LONG DUK DONG

"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.

Although Borat is constructed from elements of stereotype and caricature, there's an ambiguity about exactly who he represents.

uh no he is depicted very specifically as being from an actual country where actual people of an actual ethnicity live - Kazakhstan

More importantly, he's not the butt of the jokes - the "normal" people he interacts with are.

really. all those jokes about horrible wife's "wizard sleeve" and his joyously anti-semitic community and his broken diction, he's not the butt of that material? gtfo

uh they make it pretty clear that he's from China xp

Also, the audience is always in on the joke that Borat is a constructed character

lol what movies do you watch where you're NOT sure the characters are constructs

Oh boy a Borat argument in 2012!

just because it's a construct doesn't mean the construct isn't fundamentally racist

xp

I far prefer Borat in short TV segements, btw. I'm partly convinced the movie came about because SBC figured everyone in Britain knew who he was and it didn't make sense to go the US unless they got a lot of footage.

Money

uh they make it pretty clear that he's from China xp

Fair enough. I haven't seen the movie since it came out.

What makes me uncomfortable about both characters isn't that kind of racist stereotype that says 'X ppl are like this' it's the condescending view that an attempt at versimilitude of any kind is pointless and the audience neither knows nor is curious about a credible Chinese or Kazak character as long as they're funny in a 'quirky' way.

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

Revenge also had the Asian stereotype character but doesn't go as far as Sixteen Candles does. but yeah re-watching it I do find it funny how the nerds are supposed to be the good guys even though they are as unethical as the jocks, and maybe even worse (videotaping naked girls without their knowledge, and of course that whole sex scene that's like the most implausible thing on film)

ROTN was explicitly created to be as offensive as possible - all the gratuitous nudity, racist stereotypes, homophobia etc were deliberate

(not defending it btw, just noting that the screenwriters would not dispute the film is racist, sexist, etc)

that people though Borat was THE GREATEST COMEDY EVER for some reason was just sad.

I found a lot of stuff very questionable about the movie and hate the way it was explained by the people who loved the it - like, when he's doing the "manners training" and he brings the hooker, a lot of the glowing reviews said "watch as Borat exposes a group of Southern people to a black woman and see how horrified they are, aren't they terrible racists" when it's like, you bring in a white woman dressed like that and you'll get the exact same reaction, shut the fuck up, it's clear that the movie wasn't about exposing anything. Bruno is the same way, I hate when people say things like "look how Sacha Baron Cohen is exposing America's homophobia!" when you could almost argue that it's worse to NOT be offended by his behavior.

the only point of those movies is to be funny, and to be honest I laughed a lot at both

ROTN was explicitly created to be as offensive as possible - all the gratuitous nudity, racist stereotypes, homophobia etc were deliberate

yeah, the 80's were a weird time of political incorrectness; I realize a lot of this stuff still exists, but the sex/rape scene probably wouldn't fly today, nor would half the stuff on Sledge Hammer

like I saw the awful movie "40 Days and 40 Nights" which also ends on a rape scene (woman on man though) and found it shocking that it was allowed to be in the movie

how would you have felt if it was a man on woman one?

horny

(j/k)

oh man, 40 Days and 40 Nights...

iirc he's basically hallucinating at the end due to going that long without sex

you mean, what if a woman tied herself to the bed and a man broke into the house and raped her? in that case I'd probably be watching a Gaspar Noe film which means I'd be pissed off already

iirc he's basically hallucinating at the end due to going that long without sex

that's true but when he wakes up, he's being raped
what makes it even worse is that his current girlfriend blames him for it too, as though he had a lapse in judgement and winds up apologizing for it

if the roles were reversed here the movie simply wouldn't exist

ROTN was explicitly created to be as offensive as possible - all the gratuitous nudity, racist stereotypes, homophobia etc were deliberate

― The Silent Extreme (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, January 10, 2012 12:16 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

ah, the vice magazine approach