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In light of the recent Blog entry by Erica Williams questioning the social and cultural progress of the characters portrayed in American Gangster, I decided to explore similar questions about Kal Penn's first starring role prior to the Namesake in the poorly received "National Lampoon's Van Wilder Rise of the Taj."
The film starring Kal Penn made just a little over $2 million playing in 2,000 theatres in its opening week. With little knowledge of the film's contents I decided to avoid it rather than taking the risk of supporting a film that could do nothing but perpetuate pre-existing stereotypes. After seeing the final box office results, I was left to wonder if others in the Asian American and South Asian communities avoided the film due to similar trepidation?
As we all know it is extremely difficult for a minority actor to get a starring role in Hollywood, and even when they get a part in a major motion picture they become shadows who either remain silent, perform racial stereotypes, or both (Penn himself in Superman Returns and Kelly Hu in X2: X-Men United serve as clear examples of this trend).
Yet despite this fact, I could not shake my reservations about the film. How could I support a sequel to a film about a white frat boy that turns its focus on a sidekick who was created as nothing more than a tool to gain cheap laughs at the expense of an entire community of people? Is this the kind of star vehicle that we really want for our up and coming actors and actresses?
Sure, Kal Penn lead an entire film by himself, but the trailer only refers to him as the caricature he is playing, never does the name Kal Penn appear on screen the way the star of any other film would.
Though it could be argued that the film does make some progress by showing Taj as a sexual character, he is still just another horny minority character who was taught about sex and wooing women by a white character in the previous film.
As a friend of mine pointed out this stereotypical role of a South Asian male is seemingly nothing new to Kal Penn who has appeared in 2003's "Where's the Party Yaar?" and 2001's "American Desi". However unlike Taj, these films were either directed or written by South Asians and made for predominantly South Asian audiences. In both films the main characters end up embracing their people and their culture.
Anyone who has googled Penn knows that he is a very bright, educated, articulate young man who wants to see a change in the representation of Asian Americans in film. It was this very intelligence that lead him to seek out the role of Gogol in Mira Nair's adaptation of the Namesake.But unfortunately, he is repeatedly typecast as an amorous but sexually inexperienced ethnic sidekick or a terrorist.
The development of such a pattern often leads to questions of what is more harmful, the complete absence of major characters portrayed by minority actors or said actor making a name for himself in a string of roles that bring to life unimaginative, one dimensional, and ultimately tired stereotypes?
Final Question:
Are these sorts of films truly detrimental to the societies they portray or am I just reading too much into a man's attempts at making his name known in Hollywood?
Discuss.
Sometimes, though, people take whatever roles they can to break in. Case in point: Kal Penn, and also Sung Kang, who got his start playing 'Asian Gangster #3' roles before he really had a chance (through should-be-hyped-more-than-he-i s director Justin Lin) to expand via Better Luck Tomorrow, The Motel, and Tokyo Drift.
Let's not just put it on the actors, though -- the scripts matter.
And when racist, awful dreck like the Joy Luck Club is the scripts that Hollywood picks up to 'represent' a certain racial experience...
The thing with Kal Penn is that he is unbelievably intelligent, very thoughtful and cognizant of the inequities of the mainstream media.
On one hand, I could see some of his roles being offensive to South Asians but as an Afghan growing up in America and having pretty much no one like me on the screen I can see just how much Kal has accomplished.
Its all a very tricky situation but I think a careful embracing of more minority artists is a key to change. As we all know from school and work, a lot of attempts at "diversity" is poorly planned and ultimately not really very diverse at all.
Up until very recently, studio execs saw a pie chart with three slices. "What'll sell to Blacks", "What'll sell to Latinos", and "What'll sell to Whites". Nothing personal, they say, just business. If you put out 'Sideways', you're selling to one demographic, if you put out 'Soul Plane', you're selling to another. Those demographics track strongly enough on racial lines that from a pure moneybag perspective, it makes sense they do it that way.
What about Asian Americans? The studio response was "they spend and consume like white people, so there's no need to represent them on this, there's no money in trying to particularize beyond that."
When Justin Lin was selling Better Luck Tomorrow to the studios, he got a lot of execs (Including, he said, Asian American execs) saying to him, "We'd be glad to make your movie -- if you change all the characters to caucasian."
When he refused, and when BLT got some serious buzz at Sundance due to a question-time dustup involving Roger Ebert, the film went on to do respectable business, and it was a major critical success.
The result?
According to one studio exec, the success of BLT was why Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle was green-lighted.
...And after Harold and Kumar's success at the box office and in DVD sales/rentals, a sequel's coming down the pipe...
...and it goes from there.
It's still a small trend toward representation, but it's growing. It worked because studio execs saw, at every step of the way, that they'd be rewarded financially if they invested in this.
Same thing with Tyler Perry's movies, which (while not always great pieces of film in their own right) portray a more positive slice of African American life than you normally see in Hollywood. Perry was tested at the box-office with the first Madea movie, he passed the test, he put together an unbelievably strong cross-platform content distribution system, and the movies keep coming.
Initiative from the ground up is what makes it happen.
The one big challenge they have with the Asian American audience is that it is so broad and varied that they can't easily put it in a different box. Everyone is from a different culture and speaks a different language, even within individual nations. Despite this fact, the notion of an "Asian" or "Asian American" (which I don't think really exists in the eyes of "Americans," we are the perpetual immigrant) is very limited to an extremely small section of people from a continent as large as Asia.
When I was Interning at the Center for Asian American Media I was constantly struggling with even them to broaden their notion of what is or isn't an "Asian American" Film. It'll be interesting to see how Hollywood markets The Kite Runner and find out what kind of audinece they are aiming for with its imminent release.