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ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
IS HOLLYWOOD UNDERMINING CHOW YUN-FAT?
f it's a sin to make ambidexterous mayhem look stylish and virtuous, Chow Yun-Fat was once eternally damned. Blame it on the camera. Its slow-mo infatuation with his every grin and grimace in John Woo classics like A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled had made him the world's most idolized action star long before his 1996 leap to Hollywood.
Chow's Hollywood projects have undermined rather than enhanced his godlike stature.
Take The Replacement Killers (1996). Its plot was contrived and sterile to a surreal degree. Add to that the look-but-don't-touch romance with leading lady Mira Sorvino and a box office flop was assured.
The Corruptor (1998) did even less for Chow. Not only was he cast as a cop who became corrupted for no good reason, but the action was set in the kind of squalid fleshpot one sees only in the poorest of third-world countries and the Chinatowns of schoolboy fantasies. The coup de grace were jokes casting aspersions on Asian male sexuality. Strike two!
Then came Anna and the King (1999) in which Chow donned embroidered silk buffoonery to play a backward monarch held in thrall by a western schoolteacher. The reworked plot wasn't as ludicrous as the original King and I, but the remake cut Asia's top male superstar to fit the old Hollywood cosmology in which Asians are a quaint race in need of western enlightenment. Strike three!
After that Chow might have been reduced to playing wizened oriental masters dropping metaphysical pearls on young white heroes in training had Taiwanese director Ang Lee not come along to cast him as a legendary swordsman in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Despite its modest production and promotion budgets, the movie slashed all expectations and fairly flew up to become the year's most profitable release.
No coincidence, some suspect, that the role that saved Chow's chestnuts was conceived and written by an Asian and filmed with an all-Asian cast in the world's most pro-Asian nation -- China.
It isn't so much that Hollywood consciously sets out to undermine Asia's top male superstar, argue some. It's just that its imagination has been stewed for so long in its own racist malarkey that it is incapable of letting an Asian leading man play a truly sexy and heroic role. Look how it turned Jackie Chan into a tool (fool?) of Asian-male-bashing comedy in Rush Hour 2. And Hollywood may yet get its apparent wish to deep-six Chow Yun-Fat. In early 2002 Chow starts shooting Bulletproof Monk, a cult comic adaptation, in which he plays an aging master passing on warrior wisdom to a young white hero.
Is Hollywood undermining Chow Yun-Fat's action-superstar stature?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:07:34 PM)
The conflict was between Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, not Denzel Washinton. The issue was the fact that Tarantino's characters of all ethnic backgrounds drop the N-Bomb A LOT in his movies and Spike Lee was angry saying "What does Quentin Tarantino want, to be declared an honorary African American so he can use the word?" Tarantino shrugged it off saying "Spike's just angry because nobody goes to see his movies anymore."
Tarantino's primary influences in movies are Hong Kong crime/action movies of the 80s and 90s, and Blaxploitation films of the 60s and 70s. His love of those two genres of film are evidenced in all of his movies he's written. The Black Suits with slimline ties and white shirts are tie-ins to a TON of HK crime movies. His visible use of powerful tough-talking Black actors like Samuel L Jackson, Ving Rhames and Pam Grier are a testament to his respect of their bodies of work.
As for the N-Bomb, if you ever see his films, they are mostly heavy on the INCIDENTAL use of the word and not the HATEFUL RACIST use of the word. I myself am not comfortable with it, but the actors who work with him whom I've mentioned above understand this context and have no problems with its use under the cirmcustances. Even in the cases were it's used in a hateful manner, it fits in the context of the movie or is used to show some kind of irony (Jimmie's wife is Black, but he makes the remarks about "Did you see a sign on my garage that said 'Dead N-bomb storage?'" or Marsellus Wallace referring to Vincent Vega or Butch Coolidge, who are white, as "His N-bombs")
The stupidest thing about that word is that the origin is from the old English word "niggardly" which means "Miserly" or "cheap."
"Ebeneezer Scrooge had a niggardly disposition."
What happened was that misers were observed to pinch their pennies and by cheap items rather than expensive items and such cheap items became known as niggard-items or even niggar-items (i.e. "That was a niggar-horse he bought.") Since that variation became commonly used for something worthless, any person who was lazy or worthless was referred to as a "niggar" or even mispelled as "nigger"--Black, white or whatever else. It eventually became primarily used to refer to Blacks and it stuck after that.
Like I said, I don't like the use of that word to describe Blacks by ANYONE, EVEN BLACKS USING IT ON THEMSELVES, because nobody is worthless. However, I do understand the CONTEXT and SUBTEXT of it's use in Tarantino's movies, as do the many Black Actors who have worked in his projects and have a ton of respect for him and his work.
Quentin Tarantino Fan
Thursday, February 28, 2002 at 08:09:01 (PST)
Q. Tarantino is a dick. He loves racial jokes. It's in his blood.
All you have to do is get one minority laughing at another and you can justify making racially insulting remarks about everyone on the block.
Who loses in the end? Yep, people of color.
African-Americans laughing at the use of the "C" word and all things Asians. Asians laughing at the use of the "N" word and soul food and black people's bad credit and low college degree rate. People telling Latinos to "go back where they belong".
Hahaha...Hehehe...funny, funny, funny.
Question? If white directors can get blacks to laugh at Asians; Asians to laugh at African Americans and people viewing every Latino they see as a foreigner, then who wins? White people get to talk about whoever they want and who gets to take the licks?
If African Americans view Asian Americans and Latinos as foreigners, then white movie producers/directors get to target larger markets and racial jokes become acceptable.
I wish I could slap every African American comedian who makes fun of Asians and then gets pissed off when the "N" word is used.
Geoff DB
geoffdb02@aol.com
Wednesday, February 27, 2002 at 21:48:56 (PST)
Quentin Tarantino fan, It's quite obvious that u haven't seen Tarantino on the Howard stern show. Sure Tarantino may have a sarcastic sense of humor, and the howard stern show is full of BS.
Evidently, you have to note that there are many people who watch and listen to his show. After watching it, some people may bash other asians with impunity since two famous icons such as "Tarantino" and "Howard Stern" are doing it. Regardless of all this skepticism on what facts are true, Tarantino bashed CYF based on the show based on the simple fact that he spoke some broken english in the film.
In addition, there was an incident that i read about in an article, regarding a conflict between Denzel Washington and Quentin tarantino about the movie "Crimson Tide" I couldn't remember the content of the article in depth, but it was race-related, and it indicated that Denzel confronted Tarantino about the use of black slang words in a movie?!?...something along the lines of that...anyhow, tarantino was embarrased about the situation and wanted to take it to a private place to discuss....but denzel would not hold back.
Still waiting for a J.Woo+CYF movie
Tuesday, February 26, 2002 at 21:18:09 (PST)
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