just a young person who needed a job, unfortunately sucked into the maelstrom.

connections and saw this as a way to get work experience?

easier assumption than 'connections,' imo.

... actors / actresses (SAG members) earn on average $5K a year. I don't blame her, I imagine she's trying to make a living, living her dream.

that he would like to have discussed with her.

The finger!

to focus on the woman just takes away. unless she was already someone famous and well known.

I'm not an actor, but I work closely with them and understand the difficulty of making a living at it.

All I can say is, when you're just a bit player, try turning down any role you thought might be beneath your dignity, and see how much work you get. Especially if you're a minority. ESPECIALLY if you're a female minority.

What good does it do to aim criticism at her, when the creator of the ad is such a better target?

For all you know she's 3rd generation American and has no ties to or interest in China. Leave her be.

I'm sure she's terrified by the backlash that ad has caused.

making fun of Asians who aren't in her class.

to do with content.

Or is she just some struggling actor who needed a job bad enough to take anything that came along?

If she's some Michelle Malkin wannabe, full blown contempt is in order.

It follows them on their resume and they may never get called for another job again. Only when they get established and/or famous can they afford to be picky. However in the case of this actress, because of the controversy, she might be in some hot water, a damned if you do or damned if you don't scenario. Hopefully, the notoriety might work in her favor if she is an innocent in this. Of course the bad acting and bad sing song accent isn't going to help her.

...because when it comes to shooting commercials and other filmed media, they rarely have a good sense of what the final product is all about until it's all over.

I wouldn't blame an actor in a play I found offensive--I'd blame the author.

Long answer--you make it sound as if actors always know ahead of time what they're getting into. If I have to guess, this woman probably answered a local trade ad that said something like: "SEEKING ASIAN-AMERICAN ACTRESS FOR TV! Political Campaign seeks female performer of any East Asian background (pref. Chinese), 25-35 years old, for statewide Television spot." (etc)

After auditioning and landing the part (yay! $500 for one day's worth of filming!) you report to the shoot and deliver your pre-memorized lines. They may say "Can you do it again, this time with a bit of accent?" Of course you can--accents are a specialty of yours...At no point do you really wonder what the entire commercial is going to look like, because you're too busy trying to give a good performance--although you suspect there's a bit of satire going on. (There MUST be, right?) You pick up your check, thank everyone, and move on to your next project.

Historically, society treated actors with a great deal of contempt because their career was judged to be "amoral" precisely for the reasons you just gave--pretending to be someone you're not, saying words that are clearly immoral, all in the name of a paycheck. They were at the bottom of the social ladder, along with prostitutes and thieves. I'd hate to think we're going back to those times...

These hypotheticals are stupid.

I assure you, nothing about what the actress said or did was conceived by her, so there's no point in casting any anger in her direction. You might as well blame the gaffer.

and needed money. If a white actress needed money and she was willing to play the part of a Chinese worker why would the actress being white rather than Asian change your opinion?

You really don't seem to understand how the casting process works.

You nailed it ...

I suspect that the actress is a member of SAG, or she aspires to be, and she might be a member of one of the other entertainment industry related unions ... as would be the person filming this, the writers, the gaffer, and those who did the editing.

The BASTARDS!!!!

And I always thought that the people in the TV commercials ACTUALLY use the products they get paid to help sell!!!

part of that era in vaudeville? Should he not do the role, especially if it was a particularly interesting and well written character that could win him awards?

Also, simply doing an "accent" is not racist. It is acting.

Rude Pundit: "the ad couldn't be more racist if it had the woman shooting ping-pong balls out of her snatch while yelling, "Ching-chong-cheng." It couldn't be more racist if it featured a white actress with slanted eyes drawn on her face working at a laundry".

that white people project ideas about what is racist without really knowing.

But then again, I live in Asia and am married to a Japanese woman and have 3 half-asian children so what do I know.

snip


I'm a native-born Chinese American. Odious scumbags like Rep. Pete Hoekstra and his daft team make my blood boil hotter than lava.

I'm not going to spend too much time explaining the blatant in-your-face racism of this ad, it's self-evident. This ad is the most visible and obvious example of a dangerous trend that Republicans and even some Democrats have embraced in recent cycles: casting Chinese people and culture as the Other to be feared.

Remember Jesse Helms' infamous Black Hands ad? It was enough to use the simple imagery of a pair of white hands to intone darkly that African-Americans were taking the jobs of Whites. With China-bashing, they don't even have to try for such subtlety.

This ad is a symptom of two threads of thought weaving themselves into a crazy quilt of racist imagery:

1) Chinese stereotypes, culture, and language as a shortcut for the Chinese economy and government -With only 30 seconds in an ad, it's much easier to preach fear of Chinese faces and culture than the Communist government, or economic forces. Hence the conical hats, rice paddies, gongs, and dragon dances.

2) Chinese faces as the Other, separate and apart from "American" faces - These ads always show happy Chinese faces taking jobs away from Americans, exploiting hidden a hidden sentiment that Chinese-Americans and other immigrant groups are simply not accepted as standard. That's why Senator George Allen tried to point out a native-born "macaca" as a foreigner in 2006: it's easy to keep castigating groups into permanent outsider status.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/06/1062342/-Hoekstras-Yellow-Hands:-A-Brief-History-of-anti-Chinese-Racist-Campaign-Ads

"Just be thankful you have a job..." yuck.

She probably hasn't seen "Hollywood Shuffle."

What am I missing? The description I read said the girl spoke with a - I forget how it was described, but something like a broken English reminescent of how slaves have been depicted talking in movies. When I saw it, I didn't think that. She's not supposed to be an American Asian, right? She is supposedly a Chinese person, who lives in China? So a Chinese person would speak with an accent, wouldn't she? I didn't think the English was that broken, even. I couldn't detect any brokenness to it until her 2nd sentence or so. And that was minimal...she just left out a verb or something. Or was there more that I missed?

But I only saw it the one time, so maybe I missed something. I thought it was just a weird, ineffective ad.

If there were an ad showing a French citizen speaking in English, s/he'd have a French accent, right?

Your Republican Senate Candidates Suck Hard: Pete Hoekstra, He So Funny:

<snip>

Apparently, some people think this is racist. Hoekstra doesn't think so. He thinks it's just fine, as he told Fox "news" today: "There’s nothing in here that has a racial tint at all. But the bottom line is, when Debbie Stabenow and them can’t defend their record, what they’ll typically move to is they’ll move to the race card."

And that'd be valid, except that the ad couldn't be more racist if it had the woman shooting ping-pong balls out of her snatch while yelling, "Ching-chong-cheng." It couldn't be more racist if it featured a white actress with slanted eyes drawn on her face working at a laundry.

As if to underline just how horribly racist it is, Hoekstra has created a website that quotes the ad and uses a Chinese restaurant font to highlight the insidious yellow menace (and the Stabenow menace). They're inscrutable, you know.

Oh, and Hoekstra features it on the front of his own campaign website:



More:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/02/your-republican-senate-candidates-suck.html

I think because the description I'd read about it built it up to be worse, when I saw it, it wasn't as bad as described. But I see now that she's not speaking like a 21st century normal person who speaks English as a 2nd language. She's speaking like someone in a Charlie Chan movie (or close to it).

she says something like you'd hear in a Charlie Chan movie. "Me like that." Or something like that.

I think the accent is fine.

Is it racist to think that Chinese can't learn proper pronoun use? Well, sort of, I guess... Is it offensive if you KNOW the person who is responsible for the ads is a racist? Hell yes.

And that's where I think I have a small disagreement with the premise of this OP.

The ads themselves are not racist, I think, but the thinking BEHIND them almost certainly is --and that is what most of the people are responding to.

But as far as blaming the actor, she deserves zero blame.

I'm a native-born Chinese American. Odious scumbags like Rep. Pete Hoekstra and his daft team make my blood boil hotter than lava.

snip

This ad is the most visible and obvious example of a dangerous trend that Republicans and even some Democrats have embraced in recent cycles: casting Chinese people and culture as the Other to be feared.

Remember Jesse Helms' infamous Black Hands ad? It was enough to use the simple imagery of a pair of white hands to intone darkly that African-Americans were taking the jobs of Whites. With China-bashing, they don't even have to try for such subtlety.

This ad is a symptom of two threads of thought weaving themselves into a crazy quilt of racist imagery:

1) Chinese stereotypes, culture, and language as a shortcut for the Chinese economy and government -With only 30 seconds in an ad, it's much easier to preach fear of Chinese faces and culture than the Communist government, or economic forces. Hence the conical hats, rice paddies, gongs, and dragon dances.

2) Chinese faces as the Other, separate and apart from "American" faces - These ads always show happy Chinese faces taking jobs away from Americans, exploiting hidden a hidden sentiment that Chinese-Americans and other immigrant groups are simply not accepted as standard. That's why Senator George Allen tried to point out a native-born "macaca" as a foreigner in 2006: it's easy to keep castigating groups into permanent outsider status.




http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/06/1062342/-Hoekstras-Yellow-Hands:-A-Brief-History-of-anti-Chinese-Racist-Campaign-Ads

Actors have to take lots of crappy parts if they want to continue eating.

We are becoming just as good at it as the Repugs.

She is a person doing her job.

Leave her alone.

She's just like a cop who "clobbers" protesters ... because after all, she has a position of authority which allows her to use physical force in some situations.

Yea, you are correct ... its EXACTLY the same thing!!!

Let's go get her!!!

What level of contempt should be leveled at anyone for anything? How about any actor in any commercial, as they are portraying corporate driven social stereotypes that are demeaning to most real humans. How about leveling criticism at any employee of Walmart or Apple for their association with corporations using questionable business practices.

I think you're aiming at an easy target, guilt by association, and might consider aiming a little higher...

There's no guarantee that she did.

No contempt whatsoever.

She's an actress. She auditioned, got the part, said her lines & went home.

a minstrel character?

Each one is larger and more diverse.

for managing to keep a straight face.

i do hope she was really well paid and that she gets residuals for every post and comment about the spot.
i hope that she is so expensive and well paid that the stooge can not even afford his light bill now.

why can't we live back in the day when white people took all of the roles in Hollywood?

http://www.drberlin.com/charliechan.htm

but she doesn't need me to come after her to tell her that. She already knows it. And I bet she's hiding her head right now, trying to avoid Asian Americans.

This is not going to be good for her acting "career." I suspect other Asian Americans won't want to work with her.

I've heard rumors that she's a UC Berkeley student. In which case, she didn't need the money.