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Oh my god!
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Oh, he looks like an alien.
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East asians react to yellowface.
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In early hollywood, white actors were often made up to portray characters of other races.
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Yellowface is using makeup to make someone look east Asian.
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Marlon Brando, "Teahouse of the August Moon" [1996]
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Brando's character is a Japanese interpreter for the American army.
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Rest of world, not like Okinawa.
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[Voiceover] Wait, is that him?
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World filled with delightful variation.
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Example...
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f*ck
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(laughter)
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My stomach is turning, watching this.
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Oh my god.
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"My name is Marlon Brando."
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Actors, themselves, aren't funny things
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like somebody trying to learn a new language.
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[Voiceover] Is that all it takes
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to make yourself look Asian?
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Just looks like a white dude doing a shitty accent.
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Marlon Brando is also one of the greatest
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American actors and seeing this,
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you're like "No, you're not."
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Watching this feels really dehumanizing.
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Mickey Rooney, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" [1961]
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Rooney plays a cranky Japanese landlord.
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[Voiceover] Oh, that's painful.
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(angry yelling)
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Now, this is really racist.
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This guy could have been an Orge in Lord of the Rings.
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That's how much makeup he has on right now.
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Literally, a political cartoon.
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The Asian guy is not human.
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He's clearly not supposed to be human.
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An early example of the way Asian men
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are portrayed as gross.
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Oh, Audrey Hepburn, she's so gorgeous and graceful
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and then all of a sudden you get Mickey Rooney.
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But is yellowface gone now?
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James D' Arcy, "Cloud Atlas" 2012
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"Cloud Atlas" Involves characters being reborn in different eras, sometimes as different races.
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Like rawwwr, rawwwr, rawwwr.
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It's like a kick in the nuts.
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(movie dialogue) - [Voiceover] Whoa!
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Oh my god!
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He looks like a f*ck alien.
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Just because they break all the rules
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and have everybody race-bend doesn't
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mean that it's still okay to do yellowface.
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With this kind of makeup you don't transcend time,
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you just look really bad.
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The actors did a great job,
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but you just cannot make a white man look Asian.
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Level of discomfort is not like diarrhea discomfort,
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like before, but more like mild indigestion.
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Asian men are either portrayed as dweeby children
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or like a scary, alien, cold monk.
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Alyson Hannigan, "How I Met Your Mother" [2014]
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This episode was explained to be a tribute to old kung fu movies.
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Can you teach me how to do that?
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No, I retired from teaching long ago.
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I am Alyson Hannigan.
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The problem with this is the term "Orientalism".
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Yep.
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[Voiceover] It's not homage anymore when
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you start playing someone else's race.
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It just makes me feel so exoticized.
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It kind of just reads, "We're gonna take a
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hodgepodge of Asian influences."
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You could have easily done an homage,
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where you exist in that universe of the "Far East"
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but you're still a white character.
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Could you have imagined if How I Met Your Mother
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decided to do a whole episode where they did
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the same thing, but it was blackness?
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We would not have accepted that.
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[Voiceover] It's so tough because I love the show,
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I'd like to watch it every day.
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For them to do this, like really breaks my heart.
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I think that people confuse interest in another
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culture with understanding for that culture.
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Final thoughts
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You get to a point where you're just like "I don't expect
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"anything better from my media, than what I've been given."
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Yellowface, you can't get past the damn makeup!
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I think it's sort of like "Oh, well the Asians
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"are louder now and they'll get mad at us if
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"we do straight up yellowface."
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There are no Asian, bankable stars
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because no Asian has been cast in a role where
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they've been allowed to become a bankable star.
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The blame should not be on the actors
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it should be on the directors and the casting.
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Hollywood doesn't have as much of an excuse
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to say "I can't cast an Asian actor."
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because there are Asian actors.
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[Voiceover] I'm sure the people making these
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decisions think the media has gotten better.
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If you ask an Asian person,
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I feel like they would tell you a very different...
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Hey, do you think the media has gotten better?
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But better doesn't mean good enough.
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To be honest, yes.