Shortly after I wrote about a movie by Thai director Wych Kaosayananda, “Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever”, my cousin in the United States wrote me an e-mail. He said he doesn’t know anything about this Thai director and he hasn’t seen the film.
“I probably would not see it because it’s just another Asian female and white male pairing,” he commented
Well, there is always a good reason not to see a film. He also said that there is a growing gripe inside the Asian American community about the pairing of Asian female and white males (hereafter called AF/WM) portrayed in the media.
The Hollywood AF/WM formula includes “Tuxedo”, “Rush Hour I and II”, “Shanghai Noon”, “Shanghai Knights”, “Romeo Must Die”, “Wayne’s World”, “Year of the Dragon” and “The Touch”, to name just a few.
Another thing the Asian American community doesn’t feel comfortable about is the unrealistic nature of those films compared to white male and female stars. Think about it:
In “Rush Hour I & II”, Jackie Chan never gets the girl. In short, there is no romantic female lead character for him at all.
In another Jackie Chan flick, “Shanghai Noon”, Jackie Chan never has a love scene with his heroine, Lucy Liu.In a sequel, “Shanghai Knights”, his sidekick Owen Wilson is romantically involved with Jackie Chan’s sister in the film. And Wilson is a white man. In “Romeo Must Die”, a Jet Li movie, there is a lead female Aaliyah, an African-American girl. They flirted but there was no kissing in the story.
In most films, the lead characters are always blessed with virtue: they get rid of the bad guys or they save the world, so shouldn’t they get some love?
Take another example: Chow Yun Fat, who was once (and for some, still is) a darling, has never had a romantic love interest after entering the Hollywood studios.
In his Hollywood debut “The Replacement Killer”, his role was absolutely free of romantic moments. Perhaps the closest was in “Anna and The King” with Jodie Foster.
On the other side of the coin, the movie and the book “Joy Luck Club” portrays Asian males as materialistic and chauvinistic unlike the white males whom Asian female characters consider as ideal mates.
So why does Hollywood always match white males (or non-Asians) with Asian females? It’s interesting to study this phenomenon. One simple assumption we would take is that Hollywood is trying to expand its viewer base.
When Jackie Chan’s movie premiered here, Thai people – especially old fans of his kung-fu movies – didn’t really care if he brought along farang characters but they’d say: “Hey! Let’s go see Cheng Long’s film (the name Thai people call him).”
Before his Hollywood days, only Jackie Chan’s films dominated the box-office in Thailand during Chinese New Year.
Having Asian characters in films should help Hollywood maintain its grip over the celluloid world especially when Asian cultures have been rising in the film industry.
The arrival of Asian superstars like Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, or Michelle Yeoh can open a new chapter for Hollywood, paving the way for the big studios to offer some new faces in the films – if not new plots or story lines.
Hollywood may have to work harder and offer more quality for multinational audiences. First and foremost, it is the studio’s task to make the characters played by Asian stars more rounded rather than flat.
What has been portrayed in Hollywood flicks are mostly updated versions of similarly themes in movies made a decade ago.
The difference is only the later works are being advanced with more sophisticated pre-and post production techniques.
The big studios have also done their best to avoid stereotyping Asian characters. If their aim is to broaden their audience base, they do have to bear in mind that the audience knows best when it comes to their own people.
Featuring flat characters and stereotyped Asians will certainly make the films boring to non-Western audiences.
One last thing that may please the Asian American community in the US is that Hollywood must prove that the Asian-white pair formula films can be portrayed in all genres of films, including romance.
The Asian stars have to kiss and be engaged in some sex scenes just like their Hollywood counterparts.
The audience would love to watch some big action on the street and in the bedroom too
Published on Mar 15, 2003
Showing posts with label Asian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asian. Show all posts
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Seeking the truth in a world of lies
Like it or not, Reader's Digest has documented certain aspects of our dishonesty. Thai people ranked first in an Asian-wide survey of nine countries in the category about the tendency to "exaggerate our personal qualities and abilities that appear in our resumes".
While we ranked high in three (out of 10) categories (returning excess change to cashiers, returning a lost wallet, and informing security guards if witnessing shoplifting), we fell below average in seven others. According to the survey, Thais habitually lie to tax-collectors, keep quiet if they know the lover of their best friend is being unfaithful, and steal towels from hotels.
Over-claiming your ability on a resume may be normal practice in today's society, but any which way you look at it, a lie is still a lie.
But the alarming issue here is not that we rank higher or lower than our Asian counterparts when it comes to honesty: perhaps a better question to ask ourselves is whether we as a society do enough to recognise and honour honest people.
We often praise people we deem successful but tend to ignore the means they used to achieve their prosperity. Too often we turn a blind eye to dishonest acts rather than show our disapproval.
We don't need to look far to see obvious examples.
The news that dominates the front pages of our daily newspapers is largely about dishonesty. (Remember Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's famous "honest mistakes" and the countless corruption cases of various government agencies that are never resolved?)
Perhaps we are too familiar with such lies. Speaking about the news, how about the recent alleged leaks of the national university-entrance examination? And let's hope we have not already forgotten yesterday's outcome of the high-profile murder case of Duang(chalerm) Yoobamrung. The ruling should come as no surprise given the fact that the prosecutors and investigating police gave the court so little to work with.
Perhaps we are living in a world of lies? Morning to night we face situations that encourage us to tell lies. Parents lie to their children, managers lie to their staff, friends lie to each other, and politicians lie compulsively to the public. Perhaps there are occasions when we need to tell a little white lie, but the question is how far we stretch it and at what point we lose our sense of humanity and sell our souls?
To some people, exaggerating on a resume is not really lying, while others bluntly adopt a "so-what" attitude.
They may think that lying on a resume doesn't harm anyone and is therefore okay. This way of thinking becomes the norm in a society in which people are taught to achieve success at any cost. The end is to succeed, and the means don't really matter. We have too many "good" examples of businessmen who have cheated to build huge conglomerates, and there are so many liars in politics that it's beyond a joke: they outnumber the tiny community of the genuinely honest.
Children are taught to be good, but they hardly learn the meaning of goodness. All too often parents put tremendous pressure on their children to succeed using unhealthy benchmarks of success. And when children are told to succeed by any means, it should be no surprise that they adopt any means to do so.
It is a vicious circle: dishonesty breeds a dishonest society. No one will ever know how many lies were told in Duang's legal battle, though in that case it's not the lies that matter: it's the people in the justice system we trust to decide what is a lie and what is the truth.
Our besetting problem is not how many lies we tell others but rather how little time we spend being true to ourselves.
Published on Mar 27, 2004
While we ranked high in three (out of 10) categories (returning excess change to cashiers, returning a lost wallet, and informing security guards if witnessing shoplifting), we fell below average in seven others. According to the survey, Thais habitually lie to tax-collectors, keep quiet if they know the lover of their best friend is being unfaithful, and steal towels from hotels.
Over-claiming your ability on a resume may be normal practice in today's society, but any which way you look at it, a lie is still a lie.
But the alarming issue here is not that we rank higher or lower than our Asian counterparts when it comes to honesty: perhaps a better question to ask ourselves is whether we as a society do enough to recognise and honour honest people.
We often praise people we deem successful but tend to ignore the means they used to achieve their prosperity. Too often we turn a blind eye to dishonest acts rather than show our disapproval.
We don't need to look far to see obvious examples.
The news that dominates the front pages of our daily newspapers is largely about dishonesty. (Remember Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's famous "honest mistakes" and the countless corruption cases of various government agencies that are never resolved?)
Perhaps we are too familiar with such lies. Speaking about the news, how about the recent alleged leaks of the national university-entrance examination? And let's hope we have not already forgotten yesterday's outcome of the high-profile murder case of Duang(chalerm) Yoobamrung. The ruling should come as no surprise given the fact that the prosecutors and investigating police gave the court so little to work with.
Perhaps we are living in a world of lies? Morning to night we face situations that encourage us to tell lies. Parents lie to their children, managers lie to their staff, friends lie to each other, and politicians lie compulsively to the public. Perhaps there are occasions when we need to tell a little white lie, but the question is how far we stretch it and at what point we lose our sense of humanity and sell our souls?
To some people, exaggerating on a resume is not really lying, while others bluntly adopt a "so-what" attitude.
They may think that lying on a resume doesn't harm anyone and is therefore okay. This way of thinking becomes the norm in a society in which people are taught to achieve success at any cost. The end is to succeed, and the means don't really matter. We have too many "good" examples of businessmen who have cheated to build huge conglomerates, and there are so many liars in politics that it's beyond a joke: they outnumber the tiny community of the genuinely honest.
Children are taught to be good, but they hardly learn the meaning of goodness. All too often parents put tremendous pressure on their children to succeed using unhealthy benchmarks of success. And when children are told to succeed by any means, it should be no surprise that they adopt any means to do so.
It is a vicious circle: dishonesty breeds a dishonest society. No one will ever know how many lies were told in Duang's legal battle, though in that case it's not the lies that matter: it's the people in the justice system we trust to decide what is a lie and what is the truth.
Our besetting problem is not how many lies we tell others but rather how little time we spend being true to ourselves.
Published on Mar 27, 2004
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