Ray Richmond: Asian American-themed performers and projects are having more than just a moment; it’s a cultural shift
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I had a chance to watch the first three episodes of the new Netflix limited series “Beef” last night, and it didn’t take long before I was hooked. It came inside of 10 minutes. Steven Yeun (as the suicidal contractor Danny Cho) and Ali Wong (as the wealthy but tortured boutique entrepreneur Amy Lau) are brilliant and deserving of all the praise that’s already been heaped upon them, and the narrative and production are irresistibly intriguing and discomforting. But what struck me was how quickly I forgot I was watching a production filled almost exclusively with Asian American actors. It all became rather seamless, even as the storyline alluded the players’ ethnicity.
The reception greeting the series that despite its title deals with beef mostly metaphorically (stemming from a road rage incident leading to an elongated feud that makes the protagonists feel alive) has been deservedly exalted, bolstered by major word of mouth. It’s already shot to fifth place on Gold Derby’s combined odds for limited series, and Yeun and Wong are suddenly sixth among movie/limited lead actors and lead actresses for a program that launched on the streaming service less than two weeks ago.
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Add to this the fact “American Born Chinese” starts streaming over Disney+ on May 24, a comedy series based on the genre-hopping graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang about a teenage boy (Ben Wang) juggling his high school social life and home life. Its predominantly Asian American starring cast includes 2023 Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, with Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu and the legendary James Hong among the supporting cast.
Add to this the recent Asian phenomenon/Academy Awards juggernaut that was “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and the ascension of Bowen Yang from “SNL” featured player in 2019 to cast MVP bidding this year for his third consecutive Emmy comedy series supporting nomination and you’ve got something that looks far less like tokenism and more like a cultural shift of prominence and acceptance.
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And that’s something worthy of praise, as it wasn’t so long ago that Asian faces were few and far between on American screens big and small outside the martial arts and sci-fi genres. I was a TV critic in 1994 when Korean American Margaret Cho went from stand-up comedy to her own groundbreaking, culture-clashing ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl,” the first prime time series to center on an Asian American family. The show is now available to stream on Netflix, also starring Amy Hill and BD Wong.
We were just coming out of the reception that greeted “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993, a cultural phenomenon as a novel and a feature adaptation that proved a critical success, if not a box office dynamo. A drama that told the stories of four Chinese-American women and their Chinese immigrant mothers, it earned a BAFTA nomination for Amy Tan’s and co-writer Ron Bass’s screenplay adaptation of Tan’s book.
“All-American Girl,” meanwhile, featured some high-profile cameos, including Oprah Winfrey and Jack Black – and a fellow named Quentin Tarantino, who appeared in an episode entitled “Pulp Sitcom” that aired in 1995 a month before Tarantino won an Oscar for writing “Pulp Fiction.” How did it happen that Tarantino was featured on a first-year ABC comedy? Well, he happened to be dating Cho at the time. That may have contributed.
SEEFrom Oscars to Emmys for ‘American Born Chinese’ stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan
Behind the scenes, Cho frequently was frustrated by the instruction she was getting from the network and the show’s producers. She was criticized for her weight, for being “too Asian” and for being “not Asian enough.” She was damned if she did and if she didn’t. The series was also accused of propagating Asian American stereotypes that led to a mid-season creative overhaul that deemphasized the lead character’s extended family.
Cho looks back on the series – which had just a single season on the air before getting canceled – as something of a missed opportunity, telling Yahoo Entertainment in 2021, “We were so limited by this idea of having to be an autobiographical narrative that was ‘authentic.’ And I was caught up in that too, like, ‘How can we actually be authentic,’ as if we couldn’t be trusted to tell our own story. That was the wrong attitude, but I am proud of my achievements as far as I could go. It was really important.”
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It would be another 20 years before ABC launched a second sitcom centered on an Asian American family, “Fresh Off the Boat,” which ran for five seasons from 2015 to 2020. It starred Randall Park, Constance Wu, Hudson Yang, Ian Chen and Lucille Soong in the story of a Taiwanese family and their adventures in America in the 1990s.
As successful as “Fresh Off the Boat” was, it still felt like something of a token gesture, as if television were saying, “OK, we’re trying another Asian show, so we’ve covered that base.” The production and release of the feature comedy “Crazy Rich Asians” in the middle of the “Fresh Off” run (2018) helped remove some of the idea that the Asian community was permitted just a single project at a time, and the fact the movie was a hit with moviegoers and critics alike didn’t hurt. It won Best Comedy at the 2019 Critics Choice Awards while also earning a SAG Awards ensemble nomination.
SEEOscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan reunite in ‘American Born Chinese’ [WATCH]
This all represented a momentum build to where we are now, which is finally closer to the mainstreaming of a culture once practically invisible in entertainment. And it’s about f-ing time. The current moment doesn’t smack of “Hey, look at how inclusive we’re being” so much as “This is great entertainment regardless of ethnicity.”
In the case of “Beef,” the fact that the production has such an Asian flavor feels completely natural rather than something being force-fed to the audience as an anomaly. I’m going out on a limb and predicting right here that not only will it receive a limited series Emmy nom but has a damn good chance of winning the thing, too. That also goes for Yeun and Wong. who at this early date are looking strong for noms.
Yeoh, when she picked up momentum and started to collect golden hardware from January through March, spoke in her speeches about being invisible and dismissed as a one-trick pony due to her ethnicity and the kinds of movies she specialized in. “This is not just for me,” she said in her SAG Awards acceptance, “this is for every little girl that looks like me. Thank you for giving me a seat at the table because so many of us need this. We want to be seen, we want to be heard, and tonight you’ve shown us that it is possible, and I’m grateful.”
At long last, Asian Americans are being given that seat at the table – and not just during awards season but all year round.
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