What images do you have about Asians or Asian Americans? Do you think they are laundry-men or owners of supermarkets? Or Asian students all are good at Mathematics and science? And where did you get those images of Asians and Asian Americans? You might get those from your direct experiences and media representations.
We can watch a bunch of racial/ethnic stereotypes in Hollywood movies. In the past, images of Asian Americans were portrayed as urban gangsters and criminals in a drama genre, such as gangster movies and serious movies dealing with social problems.The Killing Field (1984) is the good example that Asians were represented as dark criminals. For a long history of Hollywood films, the portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans were negative, and the number of Asian roles of mainstream movies lacked. However, these days, extremely negative images are changing to somehow positive and familiar ones, even though Asian characters in Hollywood movies are still just supporting and negative characters compared to majority groups and even other ethnic groups.
Lately, some comedy movies represent Asian images. Starting with the Rush Hour series (1998-2007), The Hangover series (2009-2011) and the Harold and Kumar series (2004-2011) are significant examples to show Asian casts acting in comedy movies. These movies got box-office success, and influenced more familiar Asians and Asian Americans’ images. Among them, Harold and Kumar is the significant movie because Eastern Asian (Korean American) and Indian American are the main characters. These two actors John Jo (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar) played very good comedy scenes, but this movie uses the stereotypes of Asians to make a laugh as well as other multiracial comedy movies. In order to examine how this movie makes racial jokes, I want to introduce some scenes of this movie.
In the second movie of the series, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008), these guys were misunderstood terrorists in a flight and sent to Guantanamo. FBI agents called their parents to Guantanamo. As we said, the main character Harold is Korean American, but the agents bring a Chinese interpreter to translate their language, and the agents do not admit Harold’s parent can speak English well even though they can (Of course, because they are Asian American and have been living in US for a long time). In many cases, the English speaking issue is the most frequent misunderstanding about minority groups in US society. We can just laugh at this scene, but this scene examines that US media treat Asian Americans and even other ethnic groups as aliens or outsiders of the US community. The interesting thing is that the actor playing Harold’s father is actually a Japanese actor not Chinese or even Korean. HAHA.
The second scene is the flight scene. Harold and Kumar took an airplane, and an old lady in the plane thought that they were terrorists because they had a bomb-shaped object. This scene is the starting of this movie, after this, they were sent to Guantanamo. This scene was really funny, but we cannot ignore the racial joke to make normal citizens into terrorists. I watched many movies and television shows dealing with this issue of Middle East Asians and terrorism. I totally understand historical backgrounds of this situation, but sometimes I think that many Arabian Americans might have suffered from this misunderstanding with political issues which do not involve themselves. Of course, a comedy is just a comedy. I just want to remind the treatment of racial issue should be more careful. In addition, like Harold’s case, actually in this movie, Kumar is Indian American not Arabian American. The nationality issue sometimes is a good source of racial jokes. I think this misunderstanding, even a joke in a comedy movie, stems from ignorance about other countries and ethnicity.
Obviously, I like comedy movies because comedies deal with racial issues, but not seriously, so it should not be taken as extreamly seriously by people. In addition, I think I can accept negative stereotypes in comedy movies as just jokes. However, these small scenes contribute accumulations of stereotypes of Asians these days. Even though media do not have extreme influence to their audience, parts of the audience, including children, can be affected by those media images about minority groups.
good points, however they do point out during the interview scene with the parents that they are "not Arab but Indian" referencing the very absurdity of pinning the Arab terrorist image onto Kumar, also the translator is in fact speaking Korean but with a very obnoxious accent that makes it hard for any Korean speaker to understand
ReplyDeletebut I think the strongest points in this movie is how the titular characters break out of stereotypical molds (especially when seen in the broader context of the entire trilogy)
Kumar in the beginning is seen at work being a stereotypical office peon, quiet and subservient and taking on other people's work but at the end he stands up for himself and shows he's not just a quiet workaholic Asian man; further in the Cindy Kim narrative it shows he is the object of affection for a Korean student at his alma mater that he's at best reluctantly interested in, quote "I'll end up with Cindy Kim whether I want to or not", it doesn't show he has anything in particular against her or that she has any negative qualities, but at the same time you see in him an implicit resilience to live up to another stereotype, that he'll carry on the cycle of Korean Americans marrying other Korean Americans living a sterile life conforming to a stereotype
queue Kumar who is the fun loving slacker already rebelling against Indian stereotypes who actively sabotages his own efforts to get into medical school because he "was afraid of just being another nerdy Indian guy turned doctor", who later resolves to go onto getting into medical school not to be a stereotype or to carry on a legacy but because he finally recognises the merits of becoming one for the sake of being one, he's doing it now of his own volition and not because stereotypes and his overbearing father tell him that's his destiny
but one of the most powerful messages are when the two end up with girlfriends who are white and Latina, granted one is more of a trophy, but the other is seen as a slightly more complex character
now being trophies can contribute to a harmful discourse that the white/latina girl is an end goal for minority men, however the powerful hidden message isn't that a minority who breaks stereotypes will "win the girl", rather they are more deeply symbolic for their character development... perhaps you could argue that Maria was cast as Latina to drive that it's not "the white girl" that's the end goal but rather that they have the freedom of choice
suffice to say while the movies do a good job addressing various stereotypes in their own satirical way, they do an even better job of being color blind, or at least contributing to color blindness, that two men of color are free to live like any other American man and marry/date whomever they wish to, unbound by the "destiny" placed by what was always nothing more than one big stereotype