(500) Days of Bummer

http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/65085025.html

I know I've said this before but just shut up and listen (to quote L.M. once again). Not really, I just want to rant. There's this scene in (500) Days of Summer where the two lovers are frolicking in Ikea and lying in a bed and they look over and there's a Chinese family staring at them. One of them (I can't remember which) says, "There's a Chinese family in our kitchen/bedroom/something." That really pissed me off.

Up until that point, I was enjoying the movie. Oh, so indi! So dramatic! So fun! So romantic! But after that, I just couldn't. It HAD to be an Asian family staring at them. And they HAD to comment on the fact that they were Asian. Just grow the fuck up.

There's a Japanese character in Breakfast at Tiffany's played by a white guy (Rooney). He is portrayed as a slightly perverted, clownish idiot who both annoys perfect, White Holly while demanding rent and, at the same time, alluding to the possibility of him raping her at any point. It kind of tainted the movie to me as well.

Some years later (or at the time... I can't remember), there were complaints about the portrayal of that singular Asian character. I think the portrayal of the Chinese family in (500) Days of Summer is very similar to the portrayal of the Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I don't know if it's racism. I don't think it's racism. I think it was a bunch of White guys, sitting in a room, saying to each other, "Haw haw, imagine if we put this really weird, slanty-eyed Asian family in there, staring at the White folk. How hilar would that be? Man, Asians are so weird."

To summarise: Asians are always portrayed as these side projects. One dimensional characters who offer nothing more than a face to laugh at and a culture to satirize. Asians are never the main character in Western cinema. Or characters with some depth. It's always other ethnicities that get swept up in romance or go on wild adventures etc. If you look behind the curtain of stereotype, you will find something interesting. Not just culture but individuality. We're not all the same.

I keep editing this post and adding more crap but... This is probably the only reason I occasionally like watching Asian cinema. You get all the flavours of the rainbow. Asians portrayed as badasses, good people, bad people, sluts, ingenues, gangsters, family men/women, brothers, sisters, businessmen, artists. It's refreshing to see Asians not all clumped into one big mass.

J