Yellow Face: Still Alive and Well

Today my daughter viewed a YouTube video at school, shown to her by her classmate. It was Miss Swan of MadTV, shown at a McDonald's (renamed "McRonald's") drive through. The first thing I noticed was the thick Asian imitation accent. This character is portrayed by Alex Borstein, a Caucasian actress.  I had never seen or heard of this character.

In the skit, "Miss Swan" irritates the drive through Manager by failing to understand what he is saying, and failing to speak or understand English well enough to place her order. In the end of the skit, she receives free burgers from the irritated manager, and she reveals that she does this all the time to get free food.

This was an ancient clip, from the year 2000. Guy Aoki, President of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), wrote a complaint, asking the Fox Network to ditch the character. The network did not, but said they would "fix" the character in a year. The original name of "Miss Kwan" was changed to "Miss Swan" and they lightened up on the makeup, but the page boy standard black China Doll bob haircut remained, along with the pseudo Asian accent.

In her defence, Alex Borstein claimed that the idea for the character was from her 85 year old immigrant grandmother, who would pull the same type of stunts as suited her to her advantage. She believes that by explaining the origin of the character, that she has done no wrong. I couldn't believe the inadequacy of her response, given that any observer would conclude immediately as to the possible ethnicity of the character--come on! Look at the picture above: Isn't she wearing a Chinese style collared shirt? What a lie, pretending that the character has nothing to do with Asian stereotypes. I love her response: "For starters, I would like to let it be known that the author of the article has never contacted me or, so far as I know, made any attempts to do so. He has never asked me a single question as to the origin of this character. So, in an effort to correct his misconceptions, let me ask and answer them myself." Do you really need to contact Ms. Borstein to find out whether she *intended* to be racist, when the main question is whether an outside observer would be characterize Miss Swan as being Asian?

Happy to say, it seems she was on MadTV only until 2002. I read somewhere else that a movie was in the works. Let me hazard to guess that she never received funding for her brilliant and original (not!) movie idea. Making fun of different ethnicities was very popular in 1960s films. I should know, because those portrayals mortified me when I was growing up in Canada. I would cringe at Peter Sellers, Peter Ustinov, Charlie Chan and Mickey Rooney in yellow face, or at countless cartoon characters of stupid Asians with buck teeth, bowing, bowing, bowing...

Here's Mickey Rooney, looking oh so "Asian" in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

It repulses me to further promote this character or Ms. Borstein in any way, so I do not provide a link to the YouTube clips in question. They're easy enough to Google.

This provided fodder for today's lesson to my kids: what is stereotyping and racism. What is repulsive and ignorant.

Asian Canadians and Asian Americans are an anomaly: Hispanics and Blacks are protected groups, and it is not acceptable to don black face nowadays or pull racist humour on them. But for Asian North Americans, it is open season. Note Asian American NBA player Jeremy Lin, and the controversy with the firing of the ESPN writer, headlining an article "Chink in the Armour." That writer also claimed that he intended no racism. Sure, I really believe he had no intention, and that's what counts, doesn't it, intention? Ridiculous. Many wrote in supporting the comment, with the most popular argument being that Asian Americans needed to get a sense of humour. Likewise, the Miss Swan supporters believe that folks like the MANAA are just silly. She writes: "If he believes my nutty little character on a late-night sketch comedy show is a depiction of him and his "people," then, as Ms. Swan would say, "He needs to take a chill pill!" Nice.

Recently the campaign "Remember Vincent Chin" made its rounds on Facebook. In 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was having a bachelor party at a strip club but got into a fight with some auto plant workers who said "It's because of you little motherf*kers that we're out of work!" referring to U.S. auto manufacturing jobs being lost to Japan, despite the fact that Chin was not Japanese. He was beaten to death by a Chrysler plant superintendent and his stepson, who hunted him down for 30 minutes after Chin's party was thrown out of the strip club and found Chin at McDonald's.

"They served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. In a response letter to protests from American Citizens for Justice, Kaufman said, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal." Chin's mother, Lily Chin, stated: "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives... Something is wrong with this country."

The comments on the YouTube videos of Miss Swan were nearly 100% supportive of the skits. As long as there are people like Ms. Borstein, and supporters and fans, we will never be respected as equals.

Photo from SodaHead, probably Copyright by MadTV of Fox network. No violation of copyright laws intended. Ha! Because it's intention that counts.

Also, see the two letters written here with eloquent brief responses to the Miss Swan character.

In "Fox's Satiric Little Secret Finds a Growing Audience" (by William Keck, Feb. 24), "Mad TV's" Debra Wilson says that "the Asian community is taking themselves much too seriously" when they complain about Alex Borstein's Ms. Swan character. Here's an open letter to Wilson:

You are an African American performer making fun of African American characters. Cool. That's fine. Whatever. But Borstein is a white performer who dons Asian makeup and makes fun of Asians with an obnoxious nail salon-worker character (check the history of the character, she started out as "Ms. Kwan").
Asian Americans have teamed up with African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans to help get more people of color on prime-time TV. African Americans have benefited greatly from this, Asians hardly at all.
We're angry because not only are we barely visible on TV, when some white actress creates an annoying Asian character based on a lousy stereotype, the African American producer refuses to take her off the air, and we feel dissed and disenfranchised.
KEN NARASAKI
Venice

For decades (if not centuries), white performers have been dressing up as Asians to mock the way that Asian people look and talk (such as Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and Jerry Lewis in "Hardly Working"). Ms. Swan is in this same, tired tradition. I see nothing cutting-edge about this kind of race-based humor.
ROBERT PAYNE
Studio City

An excellent history of Yellowface in Hollywood is here, at Racebending.com.

If you would like to do more reading about Jeremy Lin, this excellent article from Devin Gordon of GQ exposes some disturbing questions about race and the failure of the New York Knicks to sign him:

"The moment I knew for certain that the Knicks were done with Jeremy Lin was on Sunday, July 15, when Carmelo Anthony publicly called Lin's offer from the Houston Rockets "ridiculous." At that point, the Knicks were still saying their minds weren't made up, and maybe that was true—maybe they were only 99 percent sure. Even still, Melo's remark was like an X-ray of his psyche, and, because Melo is the only person other than owner Jim Dolan who really matters in the Knicks organization, it was a glimpse into what the entire franchise thinks about Lin.

What's relevant here is not whether Melo was right or not about Lin's contract. Plenty of NBA players surely agree with him. What's relevant is that he said it out loud. Bad-mouthing another player's deal is a serious breach of the unwritten code among pro athletes, which is why it happens so rarely, no matter how many stupid deals get handed out, no matter how many franchises are crippled by bad contracts, no matter how many superstars find their paths to a title blocked by the bonehead decisions of their teams' front offices. It's also why, conversely, players almost always praise each others' deals in public, and offer congratulations – we've all seen the tweets – for getting every penny that the market could generate. It's a fraternity.

Apparently, to Melo, Jeremy Lin is not in the fraternity. Or at least, Lin's place in it is dubious enough that he has not earned the omerta that every other player gets. Anybody wanna try to convince me it has zero to do with Lin being Asian-American? Because, and let's cut to the quick, Carmelo Anthony never ever would've made that remark about a black NBA player's contract, and I doubt that he ever would've said it about a white player's, either. If Melo thought that Lin was being wildly overpaid but still, fundamentally, belonged in the club, he would've kept his mouth shut. He didn't because he doesn't."

Read More http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2012/07/the-jeremy-lin-debate-no-one-wants-to-have.html#ixzz21B6YRuco