CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : A Real American Me at the Movies : Here’s a concept for the ‘90s: movies and TV about people’s lives and loves, starring people of color. Let’s do lunch.
I didn’t know anything about Bruce Lee, never saw one of his movies, but when the lights came up, my brother Will and I looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, “Finally.â€
We both knew what we meant. Finally, a mainstream movie about a contemporary American, backed by mainstream money, supported by a mainstream advertising campaign, marketed to mainstream audiences nationwide.
In other words, finally a mainstream movie about us for everybody.
Don’t get me wrong. “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story†has its Orientalisms--the sage sayings, the mystical demons, the folk superstitions. Stock in trade for flicks with Asian characters. But just when you think that’s all you are going to see--bang bang chop chop action--you see instead scenes that speak your secret heart.
Jason Scott Lee, playing Bruce Lee, watches Mickey Rooney play a bucktoothed slanty-eyed English-mangling Japanese in the classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.†The pain of the caricature and the insult register on Lee’s face.
I know that pain, that insult.
Then there’s the scene in which the prospective mother-in-law worries about potential half-breed children from the unsavory alliance between her daughter and this Chinese. Lee’s answer? His children will be born in America, their mother is American, he is American; they will be American.
Not Chinese-American, just American. Incredible. This is a revolutionary distinction, not often espoused in a mainstream film. I, too, reject the hyphen.
And finally, there are the marvelous measurements of Jason Scott Lee himself. Here is a physically fit, likable, sympathetic hunk o’ man. Even my brother was surprised and relieved to see a portrayal of Bruce Lee as beefcake, shirtless and muscle-flexing.
Too many times have we sat in movie houses, rolling our eyes at the usual fare--the silent sidekicks, the overachieving geeks with glasses, the mystics with their opium pipes; the unappealing, unsexual, weak, powerless Asian male of the movies.
Not! And certainly not Bruce Lee.
Now, don’t chalk it up to hypersensitivity in an age of political correctness. I wouldn’t mind the stereotypes so much if there were other portrayals of Asians out there. But usually, there aren’t. Just a flick of the channel changer and there is David Carradine still slogging around in “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues†like a good little grasshopper.
But as I scan the entertainment section, I see a few films featuring stories I’d like to see. There’s the love story involving an Eskimo, “Map of the Human Heart.†There’s an epic saga about three Latino brothers, “Bound by Honor.†There’s an action picture starring Wesley Snipes, “Boiling Point.†There’s the hip-hop cop comedy, “Who’s the Man?â€
Perhaps these are hints of a nascent realization in Hollywood that people of color are starved for stories about themselves, revolving around an Asian or Latino or black protagonist; stories in which the diverse American cultures interact with one another and not just with or against the dominant white culture.
The titles I mentioned may add to the already rich canon of bad stereotypes, they may not be interesting or well done, but at least they are in the marketplace. Just to see oneself reflected in the movies we see, the TV we watch, the plays we experience--the idea takes my breath away.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see youngsters of all races in a flick about a shaggy dog? Wouldn’t it have been interesting if the married couple in “Indecent Proposal†were Americans of, say, Mexican descent? With all the challenges of Catholicism and mores of that heritage, see how rich and more complex that movie might have been?
It would be a happy day, indeed, if I could turn on the TV and see a family of Chinese ancestry trying to make ends meet like the Conners on “Roseanne,†or a Latino comic trying to stay sane in the Big Apple like Jerry Seinfeld in “Seinfeld.â€
We want to see people who look like Cesar under the hood at the gas station or Carlos in front of the class at junior high school or Soomi with the drill at the dentist office or Tsui Wah at the factory sewing machine or Nadirah clerking at the law office.
There are a wealth of stories and a limitless cache of experience-- American experience--and there are the audiences, and their pocketbooks, to go with them. There are even directors and writers and actors of color eager to tap into that cache. They just need an honest chance, with the kind of marketing and ad support that goes beyond lip service.
What is mainstream? Who is mainstream? These are questions for evaluation by executive producers and artistic directors and others who decide what we do or do not see in popular entertainment venues. They also are questions that artists of color and of conscience must continue to press. And if that doesn’t work, let’s talk box office.
“Dragon: The Bruce Lee Storyâ€--$10 million in just three days after release.
Only good movies
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