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The New Long Duck Dong

Jill

I have admittedly never watched 2 Broke Girls, mostly because it looked really fucking stupid (I have, however, watched multiple episodes of The Bachelor and Kourtney & Kim Take New York, so that says something). But apparently in addition to being really fucking stupid, it is also really fucking racist:

A little background is probably in order. I don’t usually watch 2 Broke Girls, and I fully recognize that this show is not, you know, created with an Asian dude living in LA as the target demographic, but rather the much larger, and definitely more lucrative, audience of Americans for whom the diversity of New York represents a dangerous and head-scratching Other. (Actually, it’s probably worth further noting that I understand that almost all of TV is geared towards this audience.) But the quickest way to get to the heart of the matter is to say that the central tension of 2 Broke Girls appears to involve two white girls, one extremely sheltered and one slightly less so, who live and work in a diner in Brooklyn, where they’re forced to interact with a hilariously, uh, colorful cast of characters from all walks of life, and critically, a handful of people whose most salient character trait is that they’re not white.

…

Enter Han Lee, the Korean owner of the diner where the girls, Beth (the blonde one) and Max (the brunette one) work. It’s putting it mildly to say that Han Lee is a fairly regressive portrayal. To begin, he speaks with a broken, generically Asian accent, and then moves on to nicely tick off basically every possible Yellow Panic stereotype with an actually fairly impressive level of thoroughness. For real, it’s distressingly easy to imagine the writers sitting around and listing off every single ching-chong stereotype, ultimately deciding with some sorrow that a Fu Manchu mustache would be impractical for budget reasons. Or rather, it would be, except that would obviously be far too much time spent fleshing out this character. A tiny, greedy, sexless man-child, Han Lee did not disappoint as the B story in last week’s episode, involving his decision to raise the price of tampons in the ladies’ room in the diner.

Sounds great. And oh if you’re not reading Yo Is This Racist?, you should probably be reading Yo Is This Racist?

13 thoughts on The New Long Duck Dong

  1. I started watching 2 Broke Girls, mostly because I’ve liked Kat Denning in other stuff, but it was terrible because it was terribly unfunny. Any other reasons for not watching are just extra shit icing on the shitcake.

  6. I really wanted to like this show when it first came out, as a fan of Kat Dennings in particular and women-centered comedy in general, but I’ve never been able to finish an episode. Not only is the Han character a ridiculously offensive stereotype, but the other characters treat him like total shit, as if he is some kind of subhuman who exists only to be the target of various unfunny quips. It struck me as really mean-spirited and normalized in a really problematic way. I don’t like it when shows use racist humor for shock value, but at least it suggests that they know that what they are saying is wrong and offensive but are doing it anyway to seem naughty. 2 Broke Girls treats racism like the most natural thing in the world. Of course we should mock the Asian man for being short and nerdy and unable to drive and speak “normally”. Now let’s have a scene about cupcakes!

    Besides that, the only black character (in a show set in Brooklyn!) is a jive-talking, hypersexual Magical Negro. The show at least treats him with a measure respect (they don’t actively make fun of him for being a stereotype), but it’s pretty fucking obnoxious.

    The show is also generally not funny. It’s like the writers used a time machine to go back to 2007, where they discovered this strange place called “Brooklyn” and the mysterious “hipsters” who live there. They make cupcakes! They dress funny! Glasses! Poverty! Coldplay! Shove it on the air!

  7. The key to making fun of ethnic or racial stereotypes is to tip the audience off that your joke is self-conscious of what it is, not to lay it on too thick, and to balance it with a multi-dimensional and humane portrayal of the character in the rest of the story. These clips break all the rules; it’s not funny, it’s laid on like a cement truck, and by all appearances this is a one-dimensional caricature whose humanity is nowhere to be found.

    And there’s this-

    2 BROKE GIRLS, Episode #118, “And the Full Disclosure” Episodic 1/2 hour multi-camera CBS / Bonanza Productions AFTRA
    [EDWIN] 22-32. A hot Asian guy, he is the web designer for the girls’ cupcake site. Clearly, he and Caroline have a thing for each other, and after hours at the restaurant, things quickly heat up between the two… GUEST STAR/CO STAR
    Perhaps the new character “EDWIN” is an attempt to defend the show against accusations of racism over the series’ single Asian character, Han Lee. Played by Matthew Moy, the character is a short, emasculated nerd with no chance in hell of being taken seriously. Also, the fact that he speaks English with an accent seems to be a joke in and of itself. The Hollywood Reporter doesn’t mince words about the Han Lee character: “… what CBS is doing every Monday night is trotting out one of the most regressive and stunning racist devices a network has produced in five or more seasons.”

    Because an Asian web designer is such a refreshing break from stereotype.

  9. OK, just to be fair, I read the article about the “almost a fist fight” as King confronts questioners. Really? I didn’t read ANYTHING that even suggested King was ready to brawl. What I read was a bunch of questioners trying really hard to get King to say the show was racist and terrible and he just fielded each question deftly. The show is full of racial and social stereotypes–that’s kind of the point. The people down on this show are just the sort of ultra PC humorless whiners that provide rally points for the ridiculous right. Calm down and lighten up. Oh, and by all means, be sure and point out to the actors that they’re just playing idiot stereotypes. I’m sure Matthew Moy and Garrett Morris agree with you completely.

  10. They’ve also recently put out a call for another character to be Kat Dennings’ love interest. The casting description: looking for a “hot Asian guy” who is A FUCKING WEB PROGRAMMER. Michael Patrick King is the definition of white devil.

  11. The show is full of racial and social stereotypes–that’s kind of the point. The people down on this show are just the sort of ultra PC humorless whiners that provide rally points for the ridiculous right. Calm down and lighten up.

    Are you perhaps new to feminism?

    -calling feminists “ultra PC humorless whiners”
    -telling them to “calm down and lighten up”
    -defending racism
    -blaming people who point out racism for giving conservatives an (unexplained) advantage

    Those things are generally a bad idea.

  12. The show is full of racial and social stereotypes–that’s kind of the point.

    How so? What the fuck can the point of that be? Besides, you know, to be racist.

    The people down on this show are just the sort of ultra PC humorless whiners that provide rally points for the ridiculous right.

    *sigh* The show isn’t funny. Even if you somehow erased all the racism, which you won’t and can’t because it is there, the fucking show is sad tropes and rape jokes. Rich girl out of her element? WHAT? HAHAHA. And then she meets a tough street wise girl and hijinks ensue? Now we’re cookin’. I mean, throw in some infantilized behavior from girl 1 and now we’re seeing something new. Fuck that.

  13. The show is full of racial and social stereotypes–that’s kind of the point. The people down on this show are just the sort of ultra PC humorless whiners that provide rally points for the ridiculous right. Calm down and lighten up.

    What’s truly offensive about this show is how aggressively unfunny it is while it blunders around issues of race and class. Do you write for this show, or work on the marketing? That would literally be the only way I could imagine you could make the claim that this show is funny. In fact, making the claim this show is funny is funnier than anything the writers have ever crapped out.

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