Is it just me, or are things getting worse? 

Some background: I love television.  Like, so much.  It’s kind of my best friend.  So I have a big blind spot for it, I love to give it the benefit of the doubt, laugh things off, roll my eyes and think, aw television, you will get better and be better, just take your time.  I will wait for you.  

But I’m kind of getting fed up.  I can only ignore so much, television!  You may be shiny and exciting but so much stuff is just lazy, and unfunny, and I’m getting tired of making the same excuses for you. 

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So my genre of choice after a long day of dastardly lawyerly deeds is the 22-minute sitcom.  It’s easy to digest, it makes me chuckle, and it’s easy to forget so that I can rewatch it again and again.  Fast food for the brain.

This week I was flipping through the usual channels: CBS, Fox, etc.  And within a 2-minute window of lingering on 2 Broke Girls, I heard 2 racial stereotype jokes said by 2 extremely white ladies (so many twos!) and I just roll my eyes.  (If you are interested, one joke was about how Asian folks are good at taking the SATs, and the other joke was about how Hispanic people are good at cleaning.  Real creative, smart comedy here.)  Then I start watching Raising Hope, a show I actually really do like, and there are these 2 Chinese gymnastic twins who don’t really have any lines, do a lot of acrobatics, eat noodles out of bowls that look like they were crafted in medieval China, and only listen to Chinese pop. 

Of these 2 shows, I infinitely prefer Raising Hope, and while I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a bit (I swear they will get stuck that way one day), at least the humor in the ep was not at the expense of the Asian folks.  2 Broke Girls on the other hand….with their ridiculous portrayal of an Asian diner-owner named Han Lee (which translates to “Rice” Lee apparently) and the constant racially charged jokes at his expense….that I have little to no patience for.  Just because the main characters are disenfranchised in some way does not mean they have free reign to target other disenfranchised communities.  Being poor doesn’t allow you to suddenly be a card-carrying member of every minority. 

And where Raising Hope at least occasionally has other Asian representation (i.e., an Asian American pawn shop owner that spoke English just fine and whose race was completely irrelevant to the plot), 2 Broke Girls makes lazy pan-Asian jokes about racial stereotypes (karaoke, notions of “honor,” his accent, his general emasculation), and all we get is Mr. Fake Accent.^*

Wow I lingered longer on 2 Broke Girls than I thought I would.  Working out some inner angst here.

But it certainly is not the only perpetrator.^**  I caught some Mike and Molly a while back, and within the first 5 minutes of watching this show, I saw another Asian restaurant owner with a thick (and methinks, very fake) accent.  And then his pretty daughter comes on the screen, and she also has a thick accent.  Now this is kind of where I draw the line.  Sure, immigrants are real.  And have real accents.  And a portrayal of that is not unrealistic, or offensive per se.  But then to have a younger daughter from the next generation also have an accent, be an Other—it made me think, man, Asian will never just be Normal!

Even though the majority of older Asian immigrants came over in the 70s and 80s, and there are now several generations of Asian Americans that speak perfect English (well maybe there are still some issues with grammar, I can’t speak for all Asian Americans but my grammar kind of sucks, but I’ll blame that on Mrs. Hildebrandt, my third grade teacher), we still feel so comfortable with the image of the Asian American with an accent.  How have we made zero progress from the days of Pat Morita?  Seriously, in the last 2 years, 2 NEW shows have come out with Asian restaurant owners that put on fake accents to fit some comfortable yet distorted racial notion.  When will we age out of this portrayal?
 

Beyond the asexual accented restaurant owner roles, I’d say that 80% of Asian American acting work comes from the obligatory Asian Gang episode in every procedural show, ever.  As a scholar of the procedural show, I do think that on the whole, these portrayals are getting better—White Collar did a pretty sweet job where they actually showed different “types” of Asians (some were villains, some were bystanders) and everyone spoke English well.  But don’t get me started on the Chinese smuggling ring episode of Bones where someone LITERALLY said: “She tried to be white—that’s what killed her.”  How DARE she try to forsake her homeland by not being stereotypically Asian???  Moral of the story: don’t fight your Otherness!  Or you will die!  It was so ridiculous I couldn’t even take the rest of the ep seriously.  And I normally take my David Boreanaz time very seriously. 

Sadly, even my most favorite sitcom, 30 Rock, is not blameless.  I’ve seen all of the episodes a gazillion times, and the very few times Asians have ever been guest stars or even mentioned are: 1) silent Yoko mannequin lady who got with Frank when he and Pete made a music demo, 2) Jenna Baby Dolls that say “me love you long time” but also say “I’m good at math,” so it’s not offensive, 3) the fact that Princeton’s lead quarterback’s name is Henry Chang used as proof that the football team is laughable, 4) one of the very few Asian extras being used for a bit where they compared Kenneth to Godzilla, etc.  None of these events in isolation offended me—in fact, I chuckled at the Jenna one—but taken all together + the lack of Asian representation = no me gusta so much anymore.  I propose that there should be a rule.  For every Asian stereotype joke, there has to be at least 10 seconds of Normal Asian Person time.  Like some dude getting coffee.  Or some dude asking for the time.  (It’s kind of a sad reality that an extra doing insignificant things is still somehow more progressive than a lot of stuff on tv.)  The one point of redemption for 30 Rock (and I’m embarrassed to say that this really made me swell with Asian pride when I watched it) was the awesome “Who Nose” character.  He is an investigative journalist who lost his sense of smell, and there’s a 4 second scene where he shouts: “You underestimated me Congressman, because I can’t smell.  But you made one mistake: You let me SEE the documents!”  Asian American dude with an awesome punchline!  Gold stars for everyone!!

In conclusion: I’m not against racial jokes—they can be really clever, and insightful, and hilarious.  I just kinda want to see Asian Americans be in on the joke for once!  If that’s too much to ask, then I just want to see some regular ol’ Asian Americans doing regular, non-stereotypical things.  And also, to not have to put on fake accents anymore.  Let’s just put that one to bed.

Notable Exceptions:

• Hawaii Five-o!  So many hot Asian American actors! 
• Lester on Chuck, Abed on Community, Jonathan on 30 Rock, Kal Penn on How I Met Your Mother.  South Asian Americans are doing pretty well in comedy right now, which is AWESOME.  Sure, South Asians still have fake accents in a million things, but at least we are starting to see some sweet, non-stereotypical counterexamples.
• Señor Chang on Community.  His awesomeness needs no explanation.

Honorable Mention:

• Mike Chang on Glee.  The only reason this is demoted to honorable mention is because he and Tina are compartmentalized off in Asian Land, where every single line they have and every single reference to them has the word “Asian” in it.  (I will document this at a later time.)  They aren’t real people, their only character trait is “being Asian.”  But where the show fails, the power of his abs prevails.  That is undeniable.

 

rant by Liz (wearing her frustrated Asianpants after being mistaken twice for another Asian girl last week) 

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^* I just found out that the creators scrambled to cast a “hot” Asian American guy after getting bad press about this.

^** In the time between writing this rant and posting it, I had the joy of witnessing another awesome example of tv “comedy,” this time on the New Girl.  In an attempt to portray a female character’s tough lawyer demeanor, the show has her yelling at someone over the phone, shouting “I guess it’s time to take that Chinese head out of that Chinese ass, Ming!  Hey!  Confucius say, you work for me!”  HOW is this funny, exactly?  That’s not a tongue-in-cheek reference, it’s not satire/parody, it’s just a racial slur.  Also, is the Asian community as a whole still closely associated with Confucius?  You guys, that dude is like, soooo 2,500 years ago.  (Seriously, he lived from 551 BC to 479 BC (thank you Wikipedia)).  And by deliberately making the grammar incorrect, it’s a nice little belittling reminder that Asians just don’t know how to speaks the Engrish, gosh darnit.  Bah.  And FYI, if anyone ever actually said this at a law firm, their ass would get sued.