GQ Writer Compares Harold and Kumar to “The Happy Go Lucky Negro” Caricature at Racialicious

GQ Writer Compares Harold and Kumar to “The Happy Go Lucky Negro” Caricature

by Latoya Peterson

Paging through the new issue of GQ, I happened to notice an article on the upcoming Harold and Kumar movie. I browsed the article - which is a critique of the film that gives away way too much of the plot - before pausing at this paragraph:

The lowly stoner comedy has always had interesting underpinnings, too, starting with the ethnic angle that dates from Cheech & Chong’s invention of the genre. Even when the stoners are Anglo, the basic gag amounts to a weird modern spin on old-fashioned race humor. Like the comic minorities white folks used to laugh at in a bygone screen era, they’re funny because they can’t get with the program. Face it, they’re our time’s inoffensive equivalent of that offensive Jim Crow caricature, the Happy-Go-Lucky Negro: those childlike perceptions, that puzzlement about responsibility. Sean Penn’s Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the perfect example.

Umm…I didn’t read the movie that way at all. But I suppose I see how that perspective could be argued.

Well, I did see how that perspective could be argued until I hit the next paragraph, which reads (emphasis mine):

Hurwitz and Schlossberg’s trick is to take advantage of all this at the same time they’re turning it inside out. One joke is that the heroes come from two immigrant groups with reps for industrious conformity, not rebellion. Another is that they aren’t slackers: They’re bright college grads on the fast track to success—à la Borat, the clouds of reefer smoke and the actors’ ethnicities barely hide Harold and Kumar’s secret identities as a couple of brainy, affluent Jewish kids who aren’t too unlike, dare I guess, their creators. That just shows how things have changed, since Jewish characters used to have to be disguised as—or in a pinch, played by—goys to keep Middle America buying tickets. Now they’ve got to be passed off as dope-happy Koreans and Indians to avoid looking like juvenile Woody Allens.

Whoa, whoa, whoa - WTF?

I find a great many things wrong with that statement, but I’ll open up the floor on this one - what do you think the writer is implying?

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Jim Crow Laws » Blog Archive » GQ Writer Compares Harold and Kumar to “The Happy Go Lucky Negro … on 24 Apr 2008 at 2:45 pm

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Comments

Gouw wrote:

The first point I think has some legitimacy. I have met people who think the prime humor of the movie is that the characters are “Asian but stoners.”

The second point I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:09 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

My first reaction is that Tom Carson should have his license to write about race revoked. The pretentious wording is a thin disguise for the underlying stupidity.

The article focuses exclusively on the white perspective. How people of color view the movie is completely, totally discounted. It’s like we don’t even exist.

The success of Harold and Kumar is actually based on the fact that it does get audiences (both white and of color) to empathize with the viewpoint of the characters! To somehow turn this around and make it a modern-day minstrel show where a white audience laughs AT (not with) the colorface characters is totally misguided.

Cheech and Chong movies use the same approach. I remember a great scene where Cheech sings an improvised, really clever song about being a Mexican-American, then asks Chong to come up with his own. Chong sings something that’s just the word BEANERS repeated over and over again. The scene is funny because we’re laughing at Chong and empathizing with Cheech. It’s a much more complicated and dialogic process than minstrel humor.

You know what, maybe he’s right and I’m wrong and there really is a substantial group of white people out there that view these stoner movies as minstrel shows where the subversive humor just goes totally unnoticed. I hope I’m not wrong, that would really be depressing.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:25 am ¶
gandalf mantooth wrote:

The second point I know exactly what he’s talking about, and it requires a little knowledge of the beginnings of Hollywood, how Jewish immigrants used White America’s lust for Blondes and outsized White heroes as a vehicle for their success. Hollywood historians have argued — succesfully — that writers in early Hollywood hid the stories of Jewish immigrants and Jews in the guise of the likes of John Wayne and Cary Grant, feeding middle America a dose of Jewish culture without them being aware of it.

The author of the piece is saying that Hurwitz and Schlossberg are, like Allen, writing about themselves, but alter the ethnicity of the characters to allow them to comment on society in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

I have more trouble with the first quote than the second. I think it’s a stretch. Does he suggest with this argument that Friday is a return to Steppin Fetchit stereotypes?

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:34 am ¶
theysaidwhat? wrote:

Wait…Harold and Kumar, a Korean man and an Indian man, are “Anglos”? Whoa. There’s a whole lot of explaining that I need here. So the term “Anglo”, purportedly a description of the White, Christian, English-speaking, American mainstream, is elastic enough to embrace non-Christian, non-White children of immigrants with a foreign language background, but still by definition excludes African-Americans and Hispanics that have been in the country for generations? Nice, GQ. Very nice.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:36 am ¶
marge twain wrote:

Spot-on critique, atlasian! You completely articulated the reasons for my discomfort.

@Gouw: That some white people think that doesn’t surprise me. Once when I was a kid I made a white guy crack up because he asked what my favorite dish that my mom makes is and I answered “apple pie” Oh, HA HA It’s funny because I’m the wrong race to be American.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:43 am ¶
Elizabeth wrote:

I think he’s totally, shockingly full of crap (GQ published this!?!?!), but he brings up an interesting comparison: the idea of a “white” ethnicity. At first in pop culture it was Jews, now in pop culture it’s Asians (South and East). Both groups are (have been) foreign and strange but considered “white” by class markers indicating some degree of “successful” assimilation into US culture (college = money). Are Harold and Kumar Jewish? Fuck no. But is the humor based on the idea that high achieving not-really-white, not-really-not-white Asians can be slackers? That is, is the humor based on mocking “white” ethnicity? Yes.

Maybe if he weren’t such a jerkhole with styrofoam for brains, he could have articulated a more interesting point about ethnicity and class in pop culture.

One sad thing is that the Jews and money stereotype has globally damaging consequences, though many American Jews are white by most American cultural standards. (Though come Christmastime, who’s culturally acceptable? Not Jews.) So while U.S. Jews are more assimilated than many Asian groups now, the politics of ethnicity are global, and f-in dangerous for everyong.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:45 am ¶
lemure wrote:

WTF? Here we go with the racial monolith idiocy again. Apparently he can’t accept that certain characteristics (well except for white supremacy as “mainstream” America) aren’t exclusive to race. I know stoners, slackers, horndogs, and overachievers of a variety of ethnic/racial groups as I’m sure many other semi-intelligent people do.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 11:51 am ¶
Feminist Punk! wrote:

They are both Asian-Americans characters created by white guys, enough said.

I don’t see anything in the movie(s) that show how the stereotypes are related to Jewish caricatures. That being said, I just wish the movies were created by Asian Americans.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 12:00 pm ¶
Aaminah wrote:

Cannot comment in any way on Harold & Kumar because I don’t watch, and I don’t “get” that kind of humor anyway.

But to Marge, I really want to say that example you gave is so wrong on so many levels that I want to smack someone. That is so damaging to kids to grow up having heard that kind of ish. You live in the country your whole life, and someone is still trying to make you feel “foreign”…

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 12:24 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

The author went from “Harold” and “Kumar” being the latest “Happy-Go-Lucky Negroes” to being “Jews-in-disguise?” What kind of half-assed pop-cultural analysis is this? It just reminds me of some other white media critics who think throwing around loaded cultural images equates to deep racial critiques.

What does this imply? They’re not reading Racialicious!:-D

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 1:10 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:

Second paragraph sounds like Jews can’t smoke pot. More’s the pity.

I think the writer has his own issues to untangle and choses to write from the dominant paradigm, which is his choice, because it is easier than believing that these characters could be anything but white, since they were created by white men.

I’d love to see him dissect Zadie Smith. Notably The Autograph Man. Oh, what fun THAT would be.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 1:16 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:

It just reminds me of some other white media critics who think throwing around loaded cultural images equates to deep racial critiques.

You must be referring to the LA Times “magical negro” reference.

I get the same feeling too.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶
macon d wrote:

I think Gandolph Mantooth makes a great point above, but I’d have to read the article’s context to see if it’s really saying that.

There IS a lot of writing out there about how Jewish people built Hollywood, and how one way they did so was to channel their ethnic humor into more acceptable guises. Al Jolson’s blackfaced, “Mammy!” jazz singer is another, perhaps (perhaps . . . ) more twisted example.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 1:20 pm ¶
claire wrote:

it’s interesting that the commenters’ outrage about H & K being compared to jews comes from the assumption that jews are white. i’m glad that someone above said that many jews read as white in the US until christmastime. if the outraged commenters could be convinced that jews are actually a minority, rather than “kind of” or “used to be” a minority, i wonder if they would be as outraged?

i also think it’s interesting that H & K being compared to blacks doesn’t create any outrage at all, although commenters don’t find that argument entirely convincing.

seems pretty obvious to me that the point with most commenters (and the blogger) is that the oppression of asian americans be recognized and not glossed over. comparing as ams to af ams–who are generally acknowledged to be oppressed–sounds like as am oppression is being recognized, so it’s okay.

comparing as ams to jews–whose status as an oppressed minority is constantly embattled–is tantamount to saying that as ams are whites or near-whites, in the same way jews are whites or near-whites in the public consciousness. and that is not okay.

the problem for me with this analysis is comparing asian american status with ANY other group’s status. it’s not possible, or illuminating, to compare asian americans as a group with african americans OR jews. each group has a distinct history and status, and within each group there is a complex of class and ethnic strata which means that none of them can be considered monolithic.

i DO find the argument that the jewish writer/directors were drawing on their own ethnic experience interesting or even illuminating: not as a comparison of as am and jewish statuses in general, but as a commentary on these individuals’ artistic processes.

writing another race or ethnicity is difficult, and it’s especially difficult if you’re writing “down,” i.e. writing a race or ethnicity that is lower than yours in the racial hierarchy. it’s a balancing act between learning what is foreign to you about this group, and tapping into what is familiar to you about this group.

it’s pretty clear that the H & K creators didn’t get too deeply into the foreign aspects of korean and indian diasporic cultures. they ONLY tapped into the public stereotypes of the industrious, academically successful asian–which, frankly, IS a stereotype that’s shared by jews.

it doesn’t say anything about asian americans and jews in general, but it does say a great deal about how harold and kumar came to be.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:00 pm ¶
chaia wrote:

@FeministPunk! - Actually, the writers of the H&K movies are both Jewish. Enough said?

***

As far as that second comment goes, ummm why would Harold and Kumar need to be “secretly” Jewish when their (stoner, expected to be high-achiever minority) neighbors Goldstein and Rosenberg can do that openly? Except for my people’s hidden agenda to take over mass media and the entire world…oh, was that my outside voice?

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:03 pm ¶
Nadra wrote:

Hmmm…it seems that, in the second comment, the writer is suggesting that anti-Semitism prevented Jews from being depicted on the silver screen in the past and that is still the case today. Therefore, John Cho and Kal Penn were really acting in “Jew” face because it’s not acceptable to have a film starring two Jewish characters. The problem with this theory is that the creator of the film said in the DVD commentary that he was inspired to write John Cho’s character based on the experiences of a real-life Asian friend of his. Also, he discussed Harold and Kumar’s two Jewish foils in the film—you know, the ones who end up at Hotdog Heaven or whatever it’s called—and that those characters could have had a film of their own, something he would not rule out doing. Anyway, to suggest that it isn’t safe to have Jews on screen would also suggest, in this case, that it’s safer to depict Asian Americans on screen, which just isn’t true. I can name endless films and TV shows starring Jewish characters, but Asian American actors are still hard to come by on screen. Most of the successful films starring Asians usually feature actors directly from Asia, suggesting that the American public is still only comfortable viewing Asians as inherently foreign, exotic others. At least, that’s my two cents.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:07 pm ¶
BT wrote:

I haven’t watched the second movie but I got a different impression from the first film. In the first film everyone White was crazy or blatently racist jerks. The cops were racist, the girls where slutty, the coworkers were jerks, the extreme guys were idiots. The smartest people in the film were Harold and Kumar. Their only flaw was that they loved pot. I thought that everyone else was a caricature except for them. Maybe the second movie has moved away from the original slant.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:13 pm ¶
Kaonashi wrote:

Wait…what? Why?

So what are they trying to say; that everyone who is brainy and doing well in school and life is secretly Jewish, or that since the creators of H&K happen to be Jewish they can’t write about Asian characters without putting themselves in it? Nice.

Ugh.

Last time I checked, weed is an equal-opportunity drug. Black, White, Latino, Asian…everyone smokes up.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:17 pm ¶
sylvie wrote:

Considering the happy-go-lucky negro image was basically a justification for slavery and segregation, I’m not seeing the connection to Harold and Kumar who are essentially two high achievers who happen to enjoy pot. In fact, a significant part of the film involves the two characters standing up to racist jerks and authority figures.

As for the writer’s second point: since when did America start finding it easier to relate to two Asian American guys as opposed to two white Jewish guys? I doubt the producers of “Seinfeld” thought, “This isn’t gonna work. We need to put an Asian guy in here.” His statement seems to be propagating the stereotype of the insidious Jew in Hollywood but under the guise that these particular directors are exploiting Asian American actors.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 2:47 pm ¶
queer hapa wrote:

Maybe he’s saying that since Jews are no longer the model minority flavor of the month, ethnic humor about brainy conformist overachievers really being potheads is just, uh, funnier or more ironic when portrayed by today’s more visible East Asian and South Asian model minorities??? But I agree with those who bring up Goldstein and Rosenberg–those were clearly Jewish characters also playing model-minority–as-pothead roles.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 3:27 pm ¶
Daniel wrote:

The writer is implying that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Not that I give a fuck about the Harold and Kumar franchise.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 4:12 pm ¶
Farheen wrote:

So wait. Is he saying that Indians and Koreans can’t be brainy or academically successful? That they must be Jewish because there is no way that an Indian or Korean could be smart and successful.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 4:36 pm ¶
Erica wrote:

Sounds like GQ was going for deep philosophical analysis of race, history, and Hollywood, and ended up with a driveling mess.

As a Jew, it’s a weird read. We’re trying to hide Jewish characters in everything in Hollywood… whatever. Writers write what they know, then and now. That doesn’t mean that “Jewish” characters were disguised as “goys” (a word I loathe, by the way) back in the day, and into Indians and Koreans now. It means that Jewish writers simply let their experiences and viewpoints color their created characters.

The GQ article suggests these disguised characters were more purposeful than accidental, however; I find this disquieting. It echoes the traditional idea that Jews control Hollywood just like they control everything else, and use popular entertainment as a way to broadcast “their” ideologies.

Maybe you can read it as, the Indian and Korean stoner buddies are so like two Jewish characters they’re indistinguishable, gosh ain’t it great we’re all so similar, but I don’t get the feeling that’s what the author intended.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 4:37 pm ¶
china blue wrote:

“… things have changed, since Jewish characters used to have to be disguised as—or in a pinch, played by—goys to keep Middle America buying tickets. Now they’ve got to be passed off as dope-happy Koreans and Indians to avoid looking like juvenile Woody Allens.”

Oh right. I don’t think Judd Apatow or Seth Rogen have received that memo

Otherwise, although he skips lightly over that observation, as other posters have articulated: Hollywood history would bear that argument out.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 4:38 pm ¶
Taylor wrote:

Harold and Kumar are basically movies that show the type of sh*t Asian Americans in this country have to deal with. I remember some of my friends (non-white) said that Harold was a bad representation of Asians because he was weak and would not stand up for himself. I did not come up with the words at the time but in retrospect I wish I had said to them, “he gets picked on and has to hold his tongue and you call HIM weak rather than empathize with him, newflash you dumb f**ks, that is the type of garbage I have to deal with every day and normally I have to hold my tongue for decorum sakes.”

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 5:47 pm ¶
ilana wrote:

Besides that behind ridiculous, over-the-top meta for a movie that, however fun and awesome (it has Kal Pen! Hot!) is basically fluff for Saturday nights at home with some popcorn (and maybe weed, depending on how big a fan of the movies you are…), that’s offensive to me as a Jew. Jews have nothing to do with the Harold and Kumar shtick, aside from them having Jewish stoner neighbours in teh first movie. WTF?

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 5:57 pm ¶
gandalf mantooth wrote:

Some are missing the point re: the writers subbing Harold and Kumar in for themselves. This isn’t a question about representation, but I get why peeps jump on that because it’s a popular subject. Carson skips a few steps in his explanation for the sake of pith, but he sees a parallel in broad movie types between the ethnic subcultures. When he uses the phrase “Now they’ve got to be . . .” he doesn’t mean that literally. I never thought he meant that “it isn’t safe to have Jews on screen” in today’s Hollywood.

I would guess Carson sees enough movies (several hundred?) a year to know about Jews represented on film (he even name checks Apatow later in the review for comparison). FWIW, I don’t recall any of the characters in the Apatow flicks explicitly Jewish.

Which is getting to the point I made:
@chaia
The reason why they might “need” to sub Harold and Kumar in for themselves is that they really couldn’t address the same issues in the same way, not unless they set the film in 1960 or something.

Even though, as another commenter noted, the creators based Harold on an Asian friend, that only means their friend served as a baseline for the character they created. Having a best Asian friend isn’t dispositive.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 6:44 pm ¶
johnjihoonchang wrote:

Gandalf Mantooth: “FWIW, I don’t recall any of the characters in the Apatow flicks explicitly Jewish.”

Just a note that Seth Rogen’s character is KNOCKED UP is explicitly Jewish, as noted during his conversation with his Jewish father during an early scene in the movie. But that’s the only explicit example I could think of in film (granted, I’ve only seen two Apatow films). In Apatow’s “Freaks and Geeks”, one of the main characters and his family is Jewish.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 8:27 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:

There’s also references to being Jewish in The 40 year old virgin and Superbad. I’m not sure what it says about me that I find these references disconcerting; I hate so many of Apatow’s loser teen boy characters and don’t want to connect their obnoxiousness to pop culture ideas of what it means to be Jewish…

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 9:13 pm ¶
RainaWeather wrote:

I got nothing.

The reason I love Harald and Kumar is because they aren’t stereotypical Asian/Indian nerds, and also they had to deal with Stereotypical white racist frat boys. I agree with Taylor. I think H&K movies are much more realistic in their portrayal of what minorities have to deal with.

Posted 24 Apr 2008 at 10:09 pm ¶
Korolev wrote:

The writer is implying that he has had his brain removed and replaced by a hamster running on a wheel.

I feel as if the writer was just writing for the sake of filling in words. Tom obviously is having a hard time doing an “analysis” of a Harold and Kumar Film, so he’s basically grasping at straws.

This is what I despise about literary critics - they often take something that’s rather simple - and then “contextually analyze” a whole lot of nonsense into it.

Basically - I think he’s just trying to fill in space with words. And if he really does believe what he’s written, then I feel sorry for him.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 12:07 am ¶
gandalf mantooth wrote:

I didn’t see Knocked Up, so there you go. Rogen’s characters in Superbad and 40 Y.O.V. were supporting, weren’t they?

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 3:29 am ¶
Taylor wrote:

RainaWeather,

Hey thanks for the shout out. Not only the fratboys, corporate culture…etc but a lot of the content was specifically about race from an AA perspective. For example 16 Candles being Harold’s favorite movie…an inside joke on how AAs hate that piece of garbage along with most John Hughes films. The use of Doogie Howser as an ally to the two (i.e. over achieving young genius stereotype) and Harold being a stoner because he was deliberately trying to avoid being pigeonholed as a stereotypical AA. I love explaining all this too my white friends who think that this is just a stoner movie. Most of the more open minded ones get it.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 12:42 pm ¶
Jann wrote:

I know this might seem strange, but I actually found the first H & K movie oddly empowering. (haven’t seen the second one yet)

Its the first mainstream pop-type movie (with an Asian character) that I can remember that did not make fun of the masculinity/sexuality of Asian men. (In fact it successfully made fun of people making fun of the masculinity of Asian men – which was refreshing) Generally, when an Asian character “hooks up” with the attractive girl/love interest, it is the punch line of the joke. Off the top of my head – the Asian exchange student characters in How High, Van Wilder (Kal Penn) and 16 Candles were comedic because they were excessively sexuality active. This is supposedly funny, because Asian men are perceived as asexual or non-masculine.

Harold gets the love interest and its not a joke. It’s a sappy happy ending.

About the GQ article – don’t actually know enough about the Jew comparisons he is making to evaluate. However, I think that you can’t dismiss H & C as a racially based caricature. In the guys of a shallow pop movie - there is a lot of stereotypes being challenged. Taylor – good point about Kumar being a stone to avoid stereotype of over achiever.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 2:10 pm ¶
Ali wrote:

I agree with chaia that it makes no sense to assert that Harold and Kumar are secret/coded Jewish characters when their foils in the film are openly Jewish. Goldstein and Rosenberg provide Hurwitz and Schlossberg a vehicle with which to write themselves into the film so they don’t have to inject so much of their personal experience into the title characters. The foils are their opportunity to explore the overachieving stoner stereotype as well as other Jewish culture stereotyping. Also, I think it’s important to note that although both writers are not POC they have frequently spoken out about the fact that both of the films title characters are based on friends of theirs from college (Harold is based on one specific guy and Kumar an amalgam of various persons). Bravo to Nadra for pointing this out. John Cho has mentioned in several interviews that part of his preparation for the first film was to travel to California and visit the real Harold. Also, as Taylor points out, the filmmakers really wanted to incorporate realistic portrayals of what its like to experience subtle and overt racism as an AA. Hence all of the inside jokes (16 Candles, Apu, Harold smoking weed to avoid being stereotyped while avoiding Asian student events like the plague, etc.) The writers frequently discuss all of these issues in interviews about the film.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 2:15 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:

@#9 Aaminah: Thanks for the empathy, friend. I think I recognized it as ignorant b.s. even then and gave this guy the stinkeye, dismissive yet contemptuous like only an 11 y.o. girl can.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 5:39 pm ¶
marge twain wrote:

@Ali: wow, a hollywood depiction of racism that isn’t restricted to recognizable slurs/violence? I really want to see this movie now:)

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 5:44 pm ¶
al wrote:

the thing about the jewish comment is that they don’t have to use asian people to get the movie made. whereas, the whitewashing of early tv and hollywood was done because they wouldn’t have gotten advertisers otherwise.

regarding the other paragraph: harold and kumar (at least in the first movie, i haven’t seen the second yet, i mean, it came out today) ARE with the program. they are the ones that know what’s going on. the white people in the first movie are fools, with the possible exception of doogie howser, who is instead a drug-addled sex-obsessed entitled white dude. they are oblivious to their privileged status (the white people), but the audience sees it through the eyes of harold and kumar.

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 9:16 pm ¶
Cat wrote:

=/ maybe I just don’t know enough about the history of hollywood.

but I really have no idea what this guy is trying to say.

I’m really confused about the fact he jumps from the the happy go lucky caricature to jewish stereotypes.

Would someone care to clear up his points?

Posted 25 Apr 2008 at 11:54 pm ¶
Ha! wrote:

I’m not sure where the writer is going with this. I am just glad to see more minorities in films and on television…. it would be nicer if they weren’t stoners though. In this age of extreme xenophobia, I will take what I can get. Why does this movie have to be weighted with this ‘Happy Go Lucky Negro’ bs. Does it make the movie less authentic? Its a comedy.

Posted 26 Apr 2008 at 12:44 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

This ended up waaay longer than I intended but here’s my attempt to answer that last question.

Historical detour:

Many of the Jewish people in the early film industry changed their Jewish names to Anglo ones and went through a lot of difficulties to escape the strong Anti-Semitism of the time.

In the history of Hollywood, the first talking movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927, was also a blackface movie. It was produced by a Jewish studio head and had a Jewish star (Al Jolson).

The diagram of The Jazz Singer (author –> creates figure –> for primary audience) looks a bit like this:

Jewish authors –> exotic, stereotyped Jewish figure performs exotic, racist fantasies of black people –> primarily white (non-Jewish) audience.

No single person (writer, director, actor) is the arbiter of the meaning of a movie. Especially for popular movies, authors tailor their creations to what the audience wants to see. Audiences also might decide they see meaning that the author or actors didn’t intend to create. So the diagram above is more like a feedback loop, one which is also informed by the context or cultural environment. As the environment changes, secondary audiences assume a lot of importance as well.

There are also some early Hollywood movies that have nothing to do with blackface, in which Jewish subjects and issues informed the movies, but Jewish characters were not represented. It was just not acceptable to show Jewish characters as part of mainstream American life. In fact, I recall seeing an American movie from the 40s about a Jewish family persecuted by Germans in which the word “Jew” was never even mentioned once. So those movies would look like:

Jewish authors –> disguised Jewish characters –> white (non-Jewish) audience *plus authors

I’ll try to clear up what I think Tom Carson is trying to say with H&K.

Argument Part I: H&K stand in for white people’s racist fantasies of black people. In other words, it’s a minstrel show.

Argument Part II: H&K stand in for the Jewish creators of the show. The Jewish creators would like to reflect themselves for their own amusement, but are worried a non-Jewish white audience will not accept Jewish characters as interesting and exotic enough.

Here’s a sort of Author –> “True” Figure –> Audience sketch for the two separate scenarios.

1) Minstrel argument: white (generic) author — > disguised racist fantasy of black people –> white audience.

2) Jewish argument: white (Jewish) author –> disguised white (Jewish) character –> white (non-Jewish) audience *plus authors

The problem with the analysis as a whole is that it completely ignores the existence of any NON-white audience. We don’t live in super-segregated 1940s Hollywood…. and even back then, non-white people were producing and consuming media. Carson could have made either analysis much more convincing by including the fact that people of color are, yes, underrepresented… but we still do our best to play active roles in media production and consumption. We have an existence beyond the fantasies of white people, dammit!

The attempt to erase Asians is also specifically very offensive. According to his analysis, Asians aren’t powerful enough to represent themselves, they always have to stand in for something else.

Posted 26 Apr 2008 at 8:42 am ¶
Rachel Kramer Bussel wrote:

There’s an article in the latest issue of Heeb which interviews the writers (I think only part of it is online from my recollection) and touches on this:

But Hurwitz and Schlossberg acknowledge the deliberate effort they’ve made with their class-conscious comedy—a decades-old tradition of slobs versus snobs that spans from the Marx Brothers to Adam Sandler—to move away from the Jewish actors who have routinely starred in these movies. By mining laughs from the class conflict of the 21st century—that is, the battle between any identifiable minority group and jingoistic, flag-waving white dudes—they’re perpetuating a decidedly Jewish brand of comedy while showing that anyone can do it.

Posted 27 Apr 2008 at 10:50 am ¶
Torontonian wrote:

There is an article about Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay by Eye Weekly with an interesting quote from Cho:

“Being people of colour in America, it’s not like we even choose to deal with politics,” says Cho. “It’s just a part of our lives — Kal being pulled over at the airport is just one aspect of it. So the politics of the movies probably seem less pronounced to us than to other people. It’s something you’re involuntarily thinking about all the time.”

Posted 27 Apr 2008 at 4:43 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:

Also, while Harold & Kumar may be refreshing in terms of portraying Asian American men, we need to point out it’s blatantly misogynist. The first movie empathizes with Asian American men by appealing to male hipsters who find domestic abuse funny and hetero hipsters who find homophobia funny.

Come to think of it, it may be perpetuating a stereotype of Asian American men of being misogynist and homophobic. Still, Cho didn’t find anything wrong with the first movie’s domestic abuse parody, and thought the problem was with oversensitive women taking offense.

Posted 27 Apr 2008 at 4:59 pm ¶
al wrote:

just for reference, it wasn’t a ‘domestic abuse’ parody. it was a parody of raging bull. i don’t think the treatment of women was very good in the movie, but it was on par with similar genre-films and while it totally needs to be discussed, doesn’t take away from the subversive qualities of it, only keeps the film from being as good as it could have been.

Posted 28 Apr 2008 at 11:50 am ¶
Stus wrote:

Have you read “How Jews Became White Folks and What That says about Race in America” by Karen Brodkin or “Blackface, White Noise: Jewish American Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot” by Michael Rogin?

The Harold & Kumar seems more in the mode of silent and early sound movie buddy comedy, like Laurel & Hardy or Wheeler & Woolsey.

Posted 02 May 2008 at 12:17 pm ¶
Matt wrote:

Good point, Rachel (#42).

Jews often have trouble “coming out Jewish.” Had the writers used main characters who were Jewish to deal with issues of race, they’d be told endlessly, “You’re white; get over it.”

We’re often told we aren’t allowed to complain about antisemitism. Yet there is still (growing, at the moment, with a 6.6% rise in violent attacks for last year according to a recent study) serious antisemitism in the world.

So Jews do have a long history of subverting their own identities in broader progressive movements. Sometimes, the efforts have been incredibly insensistive and just plain wrong. The Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement was often problematic, as Jews who knew very little about racism tried to recreate white privilege within the civil rights groups they joined. Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer in blackface can also be read as a Jew taking on an identity where he’s allowed to express things he can’t otherwise.

By contrast, I think the writers of H&K did well to avoid the traps Jews have often fallen into in the past. But their Jewishness is not obliterated because H&K aren’t Jewish. It is a problem when we fail to recognize that there are other things in play here, that H&K is important for people of many races, that H&K is not just a Jewish story. But let’s count Jews among those who can take pride in it.

Posted 02 May 2008 at 12:26 pm ¶
tc wrote:

Gosh, you kids are fun to read. With a few welcome exceptions, none of you seems to know that a) Hollywood has a very long history of playing with ethnic humor while disguising the real point, and b) that Hurwitz and Schlossberg are clearly aware of this and doing their own riff on it.

And honest — assuming any of you read the whole piece, not just Those Two Paragraphs — did anyone notice that I’m praising the H & K movies for all the smart things they’ve got to say about race in America? For your sake and not mine, try not to be so literal-minded.

Love,
Tom Carson

Mod Note: Gosh, Tom, I guess we “kids” just can’t read. Or else we would have read that long ass boring piece and linked to it so others could read and make their own decision. Oh wait, we did! And we understand your viewpoint just fine - we just don’t happen to agree. There’s a big difference.

Posted 03 May 2008 at 6:10 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:

Really - “Oh, those wacky kids!” is the BEST he could do (assuming the ID is genuine).

Look, it’s #2 on the How To Suppress Discussions of Racism list: in this case, paternalism and condescension used to attack the person and not deal with the issues raised.

Funny, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that there’s at least one commentator or reader of Racialicious who is older than “Tom Carson.”

Posted 04 May 2008 at 7:06 am ¶