a rising hollywood fad

so one thing i’ve been noticing to be on a steady rise over the last few years, and especially over the past few weeks, is that there seems to be a curious rising fad in hollywood where white actors have it bad in terms of acting, but asians usually tend to get the short end of the stick: whereas white actors usually end up playing white people, asian people usually end up playing asian people… of another ethnicity.

by this point you’re probably pointing out the flaw in my argument by saying, “well yeah, but you have white people playing white people of other sub-cultures and ethnicities, like irish-americans playing german-americans and whatnot.” and you’re 100% right: more often times than not “american” actors will usually end up playing a role that is of a ”different” sort of american, and in that sense chinese americans playing japanese americans or vice versa doesn’t seem all that bad – except caucasian americans will never run into this kind of problem since they almost 98% only use english in their prescribed roles (with exceptions of simple foreign words mixed into their dialogue, such as “salud”, “gracias”) whereas asian americans, for some odd, odd, reason are always FORCED to use their “native” language or made to seem like they don’t speak anything beside it.

my first example is related to masi oka, the japanese-american actor who plays “hiro nakamura” in the hit drama series “heroes.” i don’t really mind the fact that they got a japanese-american actor, perfectly bilingual in english and japanese with an iq of 183 to play an otaku-like salaryman, who frequently utters the phrase “yatta!” which means “yay!” or “i did it!” in japanese (oka recently revealed in an interview that the original line for his catchphrase was actually “bonsai”–yes, “bonsai”, the little tree, not “banzai!” the warcry–which he petitioned for change into a more generation-friendly “yatta!”) but yeah, i just felt like breagging about him, but here’s the thing that really matters. ando masahashi, the guy hiro nakamura is frequently seen with, i.e. the businessman who is always nagging him to stop dreaming about being a hero and having super powers and what not, is actually korean, and that fact would be perfectly acceptable if he spoke japanese fluently and if he didnt sound like an ass trying to pronunce the syllables that don’t exist in his phonological alphabet.

now my beef with hollywood isnt actually against using non-japanese people to play japanese roles, or non-korean people to play korean roles and etc. because i’m a firm believer in multilingualism, but the fact that they employ less-than-adequate speakers of each language to play those parts and the fact that they are getting away with butchering our languages on national television has been an irking annoyance for me recently.

the phenomenon is not only seen in television, but is actually much more dominant in movies. a few puny examples would include: the “korean” man who speaks horrible korean in starsky and hutch (the one owen wilson supposedly speaks korean to), the “japanese” girl from hostel who commits suicide after her face is defaced (i think her name is kana in the movie, but she’s actually played by some korean girl) and also that asian doctor who was on csi miami for like three episiodes–dr. peng, i think his name was–who is supposedly cantonese but is played by a korean actor.

so here we have a confusing spiral of misrepresentation, where japanese are being played by koreans, koreans are being played by chinese, and the chinese are being also in one hand played by korean and also recently by kudoh yuki in rush hour three. this would be a good place to stop and say WHAT THE FUCK?? by this time it’s very evident that asian-americans are asian-americans, and there really is no need to make a distinction–whatever native language we speak, the primarily english speaking nation will not understand, so why try to make them play what they’re not? why can’t the korean-americans just play koreans, the japanese-americans play japanese, and the chinese-americans play chinese?

a recent example that left me flabbergasted was “war” — that awesome movie with jet li and jason stathan where jet li is supposedly a rogue assassin and supposedly not a rogue assassin at the same time. i will leave the contents of the movie cryptic to those of you who haven’t seen, but whatever. one thing that really pissed me off, is that while the movie engages on a fantasy asian mob match made in heaven with the japanese yakuza facing off against the chinese triads in san francisco (even though the movie is clearly said to be filmed in vancouver, bc in the credits) except none of the mobsters actually speak the language that they’re supposed to other than the few actors that matter (i.e. the respective capo of each clan). for example, jet li in this movie speaks english underlyingly, but there are a few scenes throughout the movie where they make him try to engage in some asian language to make him seem like “one of us”; for example, there is a scene right after he has made his way into the chinese triad’s circle of trust where he is approached by the capo’s right hand man who brings his little brother along for whatever mission they’re doing. jet li asks the guy a question in mandarin, but the guy answers back in cantonese. ok that’s an improvement, at least both of them are fluent in their own languages right? and given the fact that jet li7s first movies were actually cantonese and he spoke cantonese in those roles make it seem all right overall. but that’s where you’re wrong. cantonese and mandarin are not mutually intelligible and speakers of both parties will generally not understand each other without some kind of formal training in each respective language. but the white people will never know…

my second outrage is with hollywood casting devon aoki as a japanese role. i really don’t understand why they keep doing this to me. they ruined my teenage fantasies by casting her as kasumi in the dead or alive live action movie, and now they’re making her try to speak japanese. and by the way she sounds in the movie, she’s not even trying: i’m sure the phonetic guidelines that came with her dialogue prompts somewhere does mention that [u] in japanese is more uvular than english and is much more clearl cut — but she totally ignores this fact and butchers every syllable of japanese dialog in that movie. even jackie chan spoke better japanese than her in rush hour 3, and his only japanese line in that movie was 銃下ろせ！！ (drop the gun!!)

so my question to hollywood is, given that hollywood has tapped into a new market of a young, fresh acting generation in asian-americans–after hit movies such as harold and kumar and i really can’t think of another one but i’m pretty sure there are more–and given the fact that there are over 10 million asian-americans/asian immigrants living in the united states, why are they so lazy to find one that can speak their “native language” properly? i’m guessing people like devon aoki are being cast by hollywood either because white people think she’s hot or maybe she’s been sleeping around with the directors, god knows, and its good to see that some of the young talent are getting recognized but they’re being done so for all the wrong reasons.

white people make fun of us asians for not being able to speak english properly, and that is understandable–but why must they add insult to injury by making it seem like we can’t even speak our own?