Asian academy members protest Oscar's Asian jokes

2016-03-24   Source: China Daily

25 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science members of Asian descent have written to Academy leaders protesting "tasteless and offensive skits" mocking Asians during the 88th Academy Awards late February, according to Los Angeles Times.

"We are writing ... to express our complete surprise and disappointment with the targeting of Asians at the 88th Oscars telecast and its perpetuation of racist stereotypes," said the letter, signed by members including two-time Academy Award winning director Ang Lee, actress Sandra Oh of Grey's Anatomy, actor George Takei of Star Trek and former academy governors Don Hall, Freida Lee Mock and Arthur Dong.

The letter, addressed to academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Chief Executive Dawn Hudson, the board of governors, and Oscar telecast producers Reginald Hudlin and David Hill, became public on Tuesday in a story by Variety, as the Academy's 51-member board was meeting for the first time since the telecast.

The awards ceremony was packed with racially charged material related to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. In one, host Chris Rock introduced three Asian children as Academy accountants, followed by ad-libbed comments and a derogatory joke about Asians by presenter Sacha Baron Cohen.

"If you watched the Oscars the word diversity seemed to mean black and white. That was it," said Takei during an phone interview with Los Angeles Times. "We were absolutely aghast to see they compounded that by having a joke about Asian American children. How insensitive and how ignorant."

The Star Trek star said Asian academy members began emailing each other about initiating a protest the night of the show.

"I grew up in prisons behind barbed-wire fences largely because of those stereotypes," Takei said. "Asians were depicted as merciless villains to be laughed at. Now the stereotype is we're silent numbers counters or depicting child labor."

Documentary filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña said she and other Asian Academy members were surprised to see jokes of such nature in a year where a call for diversity was at the center of attention.

"Everybody was excited because we knew that the academy was responding to #OscarsSoWhite," Tajima-Peña said. "We were excited to see the telecast to see what was gonna happen. It kind of blindsided us. It was such a contrast to the language of moving forward, recognizing that this culture is multi-racial, multi-ethnic. It wasn't even funny. It's just dredging up really idiotic stereotypes."

In the letter dated March 9, 25 members asked the board to respond to their criticism and take "concrete steps" to "preclude such unconscious or outright bias and racism toward any group in future Oscar telecasts."

A spokeswoman of the academy has responded through a statement.

"The Academy appreciates the concerns stated, and regrets that any aspect of the Oscar telecast was offensive," the statement read. "We are committed to doing our best to ensure that material in future shows be more culturally sensitive."

David Magdael, a member of the Academy in its public relations branch, said he was surprised when he saw the show.

"When that skit came up in the middle of the Oscars, we all went like, 'What?' There was a collective, 'That didn't just happen.' We found a lot of people who said, 'We're not going to accept this sort of joke anymore,' especially right after Cheryl Boone Isaacs gave that speech about diversity," comments Magdael during an interview with The Hollywood Reporters.

A complete list of academy's members is not on public records, however according to a 2016 Times analysis, Asians account for just over two percent of the academy's membership.