label ranting “bitching” and further his agenda at male superiority over women and even do so right next to two women. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m not saying he is, I’m just saying that’s how it could be viewed.
b) again, i keep seeing the same logic from you Jaehwan. You just really don’t view it as offensive. Extremely flawed. Just because women use it it’s okay to use?!? WOW. WOW. WOW. While some may argue that the historical significance to the word “ni**er” to describe “blacks” cannot be paralleled to the word “bitch”, it is really only in terms of the degree of social acceptance and not its usage that people might or might not consider “ni**er” as offensive to “blacks” as “bitch” is offensive to women. The N-word is offensive because it references the ownership, enslavement, and subjugation of “blacks” because it was a common term used during that period. Who knows how long “bitch” has been used by men to refer to their ownership, arguable enslavement, and sublime subjugation of the female sex as second-class citizens; so much so that women were not even given the power to vote until 1920.
So, because it is arguable, there is in this world a sizable amount of people that will find offense to the word “bitchin”. Your argument then, is that because members of that group that are supposedly subjugated use it freely, it is therefore allowable and non-offensive for other people, including people outside of that group to use the same word. Go, and walk up to a group of “blacks” and say “hey ni**ers”. See what happens to you. I mean, you probably heard them using it talking to each other, you hear it on the radio all the time and in movies, it must be okay right? Haha, right? RIGHT!?! Wrong. Your logic is fail.
If you’re going to say it’s not the same, blah blah blah, again, I’ve already said, only by degrees of social acceptance over the course of history is what makes it “bitch” less offensive than “ni**er”. Because, back in the 1600s, a slave owner routinely labeled his slaves as “ni**er”, and everyone was okay with that, even the group being subjugated. Nowadays, they have a reason not to be okay with that same term and be offended. All you need is a reason. And thus, there are plenty of reasons giving the history of the usage and definitions of the word “bitch” to be offensive.
c) You never heard of anyone? Let me give you a link on a discussion. I’ll start with a quote by one of the posters regarding the word “bitch”: “It denotes ownership. It was used to describe female slaves. It also refers to female dogs (see post above). Do a little research on the word. It has quite a history. Those who it is used against have sometimes taken possession of it, just as some of the AA community have taken possession of nigger. It is an attempt to give it less power.
You can try and convince yourself that it is not sexist, but it is. Any language which has the intent of keeping a group down, minimizing them or harming them just because they are members of that group is ____ist. ”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×5595245#5595267
And besides that statement that spells that out, I can’t believe you just didn’t see how I was connecting it to what you guys are talking about, because “bitch” can easily be viewed as someone, historically men, asserting dominance (subjugation as Larry likes to say) over the other person (whether MALE or FEMALE)
And guess what? It is EXACTLY because you don’t see “bitch” as an offensive word that some women will argue that a system of sexist male dominance over females has been so successful since the dawn of society. Now, people feel okay to just walk around and use the term and not give a care about all its implicit meanings and continue to advance some sexist agenda. That’s what we’re being accused of? Accept instead of saying “bitch” we made a movie with Asian stereotypes. Does the bicoastal bitchin founders mean to offend women with the word “bitch”, OF COURSE NOT. Could they? ABSOLUTELY. Did Micah mean to offend Asians with a film that has Asian stereotypes? No. Did he? ABSOLUTELY.
Now, before you play the “sense of empowerment” card for the bi coastal female founders, I’ll say this: if you argue that because women founded the blog, titled it with an arguably sexist term, they are allowed to do so because they are women taking power of the sexist term, then it just goes back to my original point, if Micah Moore was Asian and made this film, you Asian activists wouldn’t of crapped on it the way you did, because it could be argued that Micah Moore was taking power of the “racist” stereotypes. Just because “bitch” isn’t as prominently offensive and doesn’t have a line of activist groups disparaging people who use the word for being sexist doesn’t make it not sexist. That’s what that poster brings to you attention above. It just shows how internalized the male superiority attitude is within your consciousness. Again, if you think it’s not sexist, the next time a random female co-worker complains to you about something at work, tell her to stop “bitchin” and see what happens. Hopefully, you don’t get sued for sexual harassment. Then you and the legal system can argue whether or not “bitchin” is a sexist term. And that’s possible too: http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=412
Jaehwan, just admit it man, you’re looking through your own filtered glass, and we’re looking through ours. Again, I’ve already told you, I can see how people like you will forever deem 90% of our work as racist, there is nothing I could ever do to change that. No matter how much I bring up your biases, your passes for guys like Justin Lin (well, at least regarding what the poster “Anne” mentioned) who make huge mainstream stereotyped movies like “Tokyo Drift” without a blogging outcry because he made “Better Luck Tomorrow”, it doesn’t change your attitude or even how you view things. Again, if Micah Moore was Asian, or even if it was a “black” guy instead of a white guy as a lead, with ALL the other stereotypes it would’ve been given a pass because the initial poster on Dogs would’ve dismissed the film. You activists are trained to make something appear racist whether or not it really is and at your disposal you have a minority group of supporters, these blogs, and academic literature written by the same minority group of supporters. It’s your viewpoint. This is ours. You’ll never see it how we see it, at least it doesn’t appear that way in the writing I’ve seen. Maybe you’re just a bad writer. You already admitted you’re a lazy one. But even you, being a lazy, arguably bad writer will have a following because you write what people with similar views want to read about, just like Bill O’Reilly reports things in way that his conservative viewers want to see the world. You both shape things. We all do.
Ed,
What is the racial hierarchy built into Dogs of Chinatown? The Italians lose the mob war to the Asian gang. One white person kills the entire Asian gang and dies in the process. The only person left is the Asian actress. If there’s a racial hierarchy, the Asians were left on top.
Why do you even need me to comment? You answered your own question: “One white person kills the entire Asian gang.” Duh.
“Parrot. You think you’re funny Jaehwan? “
Well, I thought I was funny. Then Tyler said I was humorless, and after trying to defend myself, I conceded. I guess I’m not funny. You gotta credit me though for trying. Hey, at least you were able to see that it was an attempt at a joke.
” You think I’m like you and don’t check my facts before I post things? I’m not a writer but I watch what I say. [strong]I checked that podcast before making that statement. I KNOW two of the founders in the group are women, one is a male.”
Hahaha…okay, Ed. You see, this is why my humor sucks. I got you providing the humor behind this blog, and so I get lazy. If you really had listened to the podcast, you’d know that BcB was founded by two women and no one else. Aznheartthrob came on later. Listen at around 9:00. So much for “male superiority;” Bcb started without men! So much for doing your homework!
About “bitchin’.” People could be offended by the music I play. People, male and female, say “bitch” all the time. Check it out: even non-Asian people are into it:
http://bicoastalbitchin.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/bicoastal-bitchin-vs-bicoastal-bitching/
“if Micah Moore was Asian and made this film, you Asian activists wouldn’t of crapped on it the way you did, because it could be argued that Micah Moore was taking power of the “racist” stereotypes. “
Wrong again, dude. Check out this.
Actually, this is a good parallel. It’s the same issue. Did I have to see this movie? No, because it’s clear it’s the exact same thing. Everyone I know who saw it said it was the exact same thing.
Let’s raise our standards!
“Again, I’ve already told you, I can see how people like you will forever deem 90% of our work as racist, there is nothing I could ever do to change that.”
90%??? That high? Man, if I’m offended by 90% of what you do, I really do think you ought to do something else. You could change that by standing up and saying, “I can do it!”
“But even you, being a lazy, arguably bad writer will have a following because you write what people with similar views want to read about, just like Bill O’Reilly reports things in way that his conservative viewers want to see the world. You both shape things. We all do.”
I don’t think I’m a bad writer, but I am lazy. Being lazy is just my attempt to fight stereotypes. As for me building a following with people who share similar views, that’s probably to be expected.
Anyway, I actually agree with you that we see things through our own perspective. I’ve said my piece on this, and I don’t know what else to say. It reminds me a little of the porn debate, which I posted here:
http://www.bigwowo.com/2009/04/morality/
Check it out and leave some comments. I think we’ve almost exhausted this topic.
I knew it. The only way you can respond to an argument is to take it out of context!!! Who survives it all? The end result is that the Asian female is the only person in the story’s context left alive. So you’re telling me that every time a white person kills an Asian person it will depicts a social hierarchy!?! That is ludicrous. And technically, I’m wrong. The one white person doesn’t kill every Asian person, because he not only leaves the Asian female alive he also had no part in his Asian mentor killed in the film. That point goes back to me, unless you can really prove that a white person killing multiple Asians will always denote racial hierarchy regardless of context.
Yes, I concede that I did not know BCB was founded ONLY by two women. So jab for jab, neither of us completely check our facts, but I’m not claiming to maintain a blog that espouses intellectual discourse where I would be held to a journalistic standard that requires people to go and find out who produces a film before accusing another person of doing so. Talk about standards!!! Again, the real point is that the word “bitchin” can and is by certain people taken to be an offensive word meant to subjugate a group consisting of the female gender. You’re going right back to your original defenses of the use of the word “bitch” by saying that because that gender uses it it’s not offensive. Which means you haven’t refuted my reasons for why the word is offensive. And that link was pointless. You say as an AA male you’re tired of seeing a film that shows Asian women making off with white males? I say as a Pacific Islander male that I’m tired of seeing people, especially other men, flaunt the word “bitchin” all the while thinking and defending, especially in writing, that it’s not offensive because especially when a male uses it to a woman it’s damn disrespectful.
As for that podcast “Falling for Grace”, you make this point that while you are all in support for Asian American cinema, what SHOULD (according to your perspective as an Asian American MALE) garner community support is something that pleases both Asian males AND females. If not, it is otherwise considered “divisive” for the community. You want something new. But that’s the problem. That’s what YOU want and then you say that’s what the AA community should want. But Jen in that debate is a perfect example of what the OTHER people in the AA community might want. You ever consider that maybe alot of Asian females ESPECIALLY those struggling to break into the entertainment industry would look up to this film as a model of what THEY can eventually accomplish despite all the racism in the industry? That they too can actually become the writer, producer, director, and star of their OWN movie? It’s damn empowering.
But no, you’re fixated on withholding your support because the film perpetuates something that goes against YOUR interest as an Asian American male and that should not be confused with what the AA community thinks.
Another problem I see in this form of thinking and activism are the ultimate results. It’s interesting to see how the entire AA community rallied behind “Better Luck Tomorrow” and supported Justin Lin only to see him direct movies that perpetuate stereotypes to an even larger audience in the form of “Tokyo Drift”. I mean, look, you showed your financial support thinking it would be an incentive for filmmakers like Justin Lin to produce films that will unify the AA community, right? I’m sure he’s done a few since then, but his larger efforts resulted in “Annapolis”, “Tokyo Drift”, and “Fast & Furious 4″. I guess your mechanism for generating more films that unify the Asian community as opposed to divide it didn’t really work. Well, I guess if the AA community all went out to SEE Tokyo Drift to support Lin then I guess you all united in a movie that perpetuates more stereotypes. Did you see it and pay some money?
Maybe the producer, director, writer, and star of “Falling for Grace” would’ve produced subsequent films with less stereotypes and actually produce a film like “Better Luck Tomorrow”. But you’ll never know because you guys shot her down. She might’ve come away from that whole controversy bitter that even people from her own community couldn’t support her efforts. Who knows? All I see on her IMDB is that she did some TV show acting gigs after her movie production. You might’ve just silenced a potential voice for the AA community, and instead you opted to promote one that’s causing you more and more damage as he makes more and more big mainstream movies. I agree that not giving your financial support to filmmakers that produce films that go against your beliefs CAN give filmmakers an incentive to produce films that DO cater to your beliefs. But you must realize that in the real world where these opportunities are difficult, especially for Asian Americans, those actions CAN also ruin filmmakers altogether, and it CAN also end up just creating a movie like “Tokyo Drift” that perpetuates Asian stereotypes to a larger audience, and a follow up movie with less than a handful of Asians in the cast, if any.
But if you want to continue to see it otherwise, then you’re back to your own filtered glass, and I to mine.
And well, I and most of the Stunt People are offended by 90% of what you said, so maybe you should do something else, too.
“Being lazy is just my attempt to fight stereotypes”, uhh…..how does that make ANY sense? Were you being lazy in completing that point?!?
I’m not going to check your porn debate. There’s no reason for me to do waste my time there.
And by re-reading my post, I just realized, that in the end, you are no filmmaker. You have NO idea what it is like in that industry. Hell, I don’t have experience in the REAL Hollywood machine either, only in the ragtag indie movie scene.
But I do know enough to know that when people like you who have no idea what their talking about regarding the industry we’re involved in start slinging around words like “racist” and “Orientalist” at us, withhold support or in the worst case, argue against supporting films we make, even if we’re Asian, you’re doing more damage than good. The way you go about things, the only thing you are activating is your fellow activist.
After reading all these comments, it’ s no wonder why Asian people in North America haven’t gotten anywhere; they don’t need white people to stereotype and oppress them, they can do it themselves.
I’ve never seen so many retards defend themselves by rambling about non-nonsensical crap. If you can’t get your point across in just a few sentences but rather need paragraphs to do so, chances are, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I mean, look at your posts, it’s turned into the “dreaded block of text.” If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Christ on a cross, please get rid of two excuses of people who normally defend these comments. They’re getting old really fast.
1.) Stop using “well, I gotta pay the bills and eat too.”
-If you hold onto that mentality, things will never get better. It just repeats itself.
2.) Stop using “well, if you want to make a good movie, do it yourself” excuse.
-Not everyone is in the business of filmmaking and I don’t expect them to drop what they’re doing to start their own production. You, however, are already on the set and can offer a dissenting opinion. Instead, you choose not to which everyone can blame you for. I work at the most powerful financial firm on Wall Street. When filmmakers come up to me and chide me on how Wall Street rips normal people off, I don’t tell them to “well, if you don’t like getting ripped off, start your own investment firm.” What I do is I try to offer input on how to correct the problem of people getting ripped off.
I mean, that’s just common sense.
urB4N:
I like your analogy on investment firms. Lopan once said the same thing. He said that people express themselves in different ways. There’s no point in telling someone, “Well, you should just become an actor then.” The common sense thing to do is for actors and producers to adjust their own thinking.
Ed:
The one white person doesn’t kill every Asian person, because he not only leaves the Asian female alive he also had no part in his Asian mentor killed in the film.
Oh, so there’s a Mr. Miyagi-style character? And the bad Asians kill him, and the main white guy kills all the bad Asians only to leave alive the Asian-damsel-in-distress? Now I know what Vu meant when he said this was worse than he thought it was.
“Yes, I concede that I did not know BCB was founded ONLY by two women. So jab for jab, neither of us completely check our facts, but I’m not claiming to maintain a blog that espouses intellectual discourse where I would be held to a journalistic standard that requires people to go and find out who produces a film before accusing another person of doing so. “
Nope, nothing I’ve said so far in this whole debate has been factually untrue. We’re just debating over responsibility. I think that actors and groups supporting actors should take some responsibility for movies; others say actors have no responsibility whatsoever. This isn’t a debate over facts; this is a debate over opinions.
“You want something new. But that’s the problem. That’s what YOU want and then you say that’s what the AA community should want. But Jen in that debate is a perfect example of what the OTHER people in the AA community might want. You ever consider that maybe alot of Asian females ESPECIALLY those struggling to break into the entertainment industry would look up to this film as a model of what THEY can eventually accomplish despite all the racism in the industry? That they too can actually become the writer, producer, director, and star of their OWN movie? It’s damn empowering.”
Haha….yes, I considered that maybe Asian females could consider it empowering to write, produce, direct, and star in a movie all about them and their white boyfriends. I’ve seen it before, and I get it. We ALL get it. But you know…I feel no need to support that. It’s not my community. Jen is welcome to her own opinion. I don’t think her opinion is morally wrong, but as far as “more of the same,” it’s just not for me.
I actually don’t see what the disconnect is here. Jen wants more Asian people on the screen; I want more Asian people onscreen having non-stereotypical roles. We just have different standards. The producer of that film solicited the AA community’s help, saying that it empowered us. I asked a simple question, “How?” When the producer was questioned, it became apparent that it was just another White Knight tale, which is fine. If it works for you, see it. If it doesn’t, don’t. Maybe she’ll produce more in the future, but if she ignores the audience, promotes yet another WM/AF movie, and her career falters, whose fault is that?
I didn’t see Fast and Furious; I only saw BLT. Anna has a good response to your question about Justin Lin here.
“I’m not going to check your porn debate. There’s no reason for me to do waste my time there.”
Okay, suit yourself. It’s about morality and debate, and it’s supported by an article by David Brooks. Best of all, it’s free to read, with no ads whatsoever on my site. I think it’s an interesting way to think about morality, but it’s up to you.
“What took you so long to get here? Seriously. I’ve been waiting for you. ”
- Oh, you make it sound so naughty. Behave baby, behave.
“I knew that somewhere, sometime, some Asian woman affiliated with the Stunt People was going to come and say, “My white boyfriend…” this or that. ”
- Ah, I see. So you’re going to prove you’re not a sexist by generalizing me.
Hahahahahaha!! Good job!
PS: I worked in Stunts in Thailand and New Zealand. I have nothing to do with the Stunt People. I’ve never worked with them and don’t know them personally or professionally. My boyfriend owns Contour on DVD and I’ve seen it twice. That’s the limits to my connection to them, but I like their work and I admire their dedication to do what they love. They’re very talented and they got a bright future ahead of them, if they can stay healthy.
“I’ve never seen so many retards defend themselves by rambling about non-nonsensical crap. If you can’t get your point across in just a few sentences but rather need paragraphs to do so, chances are, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I mean, look at your posts, it’s turned into the “dreaded block of text.” If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
- And you can’t do either. Wow!
“If you hold onto that mentality, things will never get better. It just repeats itself.”
- And this comes from the people who never accomplish anything because they spend their life chasing paper tigers, and then just blame the ‘evil dominant majority’ for all their failures. Yeah, cause nothing promotes ethnic empowerment quite like giving a presumptive legitimacy to bigotry and perpetuating the myth of Asian inferiority.
“Not everyone is in the business of filmmaking and I don’t expect them to drop what they’re doing to start their own production. You, however, are already on the set and can offer a dissenting opinion. Instead, you choose not to which everyone can blame you for.”
- Spoken like someone who has never worked for a single day on a set. You’re going to get hired onto a 100 million dollar production and rock the boat? YEAH RIGHT. You couldn’t even if you wanted too. You’re going to interfere with production and film-making on an indie film, costing hours and money on a production that has no money? Yeah that will get you future jobs and give you a great reputation in the business.
“I mean, that’s just common sense.”
- There’s no such thing as common sense. If the common person was sensible they wouldn’t all be fat, lazy, eat like shit, never get laid and hate their jobs.
That’s correct because I’m not trying to dazzle or baffle.
Yes, individuals aren’t forced to do so in every conversation if they’re not looking to appear smarter than they are.
“And this comes from the people who never accomplish anything because they spend their life chasing paper tigers, and then just blame the ‘evil dominant majority’ for all their failures. Yeah, cause nothing promotes ethnic empowerment quite like giving a presumptive legitimacy to bigotry and perpetuating the myth of Asian inferiority.”
I have no inferiority complex at all. In fact, at worst, I sometimes have a superiority complex that manifests itself because it’s required to survive in a cut throat business such as investment banking and sales. I’ve never blamed others for my problems. In fact, my girlfriend worries that I place too much criticism on myself.
This is why I expect others to take criticism as something that’s good. It allows someone to improve themselves. My parents loved me and wanted me to be a better person so they constantly criticized my actions. If someone refuses to care, they would say absolutely nothing.
Only an idiot takes criticism as an attack.
“Spoken like someone who has never worked for a single day on a set. You’re going to get hired onto a 100 million dollar production and rock the boat? YEAH RIGHT. You couldn’t even if you wanted too. You’re going to interfere with production and film-making on an indie film, costing hours and money on a production that has no money? Yeah that will get you future jobs and give you a great reputation in the business.”
You’re right. I have never worked on a set nor have I participated in the production of a movie or play in my entire life. That’s not my point. The point is that since YOU are involved, you have more of an ability to critique and offer comments as a way to change things around. Fine, I understand the point of not waiting to get on the producer’s bad side. That’s fine too but at least have the courage to fully admit that you’ve sold us out, don’t care, and are doing it to further your own PERSONAL goals.
That’s my gripe. You’re trying to pawn off your fault into a virtue. As the old adage goes, don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s raining.
“There’s no such thing as common sense. If the common person was sensible they wouldn’t all be fat, lazy, eat like shit, never get laid and hate their jobs.”
No, it’s common sense. You’re talking apples and bowling balls. The examples you cited is about self control and discipline, not common sense. Everyone knows that they should be in shape and exercise but they don’t have the discipline to get up and do it. Everyone knows that they should study and get into a good school but rather go out and party with their friends.
After reading all these comments, it’ s no wonder why Asian people in North America haven’t gotten anywhere; they don’t need white people to stereotype and oppress them, they can do it themselves.
I’ve never seen so many retards defend themselves by rambling about non-nonsensical crap. If you can’t get your point across in just a few sentences but rather need paragraphs to do so, chances are, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I mean, look at your posts, it’s turned into the “dreaded block of text.” If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
Couldn’t have said it better.
Reading through the ramblings of Pete, Edward, and Gailyip, it’s like wading through the spittle-flecked rants of some kind of dementia patient.
It’s word salad.
They confuse the quantity of the verbiage and attitudes they spew with the quality of their arguments.
And the funny thing is they almost make Micah Moore seem reasonable in comparison.
The bottom line is this:
Why do these people care what some random bloggers say about their self-styled movie masterpiece in the first place?
Why even bother spending the energy to whine about these criticisms, if what Jaehwan, BCB, myself, and others say is self-evident nonsense to begin with–as they insist?
The very fact that these people are basically cyber-stalking this and BCB’s website with these boring-as-hell block text jibberish says a lot about their own insecurities and defensiveness.
Jaehwan’s and BCB’s criticims must have hit too close to home for these people.
They protest too much. Way too damn much.
The best thing for them is to stay in their saccharine “We-Are-the-World” reality so they can continue to reassure themselves that White racism is not a fundamental problem with the media or American society in general … and perhaps their own work.
Gailyip:
“- Ah, I see. So you’re going to prove you’re not a sexist by generalizing me. “
Actually, quite the opposite. Instead of proving my lack of “sexism,” I was going to prove my generalization abilities by predicting that you would accuse me of sexism. That’s usually the modus operandus:
1. State “I am an Asian woman.”
2. Say “I’m enlightened because I’m dating a white guy.” (pc version: “I’m enlightened, and I just happen to be dating a white guy.”)
3. Excoriate Asian men who rock the boat as sexist.
4. If Asian male opens his mouth, repeat #3.
“- Oh, you make it sound so naughty. Behave baby, behave.”
Woohoo! Now this blog is getting exciting! Although you probably should be playing this game with Ed Kahana instead. You said you want to see him naked, and I’ll bet he wants to git nekkid since Asian guys who play backup usually don’t get to show their assets onscreen.
What do you say, Ed?
Yeah, I’m down to show my assets, and I already do on youtube. I don’t play back up because when i set the camera to record my wushu training in shorts I take the power to do so. Again, didn’t I already say this? It’s not because of Eric and The Stunt People as an example of your racist institution that I’m not the lead. It’s because I’m not putting together the damn movie myself. Again, I’m halfway through a script for my own feature, shot a test scene for it (featuring my Pacific Islander cousin beating up our “white” buddy on Vimeo), and Eric and The Stunt People are going to help me make this movie happen. I don’t need someone to point out the racist characteristics of a movie two of my friends participated in and then label them and the Stunt People as racists to prompt me to create work where the Asian guy kicks ass. I do that naturally, and have been doing so since my first short film in high school.
Come to think of it, damn, was I racist in my high school movie? I wrote, co-directed, produced, edited, and was the lead in it. I beat up a black guy, a white guy, a half-white/Asian guy; the white people in the film are depicted as people with problems like gambling, cowardice, other vices. I put in a brief part in the film where the half-white/asian girl is scoping me because I was the big underground fight winner; I mean, technically, I created a social hierarchy where the brown guys end up on top, but I didn’t do so out of a racial agenda. It’s because when you’re an indie filmmaker you use the resources you have to make the film you want to make. People who really understand that, both viewers and filmmakers will not see a film made under those conditions as racist or even consider notions of race in the context of the film. Now, if I’m going to make a film that wants to speak to the AA community, than I’m operating in a different context and would act accordingly. But again, it’s not like Dogs of Chinatown was entered in some APA film festival, some dude walked by the Four Star in SF, saw a white dude with an Asian girl and scoured the internet to find the trailer of the film, satirically accused not just the film, but the people involved in the film as having obtusely racist views, and then another guy implies “birds of a feather” that because we’re also part of this institution we must also have similar racist views else we would not continue to work with Eric and his institution. I won’t even begin to point out the flaws in that logic as Eric has already done so.
And to answer Larry’s question directly: We care because when YOU CALL OR IMPLY that people are racist and they are in FIRM BELIEF that they are not, it is because being labeled whether or explicitly or implicitly racist is such a HEAVY, REPUTATION-RUINING and personally MORALLY negative term you are sticking your hand in a beehive.
So if our uproar over the above says something about us, I’m cool with that. But I guess when you guys get in a tizzy when an Asian girl ends up with the white dude (as shown by the discovery of Dogs of Chinatown and the lack of support for “Falling for Grace” provided by Bicoastal and Jaehwan respectively), than it must say something about you.
“Did I have to see this movie? No, because it’s clear it’s the exact same thing. Everyone I know who saw it said it was the exact same thing.
Let’s raise our standards!”
———————————————-
This is the crux of your character as you have presented it.
YOU justify generalizing things and just assuming every individual is the same the same to save you time and effort. (Whereas we evaluate everything on individual merit.)
“Everyone you know who saw it?” You mean ONE PERSON? One person who had a different out-of-context take than every other Asian-American viewer because his daily life is so predisposed to expecting racism, reveling in victimization, and assuming anyone who is not homogeneous with his own POV is prejudiced or suspicious. (Whereas we try to gather balanced reviews from diverse points of view.)
You justify believing whatever one biased person tells you, and accepting that view as your own belief, just like any other biggoted person in the world does…. (I’m not saying we’re not biased individuals; I’m saying if everyone’s biased, educated viewpoints require a much broader sampling of perspectives.)
YOUR logic is that of stereotypes, and that which continues stereotypes. GENERALIZATION is whats leads to stereotypes. You’ve seen a bunch of movies you didn’t like, now any movie that shares a single element gets lumped in with them, and regarded the same, without any legitimate review. But you go further in letting your hate and prejudice spill out for everyone who so much as crosses paths with the film and doesn’t agree with your biased POV. I know a bunch of Asian guys who practice MA, but I don’t assume everyone sharing the single element of geographical heritage, knows MA. If I treated people the way you treat art and justify generalization, I’d assume all stereotypes to be true because I’ve met a handful of individuals who are into activities that would be considered “sterotypical.”
If ONE guy from BCB told me all black guys play basketball and rap simply because he went to a game and a concert and was predisposed to that notion before he went, unlike you, I wouldn’t just accept whatever they say. I would rely on my own legitimate experiences and observations.
***No teacher of fair debate in the world (of any culture) would support YOUR notion that you don’t need to actually see or read a piece of media to fairly argue all about it. And if you refuse the ethos, logos, and pathos of all sane experts in the world, insisting you know better, that speaks loads on the enormity of your ego and character flaws, and predetermined bias.***
This blog and BCB have gone way out of their way to reveal the real biggots, and guess what, it ain’t the huge multi-cultural group that you’re attacking. It’s YOU, the smaller group self-identified-as-homogeneous-thinkers that attack art (whether its aesthetically good or bad) and real people without any balanced and deep observation or research, simply based on your own predisposition and expectations. And still claim its OK to generalize and assume, based on a collection of past experiences – the same excuse as every racist in the world.
—————————————————-
Gail,
The only problem with Naked Ed in a film is there’s a rumor about him and horses in the bloodline, and I don’t know if I have a lens wide enough to capture the full picture. Maybe we can get you on crew to assist thought? Hehe.
I’m definitely eager to work with all the SP members. I shouldn’t mention on this blog that most of my other films involve unique Asian and black and Native American characters coming out on top, and most have unique white villains, because then they’d find some way to twist that into racism. But between you and me, the future films I’m plotting are a bit chipper and involve casts of multi-ethnic heroes working together – something that would scare the bejeezus out of some of the posters from this blog, who like to keep to their own small homogenized sets and narrow points of view.
Gail, you seem right up our alley as someone who can hang with crew, in that it’s kinda like hanging with sailors – really foul-mouthed and a bit gay. Are you a good costume person? And as in sewing, or just dressing and undressing Ed? Because we’re always on the lookout for original costume designing seamstresses.
And if you don’t see the film what the heck would you know about “hierarchy” or details. I understand you assuming the overall story or moral is the same as other film through your love of generalization (even though most educated people would regard this as biased and ignorant), but it’s ludicrous to assume you also know every small detail. What are you, omnipotent? – you might not say it, but I suspect you may think so.
The fact is the film has one deep bit to it, a study in strategy and MA philosophy, told through Wei’s (the mentor’s) lessons based on The Art of War, The Prince, Book of Five Rings/Spheres, Family Tradition on the Art of Swordsmanship, etc etc. Jack is taught to use the lessons of famous historic battles to accomplish single one-one-one hits in modern scenarios. Jack is just a tool against the Mafia, merely a pawn used by the more strategic Boss Wu, who wisely keeps his own family safe from harm, and smartly identifies Jack as the perfect weapon to enter the enemies neighborhoods and businesses unnoticed. Wu eventually comes to respect Jack for his individual performance. So when it comes to people who buy into “hierarchies” like the ignorant/racist characters in the film and like you, Boss Wu would be considered at the top, stronger and wiser than the Mafia leader, and controlling of and respected by Jack and his other suboordinates. Later, Jack’s victory against Ray is due somewhat to his training, and somewhat because Ray, buying into stereotypes (and thinking very much like some posters from this blog) assumes that a white individual can’t excel in MA over an Asian individual.
You would argue that lessons on prejudice are ONLY OK if it’s a white guy being prejudice, and no other ethnic identities can be prejudice or are allowed to be the deliverer of such a moral.
The only hope to be had in the dark film is when Jack and Jin, who’ve always bought into “hierarchies,” break free from those hollow traditions and institutions and become their own individuals, only putting faith in pure good notions like love. On the other hand, Wu’s downfall is his irrational love for Jin, which is the only thing that momentarily compromises his strategy and creates and opening for an attack.
So would someone please tell me how this Sony Handycam movie ends? I’m assuming the Romeo and Juliet ending because it’s a hacked re-imagining.
Basically. But it’s Panasonic Handycam. Pretty much the same price bracket though.
Ed,
“I don’t play back up because when i set the camera to record my wushu training in shorts I take the power to do so.”
Instead of doing wushu in shorts, maybe you should do it in a thong. Oh, you were talking about short films? My bad.
“And to answer Larry’s question directly: We care because when YOU CALL OR IMPLY that people are racist and they are in FIRM BELIEF that they are not, it is because being labeled whether or explicitly or implicitly racist is such a HEAVY, REPUTATION-RUINING and personally MORALLY negative term you are sticking your hand in a beehive.”
For the record, I don’t think anyone here has called any person a racist. Orientalist, yes; racist, I don’t think so. There’s a difference. Now I think it’s fair to call a work racist or a comment racist. If people don’t like that, they shouldn’t make racist works or comments. Really.
Micah,
Sorry, still not going to watch it.
Instead of attacking people like me for avoiding films like this, why not try to cater your writing to appeal more to our demographic? Seriously. I’ve seen so many films where a White guy goes into Chinatown to save the Asian damsel in distress and kills all the evil Chinese triad members. (I’ve read this synopsis from more than just Vu–so let’s not scapegoat the one guy I know who gave your film a chance.) You’ve got FREE advice here, on BcB, and I’m sure in many other places, so rather than fighting us and telling us what we minorities are supposed to think and feel, why not adjust your own viewpoint?
You wrote: “One person who had a different out-of-context take than every other Asian-American viewer because his daily life is so predisposed to expecting racism, reveling in victimization, and assuming anyone who is not homogeneous with his own POV is prejudiced or suspicious.”
I think you should apologize to Vu. I mean, c’mon, most Asian guys I know would be turned off by this movie. He actually went out there, paid you money, and now you attack his personal life and say he revels in “victimization?”
Again, why not actually listen to what he’s saying? If people on this blog and on BcB don’t like these stories, think about how you could make money by creating something that no one else is. You’d have a monopoly on non-Orientalist films about Asian people. Hey, Harold and Kumar did well.
Gail, you seem right up our alley as someone who can hang with crew,
No comment.
Why not try to to write films for generalizing biggots like you Jaehwan instead of people who can comprehend characters as individuals and not just skin tones? No thanks. The majority of the world might be racist, and maybe I’d get a bigger audience if I catered to you and that majority, but instead I’ll continue to write films where those racist characters suffer due to ignorance, as they did in Dogs.
I’ll continue to argue that love should be bigger than cultural divides no matter how much people like you are uncomfortable with a couple with two different skin tones.
And even though I’ve got some sci-fi and comedy on the docket, I’ll always be down for heavy-handed dramatic commentary on society.
Just think of a white-run website that would be the mirror of this one, Jaehwan, some prejudiced white guy accusing other ethnicities of stealing their women, taking over music, their sports etc. You know who those type of white individuals are Jaehwan, and you’re the Asian-American version. You’re the suicide-bomber to their Crusader. You’re the other extremist.
If I didn’t listen to what Vu said how would I (and many other people who’ve chimed in) have been able to analyze his evaluation of the character breakdown. Great logic. I read all of his statements. I’m not like you. I don’t just assume I know what was written or filmed do to any predisposition.
Micah:
“Why not try to to write films for generalizing biggots like you Jaehwan instead of people who can comprehend characters as individuals and not just skin tones? No thanks. The majority of the world might be racist, and maybe I’d get a bigger audience if I catered to you and that majority, but instead I’ll continue to write films where those racist characters suffer due to ignorance, as they did in Dogs.”
Greeeat. An individual White guy who kills all the Asian male individuals while rescuing the Asian female damsel-in-distress individual. Well, you can continue to cater to this smaller audience, but you should know that individual Caucasian American writers have written this individual story before, many times. Individually speaking, of course.
“I’ll continue to argue that love should be bigger than cultural divides no matter how much people like you are uncomfortable with a couple with two different skin tones.”
Yup, love conquers all. I know, you’re writing stories like this because you love people of all races. I’ve heard this before too. Just FYI: this may be a brand new conversation for you, but I’ve been through it many, many times.
If I didn’t listen to what Vu said how would I (and many other people who’ve chimed in) have been able to analyze his evaluation of the character breakdown.
Haha…Micah, you kill me! I read all of Vu’s comments, and they seemed perfectly rational to me. Maybe a minority man with an empowered voice is considered a bigot in NC, but it’s perfectly normal in more diverse cities such as SF and even Portland. Man, it must be nice to be living in your bubble.
“Just think of a white-run website that would be the mirror of this one, Jaehwan, some prejudiced white guy accusing other ethnicities of stealing their women, taking over music, their sports etc. ”
Well, to be honest with you, Micah, when a White guy complains about being discriminated against in a country which has enslaved black people, slaughtered Indians, and had laws designed to limit the number of Chinese people all created by White men, and when a White guy complains about being disempowered in a land where a huge majority of political leadership positions and board room positions are still held by White men, I tend to not take them seriously. Those people tend to be either delusional or wimpy.
I think maybe you should check out Orientalism. Or maybe read the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Or Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King. You really should try to get outside the bubble. It could help you to more accurately portray non-White characters in your films.
Out of the bubble? I’m the one with a diverse circle. You are the the one preaching homogenous cultural protectionism on your blog. At this point there’s no more logic to debate. You say racism is wrong and mixed couples are bad (illogic). You say sterotypes are wrong and generalization is good (illogic). You say discrimination is wrong, but equally multicultural groups are racist (illogic).
Tons of current day problems that are results of a terrible history that need to be addressed. Poverty and lack of education that are the direct ripples of the boulders of slavery and oppression. Lack of media access for all voices equally is a problem with the political and corporate system.
But as long as you project that every modern light-skinned individual should be deemed a racist and conqueror, individually responsible for what anyone with white skin has done in the past, and not be treated as a proper human being, you won’t find a broad audience to help correct the real problems out there that are the direct results of terrible history and modern day wrongness. You’ve made an argument that only some skin tones can possibly have a valid voice and be taken seriously.
As much evil has resulted from European imperialism, conquering, and New World slavery, I can list an equivalent amount of atrocities amongst African and Asian history. But I think it’s all the human condition and civilization that’s f*d up. Unlike you I don’t blame any Asian or African individuals for a history that they had no control over. Nor do I feel any ethnic group of people has more of a value than any other ethnic group. You think I do because of my skin tone and your personal racism. If you don’t share a balanced opinion admitting that everyone’s geographic history is flawed, and if you think it’s stupid for people of all races to work together equally to fix the problems, only one-dimensional biggots will want to follow you. And they don’t want amiable solutions for all parties involved, they want fights. Which will fit you fine. You’d hate waking up in a world of equality. What the hell would you do with yourself. Probably try to rile up some discord just so you’d have some anger to consume.
Fighting racist by being racist yourself will only promote the cycle.
You say racism is wrong and mixed couples are bad (illogic). You say sterotypes are wrong and generalization is good (illogic). You say discrimination is wrong, but equally multicultural groups are racist (illogic).
I said racism, stereotypes, and discrimination is wrong, but I didn’t say ANY of the other points. Not even close. Try again.
I’m all for us getting along, but it better be on terms on which we all can be happy. Me playin’ the stereotypical Asian coolie in your Dogs of Chinatown while the stories revolve around your white male protagonist just doesn’t work for me. Me doing the same dance in real life ain’t gonna work either.
“I said racism, stereotypes, and discrimination is wrong, but I didn’t say ANY of the other points. Not even close. Try again.”
You know this blog works as a text transcript don’t you?
“On the racial issue alone, I was a bit surprised to learn this. After all, why would a black woman produce a movie where the two leading characters were a black man and a white woman? Isn’t this an issue that gets black women down?”
Maybe because that black woman was an individual who sees no problem with mixed couple and who shouldn’t be lumped in with your generalization of all black women? Maybe that individual wouldn’t see a problem with and Asian female character liking a white male character because of his individual personality either, but you’re sure having fits over it. In your opinion whites should never be allowed to be a protagonists and get the girl. I, on the other hand, think people of every color should be able to be protagonists and get the girl (of any color). In most of my films, it ain’t the white guy that gets the girl, but a protagonist of different skin tone. Skin tone just doesn’t matter to me. Dogs of Chinatown violently admonishes anyone whom skin tone does matter to – maybe that’s why you hate it so much.
If you actually saw the movie you’d see Jack is no protagonist, and no one to be admired. But he’s the only individual who treats Jin decent. It’s not because he’s white – all the other white characters are violent sexists. It’s because he’s a unique individual. But you don’t see individuals, only color. If you saw my other films where the Asian, black, and Native American casts are not only protagonists, but unlike Jack have unique positive characteristics, you’d probably say I have no right to have such characters or call it racists somehow.
“Even though I haven’t seen it before, I’ve seen it before, many times. Trust me.” “I just decided not to go. No need to waste my time; it’s everything Asian Americans are used to. Sheesh, if I spent all my time seeing movies that I know will suck and perpetuate stereotypes, I’d have no time for this awesome blog.”
This is called defending generalization and assuming based on your predisposition, just like biggots do. Although no need to post that quote because you already lumped Beyonce in with the thoughts and feelings of what YOU consider to be all black women.
And finally…wait the last reason is the only reason our big multi-ethnic group coame over here, to answer your accusations of racism.
You know this blog works as a text transcript don’t you?
Yup, but you still haven’t proven that I said:
1. “mixed couples are bad”
2. “generalization is good”
or
3. “equally multicultural groups are racist.”
Find it. I challenge you. I know I never said any of these things because I don’t believe any of these things. Micah, hate to say it, but I think you’re just throwing out accusations and seeing what’ll stick. You’re doing it again with ridiculous statements like this: “In your opinion whites should never be allowed to be a protagonists and get the girl.” I’m not even sure where you’re getting this, but it’s not working, nor am I about to let it work.
You provided so called proof, but your proof isn’t proof. For the bullet points above:
1. I questioned Beyonce. So what? I’ve read lots of African American lit, and they question the phenomenon all the time. How does this say “mixed couples are bad?”
2. I lumped your movie into a genre and chose not to participate. This is a far cry from saying “generalization is good.” In fact, it’s neither good nor bad; it’s just what I chose to do in this case.
3. I don’t even think you tried to prove I said this one…
I think you’ve gotta stop. Try as you might, your accusations aren’t sticking.
Seriously, I appreciate that you have a multiethnic group around you, but I think the fact that so many of these Asian people are on your payroll or are friends with people on your payroll warps the viewpoints they’re sharing with you. Look at this entire thread. Of the people associated with this movie, who has taken responsibility or has ventured an opinion on the racial stereotype question? I’ll tell you: you, Blake, Derek Lee (who isn’t with the SP), and to a certain extent Lucas. Just about everyone else has taken the “Well, I just work for them” or “I happen to be really good friends with the Stunt People” approach. I don’t blame Eric’s friends for taking that approach, but when you talk to me, Vu, urb4n, Anna, or Larry, people who have no financial incentive to hold back and no personal ties to people who might be offended, you might get a fuller picture of what is really going on.
I think you have a valid point that we’ve both lowered ourselves to some idiotic and unfounded statements here. And maybe I’m stretching your words to present the idea that you are uncomfortable with seeing a with lead white character with an Asian female character. That’s what I was sensing – because that element has been pointed out here and on BCB in a tone that sounded like there was something wrong with it – and I apologize if I was wrong in that interpretation of how you feel. I also assumed that since you admitted engaging in generalization that you were defending it. It’s weird to me that you’d engage in something you won’t defend, but I was still guilty of looking at that with the bias of my own personal code of ethics and not considering you roll differently . I didn’t notice the difference, and that was idiotic of me.
But my words here are just as idiotic as you thinking I’m some Daddy Warbucks with “Asians on my payroll,” or that I (probably the poorest person on here at this particular moment) is sending out checks for people to be my friends, lol. Or that I was able to pay two people barely anything, let alone so much that a legion of people from around world who are friends with those people would come to my aid. Come on, I don’t think you really believe that.
I don’t know how you feel about white people in general or white individuals personally or if you have any hangups. I’m a very apathetic person when it comes to skin tone, but I make cathartic and extreme art like Dogs where a bunch of racist characters get slaughtered. It’s a theme in much of my work though in the past the villains have been more stormtrooperish. I’m a general pessimist who views humans as a whole as flawed and caught in an unending cycle of ignorance, discrimination, ego and violence – so in order to have a good time in this world I HAVE to evaluate people as individuals and not lump them in with the human race. Yes I know racism still exists. That doesn’t mean I have to look at everything through raced-based eyes. I can appreciate that reactionary and senstive viewpoint, but I can still look at everyone as individuals because I personally I feel that is right.
You and I…a white individual….an Asian -American individual….both kinda being idiotic here…doing a lot of the same stretching in an argument that has dissolved into some attacks that take neither us nor the purpose of understanding anywhere. Maybe we have different personal values, but damn it’s spooky how similar we can be. I think regardless of the details of our experience on Earth (I got no problem saying your skin tone gives you a lot of shit I don’t have to deal with in America) we share the same universal elements of the human condition – for good (love, hope, inspiration, brotherhood, etc) or bad (anger, revenge, jealousy, etc).
So I’m down to recognize that we both have some valid points and both have also said some idiotic things. You’re welcome to join me in that sentiment if you want. But lets put an end to the idiocy before we start looking like the characters in my film.
If you really want to influence the film making community,
I feel there is much more effective ways this blog and bicoastal bitching could effectively communicate their thoughts on cinema and try to shape the future of our film making.
Posters here and on BCB
calling us “faggots” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “fratboys” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “third rate nobodies” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “sexist” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “minority lapdogs” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “stuntman-damaged brains” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “FFUUUUU***KKKK!!IDIOOOTSS” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “losers” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “typical ignorant idiots” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “cracker” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Saying “ripoff artist micah moore fucker needs his nads kicked” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “Orientalists” or “racists” even if you believe it, isn’t the way to start an intellectual discussion if your GOAL is to influence our film making and not just start a fight.
I copied and pasted all those quotes from BCB and here. I only used ones from posts before I first posted, since I – after long discussion and observation of many posts – also hurled the words “biggot” and racist.” Obviously to the same successful effect of understanding and education as the Bigwow and BCB posters.
The very first topic on BCB kicked off by Vu wearing literary “white-face” and painting Blake and Eric as sterotypical valley-girl-grammar surfer-dude white people. To be honest I could care less about that – I thought it was funny. But it seemed like they were not serious about seeking the attention of film makers to educate, or engage in a serious discussion.
Is this truly your goal? Do you really want to reach out to diverse film makers and express the concerns of people who share your viewpoints. Or do you just want to bitch and start fights?
Because I think if you really want to get a chance to influence film makers and help educate them, you wouldn’t reach out in the manner you have. I would like to hear your thoughts on good and bad cinema, but it’s hard for me to anaylize your insight from a distance well-balanced perspective with the types of name-calling and personal attacks listed above taking place from the get-go.
Also, it would be easier if everyone was willing to watch what they were discussing so we could break down the details, but it seems people like Jaehwan wouldn’t be willing to. You have to remember Jaehwan that even if you saw it and hated it and deemed it stereotypcial trash, you actually have the film makers in your audience for the moment, and at least you could evaluate each film-specific detail and help illustrate your insight for us with specific examples IN context. But if you refuse the common ideals of debate, it’s hard for us to really trust someone’s review of a film they haven’t seen.
——— WHICH LEADS ME TO A GREAT IDEA FOR A NEW POST——-
I have a sincere idea for a post that might help you express your views on cinema to the film makers better and help us better understand what you (and individuals who share your viewpoints) desire in films.
You could call it something like: An Open Letter to Film Makers, Now With Examples (and maybe something mentioning an Asian-American focus).
What would be really helpful to filmmakers is you giving specific examples of known films (from any territory) that you do respect. Films that got it right in your opinion. And why. It would be great if you could include both films with characters that are all identified as part of only one culture, and also examples with multi-cultural casts.
Then also it would be great if you could point out the films that offend you and why. I would only humbly ask that you limit it to films that you have actually watched, as I’m sure some filmmakers would like to be very accurate and specific in their research.
This way, giving lots of 3rd party examples of story-telling, we can look at everything with distance, from all sides. I think it’s harder for some filmmakers to see what you’re trying to express when some posters might be engaging in personal ridicule or character attacks on the filmmakers, the cast, and some of the audience. That’s not a good start to attract filmmakers to listen to and understand your point of view. Instead it would be great if we could focus on detailed elements of storytelling and characters that we are all familiar with or can become familiar with by catching up with films you suggest.
That way the film makers – well, me since I think I’ve been the only name-caller defending the film – could also ask sincere questions instead of being distracted and drawn into the noise and static of name-calling.
I understand that Hollywood puts white people in heroic roles amongst other “cultural characters”, and it’s pretty ridiculous because it’s Tom Cruise playing a samurai or a random white ACTOR playing the drift champion. But Eric is a real badass and awesome MA performer in real life, so he fit that role in Dogs. It’s not like we jammed him into a deliverer role just so we could have a white (anti)hero. If Eric was Asian, we’d flip the script so that the Italians used Eric to infiltrate the Triad. In the end Eric would still end up with a girl (in this case white) whose love overcomes cultural backgrounds, and everyone that’s a racist prick would still be bled dry. And Eric would still die too, because he engaged in violence, and violence is cyclical.
Anyway, I think approaching it this way in a new post would be great. Not just a list of general grievances in film. But specific examples of films you thought were great, and films you thought were terrible (that you’ve seen, please hehe) and specifically why. I think this could actually give us much more to think about from a neutral perspective. Of course anyone who is being attacked has a hard time looking at the situation neutrally, even though I do try to varying levels of failure or success.
Wishing you happiness and peace,
Micah Moore
Micah,
Appreciate the note and the idea.
I was thinking that a lot of this misunderstanding comes from the fact that we’re typing and reading rather than talking and listening. I think we’re both raising important issues though, and I think dialogue is good. If you’re up to it, I’d like to continue the dialogue.
I’m thinking that we could do a podcast. Podcasts tend to be a lot more cordial, and though there tend to be fewer ideas thrown around, the format tends to create greater consensus. I’ll see if Vu is interested, and maybe we could do you, me, Vu, and Blake. If the Stunt People want a shot, we could do a second podcast with them. When it’s done, we can post it up so all of our readers/listeners can see how things are resolved.
You can hear my prior podcasts here to see how I usually do it:
http://www.bigwowo.com/category/podcasts/
If this works for you, we can e-mail each other and come up with a timed format that works for all of us. I won’t be able to do it before this weekend, but perhaps sometime next week might work.
What do you say?
Thanks.
On the topic of the new blog post: there are actually tons of great Asian American media resources out there which have done a better job than I ever could. Sure, I’d be willing to link them up.
Honestly, I do think that it’s a little unfair (and dangerous) to judge a movie, or anything else, without being acquainted first-hand with its contents. It does seem that the guys who made this movie, along with their friends (Asian or otherwise), have tried to honestly explain their position and their explanations do seem genuine.
At the same time, although I haven’t seen the movie, I can understand how the storyline of Asians being massacred en masse by yet another white hero (or anti-hero?) would elicit a negative reaction amongst some Asians. For me, it’s the whole notion that Asians can be routinely massacred en masse that is the issue, regardless of the nuances of a movie that may seek to look beyond the race of those being massacred or the person doing the killing. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy to see Asians being massacred en masse by other Asians either. But, in the context of an American culture that routinely represents Asians (Asian men in particular) as targets for mass murder, it’s easy and understandable to see why Asians might react to this storyline as just the latest “gook-kill” fest. An analogy would be to walk into a packed synagogue wearing a swastika armband and being surprised that those inside don’t get it that you don’t mean it “that” way because, as a Buddhist, for you it represents Dharma and peace. It wouldn’t be easy to make it fly regardless of how genuine the intent.
For me, the real issue is not media representation that wounds the pride but a general sense that the way to resolve issues with Asians is through violence because Asian lives are deemed to be cheap. It’s an issue because not only is it a theme that seems to permeate American popular culture but might even drive American foreign policy attitudes towards Asia (both past and present), and make military policies like carpet bombing and napalming easier to enact. Media representations to this effect certainly do not cause these attitudes but provide us with ample evidence that they do exist and that they are generally accepted uncritically to the point that “justifiable” violence towards Asians as a first resort is a cultural axiom.
Having said that, I do intend to watch the movie and I believe that the makers of the movie are speaking honestly about their intentions.
Hey Terri – thanks for having an open mind about watching the film. I do understand the concern about a white guy slaughtering a bunch of Asian guys. To be fair, he slaughters all the white guys too. In our circle of friends, we really don’t see the color of skin. We are all just friends making movies for ourselves with the hopes that many other people will like the film. I guess we could try to be sensitive to as big a group of people as possible but then I think I would worry about watering down the impact of the film. Like it or not, it at least started this discussion which I guess is a good thing. It does make us aware of some issues we hadn’t taken into account. Would we have changed what we did in the movie? I don’t think so. I don’t claim that we made a great film by any means but I do think we nailed the part where all the characters are ignorant and lead a very violent lifestyle and because of their failure to do anything good with their lives then they meet a horrible end. That’s the impact we wanted.
I think we achieved our goals with this film. We obviously want to make better films in the future but I think Micah was really onto something with this film. Their are a lot of things that could be better but I think that epic emotional thing is in there. Not that our film is anywhere as good as Dark Knight but that film really hit the nail on the head with what makes a man good or evil. Sure there is plenty of action and great visuals and all that stuff. But I think the thing that people can identify with the most is the real struggle between doing the right thing or the wrong thing especially when it may mean it puts you or your loved ones in harm’s way. I think on a smaller scale we were able to achieve some of that emotional connection. I wish we had the budget of Dark Knight but we did the best we could with a very modest budget. I think Micah has even better stories to tell in the future and I’ll be glad to help make those happen.
Jaewhan – count me in on the podcast, especially if Vu is down with it. I’d love to get a chance to talk to him. We had some really good email exchanges outside of the blog.
Hey Terri, appreciate your post. Your impression of the treatment of the Asian characters from the trailer or Vu’s one-sided summary is fair but very out of context; please understand the white and black characters film are exactly the same as the Asian characters and the exact same thing happens to them. The overall point is that all the characters are gangsters and criminals – that’s why they behave the way they do – they do stereotypical gangster things, not stereotypical racial things. Yes, Jack the main killer has white skin, but in this case that’s a random thing – in our other films the heroes are way more worthy and generally not white – but there’s no problem with a white protagonist either – we’re not going to discriminate against any skin tone.
Anyway at the beginning of the film I have Jack with a gun in his mouth, seconds away from squeezing the trigger, to illustrate just how distant he is from the world, how confused and outcast he is, how disconnected he is from any identity or philosophy. As an individual he’s utterly alone in the world. He’s a loner without a group, he’s the representative of individualism in solitude. I liked the ideas of organized crime families being the backdrop, because it reinforces the fact that Jack has no family or group identity. He ends up becoming content in one of the gangs, happy to be useful and recognized, but eventually learns the danger and evils of mob mentality. Only in finding some quality individuals (Wei, Jin) to connect with does he find a positive type of brotherhood and comradery. But by then it’s too late. Because he’s already engaged in violence and started a cycle that would return.
It’s easy for people to say a white criminal anti-hero amongst an equal amount of Asian and white criminal characters, and a few black criminal characters is racist. But the details of the characters and story determine whether that view is valid, or simply itself prejudiced and presumptuous.
I’ve added Edward Said to my reading list, though I think I’ll also need to read the authors’ works that he singles out to better understand his commentary. I’m familiar with the basics of Orientalism, but don’t feel they apply to my film. ***Unlike one of the many definitions of Orientalism, The Asian and white and black characters in my film are not at all defined by what I imagine Asian culture or Italian or black American culture to be – they are just gangsters; they are defined by doing gangster stuff – everything they do is a fair description for any criminal organization around the world. Do some of those criminal activities match stereotypical behavior – of course – bank robbers stereotypically rob banks, that’s the way it is.*** The Italian boss is way worse that the Chinese boss, but so far the Italian-American viewers have realized the moral is that gangs and criminal behavior is bad, regardless of skin tone. They don’t want the Italian Mafia criminals to come out on top – they want all the nefarious individuals in the film to die.
Yeah, all the characters know how to fights because it’s a martial arts film. The only facet of a character I can find that’s even loosely tied to my Western experience of Chinese art/pop culture is the drunken master part of Wei, the homage to Shaw Bros films (even though Wei without effort picks up and seduces white women, lol). Despite a drunken master character, martial arts history and philosophy and classic texts on strategy is actually something I have researched vigorously since I was in middle school. There’s plenty of people out there who know more, but I still feel I have ethos when it comes to telling martial arts stories.
I’d dig having a podcast. That’d be fun.
Just because the white lead kills all the white men doesn’t mean that killing all the Asian men is okay. There are racial stereotypes being perpetuated in mainstream American media so we’re not all the same. The problem is, you’re treating everyone the same.
This is the main reason why I think it’s stupid for people to be “colorblind.”
Asian men have always been portrayed as weak and getting killed by the lone white lead is enforcing this stereotype whereas the white lead killing all the white men doesn’t enforce an already existing racial stereotype.
Case in point, if I get a doughnut, I’m not enforcing a stereotype. However, if a cop gets a doughnut, he is enforcing a stereotype. Again, in your mind, both are the same since they’re both humans. However, the cop has a stereotype (and the stigma that accompanies it) attached to him.
The trick to understanding how racism manifests itself is not to think in binomial terms. There are gray zones.
Eric,
Thanks! I’ll let you know.
B.
Ohh…I agree with URB4N…
But is the cop being stereotypical, or is he just a guy that liked donuts badge-or-no with you applying stereotypes to him? Can a person be guilty of being a stereotype, or is it the observer guilty of assuming the individual has particular interests based on the observer’s “racial” or other stereotypes? I kind of think people can only be guilty of being stereotypical themselves when they are buying into society’s own negative stereotypes about them. Otherwise, I feel it’s the observers who are guilty of assuming someone is stereotypical.
I do take your point though, and good – it’s a really hard point to verbalize, and probably one of the fairest discussions about my particular feature film. Equality is good, but in a world still struggling with prejudice and stereotypes, equality is not always “fair.” The world isn’t fair, so equality isn’t always going to be fair. For instance, education issues in poor black communities are in part the continued ripples of our society’s dark side. While it’s good for an employer to hire based on merit alone and be colorblind in that specific situation, his equality is not exactly “fair” to applicants that (due to the effects of history) grew up with uneducated parents, lack of access to good schools, a bad living environment for potentially good students etc. Thus we have affirmative action. Unfortunately affirmative action misses the mark completely, by not starting at the beginning, by improving the living quality of neighborhoods, of making all schools a safe orderly place for learning, of improving disparate economic situations so parent have time to mentor their children and children have time to study, etc. To get fair footing from the get go. Instead of government taking responsibility to create authentic equality, they put the burden on businesses.
It’s good to realize that people in need of social, political, and economic justice need to be squared away with the “privileged citizens” before equality can really live up to it’s ideals. But I think it’s shortsighted to go after the people who live by equality and tear folks like us down. They are simply ahead of their times. They are acting like you should hope people act in the future, once culture is more globalized and hopefully people are treated more fairly.
The imagery of any person killing a group of people should be disturbing to all of us, even more so if it’s seems to be based on ethnic identity. But that’s much different contextually than one violent gangster killing other violent gangsters. To me all gangster murderers are probably scum. Someone has to be the lead, and the lead is so vile that he shouldn’t be chosen as a representative of any skin tone. So I went with individual talent. I understand you are hurt and upset, but your cause will get more open ears from ‘outsiders’ if they feel you are distinguishing and evaluating everything in context, and not interpreting everything as a race-based attack without considering the specific context.
In a film about the Crusades, I’d find a scene with a Christian Crusader slaughtering his Muslim enemies equally disgusting to a scene with a Muslim jihadist slaughtering Christian enemies. Neither side is distinguished by ethnicity, because they are both guilty of the same ego, monocentricity, and violence. They are defined by their lifestyle choices. I dislike all violent religious warriors equally. I dislike all gangsters equally.
As a filmmaker I give equal treatment and screen time. I don’t limit any skin tone to just protagonist leads nor limit any skin tones to the stereotype of a “model minority” and deprive them of juicy villain roles. I understand if you feel that equality isn’t good enough when faced with out current societal realities, that until greater everyday equality exists, some groups need preferential treatment until things are made right. While that’s fine with me, I think it’s short-sighted to consider equality bad and it’s practitioners “the problem”, and affiliate it with ills like disenfranchisement and discrimination.
Out of the bubble? I’m the one with a diverse circle. You are the the one preaching homogenous cultural protectionism on your blog. At this point there’s no more logic to debate. You say racism is wrong and mixed couples are bad (illogic). You say sterotypes are wrong and generalization is good (illogic). You say discrimination is wrong, but equally multicultural groups are racist (illogic).
Homongenous cultural protectionism? What the hell is that? Is this boy talking about economics or culture?
This must be a new Orwellian catchphrase created by the oh-so-cosmopolitan White “progressives” who delude themselves into believing they are the champions of racial tolerance and diversity–even as they are willfully blind to their own White racial privilege.
But for White apologists of all stripes, White racial privilege and domination don’t really exist … since we are all “individuals.”
What Whites are deeply hostile to is minority cultural autonomy, power, and independence.
This is what they attempt to discredit with nonsencial phrases like “homongenous cultural protectionism.”
Assimilate in the great American Melting Pot.
Adopt the culture, worldview, and value system of European Americans–which are the universal values that everyone must worship.
That is basically what White people have historically demanded of minorities in the USA.
They call this the Melting Pot.
But in practice, it’s American ethnic cleansing lite.
Posters here and on BCB
calling us “faggots” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “fratboys” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “third rate nobodies” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “sexist” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “minority lapdogs” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “stuntman-damaged brains” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “FFUUUUU***KKKK!!IDIOOOTSS” probably isn’t the way to start a helpful discussion.
Calling us “losers” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “typical ignorant idiots” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “cracker” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Saying “ripoff artist micah moore fucker needs his nads kicked” isn’t the way to start a helpful conversation.
Calling us “Orientalists” or “racists” even if you believe it, isn’t the way to start an intellectual discussion if your GOAL is to influence our film making and not just start a fight.
This little self-righteous rant is classic.
It is a textbook–though pathetic–example of White Privilege in action.
It’s the arrogance of Whiteness in all its wounded self-pitying pride.
In this case, you have some White “filmmaker” effectively spamming two Asian American blogs and ponticating endlessly about racial tolerance, multiculturalism, and even how to conduct an intellectual discussion–all because his obscure film was criticized!
Get a big box of tissue for this boy.
I wonder if there is an inverse proportional relationship in general: the more mediocre an Artist’s work is, the more insecure and hostile he is to criticism.
If you can’t stand the heat, you should stay the hell outta the kitchen.
And too bad this guy forget to mention in his rant above that going on BCB and spouting racist/sexist “humor” about Asian schoolgirls sure as hell ain’t a way to start a helpful (or intellectual) discussion.
But then again, you think you were just being so ironic and clever, as many “progressive” White Hipsters just love to alibi.
Hey Larry, sorry some of that was a different white guy, but no biggie.
The film’s actually got a lot to criticize, but the majority of viewers of all backgrounds have found the problems relegated to the technical and literary, the result of our inexperience in making feature films.
None of us have control over our heritage. I was born with white skin so some prejudiced people will treat me nicer as a stranger. I guess this is the “white privelege” you are speaking of. If I didn’t know any better, I’d imagine it would also have something do do with access and control of media and corporate and political interests, but since I’m likely the most financially and job-market-challenged person on this blog, I know better. I mean come on, I have white skin and I’ve applied to over 80 jobs in the past two months including Walmart and picking up dead pets. Where’s my hookup? Where’s the mysterious men in Armani suits calling me into their office to hand me a spatula so I can flip the burgers at the jobs I’ve been applying for as I limit my diet to a couple hot dogs a day, Larry? Could you remind these bosses of my skin tone so they can hook me up with their white supremacist conspiracy that ALL white individuals are a part of?
Or is it that the RICH white people that actually control a lot of stuff probably only really care about other RICH white people?
I understand I don’t have to face knuckleheads interrupting my life everyday based on the color of my skin alone.
But what do you want, Larry? Sincerely, what is a good solution that would satisfy you? Do you want all the white individuals to just go away and leave you alone? Do you want them all to die? Do you want them all to kneel down before you, praise you, and beg your forgiveness? Do you want some hippy stoner kid to take responsibility for all slavery and all evils in the worlds, whether it was spawned in Europe, Asia, Africa, or an icecap?
Seriously, what is it that you want? What would have to happen, specifically and exactly, in qualitative details, for you to be content and satisfied in this world? If you can’t flesh it out, you can’t hope to achieve it as you won’t have a reference for the progress of your goals. So please, what will make the world right to you?
PS. I do ask that sincerely and any aggressive tone is incidental, not intended. I’m just trying to jump to your real root wishes and desires here, and not bang back and forth with argument about the symptoms and side-effects. Maybe it would be easier to get to the source and understand the core if you could share what your vision of the perfect world is, what you would hope the future to be.
Hey Byron,
I don’t have any of my other films up yet, but here’s some short stuff you might dig (if you have a few minutes) from SP and our film making brothers.
This is a friend of SP who focuses on films starring physically or developmentally disabled heroes. His series “Stranger Hero” is really amazing, and once I get my personal finances out of the gutter I’d love to team up with him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz-yNHConwY
Here’s a short Bros homage by Ed and Eric from SP:
http://vimeo.com/1420802
A trailer from Leo, an amazing visual film maker I’m pimping to potential producers whenever I can.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_hCI-yPCcY
And here’s Eric and Ray from SP on Discovery Channel’s time warp (behind the scenes):
http://vimeo.com/1420802
Deadly Finger Returns is a funny clever physical comedy starring SP guys.
http://vimeo.com/1420802
And this is a bit longer behind-the-scenes with guys I love (in a non-boning way), some of whom I’ve worked with, and some I will work with on my next project (whenever the economy allows such investment).
http://vimeo.com/1421974
I think it will open some eyes to the way things are in bubbles like ours. I wish some of you guys could come play with us and some of the other bubbles I’m part of, as it’d be some respite and escape where you don’t have to worry about prejudice and discrimination. Since social activists spend so much time following and focusing on injustices, the sense of wrong in the world has to be overwhelming at times – especially when compounded to any prejudice you face as a minority. Like a decent cop that spends most of his time with shady criminals, I think you got to seek balance to protect your emotional sanity. My mentality is somewhat pessimistic in general so I admit to indulging in these bubbles of open-minded acceptance whenever I get the chance. I don’t spend my days seeking out wrongs to right like an activist (I respect them a lot for that, but I just deal with the wrongs that enter my surroundings) – but I think it’s important for activists who aren’t already aware to be aware of such bubbles, and be aware they are always welcome to put the fight aside for a night to be brothers without barriers – whenever they are feeling down on the rest of humanity.
And I’m not sure if you saw the real trailer for Dogs or just a work in progress.
Not that it matters, or has different less-controversial content, but here’s the real trailer.
http://vimeo.com/1305979
Oops, I accidentally gave you the link to Deadly finger twice instead of Ed and Erics Shaw Bros tribute.
http://vimeo.com/4072395
Dang I managed to mess up the link to Eric and Ray on Time Warp too, B,
http://vimeo.com/4072395
None of us have control over our heritage. I was born with white skin so some prejudiced people will treat me nicer as a stranger. I guess this is the “white privelege” you are speaking of. If I didn’t know any better, I’d imagine it would also have something do do with access and control of media and corporate and political interests, but since I’m likely the most financially and job-market-challenged person on this blog, I know better. I mean come on, I have white skin and I’ve applied to over 80 jobs in the past two months including Walmart and picking up dead pets. Where’s my hookup? Where’s the mysterious men in Armani suits calling me into their office to hand me a spatula so I can flip the burgers at the jobs I’ve been applying for as I limit my diet to a couple hot dogs a day, Larry? Could you remind these bosses of my skin tone so they can hook me up with their white supremacist conspiracy that ALL white individuals are a part of?
Or is it that the RICH white people that actually control a lot of stuff probably only really care about other RICH white people?
I understand I don’t have to face knuckleheads interrupting my life everyday based on the color of my skin alone.
Don’t play the White victim card. That’s contrived as hell.
And it’s funny. White “progressives” like you always claim that they don’t benefit from White privilege.
But if that’s the case, they why spend so much effort trying to dismiss or minimize the reality that White power and supremacy exist in general?
If you supposedly don’t benefit from White Privilege, then don’t politically cover for it.
You do have control over your political decisions, don’t you?
And if you want to understand White privilege and power, you should do a little research on the issue before you complain that you are economically disadvantaged. It’s called the internet.
Look up Robert Jensen, Tim Wise, or Peggy McIntosh. Tim Wise’s video presentation on the issue is especially relevant as it directly addresses your argument above about White economic disadvantage somehow nullifying White racial privilege..
Talk – Tim Wise on White Privilege
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UJlNRODZHA
This is your Nation on White Privilege
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated
WHITE PRIVILEGE SHAPES THE U.S.
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/whiteprivilege.htm
The point is this: Race powerfully impacts economic wealth and class in the first place–even for poor White people.
Thus, if some “economically disadvantage” White person–like yourself–were Black, do you honestly believe that you wouldn’t be even worse off than you supposedly are now?
If you were Black, do you think you would have the same access to funding, resources, and social capital to make and distribute your film masterpieces, for instance?
Get real.
White Supremacy is not just the KKK. It’s Main Street, USA.
As for what I want, I already said it above: MINORITY CULTURAL AUTONOMY, POWER, AND INDEPENDENCE. The Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s is but one example.
Why are YOU hostile to this?
Why are White people in general hostile to the idea of minorities developing their OWN INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS, CULTURE, AND TRADITIONS?
I’ll you tell why.
Because White America views minority autonomy and power as a threat to their White-dominated system.
Whites want minorities to assimilate into THEIR system, values, and way of life.
They may dress this agenda up behind sugar-coated rhetoric about diversity or multiculturalism, but it’s the same old Melting Pot bullshit.
That by the way is another example of White privilege and delusion in action:
White people–including White Liberal shills–act like have a right to influence or shape the direction of minority politics, as they are always pushing this assimilationist agenda in one form of another.
Does that ring a bell for you?
Oh noes, I’m a white victim! Oh noes, ‘foreigners’ are trying to take away my McDonalds and MTV Real World! Oh noes, what if there were an equal amount of cultural recognition and appreciation in America? Oh noes, what if everyone got equalized in education and job opportunity and media access? Oh noes, two thirds of my friends might get a bigger voice and stake in American politics and capitalism! Oh noes, I can’t let that happen, or maybe they could hook me up with a job, while I’m still waiting on Mr. X to do so in a smoke-filled room. Oh noes, what will I do if I have to compete based on talent and personal merit and be challenged and not have all these rich white people just throwing opportunities at me for being white? Oh noes, what if someone bows to me instead of shakes my hand? Oh noes, what if only a quarter of film and TV has primarily white casts? Oh noes, what if I have to watch and appreciate the best cinema from around the world? Oh noes, what if I have to take my shoes off in someones house or learn other customs to be polite in some settings? Oh noes, what if a Temple opens next to the Cathedral? Oh noes, what if an Asian girl prefers Asian guys instead of me? Oh noes, what if a white girl I have a crush on dates an Asian guy? Oh noes, what if a black senator condemns gay marriage instead of a white senator? Oh noes, what if a Latino president wants to celebrate Mexican holidays in the white house? Oh noes, what if the neighborhood I grew up in didn’t have weekly murders because there was greater economic and educational opportunities? Oh noes, what if there were Asian guys who were viewed as more macho and cool than my scrawny geeky self? Oh noes, what if politicians started considering alternative economic constructs from around the world to incorporate in the US system without demonizing inanimate economic theories? Oh noes, what if I have to see Yo Yo Ma in concert instead of Esa-Pekka Solonen? Oh noes, what if I’m assigned in class to read Confucius instead of Plato, or Laotze instead of Emerson? Oh noes, what if I have to dance to DJ Krush instead of DJ Shadow? Oh noes, what if they celebrate Chinese New Year and Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day at the public schools? Oh noes, what if someone spoke another language than my native one? Oh noes, what if the children were to grow up interested and educated in all cultures and nations?
Oh noes, what if I cared about any of that happening? Oh noes, what if I wasn’t part of a subculture that isn’t already somewhat living like that in our self-constructed circle?
Larry we might have disagreements, and whether you like it or not I care about you as a human being. And if you want me to care about you also as an Asian-American guy, or Chinese or Vietnamese or Laos or whatever your heritage might be, I’ll do that. And if you don’t want me too, I won’t. If you want to share anecdotes and stories that show me the joys and disdains of where you come from, I’m down to learn. But I’ll still make my decisions based on everyone’s commonalities and not any ones exclusive differences. If you or I like both pizza and gumbo, but everyone else on the blog only likes gumbo, when we go out as a group and I’m left with the decision we’re going out for gumbo. But I don’t give a crap if either of us wants to bring pizza along, or suggest that we all stay in and cook both gumbo and pizza, or find places to order both dishes – that’s all fine with me. I don’t care what you eat, I don’t care to tell you what to eat, and I don’t care if you eat it around me, so long as it’s not live babies, because the sound is annoying. Like it or not, if you were in a jam, and I had the ability to help you I would, and it wouldn’t make a difference at all where you come from. Maybe on your racial score board, that would be good or bad, shift things one small tick toward ‘even,’ or away. But that just doesn’t matter to me. Your just a dude in a jam, and I have the ability to help. I would hope you’d do the same for me. I’d hope you’d drag my unconscious body out of a burning car based on human compassion, and not just let me burn out of some sense of ‘justice in the universe.’ Please let me know if this isn’t so, so I can remember to regain consciousness.
I’ll help whoever I can when I see people in a jam, and take help when I can get it from decent people (when I’m not being to stubborn to accept assistance, lol).
Whatever differences and circumstances we have, we both know despair and hope. If you don’t want to hold hands, that’s fine. I respect that. But I also respect those who do want to hold hands.
For my own worry over you Larry, I hope your entire day isn’t entirely filled with such frustration and anger. I hope there are things you enjoy and take delight in, comforts you can lose yourself in and feel at peace for at least a small time, and escapes you have that momentarily lift you above the noise and darkness that surrounds you. Whether it’s family, literature, music, something.
I’ll refrain from commenting about your response to Larry due to my own experiences with his view of the world from other posts on this blog. I will make one observation about this blog and it’s contributors. It appears to me that you have the attention of a budding filmmaker – regardless of the type of films he produces. It seems sad to me that when given an opportunity to speak to someone who clearly has the power to reach the masses, rather than try to convince him of your particular viewpoint of the world, you resort to comments such as:
“Don’t play the White victim card. That’s contrived as hell.”
“Get a big box of tissue for this boy.”
“I wonder if there is an inverse proportional relationship in general: the more mediocre an Artist’s work is, the more insecure and hostile he is to criticism.”
“If you can’t stand the heat, you should stay the hell outta the kitchen.”
how much more constructive this could have been to instead open up a discourse with this person to try to non-offensively explain your viewpoints with the underlying realization that if you succeed in communicating your particular view of the world, then maybe this person would embrace it and spread the vision. Since he is a filmmaker, he has the potential to influence the masses, not just a few blog readers, many of whom already share your viewpoints.
Hey Robert,
I admire your ideals of tact and strategy.
Even though I’ve caught some flak for being an “individualist,” it does seem that every one is here for different reasons and has a unique perspective. Some are here to just point out the problems. Some are here to strategize solutions. Some are here that would like to influence a broader community including “outsiders” (especially if they could be used to advantage like you pointed out). And some are here just to vent their anger and frustration to people that already agree with them. The only thing I know about these individuals is that: I can only know as much about their life and true feelings and thoughts as they can know about mine. That’s why polite discussion is important – IF someone wants to educate. Just because a teacher cares about the subject with all their heart, students will make mistakes out of ignorance – and must be treated with patience – not yelled at and ridiculed and cast out of class…teachers must find a student’s learning style if the student has troubles.
Empowering the muted voices in our society is a cause I’ve always supported so regardless of anyone’s ill will toward me I’ll be discussing such strategies and industry insight with Byron and Vu and Blake on a podcast soon. Hopefully something we say is useful and can be assimilated into the greater game plan of getting more equal screen time. Discrimination in Hollywood isn’t as simple as Larry might imagine. It’s not an equation of white = right. It’s an equation of green = right in a world where every actor has a dollar sign and an amount of past box office revenue over their head. If Chow Yun Fat starred in the biggest box office movie ever tomorrow, half the films the next year would star Chinese actors. Because Hollywood wouldn’t understand if the movie made money because of a great story or the lead actor. That’s why we get films films like X3, Legend of Chun Li, Wolverine and Matrix 2. Hollywood can’t distinguish money made by quality and money made by recognized names (actors and franchises). Because we’re coming out of the past, the biggest box office names tend to be white. But if you don’t have the budget to afford them (or Jet Li, who’s also very expensive), a movie starring Sam Jackson or John Cho is way more preferred by investors and distributors than a movie starring any white folk who’ve have less $$ box office association.
Film makers often want to make films for the audience, but the audience doesn’t matter to the money-men. That’s something that might open Larry’s eyes when we talk about it. All that matters to actually get a film greelit is what the investors and distributors want, based on outdated mathematical formulas. Other film makers, like Ridley Scott and James Cameron, make mainstream blockbusters to raise capital and cred to make the movies they are personally interested in. Because our feature film was so low budget, we didn’t have to follow industry formula – so we just made something the audience can enjoy.
On the indy level, stars are important if they can be afforded. But one of the next investment considerations is genre. The black-produced films I’ve worked on have been much higher budgeted than my own, because they fit a thriller genre that distributors can easily package and move, attaching phrases like “I know what you did last summer.” My film is an artsy Shakespeare-inspired genre-straddler heavy on lessons from Machiavelli, Suntze, and Yagyu. Anyone who understood the industry would be laughing right now that we have a film at market so challenging to sum up in a simple sentence of copyright. What LArry might refuse to believe is that I, and the black film makers here, and the Asian film makers here, don’t care who is getting bigger budgets – even if you removed ‘race’ from the industry at all, it’s still a big tricky game that requires a lot of risk and sacrifice – so we do everything we can to help and support each other. Even thought the average $$ sum of white-produced films might be higher in America, for any film maker on their own it comes down to individual projects, name recognition of actors, genres, etc plus the amount of effort and risk the instigator is willing to put in. Yes there could be a few racist investors that only want to invest in white film makers, and there are plenty of non-white business men only investing in “FUBU”-style films. I find the latter cause to be admirable – not just out of equality, but my artisitc love for diversity – and our crew has been a helpful resource to film projects with that cause. In Hollywood, there’s family businesses and networks, which might still reflect the slow-to-fade effects of the past in their current demographics. That’s why I’ll be discussing strategies to make these factors work in the favor of minority film makers.
Micah:
I got to hand it to you. You are good at dodging the issues both that I raised and were raised by Tim Wise or Robert Jensen about White privilege and power and how these things operate in America.
That doesn’t really seem like the behavior of someone who is sincerely interested in “dialogue.” But that’s just me.
“Discrimination in Hollywood isn’t as simple as Larry might imagine. It’s not an equation of white = right. It’s an equation of green = right in a world where every actor has a dollar sign and an amount of past box office revenue over their head.”
This is a strawman that you are arguing against, and not quite what I said.
To repeat my point above, race is a powerful factor in who has the green to begin with, in America.
Race and class go hand in glove. Capiche?
Class is not opposed to race. They work together.
To restate the example above, if you were Black, do you honestly believe that you would have the same funding, resources, access, or social capital necessary to make your make and distribute your films in the first place?
If you were Black, do you honestly believe that you would not be even worse off than you claim to be today in terms of your economic status?
I think you know the answer to these questions.
That Tim Wise video goes straight to your argument about class vs. race. Go check it out. I’ve pointed this video out to Robert before and he sadly refused to consider it any honest way. Please don’t emulate him.
Tim Wise on White Privilege
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UJlNRODZHA
Another issue:
Why is White America (and apparently you) so hostile to the simple idea of Minority cultural autonomy, power, and, independence?
Why is White America so desperate to insist that minorities assimilate into the great White Way (aka, the Melting Pot)?
Is it because minority power/autonomy represents a challenge to a system that, in terms of race, European Americans dominate and rule?
It’s all about power.
And any honest “dialogue” must admit the issue of White institutional power.
There’s no sweeping it under the rug, or denying it, or sugarcoating it away with “Can’t We All Just Get Along” rhetoric.
And if you don’t want to admit that White racial power is an important factor in America society in general (whether that be making films or getting a job, even at Wal-Mart), then I don’t know what to tell you, except….
Ignorance ain’t bliss.
@Robert
Your faux piety about the tone of this conversation is just a *bit* selective and hypocritical. The initial comments by the people from the film were not exactly made in the spirit of dialogue, but in the spirit of sarcastically attacking this blog for raising issues of (shock, horror) White racism in the film. See Ed Kahana, Gail Yip, Pete, etc.
If those people go on someone else’s website and start spewing attitude, they really shouldn’t feign hurt feelings when this attitude is returned to them.
I don’t have hurt feelings. There is sadness over the ways of the world, but hurt feeling achieve nothing on their own.
I already said many times that things aren’t fair and equal in this world or in America, and much of that is based on a history of discrimination, and much of it is based on current discrimination. Hell, I was upset before the elections because I “knew” America wouldn’t vote for Obama, an amazing mind competing against the likes of the Pailin monster, based on skin tone. But I was wrong. It took great evils to occur before the majority would respect thoughtful logic and common sense, but it happened. It doesn’t always happen. In some situations it doesn’t usually happen. But sometimes it happens. That’s what I take deference to – it’s easy to interpret you language as a belief in absolutes – where x is ALWAYS this way, and y is ALWAYS that way, and individual circumstances and minds don’t make a difference. That’s fine – it will turn off a broad audience, but you’re opinion is just as valuable as the opinion of anyone else.
I don’t forget history of social problems when I approach an issue, but I also know that’s only half the story – situational details are the other half. It’s faulty to think because discrimination exists it’s an effort carried out by all individuals based on skin tone. In my opinion that’s not an activist view that promotes positive causes they love and believe in while trying to change one-sided institutions. It’s an extremist view that caters more to hatred than positive movement.
I didn’t comment on these two boards to harass or spam. You can look at my first post on each. I came to fill in people about the details of the film in case they actually cared about valid evaluation, instead of assumptions based on visual elements out of context. It’s understandable how they’d affiliate the trailer or one of the two posters with The Last Samurai, but since they didn’t see the film, they would never realize that the filmmakers intentionally broke the stereotypes and traditions of films like that, films we find equally ridiculous. Since they didn’t watch the film, they assumed the was film makers were inspired by flicks like Tokyo Drift instead of films like Sonatine and Brother. If they did their homework on the filmmakers (just email us), they’d find that most of our films have Asian protagonist leads or other minority heroic leads – not out of social justice, just due to our multicultural and pluralistic lifestyles. They’d also find out that we put decent effort into helping Asian and Black writers and film makers achieve their visions and we were trying to help several find funding before the economy collapsed. This isn’t based on self-righteous activism, just our respect for fellow talented artists, and our appreciation for everyone being able to tell their unique stories and find an audience. Some people have actually cared about the truth of the details of this particular film or it’s creators, and some have not. Vu actually checked it out and I’d love to hear more about his concerns. When I do I’ll have to try to fairly evaluate how he saw the film, from a neutral view, or someone with predetermination to see and report that the film was racist. Either way he’s the only one here that can make valid critiques on the film in context. So far all I’ve seen him saying is that virtually all the Asian characters were despicable gangsters in a movie where all the white and black characters are also despicable characters. It’s a gangster noir. If it were a space movie, all the Asian characters would be astronauts, just like all the white and black and Latino characters. If everyone here commented on books they actually read and movies they actually see, the writers and media creators can get a lot more valid critiques and applicable points. In the absence of valid research by the critics, we can only listen to your general concerns and decide for ourselves whether they are applicable or not.
There’s a lot of films I think will suck based on the trailer and details of those involved, and a lot of them I won’t see for that, but since I’m not omniscient, I can only say “I think film PROBABLY sucks for these reasons and I doub;t I’d like it.” But it’d be erroneous of me to assume I know all the contextual details of a film I don’t watch – especially the moral and social messages, which takes an entire film in context to glean.
If you just saw the beginning of Hamlet you’d think the moral is murder is a good way to become a pimped-out king.
Hey Larry,
Not all white people get “white privilege.” I’ve had to bust ass for everything I ever got. My folks never had a dime when I was growing up and if I wanted something then I had to get a job and go buy it myself. It made me appreciate everything I ever got. I went to a crappy high school and was 1 of 2 white guys on the football team and I had to bust ass to get that position. I was called cracker and white boy and the one Korean guy on the team was called rice baby but what were we going to do? Bitch about it? Eventually through our hard work, we earned the team’s respect. I worked shit jobs most of my life. The only good job I had was finishing furniture for a company where I was the only white guy (everyone else was African-American). My boss appreciated my hard work and eventually paid me better than anyone else. I doubt that my boss (also African-American and owner of the company) was considering my white privilege when he did that. Maybe some of the black guys didn’t appreciate me getting paid more but I was the one sticking around to make sure the work got done on time. I sometimes worked up to 60 hours a week doing very dirty, back breaking work but I didn’t mind because he was the only boss I ever had who appreciated my hard work. He paid me well for my hard work and that got me my house. To this day (15 years later) we are still great friends. Whether it was the football team or most of the jobs I worked, I was almost always the minority. No one ever gave me shit. I earned any respect I ever got and I damn sure busted ass to earn all the money I ever got. I continue to do so and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Larry – you wrote: “To restate the example above, if you were Black, do you honestly believe that you would have the same funding, resources, access, or social capital necessary to make and distribute your films in the first place?”
Micah and myself have worked on three features. Two were extremely low budget productions of our own (including Dogs Of Chinatown) and the third we were hired to shoot an Urban Thriller. The producers on that film were all African American as well as the majority of the cast and crew. They had approximately 1o times more budget than we had for Dogs Of Chinatown so no Larry I honestly don’t believe we would have the same funding. I do however believe we made a better film than they did.
I did watch the Tim Wise video. He’s very well spoken. Thanks for pointing it out. It’s good for him that his grandparents had money and resources not available to others at the time that they could pass down to him. Mine didn’t. Haven’t run into anyone in my family yet that had money or power. If I did then maybe we would have hit them up for the budget of our film.
I agree that white people do control most of the power and money in America. You seem like a smart guy and I’m sure you know that there are a handful of families in this country that control the majority of this country’s wealth. They don’t give a shit about me just like they don’t give a shit about you. White people with money and power only give a shit about other white people with money and power. Well, not all of them but mostly. I can’t speak for the place where you live or your experiences. These are just my experiences in my surroundings.
Don’t mistake any of this as complaining or whining because it’s not. These are my life experiences and I’m grateful for them because I’ve learned that if you want respect then you have to earn it and if there are things in this world that you want then you better bust ass to get them.
I do look forward to discussing what can be done to improve ethnic diversity in film with Byron and Vu during our podcast. Hopefully you’ll tune in and check it out.
Take care.
One of the points that Tim Wise makes about White privilege is that in a class system like the USA, a poor White person is competing with a poor Black or minority person, that a rich White person (like Bill Gates, for example) is competing with a rich minority (like Oprah).
That’s where White racial privilege comes in. At each class level, Whiteness allows one to get a leg up on a minority. That’s the way it works.
So, Blake, you really can’t compare your situation as a working class White person in a furniture store with your African American manager.
That’s apples and oranges.
A lot of people work hard. And a lot of people bust their ass.
But an African American working class guy will be more likely to be, say, in jail–or even dead–and not even have a job working in a furniture store in the first place.
Just check out the numbers for the American prison gulag, which has a massively disproportionate share of minorities in it. Or the American War on Drugs and its effects on minorities:
HOW IS THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM RACIST?
http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/pdfs/factsheets/10-Fact%20Sheet%20-%20System%20as%20Racist.pdf
US: ‘Drug War’ Unjust to African Americans
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/english/docs/2008/05/05/usint18745.htm
You can also compare the situation of the White working class with working class Latino and Asian immigrants, who not only have to deal with economic exploitation but also the US government (like the ICE or local police) and the threat of deportation or imprisonment.
In fact, the American imprisonment of immigrants–particularly from the Third World–is huge, with something like 400,000 people incarcerated last year even though most of these imprisoned don’t have criminal records.
New report blasts U.S. on immigrant detainees
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/MNAM16MA7P.DTL&type=printable
There’s also things like Driving while Black or Flying while Arab.
These things are all about racist oppression–working in conjunction with class and immigration status.
There’s a common saying, “when White America catches a cold, minorities will catch pneumonia.”
And in terms of White privilege, most White people don’t see it–or don’t want to see it.
They take it for granted, unless they take a hard look at the things mentioned above and consider where they themselves could be–if not for the fact that they are White or native-born.
Hey Larry,
You make great points. I haven’t studied those facts but I have no reason to doubt the validity of any of them. All I can do is speak from my personal experiences. When I worked in that furniture factory I worked very hard. My boss chose to reward that hard work. He didn’t care that I was white or how it would look to the other guys (who were all black) when he gave me more money. He and I both put up with a lot of crap from the other employees. I heard plenty of rumblings of how things weren’t fair or they jokingly made comments about the white man (me) keeping them down even though I worked harder than they did. All the while, they were smoking weed almost every day and several of them were fathering kids that they chose not to take care of. I do believe that minorities do have it tougher on average that white people but also sometimes you are the master of your own destiny. By setting up hurdles for yourself (like doing drugs or having unwanted kids or whatever) then it’s not quite fair to blame some white guy for all your problems. I never noticed anything that I got simply because I was white. I got my house because I worked hard as hell and saved up for the down payment. Nobody gave me that money. The guys that I worked with had exactly the same opportunities as I did in that furniture factory but they chose to piss it all away. I don’t think it’s privilege that I ended up with a little more because I worked harder or didn’t do drugs and I take care of my daughter. I am aware that minorities do put up with a lot of crap. But not all white guys get a free ticket either. Just some food for thought.
Good conversing with you.
Larry,
The reports regarding racism in our justice system sound more like problems of bad laws. While the lawmakers themselves may have been racist when they made the laws, it sounds like eliminating bad laws (drug, immigration, housing, etc.) would level the playing field a little better. Do you agree? Or should we leave the laws and just go after the racists?
Larry,
I think you misunderstood my point. My issues with you don’t really pertain to any particular post, just a general animosity that you seem to emanate toward anyone who posts a viewpoint different than yours. I speak from experience dealing with you in my posts which were certainly not intended to be inflamatory in any fashion – more a discourse, which was relatively civil until your responses. However, I see your condescension riddled throughout this blog to multiple posters, so I’m not offended. My point, and I presumed it could be detected was that for someone who claims to have a degree from Harvard, your ability to persuasively communicate with others leaves a lot to be desired. I merely sought to point that out here. *shrug* I’m quite certain that you have no respect, nor inclination to care about my opinions of you or your abilities to communicate, and I assure you it is mutual, so at this point, I’ll let you get back to your accusations.
Hey Robert,
Nice to see you again!
Have you read through this whole thread? I’m talking to Micah and Blake tomorrow for the podcast, but would you agree that some of the comments left by Pete Lee and Gail Yip were quite inflammatory? Even Ed, whom I’ve grown to like, came out and said some really crazy stuff both on this blog and BcB.
Judge for yourself. The original BcB post is linked in the original post, and you can see how the conversation grew from some comments that perhaps were inappropriate. If you look at it from the beginning, from the perspective of people who live with these demeaning stereotypes all the time, I think the story will tell itself. Larry reacted the same way Vu did, the same way I did, the same way all red-blooded Asian American activists did.
Anyway, water under the bridge for me. I won’t harp on the past. Both Ed Kahana and Eric Jacobus have agreed to meet for a podcast, so hopefully we can clear stuff up then. Like I said, I know that Micah and Blake are nice people, and I’m looking forward to talking to them. You and I should talk sometime soon too. Maybe you should talk to Larry as well. He really is brilliant. You might like him, and he could recommend some good books and resources.
By the way, I think this post is relevant to our whole Orientalism discussion. Think about the stories you read. Think about the stories you don’t have the opportunity to read. Think about the ones that don’t even get written.
@Robert. I understand your “issues” clearly, man. Like I said, your pious posturing is not quite convincing given their selective and hypocritical nature.
And debate on the web is by its nature contentious and spirited. If you expect a polite tea party, the internets in general is probably not the place for you.
And I sure as heck don’t have a degree from Harvard. Never said I did. But whatever.
I hate to have to repeat my post but there’s a lot of activity here. Sorry in advance.
Larry,
The reports regarding racism in our justice system sound more like problems of bad laws. While the lawmakers themselves may have been racist when they made the laws, it sounds like eliminating bad laws (drug, immigration, etc.) would level the playing field a little better. Do you agree? Or should we leave the laws and just go after the racists?
It’s not just a matter of changing law. It’s the entire system of institutions. It’s Hollywood. It’s the subconscious racism that takes place on juries and in courtrooms and in the press and in the media. Check out yesterday’s post. I think the best way to change is through education.
But the juries wouldn’t exist without the bad laws that put the “criminals” in the court in the first place. Perhaps jurors are racist, but without crappy drug laws they wouldn’t have any power anyway. The laws turn certain people into “criminals”, and that affects the sentiments of jurors and everyone else, so when a jury does convene, it already has preconceptions of what a criminal is.
@ Eric Jacobus
The American criminal injustice system is not “our” system. It’s your system–White America’s system. Just like every other institution in the USA.
Don’t act like it’s one big happy family. It ain’t.
White racism in the American gulag is just a reflection of the USA in general. It’s a system of control to keep “troublemaking” populations under lock and key–particularly minorities, who have a history of rebelling against your system.
See the 1960s and 1970s urban rebellions from Watts to Detroit to Newark for examples. Or the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion or the 2001 Cincinnati uprising or the recent riots in Oakland over the police murder of Oscar Grant. The beat goes on.
And it’s not a question of a few racist jurors or “crappy laws.” It’s the entire criminal justice system. And ultimately, it’s the beloved American Way that is the problem.
White “Progressives” are always trying to spindoctor the terms of debate to minimize this fundamental problem.
It’s their attempt at political damage control to sucker minorities into putting their faith in White American institutions–usually with a few band-aid reforms and a whole lot of sugar-coated rhetoric.
But’s that just White pretty talk.
And like most political scams, it can only fool some of the people for only so long.
The reality on the ground has always been very different from White boy lies.
The bottom line for minorities is to reject these European American institutions and start building alternative ones instead–whether that be courts, police, media, etc.
But this is what White America–including disingenous White Liberals–are fearful of, isn’t it?
“The bottom line for minorities is to reject these European American institutions and start building alternative ones instead–whether that be courts, police, media, etc. But this is what White America–including disingenous White Liberals–are fearful of, isn’t it?”
Most definitely. I couldn’t agree more. A competitive police and court market would not only eliminate bad laws, but such laws would never come about because they’re economically bad.
Is that what you mean? Or do you mean making a new government? What exactly?