Goodnight, Grasshopper.

[hannahchan]

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

Comments

[wasabi_poptart]

This took me a second to process ... at first I was like "huh?" and then I remembered your heritage. The whole issue of race and cultural identity is so fascinasting from the perspective of a person who is born into one race yet culturally identifies with another. There's got to be a dissertation in there somewhere.

[hannahchan]

Ha, yeah, I thought about how weird the pronouns were in this thing when I finished the post, but all I can say is that growing up, there were "we" situations and there were "them" situations, and Kung Fu was a "we" situation.

To this day, when I see an East Asian actor on TV, I check the last name of both the character and the actor, to see if they're Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc. And if they're Chinese, I have this small moment of personal satisfaction. It's kind of like the "spot the Jew" game. Which I also play. And I learned both games from my family--just different sides of my family.

psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[wasabi_poptart]

This is what I see from an outside perspective

Re: psychoanalyzing you is so much fun :-)

[hannahchan]

Ha! You know, I totally didn't even see it till you pointed it out, but yeah, I kind of pulled a Carradine myself, didn't I? Except I didn't really have a choice: One day, I just woke up and my whole family was Chinese, and as a kid, you just roll with that kind of stuff when it happens.

Race is such a weird subject, intrinsically, isn't it? The other day, someone brought up a mental exercise they'd had to do in grad school, of deciding whether, if you had to change one thing about yourself, you'd choose being less smart, less educated, less attractive or a different race. "Oh my god, there was a point in my life when I would have killed to be Chinese!" I piped up, without thinking. "It would have made my life so much easier

[noralita]

Um. Latino? African? Jew?

[hannahchan]

Oh, no doubt. Hollywood has a lot of 'splaining to do to pretty much every racial/ethnic minority in this country (um, Arab?). Jews have certainly gotten a fair bit of representation, but I have a whole 'nother tirade about the way Jewish women have been depicted in TV. And the fact that an industry based in Los freaking Angeles can't figure out how to incorporate Latino characters and actors into its casts more often? Shameful.

But this particular post is about Kung Fu. And I do think there is something extra-special offensive and weird about a show centered around a racial minority, where the main character is played by a white guy pretending to be that minority. And the fact that pretty much every Chinese-American I know of a certain age bracket is proud of that character.

[wasabi_poptart]

Also, how Israeli Jewish women are depicted as opposed to American Jewish women ... don't even get me started!!!