# Bill Maher says it's a "dirty little secret" US Movies lack blacks due to racist Asians **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 24, 2016, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044 "2016-01-24T01:36:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/21 "2016-01-24T12:27:18Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > So I get that there’s often more to the story than meets the eye on a first pass, but upon reading the OP, my first thought was, yeah right, it’s not us whites who are racists, it’s them yellow folk! Glad we cleared that up. :smack: The Chinese box office reached [$6.8 Billion USD](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-box-office-grows-astonishing-851629) last year compared to $11 Billion for the US box office but it grew by 50% in a single year. China has 31,627 compared to the US’ 39,000 in 2014 but 8000 screens were installed in 2014 which means that China may have already exceeded the number of screens by today. Furthermore, China is not a free market for Western movies, China is using protectionism to protect its domestic movie industry as it grows so the number of movies and when they are allowed to screen in China is heavily controlled by the government. However you dice the numbers, just Chinese racists alone already has or will soon dwarf the impact American racists have from a purely business perspective. If you’re preparing a slate of movies to come out as far as 2020 as Marvel is doing, you need to be taking these things into account and while “the whites” will be a factor in your decision, “the yellows” will be a much larger factor. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/22 "2016-01-24T12:44:57Z")
I think Maher is full of it. At the same time, I don’t think he’s talking about situations where people say “A Black guy is in it?! I’m not seeing it!” and more like how boys often don’t read books with female protagonists because those are automatically seen as “for girls”. ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/23 "2016-01-24T13:43:39Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Remember the “controversy” when it was revealed that in Spectre, James Bond would sleep with an “older woman”? These tensions have always roiled movie production since the very earliest days of film and the growth in the Asian markets is simply shifting the balance in numbers towards a different direction. Was this a real controversy or one of those clickbait bullshit controversies? Like when it was widely reported that mens right organisations boycotted Fury Road for being too feminist when it was literally just one angry asshole ranting on his blog. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/24 "2016-01-24T13:49:03Z")
I think this goes back to the misconception among Asians that soul brother too beaucoup. First it was no boom-boom with soul brother, now it affects box office revenue as well. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/25 "2016-01-24T13:50:07Z")
I have one problem with Maher’s theory though: If producers are that worried about the Asian market, then wouldn’t they be casting more Asians in lead roles? Is a white face just something everyone can agree on or something, whereas a black face would turn off Asian audiences and an Asian face would turn off American audiences? ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/26 "2016-01-24T14:00:19Z")
> [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](#): > > Was this a real controversy or one of those clickbait bullshit controversies? Like when it was widely reported that mens right organisations boycotted Fury Road for being too feminist when it was literally just one angry asshole ranting on his blog. The actual “controversy” was almost certainly manufactured but you also have to ask, how was it able to be manufactured in the first place? That is, why did it take 24 bond films before bond even slept with an older woman? And the answer to that is the people who object to those things don’t rant about them loudly on the Internet, they simply just go see a different movie. By and large, these people are not the 1950s style sexists that is a part of the popular imagination and I’m willing to bet most of them would be virulently opposed to having the label sexist placed upon them. But the end result of their collective action is a movie world that’s _far_ less friendly towards ageing female actors than male ones. The Bond franchise made a semi-calculated gamble that, for the first time, the publicity generated by “OMG older woman” (which if you see the movie, felt shoehorned in purely to generate the outrage) finally outweighed the downside of alienating the more conservative audience. But it took over 50 years of Bond films to get us to this point. Similarly, the racism counterbalance that Asia is providing isn’t cross burning and boycotts, it’s the collective minute actions of a large population that makes it far more difficult to be a black actor in hollywood than a white one and the rise of Asia will make progress on this front slower for a significant number of years. ---
**Author:** ![Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uosdwis_R.Dewoh)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/27 "2016-01-24T14:57:58Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > The actual “controversy” was almost certainly manufactured but you also have to ask, how was it able to be manufactured in the first place? That is, why did it take 24 bond films before bond even slept with an older woman? While I agree that the bias against older women in films is both real and shitty, Bond has slept with older women before. Both Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) and Diana Rigg are older than Connery and George Lazenby. On the other hand, as Connery got older the women stayed about the same age. In A view to a kill Roger Moore was older than than his co-star’s (Tanya Roberts) mother. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/28 "2016-01-24T15:01:04Z")
> [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](#): > > While I agree that the bias against older women in films is both real and shitty, Bond has slept with older women before. Both Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) and Diana Rigg are older than Connery and George Lazenby. On the other hand, as Connery got older the women stayed about the same age. In A view to a kill Roger Moore was older than than his co-star’s (Tanya Roberts) mother. Sorry, I stand corrected. Belluci’s record was for the oldest Bond girl ever (by a good decade), not the first Bond girl older than Bond. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/29 "2016-01-24T17:55:16Z")
Sure absolutely nothing to it… > **[‘Star Wars’ China Poster Sparks Controversy After Shrinking John Boyega’s...](https://variety.com/2015/film/news/star-wars-china-poster-controversy-john-boyega-1201653494/)** > > “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” fans are menaced by the Chinese poster for the upcoming sci-fi epic. The poster has sparked controversy online over stylistic changes, one of which result… ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/30 "2016-01-24T18:12:04Z")
I’ve heard it before. Sounds like a cheap excuse. I mean, it’s not like studios are putting a lot of Asian leads either, if Asian racism was that relevant. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/31 "2016-01-24T18:25:52Z")
> [@astro](#): > > [Bill Maher: The Oscars’ Diversity Problem Is ‘Racist’ Asians’ Fault](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/22/bill-maher-the-oscars-diversity-problem-is-racist-asians-fault.html) > > Does this seemingly oddball claim have a shred of veracity? I get that movies are a global market these days, but does overseas Asian markets potential antipathy toward black people really impact casting decisions for US movies? I don’t have any trouble with that at all. If we’re talking sterotypes, which we are, then culturally Asians - Indian/Pakistani Asians across to Vietnamese/Japanese Asians - are really very prejudiced. Basically, the last 50 years never happened. Tbf, the only reason the US is any different is because a chunk of the population is black, some even have jobs and money now (though 1 in 3 black US males will go to prison at some point in their lives). I really have no idea what weird, liberal fantasy worlds some of you people live in. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/32 "2016-01-24T21:39:14Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > …Tbf, the only reason the US is any different is because a chunk of the population is black, some even have jobs and money now (though 1 in 3 black US males will go to prison at some point in their lives). > > I really have no idea what weird, liberal fantasy worlds some of you people live in. The _Washington Post_ on the [“one in three”](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/16/the-stale-statistic-that-one-in-three-black-males-has-a-chance-of-ending-up-in-jail/) estimate (that Bernie Sanders has used): > [@](#): > > The basic lesson is: Read the footnotes. Sanders and various media organizations did not do enough due diligence to understand how old these numbers are. There is certainly little justification to assert that a black male born “today” faces these odds of entering prison. At best one can say that a baby born in 2001 faced these odds — if the rate had remained the same. > > But it looks as if the rate has declined, calling into question the “1 in 3” statistic. The actual figure is as yet unknown and still could be high. But this figure should be treated with caution until BJS produces an updated estimate. Until then, this is a Two-Pinocchio statistic. Gosh, “a few” black men even have jobs? I’d rather live in the real world than the racist fantasy. Thanks for letting us now the stereotypes you live by. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/33 "2016-01-24T21:55:18Z")
> [@Dajn](#): > > Whether you agree or disagree with him you have to respect the man. I don’t think I have to respect him. He chooses willful ignorance to further his own agenda. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/34 "2016-01-24T23:28:58Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Is a white face just something everyone can agree on or something, whereas a black face would turn off Asian audiences and an Asian face would turn off American audiences? Pretty much that, yes. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/35 "2016-01-24T23:58:28Z")
Bill Maher has never been a studio executive. So he has no experience marketing movies. At best, he may have heard second or third hand accounts of what actual studio executives have said. And it strikes me that if I was a studio executive being pressured for my reluctance to hire black actors, blaming Asians is exactly the kind of excuse I’d come up with. It’s a racist excuse for racist behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/36 "2016-01-25T00:03:37Z")
> [@Dajn](#): > > Bill Maher deserves respect. No one has the balls anymore to do what he does. Whether you agree or disagree with him you have to respect the man. I don’t have to respect the man. It doesn’t take any “balls” to do what he does. He’s a talk show host and people pay him millions of dollars to say stupid things like this. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/37 "2016-01-25T00:10:37Z")
> [@Dajn](#): > > Bill Maher deserves respect. No one has the balls anymore to do what he does. Whether you agree or disagree with him you have to respect the man. AFAIK without watching him except for very occasional network talk show appearances, I agree with him more often than not, but it doesn’t take balls to do what he does. Saying outrageous stuff is very easy, and very profitable for many. Look at Trump. Look at right wing radio. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/38 "2016-01-25T00:13:31Z")
The new Star Wars movie has a black lead actor, and its [overseas box office seems to be doing pretty well](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars7.htm), and it did perfectly [okay though not great](http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/01/18/box-office-star-wars-the-force-awakens-didnt-need-china-to-be-a-blockbuster/#7429024e37e3) with Chinese audiences. According to [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_China), _Pacific Rim_ (where one of the main leads, good-guys authority figure Stacker Pentecost, is played by black actor Idris Elba) did very well in China. Even bigger were _Avengers: Age of Ultron_, with three important named-cast black actors, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, and Don Cheadle, and _Captain America: Winter Soldier_, where Mackie had a bigger role. [Indian audiences also liked](http://www.imdb.com/list/ls073764809/) _Age of Ultron_ as well as _2012_, in which one of the main leads is Chiwetel Ejiofor and another key character is Thandie Newton, playing the daughter of the black US President (Danny Glover). So while I concur that Asian audiences are probably not particularly interested in watching Hollywood movies about the ordinary lives of western black people (or western white people, for that matter), I see no reason to think that Asian audiences would be particularly averse to seeing black lead actors in the sort of Hollywood movies that they typically **do** like to watch, i.e., big blockbuster action/disaster movies. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/39 "2016-01-25T00:14:53Z")
> [@Dajn](#): > > Bill Maher deserves respect. No one has the balls anymore to do what he does. Whether you agree or disagree with him you have to respect the man. Maher is a shockjock for aging lefties. He gets paid specifically to be edgey and confrontative. He is like the left’s Rush Limbaugh. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044/40 "2016-01-25T01:49:10Z")
It’s funny that while we’re talking about how racist the industry is to blacks, we’re not talking about how it’s a lot more racist to minorities other than blacks. If you’re going to go down the list of races represented as leading men and women in Hollywood, it would be white first, blacks second, and everyone else WAY down the list. Can you even name a leading Asian actor who isn’t a martial arts star? Seems to me that Asians and Latinos and Arabs have a much better case against the academy than African-Americans. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bill-maher-says-its-a-dirty-little-secret-us-movies-lack-blacks-due-to-racist-asians/744044.md?page=3)