http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88591800Anybody catch this?Can you believe that 16 Candles came out 25 years ago?!It was a pretty interesting piece. It really never occurred to me, but The Donger is probably one of the most despised stereotypical movie characters of all time. They interviewed the 2 guys who created Giant Robot and The Donger himself (dude is 52 now!)I feel bad for kids that were teased using all of those classic lines (possibly some of the most quoted movie lines in the past couple decades ie. AUTOMOBIIIIIILE???). What a nighmare.A super funny character, but so so wrong on many levels.
Secret_Chimp
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You sound not-Asian-male.
My old college roommate--someone from my hometown who I lived with for 5 years--emailed me about a month ago to say that he was in town on business and that he'd love to get together for dinner. He and I have really grown apart over the years and I hadn't heard from him or seen him in a long time, so I thought, "Why not?"
As it turns out, the gap between us has become even wider: he's grown more conservative, now enjoys duck hunting, and isn't above the odd incredibly misogynistic comment. But when he started telling me about a recent sales conference trip, he really bummed me out. There was someone attending from his company's Beijing office; my friend's big joke was to refer to him as "The Donger."
Cringe-inducingly unfunny, especially from a 37-year-old father in 2008.
"Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes?"
right.
He won't be laughing after his company gets outsourced to Shanghai.
lol
But serious. It's all about Gedde Watanabe in Gung Ho! And he's pretty good in ER.
anyways, i believe takashi came after the donger. i always wanted the soundtrack cuz that jam they played when takashi was on the tricycle was pretty awesome.
Yosh!
For real, I wrote something on my poplicks blog about how I thought LDD has been over-villified, at least within my community. Not that he's not incredibly problematic but as one of the few Asian faces I could have seen in the '80s, he was actually kind of a cool guy in a totally goofy way unlike most of the Asian guys I grew up with - myself included - who were totally goofy but not remotely cool.
did people commonly use the phrase "gung ho" before the movie came out?
serious question for the old men on this board.
i can't really think of many "cool guy" characters in recent major films that are played by asian males, other than the guy from harold and kumar.
But certain things- like the "gong" that would sound every time he made an appearance.. just unecessary and in poor taste.
I would not call those guys cool. I think the idea is that they're ordinary dudes.
Definitely not cool like, say, most of Tony Leung's characters.
Yeah - in all seriousness, you can't really redeem LDD as a good look. However, his character also has to be weighed against the general invisibility of Asian-ness in the '80s within mainstream American culture (not that so much as changed, per se!) and to that extent, I think he makes for a more...shall we say, interesting?...figure because of that.
For me, I never saw "16 candles" until I was well into adulthood. I'm not sure what my opinion would have been of LDD as a 14 year old (or however old I would have been when the movie originally dropped)
That's just cause most are never really looking. But there are a bunch... Just don't forget that Asian cinema is huge world wide, which there are TONS of "cool guys". But even in American films, there are dudes that can hold it down in the so called "cool" factor.
Yeah but the issue here is that there aren't cool Asian or Asian American guys in most Hollywood films. That's changed SLOWLY.
As an old man, I can assure you that the answer is yes.
We shouldnt have too "LOOK".
Name some "Cool" Asian Brothers since 2000, who arent fighting?
Yes--people that speak Chinese.
And Webster's states that came into use in English in 1942, when US Marines adopted/adapted it from the Chinese Army.
Dude from Harold and Kumar?
Then there was that high school flick.
You mean "Better Luck Tomorrow"?
DQed for being about "bad boy" AZN dudes with guns and shit.
Props to Jason Tobin and Sung Kang in that one though.
with the possible exception of Leung (and obviously Penn), the cool Asians in Hollywood seem to all be Korean-American, no?
Ken Leung - he was fighting in X-Men, but not "racialized" fighting.
Daniel Dae-Kim
Yeah, but it's not like the martial arts stereotype thing. Any good high school film about bad kids is going to have some fights go down, asian or not. Not DQ'd IMO yet, I say it's "thin line".