Note: The article I just posted got me to thinking about a column I wrote way back in the day, before blogs were a twinkle in some developer's eye, about Asians on TV. It's posted in the archives of my Nikkeiview site, but I thought I'd re-post it here. I wrote this after seeing the final "Seinfeld" episode.
Like a zillion other people across the country, I tuned in to the final episode of "Seinfeld," and I gotta say, I was only mildly impressed. Oh, I liked the show whenever I caught it, but I was a casual viewer, so the nasty humor that the characters reveled in didn't connect with me the way they may have for diehard fans.
What the show did, especially with its segments making fun of foreigners, was get me thinking about Asian faces on TV. As a Japanese-American kid enchanted by American popular culture of the 1960s, it never occurred to me growing up that there were very few people like me on the shows I watched for hours on end.
The first Asian face I can remember on TV was the camp cook on "Bonanza," Hop Sing, played by Victor Sen Yung. The show premiered in 1959 but lasted into the '70s, and I remember being fascinated by Hop Sing's pigtail, but I didn't identify with him because he was Chinese, and I knew the distinction even if many of my friends didn't. Still, I often played Hop Sing when we played cowboys and Indians.
Other Asians on TV did include Japanese -- Fuji, the POW on "McHale's Navy" played by Yoshio Yoda, was in retrospect an obnoxious stereotype of the easygoing, accommodating Japanese (the "good" American stereotype -- the other was of course the "inscrutable" and "sneaky" Jap that bombed Pearl Harbor). Yet, as a kid, I accepted "Fuj," as he was called by the PT-boat cutups in the cast which included Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway, and even went around happily being called "Fuj" through high school by some of my buddies.
About the same time, for just a couple of seasons, the first strong Asian character appeared on TV, but not on a sitcom. "The Green Hornet" injected a lot of humor into the superhero genre, but it was essentially a drama, and Bruce Lee, the young martial arts champion hired to play the part of the limo driver/sidekick Kato, was a great role model in many ways. I'm sure he got many kids -- of all races -- first interested in martial arts. I admit I went around painfully chopping my hand down on everything in sight for a while. But Kato was never allowed to stretch as a character, or even talk much like Robin in the "Batman" series. He was fated to always be subservient to his boss, the Green Hornet.
The '60s gave us one more Japanese character -- and a good one -- in navigator Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek," played by George Takei, who's very active today in Japanese-American issues. The entire cast of the show was pretty progressively integrated (having a black woman playing the communications officer Uhuru in the late '60s was a strong statement on a couple of levels), so Takei's role was no coincidence.
The '70s resurrected the good-natured Japanese fellow in the form of Arnold, the diner owner from "Happy Days," played by character actor Pat Morita. I rather preferred Morita's corny but at least more significant role as the mysterious martial arts master in "The Karate Kid" movies. The decade also resurrected the reliable Asian sidekick, in Robert Ito's easygoing assistant Sam Fujiyama to Jack Klugman's over-dramatic L.A. coroner in "Quincy."
In recent years, when Asians should have become more common on TV, they've become less so.
The most recent attempt at incorporating an Asian character that I can think was "All American Girl" starring standup comic Margaret Cho as an abrasive Korean-American woman written too obviously in the mold of "Roseanne." But since the entire show was about her and her family (instead of Cho being a character in a show along with a mostly Caucasian cast), I don't think mainstream American viewers identified with the series. It didn't last.
Though I didn't like the show, I recognized people I know from my upbringing, including certain family members.
The next step must be to come up with strong Asian characters whose roles ring true to the Asian-American experience, and include them as equal characters in mainstream TV shows. A TV critic brought up the lack of ethnic faces in the core group of Seinfeld's New York pals as if to criticize Jerry Seinfeld for not being diverse enough. But that's not the point -- and Seinfeld has a right to pick on minorities for humor if people think that's funny.
The point is to come up with the NEXT Seinfeld and make sure there's someone like me in the cast. In fact, I'm available. Just e-mail me!
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Comments: 11
And Joanne, you're right, there are many different experiences within the APA community. But I'm not even looking for someone who has the same experience as me; I'd love to just see Asians, period, on TV. That's why the current influx of Asians on Survivor, Grey's Anatomy Heroes, etc. is so great. In fact, all those shows display different types of Asian Pacific Americans, so it's cool.
Good article, and much thought provoking!
A lot of American and Canadian born Asians went to Asia to develop their careers; just like Bruce Lee did as its not feasible to wear yourself down doing the kicking-door-open; now there is a reverse flux of Asians coming to Hollywood; but these are not North American Asians.
The Japanese being racist and exclusive is slightly different from Americans being racists - Japan is not a multi-racial country; I am not saying it is alright to be racist; but in proportion wise; its normal that we dont see that many Caucasian faces; however; their policies towards foreigners are nothing that they should be proud of.
North America was built by all ethnic groups and Asians have contributed significantly from inventing the Bing Cherries to building railroads to your great scientific discoveries; food; everything; but we hardly ever see any Asian faces playing normal roles on TV. But then; maybe more Asians have to get into the field first; if only a few enter the field and the field is tough, and competitive; well... you have to have a large entry base to have higher probabilities of results that come out at the top.
Look at black entertainers; there are more people interested from the ground up thats why there are more musicians; actors in the field. And maybe they are naturally more talented with corporal expressions; perfection and interest so they are really good too?
But the weaker minorities must be vigilent to not accept gratuitous blurbs (a white person might sometimes feel racism against them - for example in Japan - but in general they are in power from an overall picture so; they do not suffer in the same way as other minorities within a majority system. Racism is wrong no matter how you justify it... ); the speakers may mean no harm; but still I always remind them that their words are out of line when it happens: stereotypes; jokes on race etc. And if aft'er having been warned they still dont pay attention - then they obviously did not register the info as important - when that happens there might be less pleasant warnings and they will understand when they have to understand.
I'm a white/Caucasian (whatever term you all prefer, you can use) person who grew up with a Native American step father and a white mom. The two of them used to call racial slurs out at the African Americans we passed on the street. As a child, this really confused me since the difference in skin color between those people and my parents was not any more pronounced that the difference between my mom's skin color and my stepdad's. Yet, they didn't yell nasty things at each other (well about race, that is).
I spent most of my growing up years in the Pasadena area of California and to me, it always amazed me that the shows I'd watch on TV seemed to be all white, with a token person of color or all Black with a token white person. The neighborhoods I grew up in were extremely mixed (of course we weren't rich either), but I never could figure out how "Hollywood" couldn't notice that there were other sorts of people out there.
Now, I'm the mom of mixed race children (Asian Pacific Islander (Tongan) and half me. I'm a mix of German, Irish, and Cherokee. My great, great, great (I think that's all) grandmother was a Cherokee woman on the Trail of Tears and ended up living as husband and wife with one of the White soldiers who was escorting her family and tribesmen and women to reservations. So, my children have all kinds of races in them and I'd be willing to guess that most of America's people do. Yet, Hollywood continues, except in very rare cases, to portray families as all White, all Black, all Asian, etc. I think your article should be published in LA times and NY times. Maybe it will wake up some people?