Apsara Gurung

It’s 2017 and I have yet to see a movie with an Asian lead that isn’t the loser or the nerd of the group and does not have a ridiculously thick Chinese accent. It’s only natural to think that there would be a movie that have cast an ethnic minority as the lead role but that is not the case in Hollywood.

 

Notorious for their white washing, Hollywood is repeatedly disregarding ethnic roles, expecting us, the consumers to accept it and be cool with it. It’s a little alarming to wrap your head around how much Hollywood refuses to acknowledge the racial diversity in the silver screen. They will try their best to make sure that the cast are all white. This is evident in the movie, ‘Aloha’ (2015) where Emma Stone was casted to play the role of Allison Ng. The best part? She was sporting golden locks and blue eyes. Nothing screams, “I’m ¼ Chinese Hawaiian” more than blonde hair and blue eyes. Classic Hollywood silver screen siren. The producers could have at least pretended to put some effort in by dying her hair darker. That way they could have at least said that they tried making her look more Asian. All of this condenses down to a never ending cycle where the director constantly casts white actors for roles that were originally intended for the ethnic minority. At this point, it is apparent that they will be able to get away with it as long as they issue out a “sincere” and a heartfelt heartfelt apology.

 

Let’s not forget about Hollywoods’ live action on Dragonball Z. Obviously, the lead role of Goku was played by Justin Chatwin, an actor of Caucasian descent. This has led me to the point where I ask myself why the directors even bother if they are just going to butcher the whole movie. I know I’m not the only one frustrated about this. It was all so blatant - the writer, Toriyama Akira was Japanese and the character, Goku, was named after the main character in an infamous Chinese story. Surely, the actor playing the role would have been Asian? Nope, not in Hollywood. It’s jarring to think the minorities makeup 40% of U.S’ population but when it comes to entertainment they are so heavily underrepresented.

 

Statistics show 93% of the Oscar nominees are white, 6% of them are black and only 1% of them are Asian. Korean-American rapper Dumbfoundead expresses the situation perfectly in his 2016 single ‘Safe’. “The other night I watched the Oscars and the roster of the only yellow men were all statues” He expresses how the only “yellow” men at the Oscars were the Oscars themselves and that he did not see any Asians being nominated. Followed by, “Fuck a bamboo ceiling, guess I gotta play the villain” here, the “bamboo ceiling” refers to the oppression Asian Americans face in their career. In this case, it leads to the Asian American actors playing the stereotypical role of a kung fu fighting villain, “mystical” beings or the worst of them all: a F.O.B which stands for “fresh off the boat” (or a “freshie”). This refers to an individual that recently immigrated from Asia to the West. They are normally presented in a negative light and are the butt of infinite racial jokes as they are new to the Western culture.

 

Stripping Asians out of their own heritage is not only a failure of the film makers but it also illustrates a mammoth amount of disrespect the creative directors have towards the Eastern culture. Not only does this display their ignorance towards the Asian heritage but also the sheer laziness and inability to portray a culture respectively; without fetishising or appropriating it.

 

This brings me to question the society that we live in. It is the 21st century; we have had our first black president, Barack Obama yet somehow, racism seems to be at its’ peak. We should be providing equal opportunities for all ethnic minorities, not regressing back to the ‘safe’ options of having an already successful, white actor/actress play most of the roles on the screen