Waiting in vain for Asian American leads

Save for one point, Lorenza Munoz did a fine job of canvassing critical views of “The Last Samurai” in her article headlined “Cruise’s ‘Samurai’: A Battle of Opinions” (Dec. 10). Unfortunately, the story gave short shrift to the impact of Hollywood’s Eurocentrism upon Asian Americans.

Munoz followed activist Jennifer Kuo’s criticism of the movie -- it being one more in a long line of Asian stories told through white eyes -- with a non sequitur: director Edward Zwick saying that the Japanese have “no problem” with a Hollywood actor making a movie about their culture.

Zwick’s statement does not address the issue that Kuo raises: Hollywood’s insistence that stories of non-Western cultures have Western lead characters. I’m sure the Japanese don’t mind this because they have ready access to their own movies with Japanese protagonists. The same does not hold true for Asian Americans.

If you’re Asian American, you have great difficulty finding lead characters in your domestic entertainment industry who look like you.

Hollywood’s focus on capturing the majority white audience has created media role models who are overwhelmingly non-Asian. Rarely does an English-language Hollywood movie allow an Asian character to rise above playing second fiddle to a white lead. And an Asian character will usually be the villain, the sidekick, the buffoon or the female love interest.

Hollywood has a long history of putting Caucasian protagonists at the center of Asian and Asian American narratives: “Go for Broke!” (1951), “Hawaii” (1966), “Shogun” (1980), “Tai-Pan” (1986), “Come See the Paradise” (1990), “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997). The list goes on.

Especially infuriating are the great lengths to which the industry will go to accommodate a white lead where an Asian protagonist would be more logical. For instance, when playwright David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”) sold NBC on his idea to turn the centuries-old Chinese novel “Journey to the West” into a miniseries, the network would produce it only if the writer would interpolate a white male lead and an Asian female love interest into the story. The result was the disastrous “Lost Empire” (2001).

By contrast, top-billed Asian stars in English-language Hollywood productions are as scarce as hen’s teeth. And even commercially successful works with Asian lead characters, such as “The Last Emperor” (1987) and “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), have not led to A-list Hollywood stardom for their actors.

The cumulative effect of this practice creates the impression among American audiences that Asian people are not as important as Westerners. If you want to be cool, if you want to be the hero, if you want to get the girl -- our popular culture seems to say -- you can’t be Asian. And this message insults Asian American viewers.

Another effect is the constant relegation of Hollywood’s Asian actors beneath a racial glass ceiling.

Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chow Yun-Fat have all gained a foothold in America, but their careers were nurtured not by Hollywood but by Hong Kong. Lucy Liu has achieved a kind of stardom, but she has yet to headline her own solo starring vehicle, and no other Asian American actor comes close to her standing in the industry.

Money and markets may very well be Hollywood’s innocent motive for its insistence on white leads. But the undeniable effect -- however unwitting -- is racial discrimination, in both the content of the stories and the industry’s hiring practices.

Hollywood can counter this by making more movies with Asians and Asian Americans as lead characters, not just as supporting characters. But the industry first needs to acknowledge that a problem exists, rather than defensively justifying the status quo.

In the meantime, compare the prestige surrounding “The Last Samurai” to the impossibility of mounting a serious occidental historical epic with an Asian main character. Just imagine trying to sell an American studio executive on the idea of “The Last Cowboy” starring Chow Yun-Fat.

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Robert M. Payne is a writer and screenplay analyst in Studio City.