"Asian guys in my show? Not gonna happen!"

[Atlantic Pacf.]

So there's this new "K-Pop Themed" show - "Make it Pop" - that's going to premire on Nickelodeon. Now I've predicted this was going to be bad (eg. the amount of K-Pop actually mentioned will likely be ~0), as Nick is now one of those things that ruins everything it touches. But seriously?

Article

Relevant parts:

I sat in a boardroom meeting with TV executives and producers to hear about their new live action kids show Make It Pop, a K-pop (Korean pop) inspired musical comedy. I was excited to hear Asian culture was beginning to influence the western mainstream, and when they told me two out of the three main female leads were Asian girls (a Korean and a Chinese Malaysian), I was delighted… that was, until I found out the show had no Asian guys in them. Surprise (not really): only white guys are in the show as the love interests for the Asian girls.

After the producer’s presentation, during the Q&A, I mustered up the courage to ask “Will there be an Asian guy in it”? In a joking manner, the producer said “Nope! Never! Asian guys in my show, not gonna happen!”, while everyone else–albeit uncomfortably–laughed it off. Come on now, it’s a show about Korean pop. Half the artists from the K-pop industry are Asian men. Most K-pop fans are actually non-Asian girls / women who are a fan of K-pop men. Excluding Asian men in K-pop is like going to Hooters without scantily clad waitresses – nobody wins. The producer began to answer the question seriously and said he was hoping to get PSY to play the father of the main Korean girl. Mentally, I was shaking my head in disappointment.

Another comedic Asian goofball as the only thing to represent Asian men – what a great message we are sending to the Asian girls in our society – that your brother, cousin, father, and your Asian guy friends, are all just laughingstock, unattractive clowns who aren’t good enough for you, are incompetent, aren’t manly, and completely incapable of love, romance, attraction, being bad ass or cool.

Many of us know that Asian-Americans are underrepresented in mainstream American media. At least this story makes some of that racism clear and obvious.

 

[jackelgull]

Don't forget the Asian nerd. The show's going to have to add one in there too if it wants to be properly stereotypical and blandly racist. Or perhaps they're going to have one of the girls fill in the role?

 

[JollyRoger]

I can't believe the negative portrayal of white males in this - being shown as settling for taking roles in a Nickelodeon show.

 

[Crackerbox]

removed as it probably breaks the rules

Link to video.

We do get Katsumoto in The Last Samurai but the whole film becomes not about Katsumoto, but about Tom Cruise! WTF. Then we get a Korean zombie Killer in Glen Rhee. Finally the Asian guy gets the pretty girl but it starts out with a racist depiction in the first season with lots of Chinaman type clips.

Asian-American women stereotypes are really bad as well.

Link to video.

 

[IglooDame]

The producer began to answer the question seriously and said he was hoping to get PSY to play the father of the main Korean girl.

With the reputation PSY has in the US?

 

[Hygro]

With the reputation PSY has in the US?

Erm..?

 

[cybrxkhan]

Whelp. Not surprised. At this point I wonder whether I'm just too tired of getting angry anymore. I think I wasted most of my anger on The Last Samurai. That was a travesty of historical inaccuracy along the lines of Braveheart.

Anyways, at the least I heard that Fresh Off the Boat is doing well enough, that's reassuring.

Also, my impression was that Nickelodeon and Disney Channel and those kid-centered channels were kinda going down the drain anyways. :/

Don't forget the Asian nerd. The show's going to have to add one in there too if it wants to be properly stereotypical and blandly racist. Or perhaps they're going to have one of the girls fill in the role?

Either they'll have one of the girls be the default nerd, or they'll throw in a loser Asian obsessed with math who has no chance of hooking up with anybody.

 

[Crackerbox]

The real history behind The Last Samurai is nothing like the film The Last Samurai. It's a complete fabrication having no semblance of the events. Jules Brunet was French, not American. Saigo Takamori was not at all like Katsumoto.

Link to video.

Hollywood just abjectly fails to get anything right about history, creates one caricature after another, but worse, it persists to present day. People would be horrified if they did that to African-Americans.

Saigo Takamori wore a French made Japanese uniform and would have looked more like the General who commits seppuku (suicide) in the film, then in a hakama.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

At last sighting Hollywood is an entertainment capital.

Complaining about stereotypical misrepresentation makes sense to me...but I think expecting historical accuracy is a bit wide of the mark.

 

[Hygro]

I wrote a paper in school for Saigo, not aware he was the Last Samurai at first. The dude was not known to be a fighter. He was like a bureaucrat philosopher.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I wrote a paper in school for Saigo, not aware he was the Last Samurai at first. The dude was not known to be a fighter. He was like a bureaucrat philosopher.

As far as I know The Last Samurai basically attempts to squish together the Boshin Wars and Satsuma Rebellion into one plot.

At last sighting Hollywood is an entertainment capital.

Complaining about stereotypical misrepresentation makes sense to me...but I think expecting historical accuracy is a bit wide of the mark.

For me it was not so much the historical inaccuracy but that the historical inaccuracy was reinforcing some Asian stereotypes. It's what those historical inaccuracies imply and suggest, not those inaccuracies in and of themselves. But anyhow that's not the topic of this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I wrote a paper in school for Saigo, not aware he was the Last Samurai at first. The dude was not known to be a fighter. He was like a bureaucrat philosopher.

Movies about bureaucrat philosophers always draw huge at the box office. Can't imagine why they didn't go with a more accurate portrayal.

 

[classical_hero]

Movies about bureaucrat philosophers always draw huge at the box office. Can't imagine why they didn't go with a more accurate portrayal.

It i just as exciting as the new movie called "Infrastructure".

Link to video.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That was hilarious.

 

[Crackerbox]

Movies about bureaucrat philosophers always draw huge at the box office. Can't imagine why they didn't go with a more accurate portrayal.

Come on, it was even less historical than Braveheart, which was complete nonsense.

On any given day, you can hear talk radio hosts making Asian stereotype wisecracks. It routinely happens in commercials. It's everywhere.

Link to video.

Stephen Colbert doing the exact same thing.

Link to video.

Hispanic-Americans have it just as badly as Asian-Americans. If I hear one more Asian talking in halting language after more than four generations in America, I'll scream. Maybe some old granny who was the first generation, but talk to some in California where Asians have been around forever, or in Hawaii, and it's really ridiculous to have these same weird talking caricatures today. It's frankly insulting to this generation to persist in the same old business as usual.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

At last sighting Hollywood is an entertainment capital.

Complaining about stereotypical misrepresentation makes sense to me...but I think expecting historical accuracy is a bit wide of the mark.

Come on, it was even less historical than Braveheart, which was complete nonsense.

Asked and answered.

 

[Crackerbox]

Link to video.
People died, and you mock them with a sophomoric joke, but then when some journalists discuss it, these guys who claim to be liberals then ride over it and act as if it's harmless fun. I wonder if they were mocking Jews if it would be as amusing when they had died since Mancowiez is Jewish.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What else do a Fox affiliate and Rush Limbaugh have in common?

Spoiler :

Target market

 

[Crackerbox]

And Mancowiez works for the Young Turks network which is very liberal and worse the owner was in that Rush Limbaugh clip criticizing the VERY SAME THING. And Stephen Colbert? Come on, that guy knows better! He makes a huge deal about how idiotic Conservatives are, then pulls this kind of nonsense. And he just wouldn't stop when there was controversy about it, so he sends out a racist tweet on top of that! Does he backpeddle? Nope, he flat out denies he sent it, no apologies, nothing. How about some personal responsibility since it was on one of his twitter accounts?

Link to video.

 

[Leonel]

Even I could see the satire Colbert was doing with that in context of the Redskin controversy.