Odd, given that she’s on a popular TV show with Ming-Na Wen.
You mean someone like this:
They could have dyed her hair red. Or any one of a number of other talented actresses that are actually mixed race.
But yeah, I get your point. Genetics is weird. My family is mainly Japanese from Hawaii, and most of the hapa kids look pretty asian, but after that all bets are off. My kid is really white looking (with very light brown hair and hazel eyes), but my cousin’s could pass for full Japanese. When I worked in Torrance, CA there was a family that was Japanese/Irish, one kid looked “typical” hapa, and the other had completely asian features, but a shifted color palette. Like “red hair, super pale white, and freckles” color shift.
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This seems – dumb. A close friend of mine is 1/4 Japanese, 3/4 Caucasian. You would never guess, and might only see it a little bit if you knew.
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I used to know a white guy whose surname was Wong. He may have had a Chinese ancestor somewhere from whom the surname was passed down, but you wouldn’t have thought it to look at him.
One of my favorite personal examples is a family with an English (as in, UK passport) father and 1/2 Japanese mother. They came up with their kids’ names before birth. The first daughter was given a Japanese name. She actually looks more Japanese than her mother. The second daughter was given a very English name. She has blonde curls and pale blue eyes. Imagine if they’d named them in the reverse order!
One of my concerns for my daughters (who have a greater % of Asian than I do) is that so many white guys want to date them because of the stereotypes about Asian women being less feminist than American women. Which of course is entirely laughable anyway – do some research, idiots – but it means they are not desired for who they are but rather that they have the “right amount of exotic femininity” without seeming too threatening. And yes, my oldest in particular has had her heart broken a couple times as a result.
(edited for small typing error)
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Hear ya…and am not looking forward to dealing with that in 10-15 years or so.
So you’re saying he’s off the hook because finding mixed Hawaiian actresses (even IN Hawaii) is “hard.” As a mixed-Asian girl that looks white and has to explain all the time (especially once racist jokes / assumptions start coming up) I do find it pretty offensive. Adding to it that the character is said to be proud of her heritage? Double-yuck on whitewashing.
When mixed characters get white-washed in movies or on TV I’m always wondering what the message is - Am I being encouraged to “pass” for white? Is my non-white heritage shameful or “bringing me down?” Am I supposed to think I’m luckier than my mixed friends who look more “ethnic?”
Also - you know mixed Asian people are not hard to find. We’re kind of everywhere.
PS: Wouldn’t it have been awesome if he had chosen an Asian actress then used make-up to make her look more white? How come that never happens?
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The greatness there was because of Amy Heckerling’s direction.
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That’s an excellent question.
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We were just lucky enough to find each other and neither of us had thought of marrying out. I’m really not sure where that stereotype comes from, it’s not been my experience at all. Any ideas?
Arseholes with Yellow Fever. 
Our daughter is too young for it to be an issue yet, but she does wear her heart on her sleeve already. Do I buy a shotgun?
Except that casting is based on acting, which is not about authenticity, but verisimilitude. I am Arab, believe me, I know maybe one or two things about problematic portrayals of race in film. I’m not going to get into performance theory, but I didn’t get pissed off that Oded Fehr played an Arab dude in The Mummy (Though we can talk about how the depiction of Arabs worked in that movie.) The guy isn’t Arab, but he looked Arab enough to make the movie work.
Still, a lot arguments about authenticity in acting are fatally flawed because they fail to take into consideration what acting is, and for that matter what race is. Race is human pattern recognition at work, but it’s not inherently connected to ethnic identity. Which is why you can take two people of different races and put them in the same supposedly blood-related family in film, and have it work. Acting is about taking a broad array of props, cultural cues, and performance and synthesizing something that feels real.
Or are all gay actors doomed to play straight characters, and straight actors doomed to play straight characters? God forbid we should have a black James Bond, because in the books he was never black… See where this line of thinking goes? I find it ultimately unhelpful. There’s whitewashing, but I don’t want to see it replaced by this weird search for “authenticity” that is ultimately destructive to the practice of acting.
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Have you seen Rosewater? If so, what did you think of the casting of Gael García Bernal as an Iranian?
I do wonder how many people think that casting Emma Stone in this role is fine, but object to the idea of Bond being played by Idris Elba.
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I have not, as for what I think of the casting choice, I’m not Iranian ;-). I will say that the actual subject of the film seemed to have no objection to that choice in an interview. I think that puts it on some pretty solid ground. I’m less concerned about films where the cultural depictions are not uniformly negative or stereotyped, because they do have the secondary effect of bringing interest to the stories of the people involved which creates more work for POC actors and directors.
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So Emma Stone is a better actress than any possible Asian actresses might have been? So much so that she can just “act Asian” and that’s okay?
I think these kinds of arguments might fly a little better with me if it didn’t always seem to default back to white actors. Like I said - you don’t see directors casting actors of color (surely because they are the superior actor) and them making them look white with make-up or special effects in order to play the part. If it’s down to talent where is the black Superman or the Indian James Bond? There are a lot of talented actors that also happen to be people of color.
I get that these directors are going with known quantities and are likely not raging racists, but if no minority actors ever get cast because directors always only go with people / faces / talents that they know and thus no one gets to know those minority actors, isn’t that a circle? Also, maybe it’s a little bit of a hint that Cameron Crowe needs to widen his circle of known quantities in order to be a richer director?
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Maybe, but this is a bad film to have that discussion about. Actually, let me rephrase, since I don’t mind discussion of race in film in any case: It’s a bad film to have an absolutist position on. As I’ve stated earlier upthread, racial miscasting happens way too frequently and egregiously in Hollywood for this borderline case to make an example. And it is very borderline, and I don’t appreciate it when white people, or even other people of color make this issue out to be cut and dry, like everyone agrees that that the dynamics of racial miscasting and whitewashing are clear. It’s complicated, especially around the fringes. There’s plenty of room for nuance here.
And yes, “acting Asian” is a thing, even for Asian-American actors, especially those who grew up very Americanized, depending on the role- What if they’re playing a first-generation immigrant and they’re nth generation Americans who are mixed? They perform a particular type of Asian ethnicity distinct from their experience. I remember Omar Sharif’s performance in Hidalgo getting some laughs out of Arabs because of how he performed Arab ethnicity, specifically with his style of Arabic speech- and it’s his native tongue. Ethnicity is performance, even in real life.
True, but both real life and cinematic portrayals of it happen within a broader white supremacist context. In that context, white performers in black face are pretty much no longer okay. Those in yellow face shouldn’t be either.
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Yeah, but this is the film under discussion at the moment. I wouldn’t derail the topic just to nit-pick a more politically appropriate example of white-washing.
I mean, I understand what you are saying and in a perfect world without the long history of racism we have in the States and in pop culture and movies, yeah, I’d probably agree with you. But we don’t have the luxury of that perfect world. I can understand all of the little individual arguments that this is okay or the ones that say this isn’t a big deal or shouldn’t be offensive to me, but in the end, you know, I’m still offended by it.
That’s cool if you’re not, though.
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I think it’s even more insidious, and possibly more innocent at the same time. I think they tend to start with a specific actor they’d like to work with and then look at what projects they have that might fit. He’s just as likely to have said “here’s a good vehicle for Emma” as “Emma would work in this film”…so the idea of searching for an Asian actress never came into it.
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The fact of the matter is if they had found a 1/4 Chinese 1/4 Hawaiian 1/2 Caucasian to play the part, the person would have still looked White or Whiteish and everyone would have complained up until the point when they read the wikipedia entry of the actress.
Because as someone else noted, Keanu Reeves pretty much is the male version of that hypothetical actress.
It would have been better if they’d cast Keanu. At least he’d have been more age appropriate for Bradley Cooper.
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