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"Why There are 'No' Asians on Television"

Part 2: 'Choose creativity over conformity.'

By Erin Quill, IMDiversity.com Special Contributor

BEING ASIAN AMERICAN

A growing audience of consumers, Asian Americans can make a difference.  The question is: what change will it be?  Will we embrace those actors taking the 'leap-of-faith' roles that challenge them as artists, and that we may personally find a bit sticky?  Or we will continue to demand only 'good' roles for APAs and relegate ourselves to the stereotypical flat roles on the back of the cultural bus?

As a community, we really need to lighten up on our actors and the roles that they do manage to land. We never want the APAs to play the bad guy.

Does anyone remember the furor over Better Luck Tomorrow?  I do.  I attended one of its many screenings at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was one of the most popular films.  The BLT actors were the Beatles of the Festival, which I thought was fantastic.

All the screenings were sold out. And yet, post-screening, audience members attacked the director, the writers, and the actors because the film portrayed APA teens 'gone bad'.  Here we had overachievers turn to the dark side, and the audience did not like it.  Some members of the viewing public got so distraught at a previous screening that they actually threw a chair at the cast members.  The viewing public were both Asian and Caucasian, equally demanding the reasons why we would want such a 'negative' portrayal of APAs.

What most horrified our rather traditional community was that these teens acted like Asian American teens, not 'Asian' teenagers. They were overachievers who turned to crime and they did it better than anyone else. Exploring what would motivate kids who 'had it all' to suddenly turn violent was an examination of desensitization in modern American society. It just happened to have Asian American actors playing the leads. No flack would have been raised if Topher Grace, Giovanni Ribisi and Lindsey Lohan played those parts. Ethnic hyper-sensitivity is a kind of censorship. Director Justin Lin had been offered a chance to make this movie with Caucasians and he turned it down, in the process maxing out his credit cards in classic 'indie' fashion to get the film he wanted.

BLT was a standout for featuring great characters who were complex, and diverse. Not one of the characters had to 'explain' what it was to be an APA in a rather painful, Joy-Luck-"but you don't even eat ice cream, why should you pay for ice cream' manner. No one was picking up or putting down chess as an act of defiance. These were characters based on a melding of incidents that occurred in Orange County, where the director grew up. It was a movie based on things that occurred in life.

The difference in portraying a negative character and a dark character is this : a negative character has no redeeming features and tends to embrace the stereotype without explanation.  It's a character with no motivation.  A dark character would be one who is complex, whose motivation is visible to the audience, and one who you understand, even if you do not like that character. A dark character would be a tapestry of wants and needs that give the actor an entire world to embrace. We cannot penalize our APA actors for taking on 'darker' roles.

Samuel L. Jackson may be one of the finest character actors working today, and yet I have never heard of a protest from the African-American community over the roles he takes. However, if Roger Fan had the opportunity to make similar choices, do we really think the sh-t would not have hit that Fan?

Our community needs to embrace one another, not divide. We need to let our filmmakers do their jobs and challenge not just Asian Americans, but the world in general with their work.

I want to use one example now, where the APA community divided itself over a film. That film was Charlotte Sometimes, which was written and directed by Eric Byler.  I am of mixed heritage, as is Eric.  We were emailing back and forth on another issue when he sent me a copy of a lecture he was giving about racial perceptions in the U.S. among the Asian community.  I could not believe the hatred in some of the emails he received from the APA community, simply because they could not tell that one of the actors was hapa.

They attacked Eric -- because they could not tell from his name that he was of Asian descent. They attacked the actor, same reason, even though it is mentioned in the film that he is mixed. One went so far as to write that Eric was lying because 'everyone knew that if the mother was Asian, the kid would not look Asian, but if the dad was Asian, the kid would look somewhat Asian'. They said that people of mixed race 'didn't count'.  They said that Eric should be ashamed for letting a 'white guy' kiss 'one of theirs'.

The truth is that many of the Asian Americans on film and television today are of mixed heritage. There are many writers of mixed heritage.  We cannot, as a community, disallow someone's background or demand racial purity in the melting pot that is America.  Mixed-race people are not only the face, in many cases, of Asian America -- they are also much of the future that is Asian America.

We want to see ourselves represented in media, but we only want to see it if it fits within rigid confines of community approval. We want to see ourselves in the lead, but only if we play roles representing the 'good guy' in the white suit that comes to save the day. We want to see our stories told within mainstream American culture, but only if they are 'traditionally' grounded and supportive.

That doesn't wash.  It takes, will take and has taken, an Asian American village to get this far.  We have to keep going.

VALUES TRADITIONAL AND NON

As a group, we have been and largely remain immature producers and consumers of the arts.  Sure, we all study piano or violin, or drawing.  Maybe we dance at the obon festival or New Year's pageant.  But what are the reactions when our parents learn that we wish to pursue a career in the performing arts?  Horror. Protests. Wailing! And that’s just the Aunties. Wait 'til your Dad gets home!

Many APAs who venture into the acting arena have a degree in something else because their parents "made" them study it. 

I was talking to a writer about his upcoming film, which features one character that he wanted to be a specific kind of Asian. He had an actor in mind who was Asian, but of a different ethnic group, and asked my opinion on casting.  I told him go with the kid who could act.  Why not?  You would not ask an untrained layman to walk in and perform a kidney transplant – and the same applies to a scene from Ibsen, or Moliere, or Shakespeare. These too require delicacy and nuance and hours of study that most assume come with preparation for medical careers, but few associate with acting.

(Ethnically correct casting at this point in APA cinema is not something we can worry about – good acting, quality filmmaking is the bigger concern with longer-term ramifications for us all.)

I repeat: Being TEN TIMES BETTER does not come with "raw talent"; it demands training, disciplined practice, experience and confidence.  Can we study Meisner or Stanislavksi independently while we're busily working at being doctors or engineers or Indian chiefs?   Of course, we can – but do we?  All training is good.  Go to class.  Craft is paramount.  Those who study make everyone’s job easier, thank you.

Now, parents are never entirely happy with their children’s choices -- and this may be true of Asian parents more than most.  But, rather than stifle your children's creativity, why not admit you may not know or understand what the heck they are doing, but you wish them well anyway, and expect them to be the best?

When I was in China, I went to the Children’s Palace. Ah, what is that, you well may ask? The Children’s Palace is an artistic training center – they have them all over China. Children are enrolled and continually tested as to ability before they are allowed to continue. It is State-sponsored. The children study a variety of things, but what impressed me the most, is that they did not ignore Western arts when they were educating their students. They played traditional instruments and contemporary – same with dance, art and acting.  So, why would we be less opened-minded about studying the arts than Communist China?  Asian countries are known for their artistry, yet, when we come to the U.S.A., somehow all that commitment to balancing life and art is abandoned.  Why?

Sure, there's always a Catch 22.  Are almost all Asian actors obliged to study martial arts?  Uh, yeah.  And if one says, "No, I don’t,” everyone looks at you funny.  However, we do not ONLY study martial arts – we then towel off and go read Mamet.  Yes, they want us to speak an Asian language, be adept at one form of martial arts, have long hair, tiny asses, and no accent when we speak English (unless they need one) – but hey, that’s Hollywood.

So, when you hear that someone’s child wants to be an actor, do not shake your head and bemoan the Ancestors – rather, encourage that growing artist to excel in this study!  Send your kids to class, go to their recitals, cheer their victories, celebrate artistry.  While you send them to obon dancing, send them also to hip-hop, ballet, jazz and tap to gain experience in and embrace the widest range of performance opportunities.

Tradition is fantastic, but you have to find a balance between where we come from, and where we are.  If you study ice skating, you also take ballet. Why? The muscles need to be stretched in all different ways to achieve the best possible result – same in Acting.

The APA Actors who attended a program of study in the creative arts are working on Broadway, in concert work, in television, and film.  Par example: Kim Miyori, Manu Narayan, Daniel Dae Kim, Chil Kong, Telly Leung, Margaret Ann Gates, Esther K. Chae,  the Bhatnagar sisters, Ryun Yu, Elaine Kao, Jeff Liu, Ming Na, Michelle Krusiec, Lynn Chen to name a few – go ahead, Google them.

CREATIVITY OVER CONFORMITY

In real terms, our actors also need the patronage – the concrete financial support – of our community.

You want too see more Asian actors in our mainstream American culture?  Then create a demand.  Buy tickets, don’t ask for comps, and go to the fundraisers!  This is true not only when actors manage to make it onto Broadway or TV, but even more importantly when they do that dead-end play where they deliver five lines and stay to clean up the theater afterwards.  Get on the board of the local theater company and spread around that disposable income we all have to create opportunity.

Actors with more opportunities to perform get better, more confident. We hear a live audience and learn nuance of a kind that mere classes can never impart.  We start to understand timing, to comprehend drama, to develop comic timing.

By continuing to build and improve our pool of talented APA performers, we take away the first excuse used by the networks: "There aren’t any."

Asian America has the economic power to make stars of our own.  If you want to see your stories and faces on the screen or onstage, though, you have to pay for it – just like everything else in life.

 

Series Continues

"Why There are 'No' Asians on Television" - Part 3: 'Our Stories, Ourselves'
An exploration of industry structures examines the roles of the writers, directors, producers and other network executives in the relative (under)representation of Asian Americans in entertainment, whether on or behind the camera. What programs and resources are available to help APAs "tell our own stories," and what obstacles lay before them?

"Why There are 'No' Asians on Television" - Part 4: Conclusion, Sidebar, Quiz and Resources
Series concludes with APA Entertainment Industry Quiz, "Top 10 Ways to Never See Asian Americans on TV," film and media resources, and expanded readings on the theme of casting, creativity, and media representation on the Asian-American Village.