It’s been pointed out that he ends up with Jennifer Love Hewitt at the end, but I also want to point out that Jackie Chan also had a scene where a caucasian blonde woman was throwing herself at him and ripping off his pants after he sang the sex machine song.
And if there were any meaningful difference in the relative visibility of each group, that would be relevant. There isn’t, so it’s not.
Well, actually, the complaint is both that Asian guys don’t get to make it with white women and that they don’t get to make it with any women.
The point you bring up about problems in the media do exist, and I would never try to diminish their significance. (Like, why is it that any comedy series with a cast that’s more than 50% African American gets shunted to UPN.) However, relationships between African-American men and non- African-American women do have some degree of visibility. Without even digging into imDB, I can come up with “Ally McBeal”, “Sex And The City” - though that was a Very Special Episode about interracial relationships, so maybe it doesn’t count, and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” (which kind of started the whole thing). Latino male/ non-Latino female relationships are a little harder to spot, but I would point out that they have a pedigree going back to Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. But Asian men are hard enough to spot, and are generally portrayed in sexless roles.
As far as the Jackie Chan movies cited, the ones that I would consider the best evidence would be “The Tuxedo” and “Shanghai Noon”, though in the latter, the idea that Jackie Chan did it with the Native American princess was played up for laughs, and he was comically awkward in the morning. A number of his other films were Hong Kong imports, and I’m going to take a stab and say that Hong Kong films don’t have the same problem showing Asian male sexuality.
This really is appallingly ignorant. It’s only “just a stereotype” because it doesn’t affect your own culture. And it is a wee bit troubling when one of the few portrayals of your ethnic group on television is in a stereotyped role. It would be like if there were only one African American character on TV and he was a gang-banger. I agree that the Simpsons is satire and the characters are intended to be broad caricatures. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Apu is one of the only identifiably South Asian characters on television and he was, at least in the early going, just a stereotype: the Indian convenience store clerk, talking with a strange accent, worshipping strange idols, and shortchanging his customers.
And why is it that every time there’s talk of increasing representation of non-white people in anything, there’s talk of “quotas”? I mean, really. Is it too much to suggest that a hospital drama set in San Francisco perhaps have at least one Asian regular cast member? Have the people writing these shows actually been to a hospital? Asians (of all types, East Asians, South Asians, Taiwanese, Japanese, Indian, Korean) are all over the place. Is it really asking a lot that an Asian be included in the cast?
Living in So. Cal., I’ve seen a good number of Korean/Chinese/Filipina/etc girls going out with non K/C/F/etc guys. I mean look at where we live. It’s not like there are 1 billion Asian guys living here in the U.S. OTOH, there are many times more non-Asian guys living here and for those of us of Asian decent who grew up here, the culture is established where whites tend to be more attractive.
At some point or another, I wondered if Asian girls felt animosity towards Asian guys 'cuz they worried that they would act like their fathers, who were typically seen as strict guys. However, I gave up on that notion when I realized that they AREN’T the only girls out there and it’s nice to “mix it up” with other gals out there. 
OMG I just dragged my mouse cursor over the smiley in the spoiler box!
Anyone ever watch that show Earth: Final Conflict? It featured a Von Flores, a Filipino. His character was named Sandoval, and he was an agent for the aliens. Due to the alien conditioning he was definitely sexless (in fact, one episode showed his then insane wife, who he basically dumped after becoming an alien agent).
The Last Emperor detailed the life and times of the last emperor of China; at one point in his history, he was very much the playboy.
Smallville has, on one hand, Kristin Kreuk, who is a total hottie that several characters lust over. On the male side have been several guys. They all died.
Barney Miller has Sergeant Yemana. Okay, not a good example…
How about Brandon Lee? Granted, he died, rather than his characters (in most cases, anyway…)…
There aren’t that many differences, while there may be a stereotypical Greek and Spanish Look, there is a broad variety of skin tones, hair colors, and eye colors that it is very difficult to say. For example, my grandfather was a native Greek and he was able to pass as a German. He was 6ft 5, blond, blue eyed, and very fair skinned. I’ve met Spaniards with just about every different hair color and eye color found in the Caucausoid race.
To further the hijack, it’s usually easier for me (a white person) to tell the difference between a Korean and a Japanese person (or Chinese or Thai or Vietnamese) than it is for me to tell the difference between a German or French person (or Greek or Italian or Russian).
Legend: The Bruce Lee Story depicts his real life relationship with and eventual marriage to a white American woman. Interestingly, the movie does touch on some of the issues raised by the OP: his future wife’s girlfriends express disapproval when they hear she is dating a Chinese guy (without actually having met him yet). Also, his mother-in-law to be is opposed to the relationship, although IIRC she comes around eventually.
I don’t know much about Bruce Lee but in this movie he is depicted as being charismatic and I don’t doubt all kinds of women found him attractive. It would have been interesting to see what kind of film roles he would have landed if his career (and life) hadn’t ended so early.
He never really looked Asian though. Granted all I’ve seen him in is The Crow but I honestly think he looks like Jim Carrey more than anyone else.
I don’t watch the show so maybe this has been dealt with in the scripts already, but can we be sure that Hoshi isn’t Korean? I mean sure, she’s got a Japanese name, but there are plenty of ethnic Koreans who were born and raised in Japan. Or the character might be the product of a Korean/Japanese marriage, a not unheard-of combination today and one likely to be even less controversial in the utopian near-future of Star Trek.
Renee Zellweger plays Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’ Diary. She is a Texan-American playing a British woman. This suggests to me that the writers feel that all Caucasian cultures are just alike.
That’s bunk. When a part is cast, the casting directors/producers (not the writers) look for these things, in order: 1) Are they hot?, 2) Can we afford them?, 3) Can they act?, 4) Do they look close enough to fit the part? What makes the argument doubly spurious is that I’ve never seen any indication on “Enterprise” that Hoshi’s “culture” is at all relevant – she’s interchangeable with any other Earth woman on the series. They just have to make sure whenever they show her family they use the right tatami & bamboo background.
So it’s relevant when it supports your argument, but not relevant otherwise. I’m sure that if The Powers That Be in Hollywood were to cast a Pakistani man in a leading role and then point to that saying “See? Asians are adequately represented in the media!” there’d be no end of uproar…
…and if you’d bothered to make an attempt to understand my message instead of just calling me ignorant because I don’t agree with you 100%, you’d understand that I believe that the uproar would be completely justified.
For starters, having a hospital drama set in San Francisco with no Asian-Americans in the cast is patently absurd. So that’s a terrible example; even if I wanted to defend that, it’s indefensible. But take any other high-profile show – the most obviously popular “all-white” sitcom is “Friends,” for example. Would it be asking a lot to include “an Asian” in the cast of that series? No, but it would be completely missing the point. If they were to start a new season with their new half-Japanese half-Indian friend Akira Shakar as a regular cast member, is that a positive change?
Of course not. It’s “The Real World” and “Star Trek” casting by the numbers. We need at least one black person, one Asian (any type will do), at least one Jewish person, two white people, and we desperately need to find a gay Latino. That’s every bit as absurd as having a show set in SF with no Asians, or a show set in LA with no Latinos. The reason that I object to the OP is that it’s looking for quantity, not quality. Doing just enough to guarantee that your show/movie/whatever is “ethnically diverse” doesn’t really help anyone.
Just one realistic (not without fault) Japanese man on the cast of a show, who doesn’t spend the entire series talking about how everyone hates him because he’s Japanese, who doesn’t perform flawlessly in every situation, and is on the show because it makes sense for him to be on it and because he’s an interesting character, instead of because some special interest group demands X number of ethnic minorities on every television series or movie, would be worth 1000 of the “Asian-spotting” instances that are being attempted in this thread.
You treat ethnicity and culture as if they’re freely interchangeable, but I want to talk about culture. Don’t even try to presume that the only reason I don’t have a problem with it is because “it doesn’t affect my own culture.” What part of my own culture is not “affected” by “The Simpsons?” I’m Christian, for one, so of course I get the overwhelmingly postive role model of Ned Flanders. I’m white, lower-middle-class, from suburbia, so of course I closely identify with Homer Simpson. I’m a comic book geek, so I get the Comic Book Guy. I’m southern, so I get the white trash guy with no teeth and the huge family.
Nobody on “The Simpsons” is portrayed in a 100% positive light. That’s not what the series is trying to do; it began as a satire. It wasn’t designed to offend, exactly, but it definitely wasn’t designed to be fair and positive either. They didn’t introduce the character of Apu in order to promote a more ethnically diverse cast; they introduced him because the stereotype is that American convenience stores are predominantly owned & operated by Indians or Pakistanis. The only way that I would find “The Simpsons” genuinely offensive is if they’d singled out Apu as the only ridiculous stereotypical character. They didn’t; everybody gets equal ridicule.
Everything that Jackie Chan does in most of his movies was played up for laughs. That’s his schtick. Most of his other films are Hong Kong imports, some of which I already mentioned. In more than a few, City Hunter in particular, he’s portrayed as lecherous and misogynistic, because the character in the original manga is lecherous and misogynistic. Is that “problem” male sexuality, or is it good enough to show Asian guys getting any no matter what the situation?
But since you’re just looking for numbers, apparently, there, we’ve found it. “The Tuxedo.” I haven’t seen any arguments against that one, yet. So we’ve found the one example of an Asian man getting the white girl at the end. Hollywood is free! Racism is no more! I’m glad that’s over.
I grew up in a huge asian community but on TV all i saw was Mako from the old MASH episodes and he looked like he wasn’t someone you’d wanna fuck with.
And I
JThunder said:
No, Daniel Hae Kim was not portrayed as a romantic interest. The reason I mentioned him, was that he could have been. He played a sharp, ruthless man who took charge and went after what he wanted. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lylah and Gavin had turned into antagonistic bedmates, using sex as a weapon. Mr. Kim’s performance was a lot different than most other performances of Asian males that I can remember. I believe he got a role that could have very easily gone to a white male actor. Besides that, he was handsome enough to have pulled off the role, IMHO.
It tells me the studio wanted a big name, and didn’t care about nationality. Plus the author let loose of too much creative control, notice JK Rowling has everyone being British. The suits don’t care about german vs. Japanese culture wise, they just want to make the most money, and usually that involves random white guy boning chicks from all over the globe.
You and the point are just ships passing in the night aintcha? My point is that there’s no meaningful difference between the visibility of Asians of different stripes (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, etc.), certainly not when it comes to non-stereotypical roles. Heck, if you want to extend “Asia” further to include the Middle East, it’s almost unheard of to find a character that’s identifiably Arabic who isn’t a terrorist of some kind.
**
If by “quantity” you mean, “looking for a number of non-stereotypical portrayals of Asians and Asian-American males”, yeah, guilty as charged. There aren’t very many, so when the number you’re dealing with is something close to zero, increasing quantity is important.
And the casting choices certainly helps those actors of Asian extraction trying to find roles in Hollywood, as well as the various Asian communities in the U.S. who don’t have to only see stereotypes when they turn on the TV.
The point is that those type of non-stereotyped characters are few and far between. I’m not saying that they have to be expounding ethnic or cultural pride every other line, or be above fault or reproach, but it would be nice to see one who wasn’t the geeky, nerdy guy, or the inscrutable sage, or the martial arts master.
And if there weren’t positive portrayals of the other types of characters elsewhere, that point might hold some water. But hey, the only identifiably South Asian character on TV today that I can think of is Apu and he is clearly a stereotype. And in the early going of the series, his only role was to run the Kwik-E-Mart. He didn’t interact with other characters outside of the Kwik-E-Mart, and was basically just there to talk with a funny accent, shortchange the customers, and make random references to Hinduism. He’s developed and grown as a character, for which I am grateful.
If the only portrayals of your ethnic group (and let’s grant that South Asian is an ethnicity) are stereotypes, that’s a problem.
And let’s not even get started on Krusty the Clown and how he disgraces Jews by virtue of being popular culture’s most visible Jew.
Telling you, man, The Simpsons isn’t a show meant to portray reality.
“Why don’t you lay off the Asians, Lou.”
I don’t think I’m saying that it is. I’m not even disputing that the show is full of stereotypes. But for those offended by the stereotypical Christian Ned Flanders, there’s a whole host of positive portrayals of Christians and Christian theology, and a very well-moneyed media machine that keeps those coming. For those who view Krusty as an offensive Jewish stereotype, well, there’s a whole slew of shows with Jewish characters to choose from (e.g. Ross and Monica on “Friends”). Those who want to view non-stereotypical African-American characters have a host of shows to choose from, of which “Alias”, “24”, and “ER” come immediately to mind. And so on, and so on.
But where do I go if, for example, I want to see non-stereotypical South Asian characters? Nowhere. I have the choice of the stereotype Apu, or a whole slew of shows where people who look like me are essentially invisible. So perhaps its not really surprising that defending the Apu stereotype on the grounds that the whole show is full of stereotypes doesn’t really make me feel better.
And, for more reading on the issue:
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/entertainment/television/5011415.htm
That’s pretty cool, are they any books about Asians in the military during the civil war? were they segregated like they were later (during WW2)?