Why is it when there’s an Asian American man depicted in the movies, we’re either the karate guy (old school), or someone’s gay tagalong (new school)?
We’re never the normal dude who just happens to be Asian.
As a normal dude who just happens to be Asian, it struck me that we are seeing the development of a new stereotype in mainstream movies: The flamboyant Asian. Hollywood is putting the Lee back in Liberace.
At least that’s what caught my radar in two recent and very heavily promoted feature films. In the movie, “She’s Just Not That Into You,” an Asian male is cast as a buddy of an Drew Barrymore who plays an ad rep for a gay newspaper. Leonardo Nam gets lots of laughs flaming it up. He’s actually an Asian born in Argentina who moved to Australia, prior to Hollywood. He may just not be into the same kind of sensitivities that some of us have.
In the movie, “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” another gay image of an Asian, played by Yoshiro Kono, at a shopaholics anonymous group meeting. Kono plays Ryuichi who loves leather and women’s shoes. Why couldn’t he just be a guy who goes crazy at Costco?
Mind you, I’m no homophobe. I’m proud to say a television report I did on AIDS was in the “AIDS Quilt movie” as one of the first reports ever on the subject in the early ‘80s. And I love those GAPA events in San Francisco.
But the movies are image factories for all of society. When I see an Asian male on screen why does his sexuality have to come into play at all?
In the Barrymore produced movie, she doesn’t play a lesbian. But the Asian guy had to be gay? He could have been straight—like Barrymore.
In “Shopaholic,” the sexuality of the Asian guy is irrelevant too. But they make the Asian guy the new vehicle to tell the old gay jokes.
As late as the ‘90s, we see the part played up as Bronson Pinchot did in “Beverly Hills Cop.” But the part has become the double-minority quota filler for race and gender. Like the minority-female anchor in TV news, we have the minority-gay joke dispenser. In the past it’s been Latin and black, and now it’s finally in full gear cycling to us.
It’s the feminization of the Asian male. Was Bruce Lee too powerful an image to sustain for the west?
I would gladly end my mild annoyance with all this if we saw full and rich characterizations of Asian Americans in mainstream films. Or if the male lead in either of the two romantic comedies were Asian.
Of course, I am exhilarated by the Oscarous “Slumdog,” “Grand Torino,” and all the offerings at the upcoming Asian American Film Festival in San Francisco. But most of those films are independents and outside of the mainstream image factory where we still seem to be going over old ground.
The fact is, we don’t have that full richness in American films quite yet. We have Asian Americans still appearing as extras in the jury box for the court room scenes. Or walking by in scrubs in a hospital scene. That image alone is a laugh considering all the Asian and Asian Amercan doctors in the country.
So is it such a breakthrough when we are the new vehicle for the gay joke in chick films?