And Hollywood does it again: Asians equal swords and samurais, Asian men aren't sexy.

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Racialicious looks at the Samurai Girl Miniseries on ABC

Based on a series of popular young adult novels, the show stars Jamie Chung as a 19-year-old Japanese girl named Heaven who discovers that the wealthy businessman who adopted her as an infant is really the head of the Yakuza(!) and responsible for murdering her beloved brother. She breaks from her family and begins training to become a samurai, and with the help of a group of new American friends, sets out to take down her father’s evil empire.

Naturally, since its a good guess that the books were written by mostly whites

The book series was developed by editors at Alloy Entertainment, which also produced "Gossip Girl." After the initial idea was passed around after an in-house brainstorming meeting about seven years ago, they assigned a group of writers to complete the project. ("Carrie Asai" is a collective pseudonym, similar to "Carolyn Keene" of the "Nancy Drew" series.)

It follows that there will be stereotypes and inaccuracies galore.

Naturally, the miniseries amplifies these... problems.

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth asking again: why must every other Asian-related Hollywood project involve secret samurais and ninjas and yakuza clans? Not that there’s anything wrong with a good samurai/ninja/yakuza story… but this ain’t it.

...

But when your show is called Samurai Girl, you eventually want to see your hero become said Samurai Girl. So Heaven must learn the secret, ancient ways of the samurai, training under the wise tutelage of her sensei… a white dude. Huh? Oh, I see. Like, um, The Last Samurai.

It’s worth noting in the book series, this sensei character is actually a Japanese guy, Hiro Uyemoto, described on the book website as “Heaven’s crush-worthy samurai mentor.” I was told by someone who read an early draft of the pilot script that this character was indeed an Asian guy. Looks like that minor detail got changed somewhere along the way… Funny how that happens. [me stepping in for a moment:I suppose the calculation was that white people are unable to relate to stories that have two Asian leads. Funny how everyone else can empathize with two white leads. Or more, I mean, Star Wars? Lord of the Rings?]

Heaven also conveniently picks up some nice white, American friends to round out her crew. Yay! So let’s see. Good conveniently Caucasian friends, white samurai sensei… Bad mob boss dad, evil yakuza henchmen, douchebag Japanese fiance left at the altar. Hmmm.

And this, ladies and gents, along with the stupider and stupider plots, is why I have almost stopped watching television and movies.

Comments

[polymexina.livejournal.com]

So one of the plot points is that it's her friends from a "foreign land" that'll help her beat the baddies... was I the only one hoping her friends from a foreign land would secretly turn out to be Korean or Vietnamese or something NOT white American??? Geez!

[bellvampress.livejournal.com]

This looks awful already, I hope it flops, although it probably won't since white people will have just enough exotification and "oh look white people can be samurai too!" to watch. But even if the show was done right, i.e. having Japanese characters across the board, the plot falls flat to me.