Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Rico
Why is blackface strictly "verboten" in the media but "yellowface" not? This is the third recent movie in which which featured a non-Asian in yellowface - "Norbit" (Eddie Murphy), "Chuck and Larry" (Rob Schneider), and "Balls of Fury" (Christoper Walken).
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technically walken's character was a white guy trained by an asian man. thus he mimicked the asian style, but i see what you're saying though.
"yellowface" or asian jokes in general aren't seen so much as taboo as jokes made upon other races yet. the asian movement in modern america is still in its infancy imho. chin up though, we are strong willed and dedicated people. we will earn the respect we deserve, it just takes time.
as the saying goes, "rome wasn't built in a day"
as far as "balls of fury goes" yes, it did play heavily on asian stereotypes, but it could have been much worse. yes, the protagonist is white and generally unappealing, and yes, he does win the heart of the beautiful asian girl. but what else were you expecting? BoF made alot of faux paus however, i feel it did
some things right
for one, the non english dialogue was pretty good. i was expecting them to just slur asian sounding noises and subtitle it. however the chinese and korean dialogue was spoken well enough, and the translations were pretty much accurate
secondly, the movie did not make any use of deliberate in your face asian bashing common in other movies. the mandatory asian penis joke wasn't there, or other jokes meant to demoralize asian physique weren't used.
all in all, it's a comedy. it served that purpose. i laughed, my gf (korean) laughed, and im sure most of the audience (roughly 24% was asian) laughed.
sometimes, we just need to reduce our sensitivity and laugh at ourselves. it's a silly, dumb, ridiculous movie, and thats exactly why i went to see it.
I'm thinking about going to see it. Roger Ebert only gave it 2 1/2 stars......
