"It pains us that any aspect of the show was considered offensive, and I apologize for any hurt the skits caused," wrote the chief executive of Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Dawn Hudson in response to a complaint by Academy members of Asian descent expressing "complete surprise and disappointment with the targeting of Asians at the 88th Oscars telecast and its perpetuation of racist stereotypes."
They wanted "to know how such tasteless and offensive skits could have happened and what process you have in place to preclude such unconscious or outright bias and racism toward any group in future Oscars telecasts" and what "concrete steps" would "ensure that all people are portrayed with dignity and respect."
Hudson's response — a classic nonapology — was not well received. George Takei called it "a bland, corporate response" and said: "The obliviousness was actually shocking. Doesn’t anyone over there have any sense?"
March 17, 2016
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57 comments:
It should have been non-issued.
The proper approach would have been to privately threaten all the complainers future careers.
Except for Takei of course.
Hollywood fails to go Oriental. Maybe it's Karma. Bless their little hearts
the academy's response to alleged racism is to commit obvious racism
Have the white people in the crowd complained to the Academy about being told by the host they were racist?
Offense was not meant, so why were you offended? Stop looking for ways to be hurt.
That would've worked too instead of the non-apology.
If it's the bit I'm remembering... They accused Asians of being good at math at a young age.
As far as stereotypes go, not exactly a bad one.
Hey, the Academy was busy trying to flog itself for the fact that not enough movies featuring black people in starring roles got nominated, what with blacks being 70% of the population. They didn't have time to avoid oriental stereotypes.
Welcome to the grievance Olympics. Soon it'll be self-cancelling and we can go back to dealing with real problems.
Doesn’t anyone over there have any sense?"
They have about the same amount of sense as the complainers, so no.
This is the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, devoted exclusively to the promotion of the business of the film arts. In other words, the publicity arm of the motion picture industry. In other words, Takei is arguing with a publicity machine here.
Don't ever go full publicity machine, to paraphrase a famously non-PC comment made recently by a white actor in blackface. Yeah, these are the people I'm gonna use to determine what is offensive and what is nonoffensive in pop culture. Not.
The Politically Correct Rule Book from the Left gets longer, and longer, and longer everyday.
Lotta tripwires. Tread gently.
Um, wait, it couldn't have been racism, the joke was said by a black man.
The whole night was about how Hollywood is oppressing black people, right? (I didn't watch).
Now these Asian people are attacking a joke made by a black comedian? Shameful.
Oooh, maybe the WRITERS were non-black. If that's the case then they [and the white Academy big wigs] in a sense forced the black comedian to tell the racist joke, so the black comedian is himself a victim, too! That works, that works, go with that.
Pretty stupid. No one really cares except the perpetually offended SJWs.
The left has been turning on itself for the last several years. Sanders popularity is visible proof. His support among the Grievance Studies majors at The University of Progressivism is 100%.
How many people who identify with the left but are sick of the Cardinal Sin of Microaggression, etc. will vote for Trump?
If it's the bit I'm remembering... They accused Asians of being good at math at a young age.
As far as stereotypes go, not exactly a bad one.
I don’t watch the Oscars but I seem to recall that when Chris Rock was on SNL he did a bit on Weekend Update lamenting that while the stereotypes associated with Asians and Jews (e.g. good at math, good with money) were generally positive, the ones associated with Black people were generally negative. That was probably around twenty years ago but I wonder if he was doing something similar at the Oscars.
Oh and George Takei outed himself as a racist moron with his comments about Justice Clarence Thomas. So to hell with him and his phony outrage.
Shawn Levasseur said...
If it's the bit I'm remembering... They accused Asians of being good at math at a young age.
As far as stereotypes go, not exactly a bad one.
Any stereotype, even a complimentary one and especially an accurate one, is a no-no because it violates the "all groups of people are the same" principle/nonsense.
Asians need to realize that they, as a race, do not matter. You accepted being shafted with affirmative action.
Also, nobody likes a whiner.
The mysterious East.
Hollywood fails to go Oriental. Maybe it's Karma. Bless their little hearts
Are you implying that they are not turning Japanese? #vaporsrule
Hey, the Academy was busy trying to flog itself for the fact that not enough movies featuring black people in starring roles got nominated, what with blacks being 70% of the population. They didn't have time to avoid oriental stereotypes.
The ironic part is that blacks aren't starring in more movies because they really want big foreign box office drawing power...and Asian markets don't give a damn about black actors.
"The ironic part is that blacks aren't starring in more movies because they really want big foreign box office drawing power...and Asian markets don't give a damn about black actors."
I'm sure we can find a way to blame white people for this. And not white liberals, who pull the strings in Hollywood, but powerless white moviegoers in flyover country who clearly are behind all of this.
"Asians need to realize that they, as a race, do not matter. You accepted being shafted with affirmative action."
True, its a bit rich, complaining about jokes at the Oscars, when hundreds of thousands of Asian kids every year are discriminated against in college admissions, scholarships, and every other sort of selective admission process. Asians are the most officially-discriminated-against group in the US.
One of the cards in Cards Against Humanity is "Asians who are not good at math."
"Asians are the most officially-discriminated-against group in the US."
And the most successful as measured by academic achievement and test scores and the least likely to bitch about the obvious and overt discrimination. Too busy studying.
It's almost as if family structure and parental choices on what matters really does matter.
Let a thousand special flowers bloom.
"True, its a bit rich, complaining about jokes at the Oscars, when hundreds of thousands of Asian kids every year are discriminated against in college admissions, scholarships, and every other sort of selective admission process. Asians are the most officially-discriminated-against group in the US."
For reasons that elude me, they tend to accept this. I can't imagine they're fooled into thinking that affirmative action isn't essentially an anti-Asian discrimination scheme. But you don't see Asians as front in center of the debate.
Chris Rock announced that he was introducing bankers from PriceWaterHouseCoopers. "They sent us their most dedicated, accurate and hard working representatives. Please welcome Ming Zhu, Bao Ling and David Moskowitz."
Somebody get the Anti Defamation League on the phone! Anyone whose worked in finance knows how obviously wrong the stereotype about Jewish bankers are. And take a look at MIT's math grad students. Surely no preponderance of Asians. God when will our society be ride of these ignorant, hateful stereotypes?
The problem is not that a skit on the Oscars was offensive to a large number of people. The problem is that a large number of people watch the Oscars and give a $h!t what goes on during that show.
"And take a look at MIT's math grad students. Surely no preponderance of Asians"
The math grad students? You're limiting yourself. Being an alumnoid of the place, I can tell you that the current undergraduate body is about 27% Asian heritage. I'll bet the grad school is higher.
"The ironic part is that blacks aren't starring in more movies because they really want big foreign box office drawing power...and Asian markets don't give a damn about black actors."
Actually that's not true. They DO give a damn about black actors. Specifically, they don't want to see them.
"For reasons that elude me, they tend to accept this. "
This is true not only in the US.
Overseas Chinese face official discrimination nearly everywhere, and generally accept it as the way of things. Notably though, Singapore, majority Chinese, took the opportunity to split with Malaysia when the Malays began to seriously consider such policies.
In Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines in various ways this has been official policy.
The general result however is as one would expect. Official policy is one thing, effects in real life are something else.
@RonF:
I just picked math because that was part of the jokes. Rock introduced three children--two of which were Asian (likely Chinese) and the third Jewish--as "bankers." Point being: the stereotype exists for a reason. It is based in empirical fact. Doesn't mean every Asian is good at math. Only a dunderhead would believe that. But they're more likely to be good at math on average than members of other ethnic groups. I'm sure I am probably preaching to the choir with you ;)
RonF, true. Studios realize that the only way a black starring movie does well is if it REALLY cleans up big here. And they usually don't.
" But they're more likely to be good at math on average than members of other ethnic groups"
This sort of statistical fact, or reasoning, is extremely difficult to get across. It may be an IQ thing. Stereotypes work better for this purpose, and are more useful for developing a workable model of the world for the sort of person who cant handle statistics and probabilities.
True, its a bit rich, complaining about jokes at the Oscars, when hundreds of thousands of Asian kids every year are discriminated against in college admissions, scholarships, and every other sort of selective admission process. Asians are the most officially-discriminated-against group in the US.
I cannot fathom WHY it is accepted. We have been at war with Asian countries for large swaths of the 20th Century. Don't they feel that THEY deserve some special treatment since, I'm have to assume, times were rough? Hispanics weren't put in camps, after all.
It was also the key part in one of my college debates about standardized testing. What cultural similarities tie whites and Asians and also tie blacks and Hispanics together? It's not like standardized tests of all types don't tend to have the same scoring range for the assorted groups.
I assumed the people who came here from Japan and Vietnam after those wars would be really wary about larger government. It seems to not be the case.
It's hard to get excited over occasional minor slurs and slights while non-believers are assaulted all day, every day by homages to God defacing all the nation's coins and bills, and by Ten Commandments, crosses and crucifixes hanging around on public lands.
"I cannot fathom WHY it is accepted. "
Most people don't realize just how different cultures are. They aren't just "people like us" with different skin color. Getting inside the head of a true foreigner is hard. The popular ideology on this is really silly.
I often scratch my head about "American" logic, and I have been here 30 years, with plenty of multicultural practice growing up in expat/mestizo communities.
Being a nonapod I find myself frequently making nonapologies.
An Asian-American group is suing Harvard for discriminating against Asian American applicants.
jimbino said...
It's hard to get excited over occasional minor slurs and slights while non-believers are assaulted all day, every day by homages to God defacing all the nation's coins and bills, and by Ten Commandments, crosses and crucifixes hanging around on public lands.
Ok, that was funny.
Class diversity politics under the rainbow paradigm continue to nurture prejudice.
I don't really get why people are offended by the joke. First off, it's saying they are good at math. Second it's saying g Hollywood is exploiting them for racial purposes (and they are good at match. And that they build our iPhones. All of which are true. Except for the bit about math, I suppose. There are plenty of Asians who are not that good at math. I don't see why making a positive stereotype should be offensive though.
At any rate, who's responsible? Whoever wrote the joke and who performed the joke. The black guy. Maybe blacks, like whites, need to be taught how not to offend racial minorities.
"We have been at war with Asian countries for large swaths of the 20th Century."
This has to be one of the silliest things written. We fought WITH China and almost all of Asia against Japanese tyranny in WW2. We fought for the south Korean freedom in Korean war and we fought for South Vietnamese independence.
"I don't see why making a positive stereotype should be offensive though."
Because Asians in the arts have been through the US educational mill that tells them they should be offended by such things. And because the "liberal" answer to Asian success is to tell everyone that to bring up these subjects is offensive - to who, I'm not sure. Its probably just SOP to shut down discussion of anything that they don't want to talk about.
jr565: Mostly it was a case of "I'm offended on behalf of those (inexplicably quiet and going about their business) folks over there..."
Maybe the solution to all this is to select actors at random from the general population and make them wear neutrally colored masks. Everyone will be equal and lefty protester types can put their paper mache puppet making skills to good use. The movies will suck, but at least everyone will be the same.
This has to be one of the silliest things written. We fought WITH China and almost all of Asia against Japanese tyranny in WW2. We fought for the south Korean freedom in Korean war and we fought for South Vietnamese independence.
It doesn't alter WWII and wars involving Korea and Vietnam. Fighting with Asians does not negate that we were also fighting against Asians. It makes explanations as to why Vietnamese or Japanese can make it but Hispanics apparently cannot implausible.
"Prease accept our sincere aporogy."
RonF said...
Being an alumnoid of the place, I can tell you that the current undergraduate body is about 27% Asian heritage.
Pretty sure MIT indulges in anti-Asian discrimination.
Cal-Tech undergraduates:
Asian - 39%
White - 35%
Mestizo - 8%
Mix - 3%
Black - 1%
P. Island - 1%
Unknown - 1%
Amerindian - 0%
Aliens - 12% [mostly Asians?]
" It makes explanations as to why Vietnamese or Japanese can make it but Hispanics apparently cannot "
Wars have nothing to do with anything here. The US has fought against and with, one way or another, nearly every major country in East Asia. The US was at one time (some cases several times) waging war against - Japan, the Philippines, Korea (North, South, and unified), China (several times), Vietnam/North Vietnam, Thailand (when allied to Japan), Cambodia, Laos, Indonesians (surreptitiously and by proxy), Burma (Japanese allies). The ONLY modern East Asian country the US has NOT fought, in its current form or previous order or its insurgents, is Malaysia/Singapore (historically unified).
The US has been allied with or is now an ally or de-facto ally of every nation in East Asia save independent Burma.
"but Hispanics apparently cannot"
They seem to "make it" just fine. They have high labor force participation and high employment, high public health measures, long life expectancy, relatively low criminality (relative to their low incomes), etc. They are well off by any human measurement. The only problems are their incomes are relatively low and their educational attainment is poor.
Let's hear it for those overachieving Mestizos!
Buwaya,
Your view of US Latinos mirrors mine. El Paso has more than 600,000 residents, about 80% Hispanic. Same social metrics (high school graduation, teen pregnancy, etc.) as many other large cities. But they have a very low violent crime rate. Substantially lower than Chicago.
They are good people; work hard, low crime, family centered. But post secondary education or aspiring to professional careers isn't a priority. They are like Asian Americans except the emphasis on post secondary education/desire to work in professional careers is the exact opposite.
They seem to "make it" just fine. They have high labor force participation and high employment, high public health measures, long life expectancy, relatively low criminality (relative to their low incomes), etc. They are well off by any human measurement. The only problems are their incomes are relatively low and their educational attainment is poor.
By "they can't make it", I mean that they have to have assistance from the government to achieve much. Affirmative action benefits them quite highly. Clearly, the government, their "leaders", et al don't feel they can make it.
And we can do away with the theory that poverty causes crime (it reverses the correlation). If poverty caused crime, the Great Depression would've been the highest crime period in the US for the 20th Century and crime would've been worse in 2008 than it was last year.
Wars have nothing to do with anything here. The US has fought against and with, one way or another, nearly every major country in East Asia. The US was at one time (some cases several times) waging war against - Japan, the Philippines, Korea (North, South, and unified), China (several times), Vietnam/North Vietnam, Thailand (when allied to Japan), Cambodia, Laos, Indonesians (surreptitiously and by proxy), Burma (Japanese allies). The ONLY modern East Asian country the US has NOT fought, in its current form or previous order or its insurgents, is Malaysia/Singapore (historically unified).
The US has been allied with or is now an ally or de-facto ally of every nation in East Asia save independent Burma.
That's the point. The "Face of the enemy" for the US for substantial time in the 20th Century was Asian. It was never Hispanic.
So why do Hispanics need protections and Asians do not? Why do they serve as an overall weight on the wage scale?
"So why do Hispanics need protections and Asians do not?"
Well, whatever your point is, it has nothing to do with war.
Asians weren't "the face of the enemy" AFAIK.
The Japanese were, when the OTHER face of the enemy was German - i.e., as white as anyone.
And also AFAIK US popular culture wasn't ever on hate Asians all the time. They were also, in most wartime media, sidekicks, victims to save (refugees, in an amazing number of movies), exotic girlfriends/love interests/sex symbols - for instance, the cabaret singer in "Green Berets", Jennifer Jones' Eurasian in "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing", Nancy Kwan in "World of Suzie Wong", etc. (both of the last are excellent chick-flicks btw)
Go-to popular culture image from the 1930's-50's isn't buck toothed Tojo but the long-suffering Chinese peasant in Pearl Bucks novels.
As to the politics of Hispanics vs Asians -
1. Numbers. Hispanics are a significant voting block in several states, Asian only in one (Hawaii).
2. Blocks - Asians come in several flavors and don't really vote as a block nor can they be addressed as a block - even in Hawaii, where the party split runs between Asian groups (Japanese/Filipino traditionally).
3. Hispanics can claim (or can have others claim on their behalf) about historic discrimination, suppression/exploitation as cheap labor (Cesar Chavez). But this is mainly a leftover white thing.
4. Poverty. They can claim dissatisfaction with their condition like Asians can't. The leftist/populist argument boils down to, in all cases, that if someone is poor its someone else's fault.
The Academy should have said; "It's humor, free speech, get over yourselves."
(George Takei is a shitty actor who likes playing the victim.)
Radio Japan said the distinction between N Asian (round faces) and S Asian (narrow faces) has social significance.
I have heard that Japanese don't hear the difference between r and l, so far from reversing them they simply have a sort of compromise sound for both.
A fact from long ago that may be completely wrong.
"non-believers are assaulted all day, every day by homages to God defacing all the nation's coins and bills, and by Ten Commandments, crosses and crucifixes hanging around on public lands."
Yeah. It must be awful having to use alternate rest room/water fountains. Or have your peers placed in camps for security purposes. Or those times non-believers had to ride in the back of the bus. And all those non-believer jokes/stereotypes on TV. Worst, of course are all the job ads that say non-believers need not apply.
Must be hell for you (ooops).
I'm a non-believer, but Ho Lee Katz you militants are embarrassing.
Of all the fainting couch/boxers in a bunch/panties in a wad grievance mongers, atheists are the most sensitive flowers I encounter. As if the word God in tiny font on a coin BURNS!!!!!!!!!
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