My friend Ginny was walking around New York’s Chinatown the other day, where she stumbled upon a few posters calling 21, released today in theaters, racist. Why? Because the movie is based on a true story about sly MIT students who use their card-counting skills — and, as it happens, non-white profile — to swindle casino authorities out of millions of dollars. In a stroke of magic, Hollywood has these Asian students resurfacing as box office-friendly leads Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth (pictured), whose undeniable star quality is Sony’s way of hedging its bet.
Having watched the film, I was a bit taken aback. But then I realized that a lack of presence is just as offensive as an overtly stereotypical one, as the near-400 members of this Facebook group cry. "Tell Hollywood thatit’s okay to portray Asian-American men in lead roles asthree-dimensional characters with personalities, feelings, and a senseof humor. You know. Regular people. Is that too much to ask for?"
Actually, it is. Sony has good reason not to brave new territory.Movies with an all Asian-American cast barely register on the radar —2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow was but a short flicker of hope — unless they unfold in an antiquated, how-exotic-am-I kind of way, as in 1993’s Joy Luck Club, 2005’s Memoirs of a Geisha, or even 2007’s The Namesake. (One exception: stoner flick series Harold and Kumar, which stars John Cho and Kal Penn as just… stoners).What’s implied here — and is upsetting to me — is that a movie dealingwith an all-minority experience in America is unappealing, even more sowhen it’s for sheer entertainment and not doling out some somber lessonin history. Director Robert Luketic only exacerbates this point when hetypecasts Asian actors Lisa Lapira and Aaron Yoo as buffoonish, clumsysidekicks who compulsively steal and can barely manage a sentence.Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed, yellowface character Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s might recognize a distant kinship.
Perhaps the flick, getting mixed reviews, would have been better off had they heeded the text of Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House, on which the film is based:
"What exactly is our ‘profile’?" Kevin asked.
Martinez took the ball.
"Non-Caucasian, for one thing. Twenty-year-old white kids withmillion-dollar bankrolls raise a lot of suspicion. Asian, Greek,Persian — the kind of kids you see parking their BMWs outside of theArmani Café on Newbury Street, that’s who we’re looking for… Gamblingis an Asian obsession. And nobody lets their kids run as wild as richPersians and Greeks. Walk around any casino, the people throwing downpurple chips are almost always dark-skinned. Card counters, on theother hand, are usually balding white men with glasses. We can use onestereotype to trump another."
What do you think, PopWatchers? Did 21 play its cards wrong, or just follow the house rules?
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Thanks for finally pointing this out!
a classmate of mine wrote to sony about this and she received a generic response which included them saying that the american public would not respond to a movie with asians– basically, that they are not a good marketing ploy. my class has agreed to boycott this as it is disparaging to an entire group of people.
I would have never even known this had I not read your blog. Replacing the title characters takes away a major plot point of the story. In fact, it changes it all together. I wasn’t planning on seeing it before, but now I definitely won’t.
There’s a Canadian movie that came out a few years ago, based on a similar idea, called The Last Casino. It’s a math prof who teaches three students to count cards: the good looking darkhaired guy, the beautiful, smart girl and…the brilliant Asian guy. Near the end, they use the Asian’s character’s ethnicity for a plot point. I thought the casting for it was better done.
An indie movie that was true to the actual story would have made a much more interesting film. The only “color” that Hollywood is loyal to is green. It’s insulting that Asian Americans are not marketable to producer’s standards, while the rest of the world can be completely fine with it. Where’s the progress?
This is a widespread issue in Hollywood. In A Beautiful Mind, Jennifer Connolly’s charactor in real life is a Hispanic immigrant. I think the general public would better receive people of color if it were done more normally and more naturally rather than sterotypically.
Whatevs. Jim Sturgess is gorgeous.
i had no idea- more reason not to see it. is it racist that i probably would have seen it if the leads were all asian?
It is the same as in the movie World Trade Center. The man who helped save the trapped officers was African American and they cast Tom Cruise’s cousin. They “say” they didn’t know he was Black, but knew his name and were able to account for what he did that day. Everything was researched accept is ethnicity. It never occured to the producers that someone who was not White was heroic that day. It was enough to have one Latino lead, I guess.
The problem here is that Hollywood is in its own world, where the ‘american public’ are other studio execs or PR people talking to the same people every time (remember the ratings board, supposely a cross-section of people, is made up of white well-off grandparents). Meantime Generation X and Y is the most diverse and debating wheather a woman or a black man should be president.
I was just going to go watch this!! I mean, I think I will still watch it, since my friend loves Jim Sturgess and Aaron Yoo (we’re both Asian btw). Of course, I’ll let her know first. Thanks for this article! I wouldve never known otherwise… And this is a realy big problem that needs to be addressed in Hollywood. I never feel like there is anyone I can truly relate to or someone that really represents our community well, which sucks. There are always Korean movies, I suppose, but the fact of the matter is that I’m not just Korean- I’m Korean-American.
Another thing (sorry for the rant), this is from Sony. A Japanese Company! Don’t you think they would proud of their Asian-American brethern and what they did?
No surprise here. Didn’t Angelina Jolie play Daniel Pearl’s widow Marianne Pearl in a movie last year? Ms.(or Mrs) Pearl is part white and Afro Carribean. And she does not look in the least bit white, from her skin color to her hair, nothing about her was/is Caucasian. But Hollywood in its infinite wisdom felt that it would be better served if she was white in the movie. I remember when I saw the poster for the movie, I was so confused cause I remember seeing Ms. Pearl on TV when her husband was killed and she never looked white to me.
I heard about this. I think it’s pretty weak of Sony or any film company to claim that Caucasians won’t want to watch a film with leads who are of a different race. As you point out, the reason they were able to get away with this ploy IRL was because they were Asian, so it’s pretty integral to the story. Also, you know how you get the White American public to watch movies with minorities? You make movies with minorities! Bah.
I had no idea about this. Wasn’t planning to see the movie anyway – it looked BORING. But I am a Cacasian woman and would and do seek out movies with all Asian casts. I am a big foreign film fan and my favorites are from Asian countries. And not just martial arts movies – I like Bollywood stuff too. I love anything with Gong Li in it. There is definitely a market for it if it is a good film. The closest “art” theaters are an hour away from me and I have driven there for foreign films(though I may rethink that based on gas prices).
I think it is so stupid to recast the lead as a white male…like Jim Sturgess really brings in the box office (who is he again?) I will point out, however, that the Kate Bosworth character is in fact based on a white women…a Harvard law school student though (not MIT).
I interviewed Jeff Ma for my college paper. Ma is portrayed by Sturgess in “21.” I asked him about the race change and he said he absolutely did not care and that he hated the negative attention the press is putting on that issue.
Ma asked every member of the press in the room who they would like to play them in a movie. The responses were pretty standard, Edward Norton and the like. Then Ma asked why we all chose who we did and most everyone said because they were talented and cool. Ma said, “Yeah, whenever people asked me who I wanted to play me in a movie, I never once said Jackie Chan or Jet Li. I always said Topher Grace or someone like that. Someone cool and talented. I don’t care if they look exactly like me!”
He also said he only would have been offended if they had hired a Japanese actor, implying that the filmmakers couldn’t see the difference between a Chinese man and a Japanese man.
Third rant: ‘Caucasians don’t want to see minorities in lead roles’. The biggest movie star in the world is WILL SMITH!
Thanks for pointing this out. I was intrigued by the story and was going to read the book first anyway, but now I’ll just skip the movie. What an insult to the audience- Asian or not.
Sam-
The problem is that Ma has a tragically limited pool of “talented and cool” Asian actors to choose from when asked who he would like to portray him.
And that gets to the heart of the issue and it’s a chicken/egg thing: Hollywood has NOT taken the time and energy to establish bankable Asian-American (or just Asian) actors outside of stereotypical roles. Then again, the reason they haven’t is because those types of movies haven’t brough any sort of guarantee of generating bank (when it comes down to it, that’s the only color studios care about). Then again, the reason they don’t generate consistent bank, is because there aren’t any established Asian actors in non-stereotypical roles…and around and around we go.
I remember when “My big fat Greek wedding” came out I read that it was such a huge success b/c so many non-WASP people could relate to it so well. I thought that may open movie execs minds to that fact that people relate to shared experiences, not skin color. But I was wrong. Movie execs don’t have minds.
One thing that’s missing in this conversation is that not all of the team members were Asian. Jeff is, but the women that the Kate Bosworth is white (see http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2008/03/26/count_her_out/). Also the man that the Miles character is based on is white. So while the discussion of if the actor who plays Jeff should have been Asian is fair, it’s not fair to say the whole cast should be Asian.
When the guy Jim Sturgess is playing says he dosen’t care what race the actor is who’s portraying him you have to wonder why some people are so eager to get their panties in a knot.
I want John Cho to play me in the movie version of my life. He’s awesome. I’m white, by the way.
Wow, maybe if more cool and talented Asian-American actors were cast in movies and television shows, Jeff Ma and the rest of us would have more people to choose from to play us in our life stories.
Personally, my ethnicity is a huge part of my story, as it seems to have been in the real-life story behind this movie. I wouldn’t be able to ignore that fact if I were choosing someone to play me in a movie.
The sorry thing is the Hollywood studios saying that a low box-office draw would be the result of minority lead actors, rather than, oh, I don’t know, lame scripts, production and acting. Make a good movie, and it doesn’t matter who’s in it, I’ll be there. Make a bad one and I’ll stay away.
I’ve read the book and when I saw the trailer for the movie, I went back to see which character Jim Sturgess is playing. The character’s description is “Dark hair, dark eyes…vaguely ethnic, but beyond that, indeterminate.” I remember the outcry when Jonathan Pryce, a Brit, played a Vietnamese pimp on Broadway in Miss Saigon. I have no problem with it, although I hope that casting directors start within the ethnic group of the character, but then ultimately talent should win out. Having said that, yes, it would be great to see great acting along with the right look. I wouldn’t have seen “Ali” done by anyone else.
The Asian-actor community needs our own Tyler Perry…someone who will write stories that portray us as modern human beings and not exotic, foreign, East-meets-West, martial arts driven, one-dimensional characters.
Quick name 3 or 4 bankable twenty-something Asian actors.
Exactly.
It’s b.s. to use the box office draw argument against Asians but write off a movie starring white actors that fails as one of those things. What about Shanghai Surprise? Charlie’s Angels? I was leaning against seeing this movie because it seemed to lack the grit of say, Rounders. Thanks for the wave off.