I Wanna Be An Asian Action Film Star!

“The next Asian action star will be….my friend P!” Years from now, I will be able to say that I knew P when he was a still a struggling checker/coffee jockey at Trader Joe’s/Starbucks. He’s auditioning today for an action movie but come to think of it, I’m not sure if he’s auditioning for an Asian action movie or your standard Jerry Bruckheimer action movie. P happens to be of the Chinese variety and I have chop-socky action movies on my mind because S.O. and I went to see Ong-Bak yesterday at the AMC gazillion-plex in Emeryville.

Ong-Bak is about a country bumpkin (who happens to be Muay Thai kickboxer of the highest ass-kicking order) who ventures into big bad Bangkok to retrieve a stolen Buddha head that apparently holds the key to his villages’ prosperity. It was released a couple of years ago and is finally now being shown in the U.S. The delay for its U.S. release is typical of most Asian action movies, I suspect distributors want to make sure it’s a moneymaker before issuing a wider release. Oh, don’t get S.O. started on Asian action film stars.

I understand his beef. It seems that all Asians in movies have super human, wire-walking, gravity-defying abilities. Make no doubt, I’m a huge fan of the “sword-and-silk” genre (i.e. House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) but it’s true, you don’t see the talky, indie movies with Asians in lead roles. You won’t see an Asian version of Garden State at your local movie house any time soon. I ask the question but I know the answer. If you put an Asian actor in a movie and not address her ethnicity at all, it leaves a taste of inauthenticity in your mouth. You’ll wonder why no one brought it up and suddenly, the whole movie’s integrity is jeopardized because…it’s an issue in real life! A person’s ethnic background IS an issue. Honest to God, I wish it wasn’t, but it is. People deal with big, bold issues everyday--you hear someone say something so racist and bigoted, straight out of 1950 and it makes your jaw drop and renders you speechless. But it also can hit you from the side, slyly, when you hear someone refer to Filipinos as being “shifty”. I think to myself, Should I be offended? It sets off a dialogue in my mind, “Well, I do know some shifty Filipinos…” “But you can’t label a whole race of people as shifty…” “But look at the history of corruption in the Philippines…” See? Someone’s off-the-cuff statement made me disparage my entire race! It’s no wonder why an undercurrent of cultural self-loathing insinuates itself throughout my psychology.

So, yes, I find it unfortunate that female Asian actors rarely find work outside of playing domestics, prostitutes, superheroes; their male counterparts busy, too, perfecting either the super-nerd or super-hero character. Hollywood seems like they can only process our Asian faces in one, two, three ways, max. That’s fine…for now. In the meantime, I’ll continue to support projects and movies that feature Asians in a (hopefully) positive light. If that means paying $9 to see Michelle Yeoh fly-run effortlessly over rooftops, I’ll gladly fork over the dough.