LONG DUK DONG

but it was the kind of bullshit that could easily get made

easily made bullshit

amazed how many scripts include stuff like CUT TO: SCARY BLACK GUY or DOG REACTION SHOT or misogynist bullshit passed off as gospel truth.

if this were a thread about racism in non-comedies i'd just be going on about the fuckedupness of assault on precinct 13

wait, what is wrong with DOG REACTION SHOT?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T55ArHjeR1c

racist as hell, mostly cringe-worthy & regrettable, but I can't help but lol @ the post-bacchanal exchange b/w the donger & grandpa.

Dong, where is my automobile?

Character is much more richly developed in Dong Is Missing.

Is Borat any different from Long Duk Dong?

not really, but i'm the only person that's going to agree w/ you on that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsywLclz8A8

john hughes did papa johns

Revenge of the Nerds is PACKED with this stuff, PLUS it ends with a comic rape scene!

At the weekend, ITV broadcast Disney's One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, complete w/ Sir Peter Ustinov as wiley/ludicrous oriental:

http://www.sirpeterustinov.com/dinopubigcopy.jpg

John Hughes, of course, wrote for National Lampoon magazine in the 70s, and that's incredibly racist a lot of the time

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm107558347/mastermind-zero-mostel-vhs-cover-art.jpg

Zero Mostel, ladies and gentlemen

http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/Dr.Lao.JPG

Tony Randall, ladies and gentlemen

oh damn

16 Candles also has the following exchange between MR and her best friend:

And you do it on a cloud

without getting pregnant

or herpes.

I don't need the cloud.

Just a pink Trans Am

and the guy, right?

A black one.

A black guy? (Sounds completely horrified)

A black Trans Am.

A pink guy.

That whole convo was always pretty o_O to me.

"if this were a thread about racism in non-comedies i'd just be going on about the fuckedupness of assault on precinct 13"

The original or the remake?

The last time this was brought up on ILX, I think someone posted a link to an article by an Asian-American writer with a detailed decription of how the image Long Duk Dong affected the way he was treated as teenager (similar to the Adrian Tomine comic). I remember the writer mentioning that before LDD, the stereotypical image of Asian guys was Bruce Lee, but at least Lee was a badass kung fu guy, so Long Duk Dong replacing him was actually a turn for the worse. Can anyone locate that article, I thought it was a good reading on this subject?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88591800

Oh yeah, that's it, I guess I misremembered that it was written by Martin Wong instead of him being interviewed for it.

The original or the remake?

didn't know there was a remake. original came to mind after people were talking about john hughes' terror @ inner-city black people. precinct 13 seems like it comes from the mind of someone who's never been in a city and thinks that black people are all sociopathic sadists who will kill your innocent white daughter as she eats her ice cream cone.

oh for fuck's sake i just remembered it was my blackface/golliwog friend that made me watch it

I think you should refer to him as that, to his face.

introduce him to people that way

"Hi, this is my friend, Mr. Blackface Golliwog."

"..."

"Well its not offensive in England."

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sxjPDDtsXdc/Ti_-g1K8EUI/AAAAAAAAESE/WyzwbzSFRYk/s1600/marlon-brando-the-teahouse-of-the-august-moon.jpg

precinct 13 seems like it comes from the mind of someone who's never been in a city and thinks that black people are all sociopathic sadists who will kill your innocent white daughter as she eats her ice cream cone.

?? All the bad guys in the movie are pretty much a mix of white, Latino and black -- and the one who shoots the little girl is as white as white can be, noted weirdo Frank Doubleday:

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsD/4803-939.gif

And the hero of the movie looks like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jCtQBPsvASY/Sfps1jvRuVI/AAAAAAAAAg8/Y9bWaPP71dE/s400/16581-939.gif

I don't think the film's racial politics are anywhere near how you're describing them here. Granted it's been a long time since I've seen it, but that doesn't jibe with my memory of it.

I was wondering that too, I thought maybe he was talking about the remake, which I've never seen. I don't remember the original being as problematic as most of the other films itt, but like you I haven't seen it in over a decade.

Here's how to do it right:

http://www.mastermindboardgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mastermind-board-game-original-cover-art.jpg

My grandparents used to have that game!

I was a teenager in the 80's and I didn't much like Hughes movies. I know that sets me out of the norm but they all seemed so tedious to me.

I like Tomine's take on the character. If the humor had been at all subversive or insightful, it might have been slightly more palatable. Instead, we have a lucky generic Asian who gets to learn from suburban white ppl how to hang out in trees or whatever.

And nail Joan Cusack. Don't forget that.

not really, but i'm the only person that's going to agree w/ you on that

no I totally agree that Borat is racist bullshit

sad misreading of Precinct 13 upthread wtf

What race is Borat denigrating, exactly?

Whatever the entirity of eastern Europe is?

lucky generic Asian

uh this is a really big stretch

Believe Kazakhs weren't too thrilled - although it was really Eastern Europeans he was targeting, he didn't bother to find out anything about Kazakhstan (xp)

the "strange/backwards eastern european" comedy character runs way back (Chico Marx, Yakov Smirnoff, etc), it's an old ethnic stereotype and it's not like Borat did anything that inventive with it, he just upped the gross-out factor. that people though Borat was THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER for some reason was just sad.

I went to high school with someone who was legitimately named D** D****. In retrospect, given that his whole family were the first and only Vietnamese people anyone in Whitehall had ever met (and probably the only ones some people WOULD ever meet), I wonder whether they were more affected by stereotypes like LDD or whether everyone else was just so flummoxed by having a whole family of non-adopted Asian people as neighbors that it never came up.

Chico Marx?!??!?!?!?

Hey whassa matta f' you!!!!!

uh this is a really big stretch

Is it? I don't remember them mentioning what country he was from. The name is a joke and not particularly indicative of any specific Asian country.

I though part of the joke about Borat is that he's Kazak but his vocabulary is sprinkled with idioms common to Russian Jews.

I know someone with the last name of Duong but you pronounce it with a t or a v consonant sound instead xp

MW - have you seen that clip I posted upthread? the whole character is an absurdist, cartoon parody on the level of jar jar binks.

I mean, calling that character a 'generic Asian' implies that there are people who act like that in real life, and that you can find them in Asian communities - which is just patently untrue.

And then there's Ali G...

Leonard "Chico" Marx (March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was an American comedian and film star as part of the Marx Brothers. His persona in the act was that of a dim-witted albeit crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes, and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat

great example there of the pervasiveness of racism eastern Europeans

Ravelli (Chico): "How did you get to be Roscoe W. Chandler?"
Chandler: "How did you get to be Italian?"
Ravelli: "Never mind — whose confession is this?"

Chico's ethnicity was always indeterminate, which was part of the joke. My larger point was that the stereotype of a strange European immigrant is really common in comedy, and acting like the character is not based on an essentially racist premise is just wrong. see also: Cozen Larry, Latka, etc. we went over this on the main Borat thread.

Borat is a lot more complex than a simple caricature like Long Duk Dong. Although Borat is constructed from elements of stereotype and caricature, there's an ambiguity about exactly who he represents. More importantly, he's not the butt of the jokes - the "normal" people he interacts with are. Also, the audience is always in on the joke that Borat is a constructed character - so there's an element of distance from the stereotypes. A lot of the humor is watching people react in a stereotypical way to something we know is a ruse.

'generic Asian'

I meant non-specified in terms of country.

There's plenty of anti-Italian humor in 30's films, btw. 'Top Hat' for example.

For my interview, Netflix stipulated that I not ask Groening about Apu controversy. I asked Netflix, "Is Matt declining to comment on Apu?" They declined to answer that, so I went ahead and asked Matt about Apu. Netflix halted the interview immediately and disconnected the call. https://t.co/RCf3lpwjvI

— Brad Wheeler (@BWheelerglobe) July 18, 2018