Are blacks and Asians portrayed unfairly in media?

[SunWuKong]

reference this thread (http://forums.yellowworld.org/index.php?act=ST&f=36&t=2216&s=73a4431f877b3a52afda35a3593d82f3):

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 20 2002, 09:48 PM

Actually blacks seem to enjoy portraying themselves as criminals, as many black movies like "menace 2 society" or "boyz 'n the hood" as well as many gangsta rap videos and lyrics glorifying crime are produced by blacks themselves. Regarding Asian male portrayals I would recommend watching some Hong Kong and Chinese produced movies and looking out in what roles white males are featured (criminals, rapists, racist and violent foreigners, mafia, fat and rude tourists).

Originally posted by KuroBishounen@Sep 20 2002, 11:50 PM

Reinhard...

Do Whites (especially White males)seem to enjoy being in the limelight when it comes to romantic leads?

Are they intimidated? (Denzel choses to not kiss a White woman because he believes his audience of White males--and even Black females--will become upset)...

Save the Last Dance was blasted in a couple of forums, as well as O...in which the pretty Julia Stiles acted alongside two African-American men...

Moreover, you have Crazy/Beautiful in which a Latino actor acted alongside Kirsten Dunst...

Hmm, where are our Asian leading men?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another thing, do you think a movie like Monster's Ball would have got the recognition if the roles were reversed?
(Or maybe an actor of color?)
No...

Now, on the quip that "Blacks" enjoy playing criminals, etc...etc..etc...

Shimata hakujin....

I'm an aspiring filmmaker myself...and despise those hood films...(which, from my understanding went out in the 90s)....

Right now, you have various Black directors who have directed a lot of films (acclaimed or not) that deal with the middle-class African-American experience...and/or the African-American experience past and present...

...and of course, comedy...

Moreover, as for the rap and music videos....(how many times have we've heard various Blacks of varying ages that those videos don't show Blacks in a positive light? Many times...)

So, your argument is unwarrented...

Another question....do Whites enjoy playing goofballs? (Ex: Adam Sandler, Tom Green, the show "Son of the Beach"...and the now defunct "Married with Children")...

And yet, another question:

There is all this talk about America being the great melting pot...

Why, in the year 2002, we don't see that in many of the movies?

Hmm...

Originally posted by AliBabaIncorporated@Sep 21 2002, 03:21 AM

Uh yeah, nice try on the moral/cultural relativism "they do it to us, why can't we do it to them?"

However there's a huge difference: no white people in HK are Chinese citizens. Very few are Hong Kong permanent residents.  On any given day, if you walk down the street the majority of white people you will see are non-Cantonese speaking tourists. Yet in movies they are still portrayed as competent workers and even as fluent Cantonese speakers. Even though I guarantee you that it is damn near impossible to find white person in HK who speaks Cantonese more fluently than English.  As compared to the millions of Asians in the US who are citizens and permanent residents and speak English more fluently than their ancestral languages, but are still portrayed as foreigners speaking in funny accents.

Furthermore, I can't come up with any examples of whites portrayed as criminals, rapists, racist and violent foreigners, mafia, or fat and rude tourists (even though as I mentioned, most of the whites in HK are tourists). On the other hand, we see them portrayed in various upstanding societal functions even when their presence does nothing to enhance the story (as compared to US TV series where an AA actor is always related to some lame Asian cultural tie-in even when such AAs don't know a damn thing about their ancestral culture).

The most recent cinematic release in Hong Kong "So Close" (Xi Yang Tian Shi) features a white guy as a skilled software consultant. (He can't act for crap, but that's his problem, unless you wanna claim there's an Asia-wide conspiracy to portray white people in Asia as really bad actors). Another white guy makes a brief appearance as a corporate executive. Young and Dangerous (Gu Huo Zai)  features a white guy as a Cantonese-speaking police chief. I'd say this is good representation considering the miniscule percentage of white people in the local population. In TV series regarding modern life, White people are almost always featured at least as extras, dressed in suits and socializing pleasantly with each other in bars or at cocktail parties. Sometimes they even get speaking roles despite their complete inability to speak Cantonese. (See, for example, File of Justice season one, episode ... umm, 4, I think?) The TV series Kanghsi Dynasty (Kang Xi Ti Guo) threw in a few white characters every now and then, such as a Russian foreign minister, representing powerful interests to which the other characters showed respect.

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 21 2002, 08:37 AM

I don't want to act as if I was an expert on Hong Kong movies or TV series, I can only base my judgement on a couple of Hong Kong movies I saw that featured whites in very negative roles, even though some of them were both negative and powerful (like the white mafia boss). One scene I vividly remember is from the movie "A better tomorrow 2" where Chow Yun Fat first humiliates and later kills of a whole gang of white criminals in a pretty racist fashion (forces them to eat rice at gunpoint shouting "for us this rice is like our parents" while some other Chinese person in the background says "fucking foreigners" over and over again). In another movie you have a fat, beardy American tourist who walks into a Chinese fast food joint and hits the waiter because he doesn't serve him fast enough, shouting "you stupid Chinese pig", is this how ordinary tourists behave? If you had similar scenes involving Asians in the US, people would be screaming "racism". On the other hand in American movies you have actors like Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Russel Wong (happa) in lead roles as positive heroes who end up with the white woman after killing bad white men.



<!--EDIT|SunWuKung|Sep 21 2002, 11:20 AM-->

[SunWuKong]

actually i agree with Reinhard H. that HK popular media portrays foreigners very stereotypically. but there are positive as well as negative stereotypes. there have been plenty of white bad dudes that got beat up, but there are also plenty of white boss/distinguished people. overall, not many just normal white people. however, i will note that for a city that is maybe 1% or less caucasian in population, they actually have a cantonese speaking european guy that regularly hosts shows on TV (currently co-hosting a tourist show of guangdong) and have frequent (although minor) roles in many TV series.

hell, they even portray overseas Chinese stereotypically. we are almost always very snobby people who insist on speaking english to non-english speakers even if we may speak cantonese fluently. now come on, i don't know any OCs in HK that speaks english to local HKers if they can actually speak cantonese.



<!--EDIT|SunWuKung|Sep 21 2002, 11:29 AM-->

[Reinhard H.]

Actually the number of westerners living and working in Hong Kong is much larger than "1% or less" and this is in addition to millions of western visitors every year. Note that only the 4 western countries in the list already comprise about 2 percent of the population:

http://www.scalabrini.asn.au/atlas/data/Hkong1.htm

Regarding the lack of westerners learning Cantonese, I think there is little incentive for foreigners in general to learn Cantonese (which is much more difficult to master than Mandarin Chinese), when you can get around everywhere in China with putonghua, while only the people in southern China can speak Cantonese.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 21 2002, 12:21 PM
Actually the number of westerners living and working in Hong Kong is much larger than "1% or less" and this is in addition to millions of western visitors every year. Note that only the 4 western countries in the list already comprise about 2 percent of the population:

http://www.scalabrini.asn.au/atlas/data/Hkong1.htm

Regarding the lack of westerners learning Cantonese, I think there is little incentive for foreigners in general to learn Cantonese (which is much more difficult to master than Mandarin Chinese), when you can get around everywhere in China with putonghua, while only the people in southern China can speak Cantonese.
um... no.

most of the "foreign population" of US, Canadian, and Australian citizenship are actually Chinese returnees. sorry to burst your bubble. most of the caucasions in HK are brits. and yes, there are also plenty of BBCs in HK, so no, those numbers don't indicate the number of caucasians living in HK.

and i think AliBaba's point about language difference is to illustrate to you that your comparison of HK media to US media is not a good comparison.

[Shuriken]

Two points about this discussion:

I agree that there has been much stereotyping of whites (as well as other non-Asian races) in Hong Kong movies. However, it should be remembered that those films (the ones that I've seen, anyway) were made at a time when Hong Kong was a colony governed by the British, a place whose head of government was appointed by Britain with little to no say by the governed themselves. In other words, although the Hong Kong Chinese at the time might have been the culturally dominant group, the British were the politically dominant group at the time. So, the stereotyping of Westerners in the movies was one way for the Hong Kong Chinese to criticize a ruling group that they were unable to remove from power politically (it was left to the People's Republic of China to do that). In short, the stereotyping of Westerners in Hong Kong media was one means for the underdog to criticize the politically powerful, while the stereotyping of minorities by white Hollywood is a method for the politically powerful to keep the underdog in his "place."

Second, just because other countries might stereotype people in their media, that doesn't give license to Hollywood to perpetuate stereotypes as well. The United States is a country where people of all races are welcome to become citizens, and all of those races ought to be respected. At the very least, we as a nation should hold ourselves to a higher standard of sensitivity on this issue.

Or to put it another way: Two wrongs don't make a right.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Shuriken@Sep 21 2002, 10:50 PM
I agree that there has been much stereotyping of whites (as well as other non-Asian races) in Hong Kong movies. &nbsp;However, it should be remembered that those films (the ones that I've seen, anyway) were made at a time when Hong Kong was a colony governed by the British, a place whose head of government was appointed by Britain with little to no say by the governed themselves. &nbsp;In other words, although the Hong Kong Chinese at the time might have been the culturally dominant group, the British were the politically dominant group at the time. &nbsp;So, the stereotyping of Westerners in the movies was one way for the Hong Kong Chinese to criticize a ruling group that they were unable to remove from power politically (it was left to the People's Republic of China to do that). &nbsp;In short, the stereotyping of Westerners in Hong Kong media was one means for the underdog to criticize the politically powerful, while the stereotyping of minorities by white Hollywood is a method for the politically powerful to keep the underdog in his "place."
hmm... i tend to think of popular media (in both HK and Hollywood, both of which by the way have alot of similarities in the way that they're operated) as more money driven than they are politically driven. in that regard, even though i highly enjoy HK cinema, i am even more critical of industry practices there than Hollywood, because HK cinema is even more money-drivenly cutthroat than Hollywood. the main reason i like HK cinema alot more than Hollywood is that HK cinema is not pretentious. alot of times it is overtly exaggerated, thus you have such clearly drawn genre lines.



<!--EDIT|SunWuKung|Sep 21 2002, 11:04 PM-->

[Reinhard H.]

Quote from Shuriken
"I agree that there has been much stereotyping of whites (as well as other non-Asian races) in Hong Kong movies. However, it should be remembered that those films (the ones that I've seen, anyway) were made at a time when Hong Kong was a colony governed by the British, a place whose head of government was appointed by Britain with little to no say by the governed themselves. In other words, although the Hong Kong Chinese at the time might have been the culturally dominant group, the British were the politically dominant group at the time. So, the stereotyping of Westerners in the movies was one way for the Hong Kong Chinese to criticize a ruling group that they were unable to remove from power politically (it was left to the People's Republic of China to do that)."
----------------------------------------

Maybe so, but what you have in Hong Kong today is not so different, I think. The Chinese government in Beijing appoints the governor/dictator of Hong Kong with little or no say by the governed themselves. I think most people in Hong Kong don't like the present Chinese government any more than they liked the British appointed governor, perhaps it is even seen as a greater threat to the Hong Kong way of life, so now you should have similar anti-CCP movies.
Finally I think one shouldn't exaggerate the harmless forms of racism or sexism that can at times be found in some popular movies, nobody wants to watch the feminist version of James Bond or a pacifist John Rambo and everybody knows that these movies don't depict reality.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 22 2002, 10:24 AM
Maybe so, but what you have in Hong Kong today is not so different, I think. The Chinese government in Beijing appoints the governor/dictator of Hong Kong with little or no say by the governed themselves. I think most people in Hong Kong don't like the present Chinese government any more than they liked the British appointed governor, perhaps it is even seen as a greater threat to the Hong Kong way of life, so now you should have similar anti-CCP movies.
but the important difference is that the government in now Chinese instead of British. so while alot of people have certain anti-CCP sentiments, they are for the most part glad to have a Chinese government now instead of being ruled by foreigners.

[Shuriken]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Sep 22 2002, 04:02 AM
hmm... i tend to think of popular media (in both HK and Hollywood, both of which by the way have alot of similarities in the way that they're operated) as more money driven than they are politically driven.
Money and politics are — to put it as simply as possible — not mutually exclusive. If you think that the vast majority of your audience might hold a particular political opinion, you might want to make some reference to that opinion. For example, in one Hong Kong kung fu movie that I saw a few years ago, the villain was illogically named "Chris Pattern," an obvious reference to the British-Hong Kong governor Chris Patten. A movie doesn't have to be explicitly about the government or electoral issues to be political.

[Shuriken]

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 22 2002, 03:24 PM
Maybe so, but what you have in Hong Kong today is not so different, I think. The Chinese government in Beijing appoints the governor/dictator of Hong Kong with little or no say by the governed themselves. I think most people in Hong Kong don't like the present Chinese government any more than they liked the British appointed governor, perhaps it is even seen as a greater threat to the Hong Kong way of life, so now you should have similar anti-CCP movies.

Finally I think one shouldn't exaggerate the harmless forms of racism or sexism that can at times be found in some popular movies, nobody wants to watch the feminist version of James Bond or a pacifist John Rambo and everybody knows that these movies don't depict reality.
I wasn't implying that the current Chinese governance of Hong Kong is any better or any worse than the British. I was only addressing the issue of Western stereotyping in pre-hand-over Hong Kong cinema. And since the British controlled Hong Kong for 156 years, I'm sure that the stereotyping of Westerners won't disappear over night. It will be interesting to see the ways in which Hong Kong's new relationship to China will be acted out in its movies.

Also, whether a stereotype is "harmless" or not is often in the eye of the beholder. The media is a major influence on how we view and treat other people, especially those we don't encounter in everyday life. When I hear someone say, "It's only a movie," something usually tells me that it's not only a movie.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Shuriken@Sep 23 2002, 02:01 PM
Originally posted by SunWuKung@Sep 22 2002, 04:02 AM
hmm... &nbsp;i tend to think of popular media (in both HK and Hollywood, both of which by the way have alot of similarities in the way that they're operated) as more money driven than they are politically driven.
Money and politics are — to put it as simply as possible — not mutually exclusive. If you think that the vast majority of your audience might hold a particular political opinion, you might want to make some reference to that opinion. For example, in one Hong Kong kung fu movie that I saw a few years ago, the villain was illogically named "Chris Pattern," an obvious reference to the British-Hong Kong governor Chris Patten. A movie doesn't have to be explicitly about the government or electoral issues to be political.
oh hahhah which movie is that? now, did you hear them say "Chris Pattern" or was it in the subtitles? those jokers that do the subtitles can be funny, and besides, hardly anybody in HK read the English subtitles.

yes, money and politics are not mutually exclusive in popular media. but i think of their relationships this way, the industry is money-driven, and if it will profit for holding a certain political idea, it will promote the idea. likewise, if it will lose money for holding a certain political idea, it will omit the idea. that is what i mean by money-driven. i don't think it will choose political ideology over profit.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by Shuriken@Sep 23 2002, 02:10 PM
It will be interesting to see the ways in which Hong Kong's new relationship to China will be acted out in its movies.
for the most part, HK's relationship to China has been portrayed as that of positive cooperation. there was especially a drive for this kind of portrayal right before the hand-over, leading critics to think that it was because of the handover scare (that the government has a black-list somewhere and will go after those people immediately after the hand-over) that some filmmakers and TV producers were portraying China-HK relationship in a positive light, and also participating in self-censoring. there has not been any negative portrayal of HK-China relationships (that i know of) in popular media, but i have seen plenty of TV documentaries commenting on the state of HK's recession and struggling economy due to closer ties with China (because businesses are investing in the mainland, and alot of weekend shoppers are actually going to Shenzhen for the cheaper prices there).

[blkazngirl]

SunWu,
You are not far from wrong regarding the role that blacks actors take. In many cases that's the only role available. And if it means putting food on the table, you play it. However, on the other hand, black actors are demanding to be portrayed in a more positive light. It's the same for asian actors, being typed casted. The change is coming, but its a slow process in hollywood. A new wave of directors, writers and producers are coming.

Let's face it there was a time not long ago when only "white" was the only face you saw on televison.

[blkazngirl]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Sep 21 2002, 03:53 PM
reference this thread (http://forums.yellowworld.org/index.php?act=ST&f=36&t=2216&s=73a4431f877b3a52afda35a3593d82f3):

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 20 2002, 09:48 PM

Actually blacks seem to enjoy portraying themselves as criminals, as many black movies like "menace 2 society" or "boyz 'n the hood" as well as many gangsta rap videos and lyrics glorifying crime are produced by blacks themselves. Regarding Asian male portrayals I would recommend watching some Hong Kong and Chinese produced movies and looking out in what roles white males are featured (criminals, rapists, racist and violent foreigners, mafia, fat and rude tourists).

Originally posted by KuroBishounen@Sep 20 2002, 11:50 PM

Reinhard...

Do Whites (especially White males)seem to enjoy being in the limelight when it comes to romantic leads?

Are they intimidated? (Denzel choses to not kiss a White woman because he believes his audience of White males--and even Black females--will become upset)...

Save the Last Dance was blasted in a couple of forums, as well as O...in which the pretty Julia Stiles acted alongside two African-American men...

Moreover, you have Crazy/Beautiful in which a Latino actor acted alongside Kirsten Dunst...

Hmm, where are our Asian leading men?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another thing, do you think a movie like Monster's Ball would have got the recognition if the roles were reversed?
(Or maybe an actor of color?)
No...

Now, on the quip that "Blacks" enjoy playing criminals, etc...etc..etc...

Shimata hakujin....

I'm an aspiring filmmaker myself...and despise those hood films...(which, from my understanding went out in the 90s)....

Right now, you have various Black directors who have directed a lot of films (acclaimed or not) that deal with the middle-class African-American experience...and/or the African-American experience past and present...

...and of course, comedy...

Moreover, as for the rap and music videos....(how many times have we've heard various Blacks of varying ages that those videos don't show Blacks in a positive light? Many times...)

So, your argument is unwarrented...

Another question....do Whites enjoy playing goofballs? (Ex: Adam Sandler, Tom Green, the show "Son of the Beach"...and the now defunct "Married with Children")...

And yet, another question:

There is all this talk about America being the great melting pot...

Why, in the year 2002, we don't see that in many of the movies?

Hmm...

Originally posted by AliBabaIncorporated@Sep 21 2002, 03:21 AM

Uh yeah, nice try on the moral/cultural relativism "they do it to us, why can't we do it to them?"

However there's a huge difference: no white people in HK are Chinese citizens. Very few are Hong Kong permanent residents. On any given day, if you walk down the street the majority of white people you will see are non-Cantonese speaking tourists. Yet in movies they are still portrayed as competent workers and even as fluent Cantonese speakers. Even though I guarantee you that it is damn near impossible to find white person in HK who speaks Cantonese more fluently than English. As compared to the millions of Asians in the US who are citizens and permanent residents and speak English more fluently than their ancestral languages, but are still portrayed as foreigners speaking in funny accents.

Furthermore, I can't come up with any examples of whites portrayed as criminals, rapists, racist and violent foreigners, mafia, or fat and rude tourists (even though as I mentioned, most of the whites in HK are tourists). On the other hand, we see them portrayed in various upstanding societal functions even when their presence does nothing to enhance the story (as compared to US TV series where an AA actor is always related to some lame Asian cultural tie-in even when such AAs don't know a damn thing about their ancestral culture).

The most recent cinematic release in Hong Kong "So Close" (Xi Yang Tian Shi) features a white guy as a skilled software consultant. (He can't act for crap, but that's his problem, unless you wanna claim there's an Asia-wide conspiracy to portray white people in Asia as really bad actors). Another white guy makes a brief appearance as a corporate executive. Young and Dangerous (Gu Huo Zai) features a white guy as a Cantonese-speaking police chief. I'd say this is good representation considering the miniscule percentage of white people in the local population. In TV series regarding modern life, White people are almost always featured at least as extras, dressed in suits and socializing pleasantly with each other in bars or at cocktail parties. Sometimes they even get speaking roles despite their complete inability to speak Cantonese. (See, for example, File of Justice season one, episode ... umm, 4, I think?) The TV series Kanghsi Dynasty (Kang Xi Ti Guo) threw in a few white characters every now and then, such as a Russian foreign minister, representing powerful interests to which the other characters showed respect.

Originally posted by Reinhard H.@Sep 21 2002, 08:37 AM

I don't want to act as if I was an expert on Hong Kong movies or TV series, I can only base my judgement on a couple of Hong Kong movies I saw that featured whites in very negative roles, even though some of them were both negative and powerful (like the white mafia boss). One scene I vividly remember is from the movie "A better tomorrow 2" where Chow Yun Fat first humiliates and later kills of a whole gang of white criminals in a pretty racist fashion (forces them to eat rice at gunpoint shouting "for us this rice is like our parents" while some other Chinese person in the background says "fucking foreigners" over and over again). In another movie you have a fat, beardy American tourist who walks into a Chinese fast food joint and hits the waiter because he doesn't serve him fast enough, shouting "you stupid Chinese pig", is this how ordinary tourists behave? If you had similar scenes involving Asians in the US, people would be screaming "racism". On the other hand in American movies you have actors like Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Russel Wong (happa) in lead roles as positive heroes who end up with the white woman after killing bad white men.
For the right amount of money I might play a hooker, haha only kidding.

[deez nuts]

Then you got Puffy rhyming about:

"Asian women changing my linen........." in one of his jointz. I heard it this morning when they were ripping up Puffy on the Star and Buckwild morning show on Hot 97.1


What's that about? Had problems finding something that rhymed with linen?

That cat and his jointz are the most moist, I'm glad I never gave that fool any burn. He's the weakest.



<!--EDIT|Chasiubao_Boy|Sep 26 2002, 08:13 AM-->

[blkazngirl]

ROFL, maybe he couldn't spell the "N" or the "B" word.

[deez nuts]

Originally posted by blkazngirl@Sep 26 2002, 10:19 AM
ROFL, maybe he couldn't spell the "N" or the "B" word.
Or maybe he's too busy organizing I need a girl Thursday's up at Justins!

[SunWuKong]

http://www.slantedeyes.com/fisheyelens.gif



<!--EDIT|SunWuKung|Sep 26 2002, 12:10 PM-->