Charlie Tabesh, he’s the Senior Vice President of Programming, contacted me. They’ve done similar series in the last two summers and he had initiated it. He had wanted to do a series on Asian images in Hollywood film. As part of his research he came across my book, so he just gave me a call and asked me if I’d be interested in doing it and I said yes I would.
What kind of impact are you hoping this series will have?
Well, I’m a professor so everything I do is just to get people talking and thinking about things. I think too often, and especially in the Asian American community, the discussion of movies comes down to whether or not a film has a positive representation or a negative representation. And I just don’t think that’s a very fruitful discussion. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a positive representation. I think there are images that are very clearly demeaning to us. But I don’t think there is such a thing as a positive image because just turning a negative image upside down isn’t necessarily a positive thing, it just means that it kind of confirms the logic in the first place. For example, if we’re talking about it in terms of gender, I think the women’s movement discovered that just proving that women can do things men do in itself just doesn’t create a positive thing, right?
So maybe we should phrase it more as wanting to see complex representations of Asian Americans?
Yeah, nuanced representations. It’s a question of a larger system. The other problem is that to say a positive representation or a positive image suggests that we’re just waiting for one image to do the trick. That’s not gonna do the trick. The problem isn’t that there are some Asian women portrayed as highly exotic, sexual creatures, because there are women who engage in their sexuality that way. The problem is that it is the only way that women’s sexuality is represented. It’s not as if one positive image is gonna solve everything either, it’s a larger pattern that we need to look at.
In interviews, a lot of Asian American actors have said they’ve taken flak for accepting stereotypical roles or roles that are “whitewashed.” And some of those actors say that roles are limited, they need the work, or that representing for an entire community is a bit overwhelming. What are your thoughts on the obstacles of Asian American actors and their responses to this kind of criticism?
I think that they can speak for themselves and have quite eloquently. But in some ways I feel like it doesn’t answer the question directly, even though I don’t think that question is always a helpful question. If you say to someone, “How can you perform this role? It demeans Asian Americans" and they say, “Well, I have to eat,” it doesn’t really answer the question. I mean, it’s a fair response, but it doesn’t really answer the question. Or somebody says, “Well, if I didn’t take the role, somebody else would.” Well, okay, so someone else would, but the fact of the matter is you did. It’s very complicated. The truth of the matter is that very few actors have any kind of clout. The nature of filmmaking is such that even if you have a lot of clout, even if you, for example, got a script scene rewritten, things happen. Things happen on set, things happen in the editing booth that once you’ve done you’re part, are out of your control.
If anyone is responsible, I wouldn’t place it with the actors. I would say the problems are that good roles aren’t being created and that industry executives don’t find it in their interests to promote those kinds of roles. And also frankly I think it’s a matter of clout, the relative political and economic clout of the Asian American community. Even if we’re the fastest growing minority, compared with other minority groups in the United States Asian Americans consume, I don’t have to tell you this because you’re trying to sell a magazine, less media. A high percentage of African Americans go to the movies, whereas a smaller percentage of Asian Americans go to the movies. We don’t have that much clout at the box office. If we all walk away from a movie, that’s not much impact to the bottom line. I don’t think the industry has a responsibility to do better by the Asian American community. Maybe they have a moral responsibility but they don’t owe the Asian American community anything. The industry needs to be convinced that it’s the right thing to do from a business standpoint. And as soon as it is, I have no doubt that they will.
This retrospective is the third in this TCM series, the first two focusing on African American images and gay images in Hollywood. How important is it for underrepresented or misrepresented groups to be aware of each other’s struggles?
That’s a very good question. I think that the different groups tend to focus on their relationship to the dominant culture and not enough on the relationship to each other’s cultures or to each other’s issues. That’s just one more way that the dominant culture maintains its dominance as it were. Speaking for myself, for example, I first realized this when a colleague of mine when I was in grad school said this to me. He was somebody who was studying Chicanos in cinema. Basically he said that for me to be able to get a job I had to prove that I could master the kind of established canon of film history as well as my specialty. And he had to do the same thing. So we were both spending our time on our specialty but also working on that kind of mainstream canon and we discovered that a lot of really fruitful progress could be made if we talked to each other [about each other’s specialties] and compared notes that way. Those questions weren’t being asked because that’s not the way that courses and curriculum and things like that were structured. So even when my work was something that was critical of mainstream film history for excluding Asian Americans, or not fully considering Asian Americans, to articulate that argument I had to be able to talk about what that mainstream version of film history was. So I was supposedly critiquing it but in some ways still strengthening it, which I guess is another way of saying the thing I said earlier about positive images. You may think you’re creating a positive image but it seems to just end up giving more power to thing you’re trying to expose.
Have you seen any Asian American films or characters recently that have really struck a chord with you or that you’re excited about?
[laughs] I really love “Harold and Kumar.” I really love those films. I think they’re really smart, I think they’re really funny. Most importantly, they’re funny and entertaining. But even down to the way they’re marketed. When the first “Harold and Kumar” movie came out, the trailers were really funny because they said, “Starring that guy from ‘Van Wilder’ and starring the other guy from ‘American Pie.’” They acknowledged that you’ve seen these guys before, you have no idea who they are, but that’s okay. And I think everybody in the Asian American audience saw those ads and were like, “Yeah, I know who that is, that’s Kal Penn. That’s John Cho.” So we were all like, “Yeah, we wanna go see this.” And everybody else is kind of like, “Oh yeah, okay, those guys.” And I think they don’t claim to be any bigger than it is. It’s a very self-aware film and to me that’s a perfect example of a film that doesn’t try to be a positive image. It directly confronts a lot of stereotypes about Asian Americans and they directly contradict most of them, but not by taking themselves seriously.
It's interesting you bring up "Harold and Kumar" because you have this great quote from "Screening Asian Americans" that says not all Asian American characters created by non-Asian Americans are necessarily racist. Some people find issue with the fact that the writers of “Harold and Kumar” are two White Jewish Americans. What are your thoughts on that?
All other things being equal, do I think that an Asian American writer would have more insight into the characters than a non-Asian American writer? Sure. But, all other things are not equal and to say that only Asian Americans would have insight into Asian American characters would be ridiculous. That would be like saying women can’t write men characters and men can’t write female characters and blacks can’t write white characters. And obviously a sensitive writer, a sensitive artist, can portray another race, another gender, another orientation, another nationality with sensitivity. Is the fact that somebody’s making “Harold and Kumar" movies is that preventing an Asian American writer from doing their thing? If somebody wants to say that they can do better, then great. Go do it.
There was a really great article comparing the same-sex marriage struggle to the fight against anti-miscegenation laws in the 