I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron on Friday night. It was ridiculous — RIDICULOUS — and I loved it. I’ve seen several tweets and a few reviews panning the movie, and I admit that in the initial heady afterglow of seeing a Korean actor on the silver screen, I couldn’t even begin to understand the disappointment. Is it possible that we did we not see the same movie? Did you people not notice the talented and gorgeous Claudia Kim as Dr. Helen Cho? Was that not enough to please you, to meet your lofty standards? I just don’t understand you, or what it takes to make you happy.
I suppose you want a Korean character AND a plot that makes actual sense
Look at Helen work. Look at her telling that crazy Cradle of hers what to do. The high neck of her fancy futuristic labcoat looks very uncomfortable, but she is making it work. This is a woman who can help drive the plot (such as it is…), a woman with the guts to stand up to evil, a woman who could name her kids Amadeus and Madame Curie Cho and calmly say to all the haters, “I like to keep my expectations high, and if you cannot understand that then I feel sorry for you.”
With Helen Cho in Age of Ultron, we get an Asian woman in a big-budget major motion picture who:
1) has a name,
2) gets more than thirty seconds of screen time,
3) does not die immediately after being introduced,
4) has no apparent martial arts skills,
5) is neither a math tutor nor a geisha,
6) gets to talk and say smart things — even in a roomful of white characters, who actually shut up for a minute and listen to her when she is explaining her science and why she’s a boss,
7) does not exist solely to give some white lady no one cares about questionable relationship advice, and
8) is not a crime lord and/or running a shady as fuck business out of a big scary warehouse.
If Dr. Helen Cho were your brilliant labmate
Helen Cho is played by Korean actor Claudia Kim, and it’s always nice when Hollywood doesn’t just swap out one kind of Asian for another because #alllooksame. Is she still a background character? Well, sure. But the fact that we don’t learn much about her doesn’t bother me as much in a movie full of larger-than-life characters whose personal lives, even when glimpsed, are always secondary to the mission. Dr. Helen Cho is a badass geneticist whose invention can rebuild damaged skin and MAKE ORGANS and shit. Her science makes Tony Stark look like the little kid he kind of is. She’s not an Avenger, she doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but she gets her moment.
I knew she was going to be in the movie, but I wasn’t expecting her to have such a pivotal (if still too small!) role. My expectations regarding the super white, super male Marvel movie universe are low when it comes to seeing people of color, women of color in particular. I was surprised at how excited I felt watching the few scenes Kim was in. Representation in pop culture is something I do think about as an Asian American, but most days it’s pretty far down the list. When I rant about it, usually in response to some Orientalism or some stupid ninja reference on a TV show, invariably someone will say, “Aren’t there much bigger things to worry about?” And I’ll feel chastened, because yes, of course there are — much, much bigger things.
Still, it’s hard not to at least notice when you consume so many shows and movies and franchises over the years — when you love so many things about them and want to love them more — and you rarely if ever see anyone like you in those spaces, in those worlds. My older daughter is seven now, moving beyond the steady diet of PBS kids’ fare we kept her on for so many years, and a few weeks ago she asked me why there were no Asians in most of the movies and shows we’ve watched together: “Is it because there aren’t many Asian people who live here?” (Her school is 40% Asian, and she still asked me this.)
Eventually, I know, my kids will get that it’s not really about numbers. They will get the none-too-subtle message that there are plenty of us here, and if we aren’t seen, it’s not because we don’t exist, but because some people just don’t care about seeing us.
This is why, as an Asian kid entirely surrounded by whiteness, I would follow literally any show with an Asian character, no matter how terrible; why I loved and watched Shelby Woo (unquestionably a fun show, but also kind of a model minority stereotype-enforcer); why to this day I’ll give almost any show with an Asian cast member a trial of one full season, even if it’s super boring. And this is also why, three days after seeing Age of Ultron, Claudia Kim’s all-too-brief presence in the movie is what I keep returning to, what I keep thinking about — not the dry one-liners or the weird fight scenes or the extreme lengths to which they went to try and make us care about Hawkeye, but just the sheer novelty of seeing a character like Helen Cho onscreen.
It shouldn’t feel like such a big deal, and I wish I didn’t have to feel so excited about a character like hers. I wish I could be neutral and reasonable and blasé about media featuring Asian characters who don’t seem like tokens or play to obvious stereotypes, but it’s so rare that I can’t be. Is it getting better? I believe it is — there are certainly more Asians on TV. But after going to see Age of Ultron, I tried to think of other American movies with Asian or Asian American characters that meet all the criteria I mentioned above, and I had a very hard time. It was especially difficult thinking of Asian women whose film characters could pass the test. (There are probably more than I think but far fewer than there should be; it would be awesome to get a list going in the comments! HELP ME.)
If this is frustrating for me, just a casual viewer/fan fielding awkward questions from her kid, I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for Asian actors and artists trying to make a living. As great as it was to see Claudia Kim in Age of Ultron, we shouldn’t have to feel so grateful for one role in one movie.
Tags: all you need to know about the new avengers movie, claudia kim, diversity in film, marvel, movies, nicole s. chung, representation, the avengers
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I know exactly what you mean, Nicole. The prevalence of white acting talent makes minority actors like Claudia Kim stand out, and therefore what she is, does, or doesn’t do seems to speak for all Asians. But I think Hollywood and various TV networks are becoming more progressive in who they cast. I liken Helen Cho to Beverly Katz in ‘Hannibal’—she exists beyond her race and tackles challenges and provides solutions just as effectively as her white counterparts. I wrote about this and my own difficulties picturing my fictional characters as non-white here: http://millieho.net/2015/04/08/we-need-more-non-w…
We absolutely need to encourage more dialogues about diversity in films, TV, books, and all manner of mediums. I think a big part of increasing adoption of non-reductive portrayals of Asians and other minority races on the big screen comes down to encouraging aspiring screenwriters, directors, casting managers, and writers of source material (which I am aspiring to be) to embrace diverse narratives.
That’s one way we can have better stories.
There’s a huge amount of fixation on whether or not Black Widow will get her own film; it’s sad that people ignored Cho in the fretting over a single line of ScarJo’s.
The fretting over Black Widow’s one line of dialogue makes me nuts. Why isn’t it ok that she is UPSET ABOUT FORCED STERILIZATION? Whether or not she ever wanted to have children?
I think a lot of people thought that whole storyline just came out of nowhere, kind of? And bringing fertility or lack thereof into it to make a female character more sympathetic or more “developed” rankled a bit? (THE ONLY female character with high billing.) But I haven’t read too much fretting about it, so maybe people are upset for some other reason?
the prima nocta “joke” was godawful, fuck you for that one, Joss.
Yeah, that “joke” was uncalled for. And the random instant family and anyone at all being worried about having kids or not was a bigger issue for me, so I didn’t peg it as a particularly feminist issue.
There are some plausible editing-too-many-cooks-etc-etc explanations of why the Forced-Sterilization-Monster Bit was…… weird. I’m willing to sort of… let that go.
I simply do not get the prima nocta “joke”. Like, I literally get it, but in the theatre, I assumed I was misremembering what prima nocta WAS, because it didn’t make much sense. Like, okay, you want to show that Tony Stark isn’t always a nice guy, that he says and does dumb stuff in the moment, that he’s preoccupied with sex with lots of people even when in a relationship, fine—– but referencing prima notcta doesn’t do those things effectively, because the total % of people who know what the hell it is is….. rather small. With the “mewling quim” line, the context and delivery and even onomatopoeia gave you everything you needed.
And it’s not even an editing issue, where we could say something like “well, maybe they didn’t realize they didn’t have a good take of something better until too late”………..BECAUSE IN THE COMICON VERSION OF THE SCENE, THERE WAS A PERFECTLY DECENT (different) LINE. That did what it needed to do, and wasn’t obscure and weird and rape-ey. So someone had to fight for the inclusion of the prima nocta line.
And I really do honestly enjoy much of the Joss Whedon oeuvre, warts and all, but I’m pretty sure it would have had to be him fighting for this one weird, not funny line.
My very most generous (to JW) imagining is that various people were advising him on what to keep and what to cut, and that he was getting so much input, some of which was bad and he needed to fight against, that when someone told him that this line was terrible, he didn’t take that advice because he was, by that point, super defensive, because he was trying to protect things that were actually good (like the last line).
I am choosing to believe that Robert Downey Jr. ad libbed that gross “joke” and then everyone was so fixated on other issues, that it never got edited out. I have zero foundation for this, but
No, I’d totally believe that RDJ ad libbed about 18 different things, some of which worked better than others, and exactly none of which everyone else spent a lot of time thinking about the day of filming.
If they had a deleted scenes/blooper reel where RDJ tried at least 5 different asshole lines there, I actually might find the prima nocta version funny, *because* it wouldn’t have made the final cut because it’s pretty terrible but it’s a thing that maybe Tony Stark might say. In a blooper reel, it would be okayish that there wasn’t some sort of reaction from someone else making it obvious that was an asshole thing to say, because they’d be showing 5 different versions of Tony being TERRIBLE in different ways.
Some of the people who are upset about it are frustrated by the way that dialogue appears to liken not being able to have children to being a monster, which I think is valid. Nobody I’ve read is suggesting that it’s not ok for her to be upset about things that were done to her without her consent.
I just didn’t read it that way at all, but I can understand that interpretation.
yes, I noticed that line; it was terrible, too.
This is precisely the interpretation I had of that line. I don’t think it was intentionally written that way- it was a poor choice of wording. Still, I’m a woman who can’t bear children (and is mostly OK about this), but I found that line so painful I still have trouble thinking about it without tearing up.
Rewatching the movie, a sort of theme running through it was everyone at some point or another talks about this thing or that thing or themselves being monsters, and that line seemed to be just Natasha’s turn. That whole scene was a crazy mess, and they tried to slip too many things into it, not just that one line that (on second viewing) came off less as how she actually felt about herself and more as a non-sequitur to get back to sexy-banter-land. But, I was also looking specifically for how to fix that scene in my brain, and anyone else’s mileage may vary.
I also think it was more because she equated herself as a “monster” because of the forced sterilization and the narrative blindly accepted it! Even if that was something that Black Widow herself felt, it was v creepy to see Bruce Banner (dude who actually murders people, consciously or not) accept it as a legitimate line of argument, essentially validating the assumption that infertility = monstrous as a result.
On another note, really liked this piece! In the general mess that AoU was, I also thought Helen Cho was a bright and darling spot (though spent most of the movie nervous and convinced that she was about to die /o).
I read it differently? For the record saw the movie once, am terrible at watching things completely non-critically and only thinking about this stuff after and on subsequent viewings)
I thought the Monster stuff was more her talking about her ruthless assassin past than the no babies thing. Am I misremembering or being overly generous? Most of my AoU critique has really been that the plot made no damn sense.
I’m pretty sure she was sterilized in the comics as well, so it’s not like this development came out of the blue.
However, that being said, if the comics depicted her as a monster because she was infertile, that wouldn’t be an excuse for the movies to do so as well – it would still be a misogynistic move.
Personally? I just can’t get that reading out of the scene at all. Black Widow’s defining characteristic is her regret over her past crimes. Listen to her voice when she says “kill easily, think you’re the only monster?” Natasha thinks she’s a monster because even though she’s probably on the side of the “good” guys now, she still kills more easily (emotionally) than anyone else on the team. She regards her sterilization as just another symptom of her creation, not the cause.
If you get something else from the scene, hey, half of art is interpretation so your view is just as valid as mine.
As for her sterilization in the comic, I think one of her writers (in the comics) has an interview snippet worth sharing:
Question: Why was it important to you to have Black Widow unable to have children? How was this part of telling a feminist story about her, in your mind? Did you worry that this was reducing Natasha to just her fertility or lack thereof? And what was your solution?
Richard K. Morgan: “That narrative thread actually emerged not from any specific interest in children on Natasha’s part — my sense of the character is that she’s probably not keen on the idea — but because one of her fellow Widows was trying to have kids and had run up against the Red Room biotech that prevented it. So when Natasha finds this out, it’s almost a casual blow. But what’s telling, I think, is her reaction; there are no tears, no mawkishness, no collapse into becoming womanly distress — she’s just very (and dangerously) angry. And it’s important to realise why she’s angry — it’s not because she necessarily wants kids. She’s pissed off because she’s had the choice taken away.
… See, most women I’ve ever met either already have or at some point want kids, but there are still significant numbers who don’t, or at least don’t right now. But those variations are beside the point — the real point is that among all those women, having or wanting kids or not, I never met a single one who didn’t want the choice. Ultimately, I think, that’s what feminism is about — building a world in which women’s choices are not circumvented by someone (male) else’s agenda.”
Christ, this 100%, much more articulate than I could make it!
I didn’t get that she thought she was a monster because she’s infertile. I got that she angry at ‘them’ for doing it to here, but that she’s a monster because of all the horrific things she’s done as an assassin/spy. She doesn’t think being sterilized makes it easier to kill, that’s what ‘they’ think, and that’s why they did it.
Thanks, yes, this is legit! And those are really good points there- I totally get the anger as that being just another choice of hers that they casually negated. and I don’t want to negate anyone else’s viewing. But going into the film without having the comics background on that plot point (particularly that great interview), I came out with a very different read. Like I said, I don’t think it was intentional; just a line on a very hard emotional point that landed poorly for a lot a people- including me.
I also read it as very much anger about what she was made to be and how – she’s not a monster because she can’t have children, she probably doesn’t even want them – but that choice was taken away from her in the process of making her a super spy assassin. To make her someone who can emotionlessly use sex to disarm and murder a target (her name is *Black Widow*, they knew exactly what they were doing when they sterilized her and why), regardless of her own wishes.
Another thing that makes me nuts is that people seem to be forgetting Black Widow’s most important line in the whole movie: that scene toward the end where she jumps out of the Quinjet on her motorcycle and yells “BEEP BEEP.”
BEEP BEEP.
Can you not pit fans of female characters against each other? It’s actually possible to enjoy & celebrate Dr. Cho AND be upset about Black Widow’s poor characterization and sidelining by Marvel
Yes, this please. #falsechoices
I totally agree.
(I should clarify WRT my follow-up comment above that it wasn’t my intention to say or imply that people should just ignore the “I am a monster because I’m infertile” bit and just concentrate on how awesome Cho is.)
Thank you for this! I’m going to share it with my 12yo daughter, who is Chinese, and loves superheroes and comic books and superhero movies and is just happy to see “A GIRL” get appreciable screen time. (And who also wishes that one of the siblings in “Fresh off the Boat” was a girl instead of a boy because “there are enough boys on tv, sheesh.)
Oh, I loved her character, and I was SO glad she didn’t die.
I’m a white Irish man who lived in Incheon for a year and even I perked up so I can only imagine what it was like for Koreans. Korean/Americans. I think they could have included more of Seoul’s or Song-dos futuristic architecture.
Did you find F.R.I.D.A.Y’s voice a bit jarring? The Irish accent is not a clear accent, there was a lot of mumbling and unclear speech, it sort of didn’t make sense why she’d be Irish. Jarvis makes sense with an RP accents because he fulfilling the role of a butler.
I’m not complaining, just trying to understand the thought process that went into selecting that actress. I’m mostly happy they didn’t get an american actress to fake an ‘Oirish’ accent *shudder*. (Although while we’re there, they couldn’t find two young eastern European actors for the twins? Instead of hiring an american and english actor to fake awful vaugely ‘Russian’ accents)
(I’m also Irish, and probably have a very similar accent to Friday, east-coast/south Dublin)
I felt that same little thrill anytime ANY of the female characters did something rad. I am with you on this. Representation matters so much.
I would really love a pop cultural moratorium on ninjas, for at least a decade. I know the Hand ninja clan is central to the Daredevil mythos, but I was disappointed to learn that the Daredevil show’s one Japanese character turns out to be a ninja. Ninjas! Not actually a thing anyone has been for 400 years! I mean, we don’t have blind superheroes either, but it’s not like Irish-American actors are grudgingly accepting YET ANOTHER blind superhero gig because that’s all that’s available.
I know we’ve had a lot of talks about the cultural fascination with samurais as well, but quick tangent: Daredevil vs. Satoichi. Who would win?
I gotta go with Zatoichi. I figure all else being basically equal, sword beats billy club.
Man, I don’t know about this. The thing about Zatoichi is that he’s kind of getting on in years, and while his experience is great for fighting a bunch of dopes — or even trained samurai that don’t have his experience — I’m not sure I would have put Old Zatoichi against Young Zatoichi Who Can Also Do Backflips, which is basically what Daredevil is.
This is a fair point. I am not nearly as familiar with Zatoichi beyond “blind kickass guy.”
Well, Zatoichi is great as hell.
Zatoichi has better hair, that’s for damn sure.
I was so relieved that she didn’t die, and then so annoyed that I had to feel relieved about that. If her character had been a white dude, I never would have worried at all.
I am pretty happy that she made it through the movie, too, no question, but actually though…why didn’t she die? Didn’t Ultron actually shoot her in the chest with a laser?
It looked like the upper right chest/shoulder, though, so as long as it missed the subclavian artery it should have been perfectly survivable with real-life medical treatment (let alone if anyone had popped her in one of her own cradles).
Hmm. I don’t know, I think this is the same laser that Iron Man uses to blow up robots, I think there ought to be at least a hole somewhere.
I mean, Loki stabbed Coulson through the chest with a spear, so maybe SHIELD just installs a backup circulatory system in case of chest-stabbage.
Yeah but they had to bring Coulson back to life with alien space-magic, I think.
(I didn’t watch Agents of SHIELD, so I had actually constructed an elaborate subplot featuring Life Model Decoys that was actually going to be an amazing lead-in to Age of Ultron, and I am never GOING to watch Agents of SHIELD because I think my version was better, so I don’t really know how Coulson is still alive.)
alien space-magic is pretty much accurate.
1) Because she needed to deliver exposition
2) Because for an all-knowing murder robot, Ultron is a surprisingly crappy shot
Maybe Ultron’s laser has a “stun” setting, and he left her alive because he spent all that time in the internet and concluded that killing the only Asian character in a big budget Hollywood movie would be too much of a garbage move even for a murderbot?
Well, Ultron definitely has something LIKE a sense of responsibility.
I was also relieved and then annoyed! It’s such a pathetically low bar.
There was Toshiko Sto played by Naoko Mori in Torchwood although that is BBC.
YES to this, but also: even though I was glad to see an Asian woman on screen, the fact that she was a Korean woman *from Korea* and not a Korean-American woman felt a bit like cheating. I love seeing someone who looks like me (in theory, anyway — Claudia Kim is all kinds of Korean beauty ideal but that’s another discussion) in a big-name franchise like Avengers, but it still doesn’t amount to acknowledgment that, hey, WE’RE HERE. Hollywood has done more than enough to cement the idea that Asians are “over there” — geishas, ninjas (and other martial arts films), and do you remember the awfulness of Olympus Has Fallen? — so even though I will take the bone that is being thrown via Claudia Kim on screen, I’m still holding out for more portrayals Asian-Americans.
I am definitely sympathetic to this, although I’m torn between “hey, I’m glad someone is acknowledging that South Korea is a technological powerhouse in movies too, and Asia just isn’t a continent of Mystical Gangs and shit” and “yeah, no one is doing any movies featuring like, 2nd generation Asian Americans as just characters.”
Also, I feel like the whole “she has been taken over by Bad Guys and is now doing Bad Things,” albeit briefly, just had shades of Manchurian Candidate all over it. I know this has also happened to other people in the MCU and was taking place in the movie all over the place but I was still like “BLEH, not Claudia Kim too.”
So many feelings!
It’s sad how impressed I was that the movie had Dr. Cho speak flawless English, and also Korean in her scenes in Seoul. Imagine that, Hollywood! An Asian person, speaking an Asian language, and also perfect English!
…unlike Sokovia, whose native language is apparently, “English, but with a Dracula accent.”
At least Sokovia’s Cyrillic signs were real words. The laziness of using gibberish signs for the “Russian” establishing shot in the first Avengers movie really peeved me.
Yeah, the mind-control thing was sad, but all the others were having their minds fucked with, too, so it didn’t bother me as much as it would’ve otherwise — and she did fight back the moment she could.
Hawkeye was basically a zombie in the first Avengers and ended up having WAY TOO MUCH SCREEN TIME in Age of Ultron, so let’s cross our fingers and hope that pattern holds for Helen Cho.
It made *so much sense* to me that the lab would be in South Korea. I mean, where else would they be developing that sort of technology?
I genuinely had her tied as most likely to die with Maria Hill, so I was very glad she didn’t! But some days I’m glad for half a loaf and some days I’m cranky, and _Ultron_ generally made me pretty cranky, so I didn’t get much past “yay they didn’t kill her! . . . but the MCU can still do a lot better.”
Maria Hill has had a pretty big role in Marvel comics recently – she’s currently the director of SHIELD – so hopefully Colbie Smulders will be safe for a while in the MCU as well.
Once again IntenseDebate appears to have eaten my email reply, so:
I hope so too; that was my speculation based on the tease that someone was going to die in Ultron, because I thought they were going to establish the twins for future stories (Rhodey had a slight edge in case Captain Marvel keeps the Air Force stuff). I’m not making predictions post-Ultron just yet, as I can see factors weighing for and against her continued survival (for: already killed a high-ranking SHIELD person, at least in the movies proper; against: if you want to get rid of someone in the SHIELD-ish vicinity, well, Samuel L. Jackson still has a few movies left on his contract).
Cobie Smulders signed a huge contract to get the role – she’s on the hook for something like six more films. Maria Hill’s not going anywhere.
This article put me in mind of Gran Torino, with which I have a complicated relationship; and Saving Face, which I love unabashedly.
I love Saving Face. I picked it up out of a $5 bin and just… ugh, so great.
This is so spot on. I remember when I was watching Big Hero 6 (which, to be fair, I legitimately liked) and talking with my friend about this, and much of the conversation ended up circling back to “well, at least they left the main character Asian”, and feeling sad because that shouldn’t be the standard.
Also, even when there’s a good opportunity for representation there’s still no representation. I’m looking at you Firefly (and fuck you Joss for waving it off and saying “Summer Glau looks Asian.”)
That argument would be bullshit for *any* character but it just plain doesn’t make sense for one whose *entire biological family* we’ve seen, none of whom look the slightest bit Asian. I know ethnic markers can skip generations and show up in some siblings but not others, but that’s still pretty bullshit.
Agreed Re: Firefly. It’s great that there were some great roles for people of color in the film. Gina Torres, Ron Glass, and Chewitel Ejiofor were amazing. It could even, maybe, have been the case that they simply cast the best actors and actresses for the roles, and they couldn’t find enough Asian/AsianAmerican/etc actors (even that’s pretty bullshit, try harder, seriously, but it’s at least possible). But you then look at the crowd scenes. At least some of those crowd scenes, on at least some of those planets, should have been MOSTLY people who look Asian.
You can also argue that the original series was short-lived enough, low budget enough, and low profile enough that perhaps it was hard for them to do everything they wanted. That they didn’t have enough time to hear concerns from outside, and then implement fixes. Fair enough, maybe. But then they had Serenity, with a significant gap between wrapping Firefly and starting Serenity, where they could have fixed certain things, and they didn’t. So that really torpedoes that potential argument.
I think the whole no Asians/Asian-Americans at all, without any explanation, is what bugging me the most. China is a billion people country, so it just doesn’t make sense to me even from a story-telling point of view.
I believe there was talks about casting an Asian-American actress to play River Tam, but Joss liked Summer Glau better (don’t quote me on this though). I am not enamored with the whole “we just want to cast the most qualified” argument, because if that’s the case, movies wouldn’t be so white. Like the casting for Hunger Games did the whole “but Jennifer Lawrence was the most qualified”, except they specifically looked for Caucasian actresses during the casting call.
guys…
I think I always thought Summer Glau was multiracial/Asian
I think it’s the hooded eyes/general eye shape?
(Like Summer Glau, I have hooded eyes. Like Summer Glau, people think that I’m at least a little bit Asian. Like Summer Glau, I am actually super-white. This is probably where the accurate comparisons between Summer Glau and I end : / )
Yes! I mean, I could totally buy that they auditioned a bunch of people to play River Tam, and Summer Glau was the best person they found where they could make everything work. But there were NINE PEOPLE on that ship, and not one of them was Asian/Asian-American/etc. That makes it pretty clear to me that it wasn’t a priority for them, for whatever reason.
So many of the criticism of Whedon and the Whedonverse are nuanced, open for debate, involve a lot of backstory, etc etc. I deeply love Firefly and Serenity. But the overall casting picture of this universe is *so bad* that I really don’t understand it, or why anyone would try to defend it.
yeah, many people have tried to raise the influence of “Chinese culture” in Firefly/Serenity as proof of how awesomely inclusive Joss Whedon is, and I’m always just like lololol
To me it always felt like a gimmick he wanted to employ, that’s it. And I really like Firefly too, so.
(This post about Dr. Helen Cho was in NO WAY a defense of Whedon; everyone feel free to criticize him all you like, let’s just leave Helen out of it)
I found her completely-unimpressed-with-Tony-Stark thing to be fabulous.
What I really want is her, Natasha, Pepper, Jane, Darcy, Maria Hill, Melinda May, and a time-traveling Peggy to all go out drinking together and bitching about how various men in their lives are, like, seriously, The Worst. And have them be lovely, and supportive, and look out for each other, etc etc. Maybe add Lady Sif? Hell, I’ll even add Laura Barton, she and Natasha seem tight and I really liked that, even as I was NOPEing and WHATing other Farmhouse related bits.
hello where can I give you all my money for this
It’ll never happen on film, but someone please write that fanfic?
idk where SULAGNA is but she did promise me Helen Cho/Sam Wilson fic too
Uh, not quite it, but you could try this fic–> http://archiveofourown.org/works/1665326/chapters… I don’t THINK you need to read the entire rest of the series, although Toasterverse is one of my favorites in MCUfic.
Hey, it’s not what you’re describing, quite, and the author seems to have taken an indefinite hiatus — and maybe you will find that it is too much about manpain, although the author is afaict a kickass feminist lady — but the Pepper/Steve discussion about art at a museum gala in “American Captain” is maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen done with Steve Rogers as a character: http://americancaptaincomic.tumblr.com/tagged/com…
If people are down for (amazing) indie short films, may I recommend the work of Yulin Kuang? In particular her shorts Irene Lee, Girl Detective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAn1TLklMHo and The Perils of Growing Up Flat-Chested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GT6vVqpGt8 , both of which feature Asian American female protagonists. Not the same genre as Ultron but they’re really well done!
Hahaha that movie tried so hard to make us care about Hawkeye.
so much effort for so little payoff
It took me much too long to think of The Joy Luck Club, which is ridiculous because for me it represents the ur-1st gen/2nd gen (East) Asian American, woman-focused book/movie. I’m also inclined to suggest that it should be disqualified for being too obvious based on that, but I can’t think of another movie like it.
ETA: .. which only goes to show why more representation is needed! I mean, I’m kind of at a point when I’m like “UGH, not another cliche story about culture/generation clash” but the more I think about this, the more I’m struggling with movies that actually show this beyond Saving Face. I have strong “ugh” feelings about Gran Torino but it’s probably not fair because I haven’t watched it.
Soooo many mixed feelings about JLC, the book and especially the film. It was groundbreaking and YET. Its spectre continues to haunt us. And who knew that would be IT in terms of movies with Asian/Asian American women protagonists?
On a different, but still comic book-ish note: Jubilee is going to be in the next X-Men! Jubilee, who I didn’t realize was even Asian when I watched the 1990s cartoon as a kid, much less a 2nd generation Chinese American mall rat.
JUBILEE OMG YAY!!!
(Still waiting for Runaways movie. Nicooooooooo.)
And, judging by the in-costume photo that made the rounds recently, ACTUALLY PERFECTLY CAST. I am (tentatively) excited for this.
Here’s Lana Condor as Jubilee (and how superheroish is a name like Lana Condor?) with Sophie Turner as Jean Grey. I’m also hoping that there’s a brief cameo where Jean meets Bolivar Trask from the last film.
So…. if we’re allowed to go old school, Flower Drum Song? I know it’s pretty sexist, but even for Chinese-Americans (the earliest and largest Asian group in America), the pickings are still slim.
More questionable suggestions:
Whale Rider (I know she’s a Pacific Islander, but she’s so fantastic, let me claim the PI part of API)
… The World of Suzie Wong. Ugh, I KNOW, but Suzie fulfills every requirement except #7, which, honestly, is probably the hardest of all representation requirements to meet. I don’t like this movie either, but except for The Joy-Luck Club, I’ve never seen a couple that reflected my parents, and the white husbands in TJLC are all THE WORST.
My Wedding and Other Secrets is another Kiwi film which has an Asian female protagonist. It’s another one about generation clash (and an interracial relationship) but it’s kind of cute.
The Wedding Banquet by Ang Lee (I think) – it’s also about the immigrant experience – and the main female character isn’t that well developed. But it exists.
It’s one of those movies that I was initially was excited about because the MC is a gay Chinese man in the U.S., and I was all yay, queer visibility – but most of the movie is about him marrying a Chinese woman so she can get her green card and he can get his parents off his back. And them pretending to have a real relationship while his parents visit.
And what about Lucy Liu in the Charlie’s Angels remake?
Nicole your daughter is probably too young for Marvel Agents of SHEILD but there are three Asian main characters who are women on that show and I think all of them fit the above criteria, although two of them are SHEILD agents so intrinsically know some kind of Matrix-esque fighting techniques (but so does every other agent on the show so whatev.) One of the characters lives in some remote Tibetan type village, but it’s not like exploited for its Asia-ness every time she’s on screen.
I have seen the show, but stopped watching about halfway through the first season; I just found it reallllly slow. (I didn’t love all the emotionless/kung fu jokes about Ming-na Wen’s character, either.) But I feel so guilty not watching a show with two Asians, not just one. I might try and catch up on it this summer.
Everything interesting that has happened in the show happened after that point— basically the Winter Soldier tie-in really dramatically changed things— so it’s probably worth trying again.
I mean, it might still not be your thing, but there is actually some chance it might get better for you.
ETA- Also, Ming-na Wen’s character’s characterization does get better. Probably not enough to be acceptable (I’m way behind at the moment, so, there are about 6-10 episodes where it all could have gotten worse again. I’m probably not the person to be selling this show to you, honestly), but there is WAY more breathing room for the character in what I’ve seen of the second season. Also, Skye and May start developing a relationship with each other, which had annoyed the hell out of me the entire first season, so there’s that too.
skip everything until Bill Paxton shows up. That’s the post-Winter Soldier arc and once it gets there you can tell that the show was twiddling its thumbs waiting for Winter Soldier to happen so they could get on with the plot.
OKAY I WILL TRY
Also, as I had suspected they might do (because I kind of trust Ming-Na Wen’s script insincts and because they were making May so central), May’s initial seemingly “emotionless” demeanor turned out to be a cover for a whole sh**storm of drama and emotions and backstory getting unpacked this season. Love her. That, and dang if she doesn’t remind me of my senior pastor sometimes. Ok, that was weird, I know. Rev. Huey doesn’t look like her or do hand-to-hand combat; they just radiate authority well. I go to an unusual church.
I also think they wanted to set up Ward more, but yeah, we could have gotten the gist of his character in 4 or so episodes. Speaking of Ward, I don’t think the show gets enough recognition for what they did with him: They introduced him like he was the main viewpoint character, so it seemed like yet another prime time show with a blandly angsty straight white dude as the main protagonist, whose black hole of charisma would forever be orbited by far more interesting characters like an accretion disk.
Then, not only does he turn heel, but he does so by symbolically executing minority (Hand) and fun (Patton Oswalt) characters, guaranteed to earn him audience antipathy and prove him irredeemable. And rather than rest on that, they’ve continued to drive home what an awful, if ultimately pitiable, person he really is. When they had to work with him again a few episodes ago, I both shouted obscenities and clapped at that epic, self-pitying, sorry-you-were-offended, blame-dodging anti-apology. Loved Colson’s response too: “Ward, just stop talking to people”
I think Canadian TV is SO MUCH BETTER about this. Even their ads show people going about their day, normally, and more often than not, it’s not just a white nuclear family. The western camera’s gaze is male, straight AND white…but it doesn’t need to stay that way!
So, American TV ads are pretty darned diverse! With our actual shows I often feel like it’s one step forward, one step back, and as mentioned in the post, our movie casts are super white.
I can name a few Asian characters who are pretty well-rounded:
– Danny Chung from Veep (insufferable prick, but so is everyone else on this show)
– Beverly Katz from Hannibal
– Joan Watson from Elementary
– ?????
– that buff Asian kid from The Maze Runner
But even as I was compiling this list I thought of something – no Asian characters on US tv are allowed to have an Asian accent. No one. It’s totally impossible. Everybody must speak perfect midwestern American English. Asian accents are like pubic hair on porn stars: they’re just not allowed. Mainstream media just can’t handle it.
errrrr LOTS of Asian characters on U.S. TV have accents, often affected for the role (Randall Park and Constance Wu in Fresh off the Boat are just two recent examples).
!!! Constance Wu specifically said that she worked to have a legit Taiwanese accent (which sounds different from Mandarin!) in her English for the role, which I love. But I hesitated because Fresh off the Boat is focused on the FACT that they’re an Asian family? It’s also a goofy sitcom. I can’t think of many instances where an Asian character in a ~serious drama~, in a role not explicitly connected to their ethnicity, having an accent for no reason than because they just do.
I don’t know, maybe I’m over-thinking it. I’m Chinese-Canadian, and I noticed that a lot of my Chinese friends, even the ones who’ve live here for most of their lives, have a slight but still noticeable accent. People who have Cantonese or Mandarin as our first language stress some vowels differently and intonate more flatly. I can’t vouch for any other countries, but it’s weird when Chinese characters on TV never have faint accents – only thick ones when they’re deliberately emphasizing their Asian-ness.
Still…is this being too nit-picky? Tons of actors are from California, and the west coast accent probably sounds different too from what I’m used to hearing. Any other POC toasties out there who’ve thought about this too? There’s just something about the way that first generation immigrants are portrayed in media that just feel…weird. Weird and removed. I feel crazy whenever I try to explain it though.
Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim on LOST.
STILL CAN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO SUN AND JIN
This is a stretch, because I don’t really remember what happens, but as I recall Sandra Oh played the love interest in Sideways. But that was a) maybe not big-budget and b) more about Paul Giamatti moping around and that other guy being insufferable. The only things that have stuck in my mind are the scene with the wine fountain and the scene with the motorcycle helmet, so I don’t know how well her character was developed, but I will watch Sandra Oh in anything; she’s lovely.
You know, I watched Sideways, and I don’t remember Sandra Oh at all – but then I don’t remember much besides “Paul Giamatti moping”.
Great post!
As for other examples, I believe Michelle Yeoh as Corazon in Sunshine meets all your criteria. And a couple of the other characters in the same movie even buck the “no accents” trend mentioned by hey_sijia a few posts up!
I just googled Sunshine, and wikipedia says: “In 2057, with the Earth in peril from the dying Sun, the crew is sent on a mission to reignite the star with a nuclear bomb with the mass of Manhattan. ”
YES THIS IS EXACTLY THE SORT OF RIDICULOUS SCI-FI PLOT THAT ALWAYS SUCKERS ME IN. THROWING BOMBS AT THE GODDAMN SUN. FUCK. WILL IMMEDIATELY PUT INTO EYEBALLS.
The movie overall is a bit less ludicrous in tone than its plot summary would suggest, but definitely still worth putting in your eyeballs. Come back and tell us what you think.
Better Luck Tomorrow is a pretty great movie featuring a mostly Asian cast. I’m a white guy but it’s probably the high school movie that most felt like my high school experience in a weird way. I think it technically fails item 5, for math tutoring, but does that count if the guy is the lead character? Admittedly somewhat male-centric but if I remember right the women aren’t poorly represented.
Any observations about Maggie Q’s tenure on the CW as _Nikita_?
Excellent article, through and through.
To my mind, MCU!Vision is of actual group parentage: Stark, Banner, Odinson… and not least Dr. Cho.
Arden Cho, Tamlyn Tomita, and Tom T. Choi all are amazing actors in Teen Wolf. Cho has a lead roll starting in season 3, and is awesome. She starts off timid and just comes into her own. The relationship between her and her family members is pretty great too. Though, I will say Teen Wolf has a BAD habit of having really great women and/or other minorities and killing them off. Granted, a ton of people die in the show, but more of the male white characters could die and I wouldn’t complain too much. It’s a surprisingly progressive and good show for something on MTV.
Hard to talk about my feelings fully without spoilers – let’s just say I thought they were going to go a direction plotwise that was going to leave me very upset, but I was so happy to see that they did not!
Heh, so vague, but hopefully you guys know what I’m talking about. 🙂
Did you see Pacific Rim? Also an action superhero like movie. The actress was Japanese and she was in the movie for a long time and a heroine.
“When I rant about it, usually in response to some Orientalism or some stupid ninja reference on a TV show, invariably someone will say, ‘Aren’t there much bigger things to worry about?’ And I’ll feel chastened, because yes, of course there are — much, much bigger things.”
What you’re ranting about is important and relevant, and I hope you never, ever feel the need to apologise for it.
And then Scarlett Johansson may have a Black Widow movie at some point, which could be a GREAT thing, but will apparently be starring in Ghost in the Shell as well (and I hope she’ll refuse somehow if the film is still on tracks without her?). Here is an AWESOME lead role for a Japanese actress and that isn’t given to that actress… bleh. Cool for the female lead (and probable boost to the project with Scarlett dimension), not cool at all for the whitewashing…
has no one noticed that all of the asian roles in big films go to non-american actors? gotta tell ya, as much as i hype for my asian counterparts, that comes out of a confluence of racist conditions that suck. not a perfect casting decision in my book.
Helen Cho is a Marvel character taken from the comic books who is originally from Korea, so I think the casting of a Korean actor makes sense, but generally speaking I would also love to see more Asian American actors in big (and, hell, also small) American films.
Hawaii 5-0 has problems of its own, but as a pension plan for aging B list actors and for a diverse cast it’s pretty good. They do seem to use Korean American and Canadian actors whenever they want a Polynesian/Japanese/Chinese mixed race appearance though.
I love/worship Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim, so I do occasionally watch Five-O. I appreciate that they cast APIs as good guys, bad guys, victims, friends, lovers, all the guys, etc. I DO get irritated by how little Park and Kim are on screen compared to white dudes NO ONE CARES ABOUT. And acting-wise, from previous work (BSG and Lost), I am pretty sure they could actually carry the show if given the chance.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Next Gen also has the fabulous Rosalind Chao as Keiko O’Brien. I was always really disappointed that they never chose to make her a regular character rather than just a recurring one. Her storylines always had to do with Miles O’Brien since her character was primarily “wife of main character”, but I really enjoyed the storylines they did give her of figuring out what she was going to do career wise since she had moved for her husband’s career. I liked that they kept her a botanist and someone who wanted to do more than just be a wife/mother. Also, there’s Hoshi Sato played by Linda Park from Star Trek: Enterprise, the Communications Officer who’s scared to go into space. One of the many flaws of Star Trek Enterprise in my opinion is that they never did much with Hoshi who I think had a lot more potential as an interesting character than the ones they did focus on (ie Captain Archer/Trip/T’pol).
Keiko was never a whole lot more than a bit character and they made her so CRANKY and one-dimensional, and the whole cross-casting a Chinese American as a Japanese character does bother me even though such things are SUPER COMMON. But I love the TNG episode “Data’s Day” when she marries O’Brien, and I have watched it maybe a hundred times, mostly because Data and Crusher tap dance together and it’s adorbs.
I never got into Enterprise! I only watched a couple of eps and they seemed very slow.
I think they never wrote her beyond “O’Brien’s wife” which really bothers me but I started watching the series after moving for a relationship and making major life changes career wise so I never actually found her that cranky during season one when she was figuring out what the heck she was supposed to do now that she had moved and couldn’t be a botanist anymore. Or rather, if she was cranky, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me!
It’s definitely ok to not ever get into Enterprise! It’s not particularly good. And unfortunately, unlike a lot of TNG and DS9 where you get individual episodes focused on the crew members, you don’t get a lot of that with Hoshi Sato or really, a lot of the characters other than the captain, first mate and science officer. Which is a shame because the captain is kind of boring!
Madame Gao is still bad ass, though right?
She is a badass. I found her character intriguing, but still troubling when it comes to certain stereotypes.
What?! No love for Constance Wu as Jessica in Fresh Off the Boat??
But yes, it irks me that there have been few Asian characters as regulars in TV. That are female. After Agents of SHIELD and Fresh Off the Boat and Hawaii Five-O, I can't really think of any.
Everything you said, Nicole! (By the way, this is my first comment on the Toast, but I have been quietly fangirling over your writing ever since I read your article about growing up as a POC in a white family/environment. I can SO relate.)
I was simultaneously cracking up at your list and sobered by how ridiculous it is that this is pretty much the only role that follows those rules that I can think of either, at least in movies. I also can relate to being told that racial representation in movies is not a Major World Problem and to stop harping on it all the time. Which, yes, I agree, and yet, also, how can I stop noticing once I’ve started? And I have just had enough of being told explicitly and implicitly, since the day I first started school/was exposed to media, that white is Normal, is ubiquitous, is the standard. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel no interest in watching movies or tv shows with an all white cast. In 2015, as an adult who survived public school in North America in the 90s, I am so over that mess.
Love your writing. Here’s hoping that it IS getting better. People like you are definitely doing your part by speaking out. 🙂
Thank you!! Glad you are here. Media/pop culture representation is tough, because it can feel petty to harp on it when there are undoubtedly bigger issues. But at the same time, I think there’s a case to be made for lack of representation making it easier for people to think of white people as more complex/more human, white people as the “good guys,” whiteness as the default. And that, in turn, does contribute to the invisibility and dehumanization of people of color, and that leads to those bigger-than-representation problems.
Thanks! I am so glad to be here.
Absolutely. The tough thing is that it’s kind of a self-perpetuating cycle – lack of representation is both a symptom and a cause of this viewing of non-white people as less human, less important, and the “other”, and as you said is not as minor in its consequences as simply feeling left out. (Which still matters, because every child should be able to grow up seeing representations of people that look like him/her.) For example, Muslims are the number one most hated group in America right now according to various studies, and that is 100% a media-created condition, because people who actually know a Muslim in real life have no problem with them. And not only does this lead to discrimination, but it leads to hate crimes like the triple murder we had here in Raleigh, NC a few months ago, and the way the U.S. government can detain, torture and kill Muslims here and overseas with barely a blink from the general public. The media and Hollywood have dehumanized Muslims for so long, and to such a degree, that their lives are not seen as valuable.
Likewise the entrenched misrepresentations of young black males in the media, which have become so engrained in the collective American mindset that racial profiling, police brutality, and the rest of what we’re seen happen nowadays (which was always happening, but is now finally getting media coverage) is allowed to go on with very little protest. Especially among white people. I may be wrong, but it’s mostly minorities that I’ve seen speaking out about police murders of black men. Because we know what it’s like to be dismissed/ignored in certain situations and targeted in others, in a way that white people never will.
Better roles, more human roles for all these minority groups can go some way towards humanizing people of colour and hopefully preventing some of this violence. One of the amazing things about movies and TV is their power to create an immersive empathic experience with someone who is completely different from you. Fully realized, complex and realistic diverse roles would not only be amazing for those of us who want to identify with the characters we see onscreen, they could go far toward educating white audiences about the lived experience of minorities in this country in a way that no amount of conversations over coffee could ever achieve.
(Oops, I wrote an essay, sorry!) Thanks so much for the reply 🙂
Everything you said, Nicole! (By the way, this is my first comment on the Toast, but I have been quietly fangirling over your writing ever since I read your article about growing up as a POC in a white family/environment. I can SO relate.)
I was simultaneously cracking up at your list and sobered by how ridiculous it is that this is pretty much the only role that follows those rules that I can think of either, at least in movies. I also can relate to being told that racial representation in movies is not a Major World Problem and to stop harping on it all the time. Which, yes, I agree, and yet, also, how can I stop noticing once I've started? And I have just had enough of being told explicitly and implicitly, since the day I first started school/was exposed to media, that white is Normal, is ubiquitous, is the standard. I've gotten to the point where I feel no interest in watching movies or tv shows with an all white cast. In 2015, as an adult who survived public school in North America in the 90s, I am so over that mess.
Love your writing. Here's hoping that it IS getting better. People like you are definitely doing your part by speaking out. 🙂
Thanks! I am so glad to be here.
Absolutely. The tough thing is that it's kind of a self-perpetuating cycle – lack of representation is both a symptom and a cause of this viewing of non-white people as less human, less important, and the "other", and as you said is not as minor in its consequences as simply feeling left out. (Which still matters, because every child should be able to grow up seeing representations of people that look like him/her.) For example, Muslims are the number one most hated group in America right now according to various studies, and that is 100% a media-created condition, because people who actually know a Muslim in real life have no problem with them. And not only does this lead to discrimination, but it leads to hate crimes like the triple murder we had here in Raleigh, NC a few months ago, and the way the U.S. government can detain, torture and kill Muslims here and overseas with barely a blink from the general public. The media and Hollywood have dehumanized Muslims for so long, and to such a degree, that their lives are not seen as valuable.
Likewise the entrenched misrepresentations of young black males in the media, which have become so engrained in the collective American mindset that racial profiling, police brutality, and the rest of what we're seen happen nowadays (which was always happening, but is now finally getting media coverage) is allowed to go on with very little protest. Especially among white people. I may be wrong, but it's mostly minorities that I've seen speaking out about police murders of black men. Because we know what it's like to be dismissed/ignored in certain situations and targeted in others, in a way that white people never will.
Better roles, more human roles for all these minority groups can go some way towards humanizing people of colour and hopefully preventing some of this violence. One of the amazing things about movies and TV is their power to create an immersive empathic experience with someone who is completely different from you. Fully realized, complex and realistic diverse roles would not only be amazing for those of us who want to identify with the characters we see onscreen, they could go far toward educating white audiences about the lived experience of minorities in this country in a way that no amount of conversations over coffee could ever achieve.
(Oops, I wrote an essay, sorry!) Thanks so much for the reply 🙂
WHen her character was revealed, I was hoping she’d be a loose end leading to the Wasp, who was a Whedon favorite and an Asian character in the Ultimate universe. When I heard her last name, I was flipping my ish about potential Amadeus Cho stuff. And when Tony talks about a brilliant hacker, I immediately thought, “Oh shit! It’s Amadeus getting revenge for his mother/sister getting blasted!” Unfortunately, it was not him, but hope remains high.
They still managed to work in fetishism albeit reversed. When asked if Cho will be attending the party she at first exclaimed that unlike Stark she does not have a lot time for parties. The script has her follow it up with, “Will Thor be there?” Don’t get me wrong, Thor/Hemsworth is a handsome dude. What’s not to like?
The problem is not so much the fetishism, I guess, but rather that with that single, deleterious line the writers have denigrated the Dr. Cho character to the level of goofy assistant Darcy Lewis played by Kat Denning in 2011’s Thor and ultimately…IDK. All the other female characters in recent Marvel movies don’t seem to have an issue keeping their desires in check.
Kickass character was Dr. Cho only slightly marred by the writers compulsion to inject that wee bit of Orientalism into the script. I guess we should be glad that it wasn’t typical outright, blatant Hollywood screenwriting with the ninjas, and other usual BS.
Someone on Twitter mentioned that ladies crushing on Thor is basically a running joke now in the Marvel movies. I don’t know! I don’t think that one line was fetishism, necessarily, just more of the same sort of Marvel movie “humor,” but it might have been better to leave it out altogether, if for no other reason than it would make it easier for me imagine Helen Cho/Sam Wilson fic.
You should add a #9 to the trope list:
9) Doesn’t have an unmotivated romance with White male character in order to satisfy White male power fantasies about their sexual dominance over non-White men
Someone on Twitter mentioned that ladies crushing on Thor is basically a running joke now in the Marvel movies. I don’t know! I don’t think that one line was fetishism, necessarily, just more of the same sort of Marvel movie “humor,” but it might have been better to leave it out altogether, if for no other reason than it would make it easier for me imagine Helen Cho/Sam Wilson fic.
Totally inappropriate for children, obviously, and many adults, but have you seen ‘The Interview,’ with Diana Bang? (Parents are Korean, she was raised in Canada) I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it. I absolutely loved her in that and Korean/Chinese notwithstanding she is my secret pipe-dream pick to play Mulan in Disney’s live-action version. <3