A wise man once told me, “Roger, there are 3 certainties in life – death, taxes, & the Chinatown episode.” So true, so true…
Every year, on just about every show on television, there is always a Chinatown episode. Something super chinky involving gangs, prostitutes, human trafficking, sweat shops, opium, family, honor, suicide, guns, and/or chinese cooks with crooked teeth. I’ve come to expect this annual chinky tradition from Hollywood, but I saw something tonight that I have never seen before… the super chinky chinatown advertisement for the chinatown episode. This be some revolutionary shit, brother. Here goes…
A typical Sunday night. Me, sitting on my tatami mat enjoying a nice, roasted squid on a stick while watching Amazing Race on CBS. Cut to commercial break and what comes up? An ad for an episode of Cold Case (ironically titled, “Chinatown”) coming up right after my show. Now typical ads for CSI, Cold Case, NCIS, etc…it’s always the same thing. Some trailer voice narrates with quick cuts of action scenes, sound bites from the main characters, cliffhanger moments, and close with show title, network logo, and time. Simple, standard…the “usual package”. This ad for Cold Case was far from typical or usual. Someone ordered the CHINKY PACKAGE. It had gongs, chinky music, quick cuts of asian gangsters & ho’s…you know, chinky shit. But what killed me was the graphic title card at the end. CBS literally had the titles, time, etc. all written in dragon-red bamboo font, like something stamped on the gates of the Forbidden City. Good god man, how does one even ask for something like that from the marketing department without creating a minefield of potential harassment lawsuits? Perhaps it went something like this…
Studio Suit and Editor sitting in an editing suite staring at a monitor
Suit: somethings not right. it’s not chinky enough
Editor: how about if i add some gong sounds and splice in a coy look from jade (the prostitute)?
Suit: chinkier please
Editor: ok. how about I splice in the line “you dishonor my father” and add this cool shot of this gangster doing a roundhouse kick?
Suit: chinkier please. this doesn’t feel anything like my R&R weekends while I was serving in Nam. chinkier!
Editor: ok, how about this slow mo shot of a monk meditating fading into lanterns and fireworks?
Suit: son, stop fucking with me. i’ll tug your balls off with my big toe if you don’t give me chinkier!
Editor: ok, sir, how about I morph the end titles so it looks like the front cover of a chinese menu?
Suit: perfect!
OK. Maybe it didn’t go down exactly like this. But one thing is for sure…a group of people sat around a table and had their version of an intelligent discussion. And the end result of their efforts was this stereotypical, hyperreality that they saw as totally normal and perhaps even smart. ”America’s gonna love this!” Scary…
I shudder to think what would happen if the studios did the equivalent ad for the “African” or “Latino” episodes. I don’t think spears, watermelons, panchos, churros, and the like would go over well in the African or Latino American communities. But then again, I’m pretty sure that the studios know better than to make shows and ad campaigns based upon such obvious offenses and stereotypes. At least that’s the case for the blacks and the latinos. Asians? No love. The hits just keep on coming…
Thoughts?
btw – i’m commenting on the game, not the player/actors in it. i thought the work by all my asian friends & colleagues was solid (as usual).
saw this ad as well and of course had to skip family guy in order to watch the abomination. the whole time i was thinking, “this is the kind of thing i’d expect of an 80s cop drama”
aside from this chinkification, cold case has got to be the cheesiest show on tv right now. you know at the end of each episode when they conveniently have someone walk in front of the camera and fade to the younger character and then back to the present day character all to a period correct soundtrack.
how this show lasted for 7 goddamn seasons is beyond my comprehension.
7 seasons? wow! that means there’s at least 6 more Chinatownish episodes for Cold Case. awesome!
Cold Case actually did a Nisei internment episode a couple years ago. They got the characters’ age timelines all wrong and the show could only gloss over the admittedly meaty subject, but I was pleasantly relieved that the episode was fairly respectful overall and did not feature the song “I Think I’m Turning Japanese” at the end. Maybe just in the promo…
Disgusting as usual. Even with a more “progressive” show like Trauma, they had a Chinatown episode complete with a Chinese restaurant running a downstair brothel. That’s before the Castro Halloween episode, which was not too inaccurate. But seriously, how does most CBS programming remain on the air?
Glad to see this becuz the nonsense is eternal. Everyone’s gone to Chinatown, including the Wild, Wild West. Bonanza had a Hop Sing episode. BTW, Stephin Fetchit, Hop Sing.
On the other hand, w/o MASH, Miss Saigon, King and I and episodics going exotic, where would we find work….
I can’t wait to see the china town episode where the feds raid the Tapioca Express and bust the fantasy-football ring they’re hiding…
Beverly, such an episode would end up winning an Emmy. but don’t hold your breath my little cricket…
The Cold Case on the Internment wasn’t bad. What I found fascinating was my contemps played the JAs, the characters looking back from today’s perspective, and other AP actors played the WW II internees.
That’s profoundly weird.
[...] fellow Offender Roger recently wrote about how almost every television series has their “Chinatown” episode. Roger may have called you to task for doing this, but hey, I’ve written for TV before, and I [...]
Yeah, I agree with Claude and Darrell. I don’t watch Cold Case but tuned in for the internment ep, which was pretty well done. Also, the lead woman is kind of milfy.
What’s scarier, LA has got to have one of the most asian-dense populations in the country. I’m fairly sure there are asians working in every level at studios and networks. So what gives? Are our brothers and sisters just not speaking up when higher-ups ask for this shit?
we don’t run the companies, few of we produce at the network level. but here it is, and it’s real and it’s a slight down
– AP stories are not mainstream. Now, when I say that it isn’t a dig so I hope no one takes it that way. Same for Latino stories. Upside: Latinos are now dispersed all over the country, are reproducing like crazy — that isn’t judgemental either, so don’t go chigasos on yo, homie, you should see how I go head-to-head with the hipster idiots who are promoting my hood, Echo Parkay, as the Eastside, the dolts — but there are years if not decades till the Latinos (all over the South, and a lot of them) till they are arrived. In the middle of society. Immigrant stories at this point are possible. And a second tier: the offspring of the immigrant, and their acculturation, in schools and jobs. Same for us, as APs.
Sure, we’re all over the East and West Coasts. There’s intermarriage like mad — JA girls, been to JANM lately?, kidding, stop the glare — but we’ve just begun to enter national poitics. You can count Cabinet-level APs on one hand. State politics is better, local way better, but it isn’t nationwide. Our stories are specific, local, historic — WW II Internment, he gold and railroad era — what, may I ask, in the voice of a Hollywood producer you are pitching is a truly Korean American story that reps your peeps? OK, nice story — we’re going to set in 1992, in a liquor store. Starring Keanu as half-Korean dude.
Not ranting here, just saying we saw an increase in medical and forensic types after the Manson Family murders and everyone saw Dr. Thomas Noguchi (Quincy, M.D., Robert Ito). And after the OJ criminal trial and Lance Ito. BTW, anyone notice all the black family commercials on mainstream television since Obama got in?
That’s what I mean.
All in all, have to say and hope no one takes offense to the pronouncement, it is still (largely, as a qualifier) a white and Jewish world in tv, film and even on stage.
Which shouldn’t stop any of us from trying.
The industry is disproportionately Jewish but the original Jews who built Hollywood into what it is today consciously shied away from Jewish subject matter and downplayed their Jewish identity. I would hope Asian-American studio execs won’t follow a similar self-denying path, but for now anyway, they lack the numbers to overcome our current social marginalization anyway.
Very much in agreement, C. Very much. And the pioneers also promoted a higher cultural calling in films, Shakespeare, social awareness, etc.
In film we coloreds seem to make success on our color and our respective community’s stories, Singleton and others. The question is, can they continue, one they made it, made some success?
Biggest question, can they turn a profit continuing to ‘cover the community’? Hollywood’s favorite color — we all know — is mean green. We can dream all we want. That don’t rake dough.