'The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard' draws criticism from Asian Americans

  Dr. Ken in "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard"

A recent blog post on the Angry Asian Man website entitled "hate crimes for fun and laughs in 'The Goods'" got me thinking about the ubiquitous doctor turned comedian turned actor Ken Jeong.

In one of my previous columns, I asked readers: "Is Ken Jeong's character Mr. Chow in 'The Hangover' a racist stereotype?"

Most of the Asians and Asian Americans that left comments on that article seemed to think his Mr. Chow character was in "bad taste" with some readers declaring him a "Hollywood whore" or "sellout."

Granted "The Hangover" is yet another in a recent slew of gross-out movies where everyone is being ridiculed, not just Asians.  Nevertheless, the trend towards tasteless humor in Hollywood is appalling.

And it seems filmmakers are pushing the limits with each new movie.

So what has Dr. Ken done to followup his over-the-top Mr. Chow caricature in "The Hangover?"

Well, he's playing a car salesman named Teddy Dang in the low-brow comedy "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" starring Jeremy Piven.

In "The Goods" Redband trailer, we see Dr. Ken as Teddy getting stomped on by a group of angry co-workers after Piven's character incites violence by giving a supposed pep talk to his sales team.

For some unexplained reason in the trailer, Piven compares car sales with going to war and spouts off: "Don't even get me started about Pearl Harbor... We are are the Americans, and they are the enemy. Never again!"

As Piven gives his speech, we see Dr. Ken's character nervously eyeing the older white male co-worker next to him seething with rage.

When Piven finishes his speech, the old white guy yells, "Let's get 'em!" and knocks Dr. Ken's character to the ground.  Next thing we see is the entire staff stomping on the Asian man.

Angry Asian Man points out the joke is probably that the old racist white guy is "taking out unfinished wartime aggression on the first Oriental guy in sight, and that we're supposed to laugh at the fact that everybody gets caught up in the racist wartime hysteria."

But something just doesn't feel right about laughing at this whole joke.  To make matters worse, Piven's character later tells the group they've just "participated in a hate crime."

Are they serious?  We're supposed to think that its funny to laugh at hate crimes?

Would the filmmakers think it's funny if the Dr. Ken character was an Arab man who was beaten because they all thought he was responsible for the 9/11 planes crashing into the twin towers?

If Piven's speech had been written as a rally cry against Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, would that be funny, too?

Historically speaking, this kind of insensitive humor reeks of bad taste when looked at in context of the Vincent Chin murder by a unemployed white autoworker in 1982.

While attending his bachelor party at a suburban Detroit club, Chin and Ronald Ebens, a white autoworker, traded insults across the bar. "It's because of you little motherf.... that we're out of work," witnesses later remembered Ebens yelling at Chin.

An irate Chin then started a fight with Ebens.  But Ebens' stepson, Michael Nitz, who had also been laid off from his autoplant job, jumped into the fray.  The fight was reportedly broken up by a parking attendant with Chin and his friends leaving the bar and going their separate ways. 

However, about twenty minutes later, Ebens and Nitz caught up with Chin in front of a fast-food restaurant where Ebens grabbed a baseball bat and smashed Chin's leg.  Nitz then held the wounded Chin, while Ebens bashed Chin's skull in with the bat.

Before Chin slipped into a coma, he reportedly murmured to a friend, "It's not fair."  Just four days later -- and five days before his wedding -- Chin died from the injuries he sustained during the beating.

The incident was later documented in the 1987 film "Who killed Vincent Chin?"  The documentary was directed by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña.  It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Vincent Chin became a metaphor for anti-Asian sentiment in America.  It has been said that not only was it ignorant for Ebens and Nitz to presume Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American, was Japanese, but the attack was also motivated by economical status, as the two autoworkers blamed the Japanese  for the failing U.S. auto industry and the loss of their jobs at the time.

It has also been pointed out that what was even more horrible about the Vincent Chin incident is "the use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon" which as everyone knows baseball is America's pastime.

As for Chin's murderers, Ebens was arrested and taken into custody at the scene by two off-duty police officers who witnessed the beating.  Ebens and Nitz were later convicted in a county court for manslaughter by Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman, after a plea bargain brought the charges down from second-degree murder.

Both men served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and were 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."

In light of the Vincent Chin incident, "The Goods" attempt at making hate crimes funny is rather disturbing and has already drawn criticism from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), who recently contacted Paramount in response to the movie.

A MANAA spokesman stated that as of yesterday Paramount had not responded to their requests to review the scene within the context of the whole movie.

I also read a post on Nikkei View: The Asian American Blog where someone has coined a new term for the form of racial-based comedy we've been seeing in movies like "The Goods" and "The Hangover."  It's being called "hipster racism."

According to the post on Nikkei View, the term "hipster racism" is defined as "indulging in racist stereotypes, but then covering your a.. with the alibi that you are just being satirical or ironic."

For more details on "Hipster Racism" go to:  http://meloukhia.net/2009/07/hipster_racism.html

Ironically, Dr. Ken once again sold himself out to promote "The Goods" on television recently, along with indulging in this new "hipster racism" style of comedy.  He also seems intent on establishing himself as the "Mantan Moreland" or "Stepin Fetchit" of Asian American actors.

If you don't believe me, just watch this recent clip of Dr. Ken dressed up as a pimp along with Piven on World Wrestling Entertainment's nationally televised show "WWE Raw" in which the good doctor gets tossed out of the ring.

I sure hope Dr. Ken has a good chiropractor!