So the great thing about being sick is that I have opportunity to catch up on mundane things like the newspaper and email. So here's the first thing I received and gave me something to smile about...

1. The Giants are hosting their first Filipino night... I'm not getting a ticket because I have one anyways with my season tickets, but those of you who want a collectible T-shirt should go.

Filipino Heritage Night
Wednesday, May 14 - Filipino families and businesses are recognized and welcomed for the 1st annual Filipino Heritage Night at AT&T Park! Be one of the founding fans to attend this new heritage night by coming out to support your culture, your heritage and your San Francisco Giants as they take on the Houston Astros.
Learn more and purchase tickets »

2. Then I read this article on the front of Wednesday's Datebook. It just made me wonder about the status of Asian Americans in all aspects of our society. At today's track meet, a couple of the athletes and I got into an interesting discussion about how hard it is or isn't for Chinese Americans to get into Berkeley. This talk was prompted by the fact our school has been promoting College Awareness Week--complete with speakers from different schools and organizations talking about a variety of topics (financial aid was today's focus).

Goodbye yellowface, hello whiteout?

Sandip Roy, Special to The Chronicle

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Paul Muni and Luise Rainer played the lead Chinese charac...

Jim Sturgess plays Ben Campbell (not Jeff Ma) in "21." So...

Anna May Wong - not good enough for "The Good Earth?" Pho...

Asian American Actors

In Hollywood

Goodbye yellowface, hello whiteout? (4/23)

Paul Muni and Luise Rainer made a very unlikely Chinese peasant couple in "The Good Earth." But that was 1937 Hollywood. Today, it's hard to imagine, say, Charlize Theron wearing yellowface. Yet there's a different problem. In "21," based on an MIT professor teaching his students to beat the odds in Las Vegas casinos, Jim Sturgess ("Across the Universe") is star

student Ben Campbell. The real-life Campbell was an Asian American named Jeff Ma.

Goodbye yellowface, hello whiteout?

Phil Lee, president of Media Action Network for Asian Americans, thinks so. As soon as word got around of the switcheroo, MANAA contacted Sony. But the group says it was rebuffed. Asian hits like "The Ring" and "Infernal Affairs" are routinely Americanized. "But '21' was based on a true story involving a number of Asian Americans," says Lee by phone. "It was a lost opportunity, especially given the lack of strong Asian roles."

More of the same?

For MANAA, it was a sense of deja vu. In the 1970s, pioneering Korean journalist K.W. Lee wrote more than 120 articles that helped free a young Korean American wrongly accused of a gangland murder. That story inspired the 1989 movie "True Believer." But who got to play the heroic crusader? James Woods.

"While '21' is inspired by a true story, the film is fictionalized," stresses Steve Elzer, Sony's senior vice president for media relations. He points out that there are two Asian Americans in the five-member ensemble. "They are prominently featured in the motion picture and they also appear in the trailers, on the posters, billboards," Elzer says in an e-mail. He adds that as a consultant to "21," Ma himself "has vigorously supported the producers' casting choices."

Not everyone buys the colorblind "it's about the best actor for the role" argument. "Are you kidding me? A movie about math, MIT and gambling, and the lead was made white? Have you ever seen the pai gow tables in Vegas?" exclaims Manish on the blog Ultrabrown. "... You can just imagine the studio meeting: 'Asian won't sell. If you want the movie made, we have to re-cast the leads.' "

"This is pretty outrageous, and just as questionable as having Brian Dennehy play Kublai Khan in (Hallmark's) recent 'Marco Polo' movie," writes Alvin on the Hypen Magazine blog.

A two-way street?

But shouldn't colorblindness cut both ways? If Asian Americans want to play Hamlet (Joan Chen's role in "Twin Peaks" was written for an Italian), shouldn't Sturgess have a shot at "21"?

"There are a limited number of Asian roles and plenty of hungry actors," says Arthur Dong, director of the new documentary "Hollywood Chinese." "When a non-Asian gets an Asian role, it's a slap in the face." And when Nicolas Cage parodies Fu Manchu in "Grindhouse" in 2007, it stings even more. "Sure it's satire, that's the excuse," says Dong. "But would anyone dare do that with Amos and Andy?"

Stephen Gong, executive director of the Center for Asian American Media, says stories like "21" don't really surprise him. "Films are constructed to make money," Gong says by phone. "I'm

sure the producers were more interested in making a film about cheating Las Vegas rather than the subtleties of the Asian American experience."

But where does that leave Asian American actors?

"I'm working, but not much in Hollywood," says Chen, though she sees more roles around than when she started 25 years ago. Then she was offered plenty of "cartoonish chop-chop action movies." "I turned those down," Chen says by phone. "But I regret it a little now. I thought they were mindless, but they were not meant to be serious. I was being too serious."

Something to prove

"As an ethnic actor, you have to work a million times harder than anyone else just to get your foot in the door," says Kal Penn in a phone conversation. Penn balked at playing a character named Taj Mahal in "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." He vividly remembers how schoolmates in New Jersey avoided him at lunch after seeing Indians wolfing monkey brains in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." But a friend advised him to find a dozen cliched scenes he just couldn't stomach and suggest alternatives instead of rejecting National Lampoon. That film

eventually helped him land "Harold & Kumar" and "The Namesake."

In 2008, Sony can say that if there were an Asian American actor with the box-office buzz of Sturgess, Ben Campbell could have stayed Asian. That sounds like the same argument as when Rainer was chosen over Anna May Wong for "The Good Earth."

Dong says it's possible that 1930s Asian American stars like Wong didn't yet have the dramatic chops for a role like "The Good Earth." "But you can argue that she was never given the chance to nurture that talent," he says. "It's a classic catch-22." After all, says Center for Asian American Media's Gong, "I'm sure John Cho could have done '21' in his sleep."

Sidelined in Hollywood, many Asian American actors are eyeing the global market. Bay Area native Daniel Wu is an A-lister in Hong Kong. "He could be the next Jackie Chan," Gong says. "He can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, knows martial arts." And he doesn't have to worry about an accent.

Wu isn't alone. Hawaii native Maggie Q made it in Hong Kong before starring in "Live Free or Die Hard." Lee-Hom Wan of "Lust Caution" was born in Rochester, N.Y.

Asian American actors, once the stepchildren of both Hollywood and Asia, are becoming

"bankable" for American productions by pursuing a career in Asia first, writes the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's Taro Goto. Others like B.D. Wong, Sandra Oh, Vic Chao are popping up regularly on television.

Variety

"It's not just about positive roles, it's about more variety," says Lee of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. That's where he feels "21" missed the boat. But Dong says he worries more about films like "Juno" than "21." In that indie hit, an Asian is shown picketing an

abortion clinic. "She has an accent, I think she's the only Asian in the film, and as I watched it, I thought, 'When that film shows in the Midwest, I'd hate to be the only Asian student in the auditorium,' " says Dong. "That really perpetuates the otherness of Asians. You make sure they are still seen as outsiders."