It’s a very thin tightrope to walk. Even with the best intentions it runs the danger of being in bad taste and an even greater danger of aging horribly.
Someone in another thread mentioned a show where Emma Stone was supposed to be a native Hawaiian, in a show that was supposedly celebrating the diversity and native culture of Hawaii.
Actually that was in this very thread. Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of the movie said the character was based on a real-life red-headed woman with that ethnic background.
Technically Scarlet Johansen playing Major Motoko Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell film really shouldn’t be problematic. The film was on cable the other day and technically her character is playing an Asian woman’s brain encased in a cybernetic body that is shaped like Scarlet Johansen such that Motoko’s actual mother doesn’t recognize her appearance.
It’s not worth really thinking about too hard. IRL designing a cybernetic supersoldier it the shape of a busty 5’2" woman who cuts her own hair without a mirror makes about as much sense as Skynet designing an “infiltration unit” in the form of the most jacked dude you’ve ever seen with a distinctive accent.
True.
And the character was supposed to be half Swedish.
Speaking of SNL, there was the sketch with Mike Myers as a Japanese game show host and Alec Baldwin and Janene Garofalo as Japanese contestants (with the third contestant a clueless White American played by Chris Farley). To their credit, all three non-Farley actors delivered their lines in accurate if poorly pronounced Japanese.
More recently, SNL ran a sketch purporting to show the Japanese version of “The Office,” though half the joke seemed to be that the characters were being portrayed by White actors (including guest star Steve Carell).
How about John Belushi in his Samurai… skits?
“It’s funny because it’s racist.”
And I’m just now remembering Dave Thomas as Lin Ye Tang on SCTV.
Has Alex Borstein’s Ms Swan on Mad TV been mentioned yet.
The MadTV writers always insisted she was meant to be a generic “funny foreigner” with no particular ethnicity. OTOH, in her first appearance, she was named “Ms. Kwan”…
IIRC, No was of mixed Asian/Caucasian (British?) ancestry, so not really a bad choice for the role.
Dana Carvey as Ching Change.
“Chicken make lousy housepet.”
The cover of David Lee Roth’s album “Eat 'Em and Smile” is pretty cringe. The native character also made appearances in his videos. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that the origin of the character was a bit ambiguous.
I mostly remember that character in the “convenience store” lead-in for the video to “Yankee Rose,” which was 90 seconds of racist, sexist, and body-shaming “humor.” I am ashamed now, that 40 years ago, young stupid me found it hilarious.
It’s still a catchy tune. He had a much better band than he deserved.
In a favorite silent film of mine, it’s still odd to see Richard Bartemeiss playing a Chinese merchant. This was Broken Blossoms, one of the saddest films I ever saw
In the 1925 version of The Lost World, white actor Jules Cowles plays the Least Convincing White Actor in Blackface ever. His character is named “Zambo”. Although the Wikipedia article claims that he’s a native (South American) servant, the dialogue he’s given in the intertitles is pretty clearly supposed to be “black” accented (although some modern versions use more generic dialogue). It’s pretty clearly a white guy with swarthy makeup slathered onto him. He’s not very convincing as a South American native, either, though.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0184801/mediaviewer/rm3129358336/?ref_=nm_ph_1_1
Weird thing – in some scenes his arm is in a sling, as if he sprained or broke it, but it’s never explained how this happened. The movie is considered over 95% complete these days, after the film archives o the world were scoured for the missing scenes, but I haven’t seen anything to explain this. Or some other scenes in the film – like the one where Professor Challenger seems to think he’s lost his hat.