Calling the bluff: Is '21' racist?
Mar 28, 2008, 01:25 PM | by Youyoung Lee
Categories: Film, Hollywood Hate Crime
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 that it's okay to portray Asian-American men in lead roles as three-dimensional characters with personalities, feelings, and a sense of 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 dealing with an all-minority experience in America is unappealing, even more so when it's for sheer entertainment and not doling out some somber lesson in history. Director Robert Luketic only exacerbates this point when he typecasts Asian actors Lisa Lapira and Aaron Yoo as buffoonish, clumsy sidekicks 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 with million-dollar bankrolls raise a lot of suspicion. Asian, Greek, Persian — the kind of kids you see parking their BMWs outside of the Armani Café on Newbury Street, that's who we're looking for… Gambling is an Asian obsession. And nobody lets their kids run as wild as rich Persians and Greeks. Walk around any casino, the people throwing down purple chips are almost always dark-skinned. Card counters, on the other hand, are usually balding white men with glasses. We can use one stereotype to trump another."
What do you think, PopWatchers? Did 21 play its cards wrong, or just follow the house rules?
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