A dream, a reverie of Harold and Kumar:
The Chinaman is back. He’s been gone for a while,
lost in the corridors of political correctness. But I can’t restrain
him. He’s forced his way back into my imagination. (If you’d like to acquaint yourself with him,
you can read about him in these previous columns.)
“Hey, dude, have you seen Harold and Kumar?” he asks. I notice that
he’s shaved off his top-knot in favor of a vintage Sinead O’Connor look.
“You mean Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle?” I
reply. “Yes, I saw it recently on DVD. I’ll admit I was late in coming to
it. What of it?”
“That movie is our anthem, man,” he says. “That
movie is an anthem to the Asian man. The Slant-Eyed Prince. He with the
Skin of Caramel Goodness.”
In the movie, John Cho and Kal Penn play two young Asian guys who,
after an evening of smoking pot, suffer from the munchies. They embark
on a quest to find a White Castle restaurant in New Jersey.
White Castle is the place with the mini-hamburgers on square buns. To
get there, Harold and Kumar have to battle racist punks, suburban cops,
overbearing immigrant parents and stereotypical Asian students at
Princeton. The 2004 film reminded me of an updated Cheech and Chong
movie, with a maniacal Neil Patrick Harris playing himself, and some
gaseous British women thrown in.
“It was funny,” I say. “But an anthem? What do you mean?”
“The movie embraces the Asian man and shows him in a
light we’ve never seen before,” Chinaman says. “Harold and Kumar are
funny, sexy, horny, goofy, raunchy, impetuous, directionless,
rebellious, conflicted, irresponsible.”
“Pretty much everything we’re not perceived to be, right?” I ask.
“Exactly, dude,” Chinaman says. “You and I are
stereotypes of the Asian man. We’re inscrutable, enigmatic, silent,
somber, humorless, noses-to-the-grindstone brainiacs. And I have buck
teeth and used to wear a top-knot. And you’re good at math and drive a
Honda Accord. But Harold and Kumar break out of those stereotypes. They
are hardly the ‘Model Minority.'”
“When Harold gets the girl and kisses her in the end, it’s a watershed
moment,” he says. “It surprises us, because something like that happens
so rarely in the movies. It gives us Asian dudes some hope.”
I try to remember other romantic or sexual moments involving Asian men in the movies.
There was Russell Wong as the womanizer in “The Joy Luck Club.” Pensive
Tony Leung in “In the Mood for Love.” Jackie Chan had something going on
with Lucy Liu in “Shanghai Noon.” There was sexual tension between
Chow-Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino in “The Replacement Killers.” And Ken
Watanabe was the noble romantic in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
But the fact that I can count these moments on one hand is probably not
a good sign. Can you imagine what it would be like to grow up in a
society where people who look like you are rarely portrayed in a
romantic light — or a human light, for that matter?
“OK, Chinaman,” I say. “But what does this have to do with journalism? This material is for a Poynter column, after all.”
It’s after midnight. Chinaman has left. He has to get up early to catch
a flight. He’s attending the Hundred Man March to exalt the human
qualities of the Asian man. He’ll give a speech about how he’s taken on
a historically pejorative name in order to “claim it as his own.” Then
everyone will demonstrate and chant: “Asian guys are pretty darn cool.
Your
thoughts?”
I think of the Asian men who have gained the news spotlight in the last
decade. John Huang, the Clinton associate who was embroiled in a 1996
fundraising scandal. Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist who in 1999 was
wrongfully accused of spying. James Yee, the Army chaplain accused of
espionage at Guantanamo Bay. All criminal charges against him were
dropped in 2004.
Other than a handful of actors; or the occasional athletes like Yao
Ming, Apolo Ohno and Ichiro Suzuki; or the occasional brilliant
scientist like David Ho; how often do you see Asian men in your
newspaper or on the TV news? Where have you gone, Eric Shinseki?
What’s an Asian dude got to do to get some media love? Seems like he
either has to be a superstar or an accused spy. Or he has to sing and
dance incredibly badly and embrace his own humiliation, like William
Hung, the “American Idol” reject who has assumed the mantle of
Entertaining Coolie. “Dance for us, William! Now dance for us some
more!”
I don’t think it’s necessarily journalistic racism that leads to this
lack of coverage of regular Asian guys. I’m sure there are a bunch of
systemic factors.
I’ve written about it before. The media needs to do a better job of
portraying members of minority groups in a multi-dimensional way.
We in the media love to chase controversy and conflict, so it’s natural
that when Asian men do get the spotlight, it’s bound to involve
scandal, investigation and questionable behavior.
Our source lists aren’t particularly diverse. So you won’t necessarily
see a lot of Asian guys in features and lifestyles stories. And some
Asian communities are hard to penetrate, whether it’s because of
language and cultural barriers, or a lack of trust between the
communities and the media.
What does this have to do with Harold and Kumar, who are scheduled to show up in a sequel in 2007?
OK, maybe we can do without the stoner image. But I’m ready to argue
that the world would be a better place if we had more Harolds and
Kumars in the movies. And it would be a better place if our news and
feature stories had more average, everyday Asian guys who like to kiss
girls and go to White Castle.
