In response to February's Oscar ceremony hosted by Chris
Rock, the sixth edition of C3 (Conference for Creative Content) at the 32nd Los
Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival added a free panel: "Yellow Nerds and
Dongs @ The Oscars or Can't You Take a Joke?: The Serious Business of
Diversity in Hollywood." Presented at the Japanese American National
Museum in Little Tokyo on Saturday, April 25, the panel included actor/activist
George Takei, producer Janet Yang, documentary producer/director
Arthur Dong, L.A. Times writer Marc Bernardin, Manager of Creative Talent
Development & Inclusion at Disney Emerlynn Lampitoc and co-chair of the
Asian Pacific American Media Coalition Daniel Mayeda.
Moderator David Magdael,
co-director of the film festival, commented that this is a "pivotal
moment" and that Asian Americans are "just tired; we can't be the
butt of jokes any more." Although there had been previous
complaints, Asian Americans must now find "strength in numbers"
because "if we don't speak up, we will be erased."
Yang ("The People vs.
Larry Flynt" and "Disney High School Musical: China") and Dong
("The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor" and "Hollywood
Chinese") were two Academy members who spearheaded the letter campaign to
the Academy after the Oscars. Yang noted that "social media is our
ally." The post-Oscar letter was "a light bulb moment in [her] life" and can be a "defining moment."
Dong, who came up with the
panel title, added that he has been watching the Oscars for over 60 years.
"It is still something I've always looked forward to." Yet this year,
when he watched with his 11-year-old boy, he was glad that he didn't have to
explain the accountant and child labor joke because his son, didn't quite get
it. However, when their surname was later used as a joke by Sacha Baron
Cohen (as Ali G), that was a different matter ("How come there is no
Oscar for them very hard-working little yellow people with tiny dongs? You
know—the Minions").
As Academy members, Dong
felt, "this is our organization. We know everything that gets out is
controlled ... How did it happen? We're members
and we have a right to know." Reaching out to other members wasn't
easy because the Academy is divided into branches. "This might be the
first time Academy members tried to identify us as a group." In all, he
and others were able to identify and contact 55 Asian American members of the Academy. Of that, only 25 signed the letter.
Yang noted that in the
letter, they approached their Academy as colleagues with very strong points.
They wanted to know "what concrete steps would the Academy take" to prevent this from happening in the future. According to Yang and Dong, the
original intent was to present this as a private membership matter, but the
letter was leaked to Variety.
While some have portrayed the
American stereotype of Asians as "relatively bland," Takei noted a
stereotype of studious and inscrutable can "overnight become dangerous and
life-changing," citing the internment of Japanese Americans during World
War II.
At that time, the Attorney
General of California, Earl Warren noted, "because we have had no sabotage
and no fifth column activity ... that means that none have been planned for
us ... This is the most ominous sign in our whole situation."
Remembering this, Takei
commented, "absence of evidence was the evidence." Because of
his experience living in the internment camps, he said he would always fight
demeaning and dehumanizing stereotypes to the end.
Bernardin wrote a commentary
on the continued whitewashing of Asian characters, ("Hollywood's Glaring Problem: White Actors Playing Asian Character"),
providing an emotional analogy:
Look at it this way: Take two
children. One of them has 1,000 action figures, while the other has just one.
If you take a single figure away from that first child, it is possible, if not
probable, that he or she won't even notice it's gone. And even if he or she did
complain, any sane person would explain to that child the virtues of sharing,
of generosity.Now, if you turned to that
child with the solitary toy and tried to take it away, that child would be
devastated. That toy might well be his or her lifeline to imagination, to hope,
to the idea that play could unlock something within that he or her didn't even
know existed.
There are so few roles
specifically written for ethnic Asians in Hollywood, that it is when one goes
to a white actor, it is soul-crushing.
Bernardin, who is black, said that having Chris Rock as the host as part of "OscarsSoWhite
Part II" made him swell with pride, but ultimately, he felt that Rock
dropped the ball by not only making "ill-advised and ill-conceived
jokes," but because those jokes weren't even funny. On Hollywood
movie makers, Bernardin added, "It is damaging in a fundamental way ... that
the only color they care about is green."
"It was a really lazy,
stupid stereotype," Mayeda commented. "The telecast was the second
time, this issue was going to be raised" but he felt "it was pretty
much black and white."
Some studios are more
pro-active. Lampitoc noted that Disney decided to use
"inclusion" instead of diversity because it is a more powerful world.
Disney wants "authenticity" to tell "stories that no one else
has." She explained: "We do track representation in the front of the
camera and behind the camera. It's created a dialogue between executives."
Yang felt that with the growth of
China, "we will definitely see the force of China." This is a large
market and movies need to be made "accessible to their audiences."
Chinese concerns have showed interest in buying studios.
Mayeda asserted that
"doing the right thing isn't going to be enough [for executives]. We have
to demonstrate that they can make more money by being diverse."
"That's the homework we
have to do," Takei added. "We're a smaller minority; that puts the
onus that much more [on us]."
The problem is that
"America's amazing when it comes to xenophobia," Bernardin said.
"It's like our superpower."
And that very superpower prevents
ethnic Asian actors from playing roles with superpowers, and getting parts in
American productions. Yang noted several Asian American men, such as Daniel
Henney, are making careers in Asia. Henney was born in the U.S. to a
Korean American mother and Irish American father, and originally spoke no
Korean. He has been in Korean dramas, winning the 2007 Korean Association of
Film Critics' Best New Actor award for "My Father." Henney also voiced Tadashi Hamada in Disney's "Big Hero 6." Yang felt it
was "harder for male actors" and that because of the whitewashing,
"these men could not be stars in America."
Yang concluded, "There
is a community (of Asian Americans) and people are watching. We can prove that
diversity sells." The panel agreed that there needs to be organized efforts
made in the future through established channels and social media.
