Dick and fart jokes as indicators of minority social acceptance
I've recently posted on how community advocacy groups always manage to find some fault in portrayals of their constuencies in the media. So I'm really curious as to how they'll react to this.
via CHUD
Those portrayals are almost completely deracinated!
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
But they're leads!
JEET'S LIBERAL ANGEL
So they're not tokens. That doesn't mean they're not deracinated.
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
Would you rather they be minstrels?
JEET'S LIBERAL ANGEL
I was particularly incensed by the the East Asian character's apparent preference for white women over Asian women.
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
Do you have something against interracial relationships? Besides, the girl in the elevator was Hispanic.
JEET'S LIBERAL ANGEL
I have something against an Asian character in the grips of a false consciousness that privileges white standards of beauty. And how do you know the girl in the elevator was Hispanic?
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
She was played by Paula Garces.
JEET'S LIBERAL ANGEL
You're creeping me out.
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
The filmmakers and studio could easily have chosen to play it safe and cast white or black "name" actors for the two leads.
JEET'S LIBERAL ANGEL
Yes, I believe I've seen Dude, Where's My Car? and Friday. We should save most of our gratitude for those actors of Asian descent like Tommy Chong and Keanu Reeves who paved the way for full-blooded Asian actors to star in stoner comedies in 2004. The casting of Half-Baked* was a disgrace, perpetuating a stereotype of the "square" Asian that persists despite ganja's subcontinental origins. That said, the casting of Asians here allows the studio to sell old material in a new wrapper.
JEET'S CONSERVATIVE ANGEL
But that's not the point! This isn't some edgy film like Better Luck Tomorrow that will probably never break out of the arthouse ghetto into wide release. It's a broad comedy intended for the multiplex! This is huge progress.
*I remember seeing a review of Four Weddings and a Funeral on an Afrocentric Manhattan public access television program. The female reviewer liked it but complained about the lack of black people. As if one was in danger of tripping over black people in British upper middle class circles circa 1994. Even the proudly multicultural British present, the chances of that aren't strong. I wonder how she'd react to Chiwetel Ejiofor's handful of lines in Love Actually... She'd probably save most of her venom for his character's marriage to Keira Knightley. (Don't worry, Keira! I'll marry you!) The less said about The Guru, the better. [shudder]
UPDATE: I also remember listening to the hosts on a black format radio station - I believe it was WBLS - bitching about how Star Trek hadn't found a black actor it couldn't slap a funny forehead or a visor onto since Nichelle Nichols. And this was after Deep Space Nine, whose lead character was Commander (later promoted to Captain) Benjamin Sisko, a sighted, normal-forehead-having, single black father on the frontier of space.
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