Goodnight, Grasshopper.
So. David Carradine just died.
I've always had a very conflicted relationship with Carradine. When I was younger, we watched Kung Fu (reruns--I'm not that old) all the time. We used to quote it to each other, call each other Grasshopper. We also watched Quincy (because of Sam) and Star Trek (because we were dorks, but also because of Sulu), but really, Caine was the only Chinese guy in the bunch, so that's where our deepest loyalties lay. Except, of course, that he wasn't Chinese--he was played by a white guy. Because heaven forbid they give the role to an actual Chinese person. But that's how desperate we were for a decent Chinese role model--even a white guy in bad pancake makeup with half-assed martial arts skills was enough to make our chests puff out with pride. Kung Fu was as good as we were going to get, and damned if we weren't going to own it. If nothing else, it taught society that you did not mess with the Chinese, because we were wise and calm and righteous and inscrutable, and we could kick your fucking ass. That was something. Society didn't think much about the Chinese, otherwise. There were blacks, and maybe there were hispanics, but Chinese? What, you expect them to remember every trifling race this country let into its borders? But Kung Fu said that not only did we exist, but we'd been around since the fucking railroad went in. Kung Fu made us weird and exotic, but at the same time, it made us American, part of this country's fabric. It meant we belonged.
Except, you know, not really us. Just some white dude in pancake makeup made to look a little like us.
As I got older, I started to get really pissed at David Carradine. I thought about how many Chinese-American actors could have played that role, and how silly and stereotyped the characters were, and I just got more and more livid thinking about it. I thought about how my relatives were so proud of a show that didn't even dare to have an actual Asian person playing the main character, how this was the closest they could get to mainstream acceptance, and I just wanted to punch a fucking wall every time I thought about it. I thought about how society, even back in the '70s, would have reacted if there'd been a TV show about, say, an escaped slave, and the main character were played by a guy in blackface. I decided David Carradine was a total prick.
Now I'm older still, and I can't be bothered to collect that level of moral certitude around me. Because, hey, it made my family happy, watching Kung Fu. It made me happy. It was something. It wasn't enough, not by a long shot, but it was something. And now we live in a world where Daniel Dae Kim can be named one of the sexiest men alive, and Asian-Americans are becoming increasingly common on TV (though they still don't ever seem to have leading roles), and OK, I've noticed that they still tend to be Japanese or Korean, and not Chinese--not, y'know, the largest fucking subset of Asian-Americans in the entire fucking country (and while I'm on my soapbox, let me just take a moment to harrangue against the ubiquitous use of the term "Asian-American," which essentially lumps together every immigrant from the largest continent on the face of the planet--I mean, do we lump "Irish-Americans" and "Italian-Americans" into the same "European-American" category on a regular basis?)--but still, it's something.
So now David Carradine is dead, in what sounds like a really gruesome and horrible way, and all I can say is my heart goes out to his family. I still don't really know if he did more harm than good, or vice versa, in my own family, but he certainly shaped the way we saw ourselves. I'm hopeful that the next generation of Chinese-Americans will have a better role model, but when he was all we had, we made him be enough. And there ain't nothing more Chinese than that.
I've always had a very conflicted relationship with Carradine. When I was younger, we watched Kung Fu (reruns--I'm not that old) all the time. We used to quote it to each other, call each other Grasshopper. We also watched Quincy (because of Sam) and Star Trek (because we were dorks, but also because of Sulu), but really, Caine was the only Chinese guy in the bunch, so that's where our deepest loyalties lay. Except, of course, that he wasn't Chinese--he was played by a white guy. Because heaven forbid they give the role to an actual Chinese person. But that's how desperate we were for a decent Chinese role model--even a white guy in bad pancake makeup with half-assed martial arts skills was enough to make our chests puff out with pride. Kung Fu was as good as we were going to get, and damned if we weren't going to own it. If nothing else, it taught society that you did not mess with the Chinese, because we were wise and calm and righteous and inscrutable, and we could kick your fucking ass. That was something. Society didn't think much about the Chinese, otherwise. There were blacks, and maybe there were hispanics, but Chinese? What, you expect them to remember every trifling race this country let into its borders? But Kung Fu said that not only did we exist, but we'd been around since the fucking railroad went in. Kung Fu made us weird and exotic, but at the same time, it made us American, part of this country's fabric. It meant we belonged.
Except, you know, not really us. Just some white dude in pancake makeup made to look a little like us.
As I got older, I started to get really pissed at David Carradine. I thought about how many Chinese-American actors could have played that role, and how silly and stereotyped the characters were, and I just got more and more livid thinking about it. I thought about how my relatives were so proud of a show that didn't even dare to have an actual Asian person playing the main character, how this was the closest they could get to mainstream acceptance, and I just wanted to punch a fucking wall every time I thought about it. I thought about how society, even back in the '70s, would have reacted if there'd been a TV show about, say, an escaped slave, and the main character were played by a guy in blackface. I decided David Carradine was a total prick.
Now I'm older still, and I can't be bothered to collect that level of moral certitude around me. Because, hey, it made my family happy, watching Kung Fu. It made me happy. It was something. It wasn't enough, not by a long shot, but it was something. And now we live in a world where Daniel Dae Kim can be named one of the sexiest men alive, and Asian-Americans are becoming increasingly common on TV (though they still don't ever seem to have leading roles), and OK, I've noticed that they still tend to be Japanese or Korean, and not Chinese--not, y'know, the largest fucking subset of Asian-Americans in the entire fucking country (and while I'm on my soapbox, let me just take a moment to harrangue against the ubiquitous use of the term "Asian-American," which essentially lumps together every immigrant from the largest continent on the face of the planet--I mean, do we lump "Irish-Americans" and "Italian-Americans" into the same "European-American" category on a regular basis?)--but still, it's something.
So now David Carradine is dead, in what sounds like a really gruesome and horrible way, and all I can say is my heart goes out to his family. I still don't really know if he did more harm than good, or vice versa, in my own family, but he certainly shaped the way we saw ourselves. I'm hopeful that the next generation of Chinese-Americans will have a better role model, but when he was all we had, we made him be enough. And there ain't nothing more Chinese than that.