As an actual Asian person who earnestly cares about actual Asian representation in film, theFacebook has gotten wind that they can target me movie trailers for movies starring Asian people and I’ll probably actually give more than the passing glance or hide-from-X treatment that I give the fast majority of other targeted ads.
Recently, I saw this preview for this film called Boogie, which is the directorial debut of Eddie Huang, the guy who made Fresh Off the Boat, a series that I really wanted to hate based on the horrible title, but ended up watching way more of than I care to admit and actually liking a lot of it. The premise of the film is pretty simple: charismatic and athletic Chinese guy living in New York, aspires to play basketball professionally, but has to overcome all sorts of stereotypes, oppression and racism to strive towards his goals.
I’m typically on board for all Asians vs. the World kind of plots, especially ones that feed the observational narrative of the racist double-standard that exists within all races in the world, towards Asians. However, there was one thing that instead has piqued my curiosity, and really makes me skeptical of the, planning of the film, regardless of how the story and film actually pans out.
The titular character is played by some guy named Taylor Takahashi, and my very first thought was, really? A Japanese guy to play a Chinese guy? Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that concept, it’s just that this seems like one of those characters that I feel like would probably have been a little more appropriate if it were actually being played by a Chinese person.
Look, I’m all about guys like Randall Park and Ken Jeong being arr rook same’d and getting cast as Chinese guys, because they’re still getting paid and go get it if it’s offered, but the same rhetorical question applies to them as it does for Taylor Takahashi: were there seriously no talented Chinese actors to play these roles? Or I guess more accurately, was there any genuine effort in trying to cast any talented Chinese actors for these roles?
Like, in the case of the Boogie preview, I’m having a hard time digesting and a hard time not laughing, when a Japanese guy is reciting lines about how stereotyped we Chinese are, and how he’s got 2,000 years of Chinese oppression on his shoulders that he’s trying to overcome so he can be what sounds like a fictional version of Jeremy Lin.
I know I clown on China a lot being Korean and all, but real talk here is that I’m very aware that in a country with a population of a gabillion, there are bound to be quite a number of talented, bilingual, and physically comparable actors as Taylor Takahashi, who probably would be slightly more believable and convincing to play the role of Boogie, than a guy that’s inherently of Japanese descent.
So egg on Eddie Huang’s face for what I think is kind of an embarrassing faux pas here. Looking at all promotional material for Boogie, it’s embarrassing to see the three marquee names, being Takahashi, Paige and Jackson, in a movie that’s basically about Chinese culture living in New York. But Huang’s kind of become a giant king of the twinkies anyway, or as what I saw a friend say on the internet being an Uncle Tong, so I guess it’s no surprise that he’s utilizing all these non-Chinese guys to promote his own stories of ironic appropriation and further exploitation of his own culture in order to stay relevant and famous.
