Goddamnit. I feel like I'm late to this but I just thought about it.
*pause*
I'm not going to lie, when I saw the theatrical trailer for The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard, I thought it was amusing. Amusing in a "they clearly aren't serious" way and "well this is appealing to a niche crowd *snerk*"
This movie doesn't come out until the next week when it'll be competing with the already vastly superior District 9, therefore Lord knows I won't be seeing it at all, but I do have some brief words for the trailer:
And those words are "oh", "really" and "now".
Guess why. Do you see it? Yes, it's our old friend, the trope of the bumbling, silly token Asian played up for the lulz. Again, I didn't do much more than the mildly annoyed face right up until the extended Pearl Harbor metaphor and the strangely Clint Eastwood looking fellow (get it, get it, Gran Torino?) but then there was the part that I didn't see in the theatre, but the hate crime bit? Wow, we're making jokes out hate crimes now--oh wait, we already do!
In this case I think it's horrible because I feel like here, hate crimes against Asians & Asian Americans aren't taken seriously. I know, hate crimes against every other minority group are hardly considered either except once every blue moon--and even then they're reduced to not being twabout race/color/gender whatever. But I think hate crimes against Asians are taken even less seriously than that. So it was a little disturbing to hear that "lulz let's get our story together and throw in a bunch of random stereotypes hahahahaaaaah"
Alrighty then.
Okay, so I don't know much about Ken Jeong and what kinds of roles he's previously had but something tells me they run the gamut of token silly Asian just looking at IMDb. I'm betting it's not completely his fault anyway considering that Hollywood isn't looking at minorities very often unless we're willing to fill some sort of ignant part for them.
But, at the same time, if you saw last night's WWE Monday Night Raw match I hope you feel as embarrassed as I am by Jeong's behavior (scripted as it may have been), with Jeremy Piven to promote the Goods. Let's just say...if I catch you wearing that stupid ass pimp get up again I will personally set your fucking lawn on fire. There's NO. NEED. They both intentionally looked silly but that was fucking IT. You can say fucking NO at aaaany time now.
Edyt: A couple of follow ups here and here. Ah, the fight continues.
