Daniel Dae Kim calls nationality-specific casting for Asian roles an “overcorrection”

Fuck off, OP.

You can't win whatever way you choose. There's some people who are offended if you dont treat various people from a general region as the same since they think they have the same general experienceand there's others that find it deeply offensive to be lumped in a group like that since there's lots of traditions etc that ate different. Then there's the colorblind casting people. And the problem is that those who believe strongly enough in one theory to be loud about it online are generally unwilling to show someone who believes in one of the other theories any grace. The other views are labeled racist. So it's impossible for even a well meaning person in a position to cast to not cause a controversy by making a decision. Social media is so toxic

He's correct. And also hot.

Yawn, OP, don't you ever get tired of trolling?

So let’s extend this out: should we bar West Coast-raised actors from playing new englanders or Floridians? Different cultures, after all.

Asian americans might think so, but mainland asians still want to conquer and destroy each other. Makes our racial hate look like baby stuff.

AM I the only one who actually liked Memoirs of a Geisha ?

The problem is forcing some independent political agenda onto entertainment art at all. Let filmmakers who are interested in cultural authenticity cast the right ethnicities, and let those who don't care do whatever.

The one thing that SJWs will never understand (and before anyone calls me MAGA, I'm to the Left of all of those freaks, and I'm still a lifelong Dem, because I recognize the threats posed by the GOP to our very way of life) is that you can't learn to act without playing Othello, and you can't tell a story with others without being willing to let them alter your vision; you can't fully cast every small play you want to do.

It's stupid not to let actors of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese ancestry to play roles that are not their ethnicity but within that group. While there are facial differences between the ethnicities, it's not enough to take non-Asian viewers out of the story.

Here’s the problem.

Black Americans creating woke culture to breakthrough for inclusion has backfired because as always, it ends up extending and expands beyond them.

Asians do not need representation. They are the dominant race of the world and are made up of multiple ethnicities, languages, cultures, and histories. Most of all, like Hispanics and Latinos, they have their OWN cinema dedicated to them.

Black Americans have America. There is no connections outside of the US. They are Americans.

So Daniel is looking at this from an outside point of view. There are Asian actors from the US who work in Asia. Kelly Hu and Maggie Q worked extensively in Asia. Even John Cho and Steven Yeun have seen their work embraced in Korea and beyond.

Asia has massive film industries—China, Japan, Korea, India—that don’t need Hollywood’s validation. Latin America has its own as well. These audiences don’t connect with being lumped into a “POC” category that was designed around U.S. domestic politics.

Until Hollywood accepts that Black Americans hold a unique cultural position in the U.S., while immigrant communities often remain tied to their own nations and industries, it’s going to keep stumbling by treating all people of color like a monolithic bloc looking for identity in American culture.

R6 They all hate each other. Thats not even up for debate. I don’t know what Cambodians and Vietnamese have against each other but it’s pretty intense. I mind my business.

But even with that said, westerners don’t even take those ethnicities into account. Asians are just Chinese or Japanese to most people and only recently, South Korean. Everyone is in college and plays the violin which is BULLSHIT if you live in the city. Whenever I hear that Asians are “model citizens” I laugh. That Cambodian or Vietnamese gang culture is probably second to Mexican gang culture. If you grew up around it. I’ll never forget when I was 13 and walked into my friends house and his shady ass father kept a machete by the recliner. That’s a whole other story.

But insight that breaks people’s ignorant perceptions.

Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!

Another example is when Simu Liu was cast in the Marvel movie and there was backlash in China. They said he was too ugly to play a lead in a movie and looks like he should be selling pork in the markets.

Asians are no joke. They only have filters with white people.

Exactly, my Asian Brother!

I agree!

And then there's Ashley Park on Emily in Paris who is *very clearly* Korean American but is supposed to be from China. Why they didn't make the character Korean American, I have no idea because even Emma Stone was more believably Chinese

R16 It’s just the “white people don’t know the difference but they’ll feel better seeing everyone” mentality. Performative.

If the actor can portray the role without stereotyping being necessary for characterization, then so what? But Mickey Rooney did not even look Asian in "Breakfast At Tiffany," and that performance is usually held up as THE worst. Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman would have been second worst.

Simu Liu is anything but ugly.

R13, I think Simu is very attractive. That's unfortunate that he got that kind of criticism from China.

I was rewatching the first couple seasons of Grey's Anatomy recently, and there was a scene where Sandra Oh's character gets offended that she's asked to translate for a Chinese-speaking patient because she's Korean, not Chinese--which is understandable, because that probably happens to Korean people a lot. But then they go ahead and cast Tsai Chin, the very notably Chinese and very memorable cast member of 'The Joy Luck Club' to play her mother.

^Whoops, last part of my post got cut off. Meant to add, it was incredibly insulting/hypocritical of Shonda Rimes, because out of one side of their team's mouth, they're attempting to shame dumb white people for not being able to tell the difference between Korean Americans and Chinese Americans, and then from the other side of their mouths expecting those same white viewers to not be able to tell the difference between the casting of a Korean actress and Chinese actress.

Just...pick a damn lane. If all Asian actors should be considered interchangeable in the eyes of your casting directors, don't play lip service to the "considering all Asian people as interchangeable is racist" finger wagging in your writer's room.

"But even with that said, westerners don’t even take those ethnicities into account. Asians are just Chinese or Japanese to most people and only recently, South Korean. Everyone is in college and plays the violin which is BULLSHIT if you live in the city."

Yeah, that's a dumb suburban East Coast/Midwestern stereotype that's laughed at everywhere else. Very proud to have known a great many Asian-American thugs and whores in my life, and they weren't even all Viet/Khmer/Lao.

Wow.

Pretty soon John Leguizamo won't be able to play Puerto Ricans anymore!

Haven't read it but I'm assuming based on the quote that he's coming at it from a reactive, "we are one" identity politics kind of standpoint; however, he at one point did criticize the harpies that couldn't shut the fuck up about Ghost in the Shell.

Is Simu Liu the Canadian who compared pedophilia to homosexuality on Twitter unsolicited?

"“Anytime there’s a role that focuses, to me, on the American experience of being Asian — that’s something that no matter [if] you’re Korean, Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, that’s something we all share in common as Asian Americans,” he explained."

Why is everyone in the US so intent on grouping Indians as "Asian" today?

There was this huge kerfuffle in NYC casting two years ago.

A very nice conscientious commercial casting office (people I know) was hired to work with a Korean company for a campaign. In Korea, the current beauty aesthetic is VERY Western. Many young Korean women have their lidded eyes "fixed" to look more wide-eyed. Notice in Korean anime how the characters never look particularly Korean. So, the client asked the casting directors to find pretty young Asian girls with nice big eyes, Western faces and NOBODY who looked "too Asian".

Well, you can imagine the backlash, the shrieking and the name calling here in the US when they simply asked for what the client wanted and casts all the time in Korea where nobody bats an eye! The poor office was nearly run out of town for relaying the demands of the client. Unfortunately or not, this is the current beauty standard in many parts of Asia who don't give a fuck what American leftists think one bit.

[quote] Why is everyone in the US so intent on grouping Indians as "Asian" today?

Uh...because Indians are from Asia?

Daniel Dae Kim is correct. My ethnicity is Irish and Italian. Does that mean if I were an actor I could not play German or French characters?

Indians can play Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis, and maybe Sri Lankans. Outside of that it starts to become unbelievable.

The thing is, I don't believe this really has anything to do with him believing all Asian Americans share a "we are one" identity politic. I think it's more likely that (for instance) as a Vietnamese-American actor, you're given a much deeper pool of opportunity if you can be cast as a Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese character than you would be if you were limited to Vietnamese roles, because those are much fewer and farther between. So you think that should be an acceptable practice and not considered racist because it creates more opportunity for you, specifically. But you would likely consider it racist if someone with more racial privilege than you were to be cast in one of those limited roles.

Same reason that anglo-passing (and sometimes not even remotely anglo-passing) Jewish, Greek, and Italian actors have no problem being cast interchangably or as white characters because that creates more opportunity for them, but don't always like it when a non-minoriity white person gets cast as someone of their ethnicity.

Same reason why black actors have no problem being cast in racially anachronistic roles, but would take offense to the same being done for white actors at their expense.

I don't blame minority actors for feeling this way, because everyone wants privilege in an industry (and society) where that is an extremely limited resource, but you can't play it both ways. Either you want Hollywood to be color-blind or you don't--you can't pick and choose when it's offensive simply because it doesn't happen to be working out in your favor.

[quote] The casting for that highly anticipated film of a best selling novel was absolutely horrendous and one reason it was such a huge flop. Ziyi Zhang (who played the title character), Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh and Tsai Chin were not Japanese actresses.

I am sure millions of Americans stayed away for that reason.

Daniel Dae Kim: I have an idea. Until you cement head white folks can find these countries on a map, we'll do it my way! How's that?

Great. Ok. Now do Latin American actors from the entirety of the countries in Central and South American. Good luck finding a Peruvian/Colombian/Argentinian/Brazillian actor for the appropriate roles that isn’t Mexican.

[quote] Why is everyone in the US so intent on grouping Indians as "Asian" today?

Because "Asian" in "Asian American" is a completely made-up term, with no real historical basis and no real historical reality. It was invented for politics, to get a larger voting bloc, and it has never made very much sense at all. There is no common heritage of Chinese, and Japanese, and Filipino, and Indian, and Pakistani, and on and on and on Americans. There just isn't. it is a completely arbitrary designation, so it can grow or shrink entirely on whim, really.

Can Jews still play Italians and can Italians still play Jews? If not, this could create chaos.

R33 I mean, they exist. They definitely exist. It would just create more work for casting directors and more willingness from directors and studios to take a chance on actors outside of the tiny pool of Latino actors deemed "bankable".

[quote]Asian americans might think so, but mainland asians still want to conquer and destroy each other.

Years ago, John, the program/major/book troll, repeatedly told us that Japanese people look down on Thais.

R34 and R35, that's kind of the point I was trying to make in R30--that ethnic minority actors never seem to have a problem accepting roles outside of their own ethnicity, because that works in their favor, but will then turn around and talk about how offensive the practice is when it doesn't. It can't only be racist when it's not benefiting your career.

And likewise, you can't get offended about about all big-nosed actors being seen as interchangeably Jewish/Greek/Italian and all vaguely slanty-eyed actors being seen as interchangeably Asian when you yourself are complicit in those casting practices.

[quote]If the actor can portray the role without stereotyping being necessary for characterization, then so what? But Mickey Rooney did not even look Asian in "Breakfast At Tiffany," and that performance is usually held up as THE worst.

R18, as a kid, one of my favorite movies was Remo Williams. I didn’t know Chiun, the Korean martial arts master, was played by Joel Grey until I was an adult.

He could get it

God I loved Fred Ward ! What a sexy beast he was.

R38 If you read the Yahoo article, Daniel basically said the issue is that Hollywood is being specific about ethnic casting despite the ethnicity being irrelevant to the character.

“Very often, when we're cast, if the role calls for a Korean American, they will not see a Japanese American or a Chinese American or any other Asian nationality, but there are very often times when the role itself has not been thought through — it doesn't require any kind of specificity in the story or in the specifics of the character,” he explained. “Because, very often, it’s not even written by an Asian person, so they don’t know the difference in what they’re asking for, and yet casting is being very specific.”

So basically he’s saying they’re using DEI under ignorant circumstances. He’s saying right now in Hollywood they don’t care about Jews playing Italian but because Asians are a minority race in the US, they care about Koreans playing Japanese.

So according to him, DEI is a double edged sword.

R42 And this in my opinion just goes back to white liberal performative politics.

Korean bone structure is phenomenal.

R37 it's been my experience that Japanese people look down on everyone who is not Japanese. Very politely of course

It is both r43, white liberal guilt, but also a group of nonwhites reinventing itself as a bogus "minority group" that has never really existed.

[quote] “There were so many Asians out there in the political demonstrations but we had no effectiveness,” Ichioka said, as documented in a book by UC San Diego ethnic studies professor Yến Lê Espiritu. “Everyone was lost in the larger rally. We figured that if we rallied behind our own banner, behind an Asian American banner, we would have an effect on the larger public.”

And I'm not denying that "Asian Americans" have faced discrimination and all kinds of shit, but really it was because pretty much every ethnic group has faced that shit in this country. And that discrimination wasn't about being "Asian" it was about being Japanese or Chinese or Filipino, whatever. The common identity was invented, and therefore it has no real roots and no real reality. It's arbitrary, so it's going to lead to these kinds of arguments that can never actually be resolved.

One from column A and one from column B. Done.