I’ve had this article sitting in my backlog for a couple of weeks and I thought today would be a good day to set it loose.
My teen years were spent smack in the middle of the Golden Age of teenage coming-of-age movies. One of the classics of this era was Sixteen Candles, which launched the careers of a number of people, including Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall as well as more successful actors including John and Joan Cusack. However, the character in that movie who left the greatest mark on North American culture wasn’t played by any of the aforementioned people. That character is none other than Long Duk Dong, who makes a memorable entrance in the movie:
He’s so memorable a character that when you rent Sixteen Candles from Netflix, it’s Long Duk Dong’s face on the sleeve, not the face of the protagonist Claire (the just-turned-sixteen character played by Molly Ringwald).
Created by taking every bad Asian student stereotype of that era and rolling it into a single character, he was William Hung twenty years before William Hung. “The Donger” was a creation of John Hughes, the man behind some of the biggest teen movies of the eighties, including The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hughes’ characters were broad archetypes: the rich kids with ridiculously expensive clothes and cars, the geeks bristling with gadgetry, the jocks with barely three brain cells to rub together and the plucky misfits with more hip quotient than the entire high school put together.
I’ve read that character of Long Duk Dong was ammunition who high school kids who needed a racial epithet to fling at Asian guys. In the NPR article Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes?, many stories about Asian guys being called “The Donger” or greeted with one of his lines from the movie. That’s never happened to me; in fact, I’m quite sure I’ve appropriated his dialogue, especially the lines “What’s happening, hot stuff?”, “No more yanky my wanky!” and “The Donger need-a food!”. (And these days, I’d love it if my entrance into the room was accompanied by a gong.)
Not every Asian guy viewed The Donger in a similar light. Indy comic artist Adrian Tomine, creator of some angsty comics in the same vein as Derek Kirk Kim, provided an interview and a comic for NPR. A small version of the comic appears below; click on it to see it at full size.
Click the photo to see it on its original page at full size.
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Hm. Interesting take and experience, Joey. The saving grace for me regarding that character, and I'm probably reaching here, is that at least he got the giant big-boobed girlfriend in the end. That's something(s).
So, check it, how would you have reacted if a bunch of white kids you didn't know walked past you (in high school, when the movie was popular) and one of em points at you laughing, "no mo' yanky my wanky!" (the rest of the gang laughing along)?
"Booty Call" ...I know went to see it, but I have zero recollection of the plot (i only have a vague feeling that it was terrible).
@Charles Follymacher: I always view getting the big-boobed girl a win.
But seriously: yeah, the reason Long Duk Dong doesn't get my blood boiling was that of all the racial jabs hurled at me, not one of the ones I was aware of were Dongerisms. Had the popular white kids in high school pulled the "No mo' yanky my wanky!" thing on me, my reaction to the Donger would've been more along the lines of Adrian Tomine's. (But not so over-the-top emo. Dude must've had a terrible adolescence.)
I saw Booty Call too, but like you, I cannot for the life of me remember it other than a few vague impressions. This is weird; usually anything with the word "booty" in it usually leaves some kind of permanent mark in my memory! Did they sneak some kind of subliminal hypnotic message in the movie to make us forget?
Although I grew up in the era I didn't bother seeing Sixteen Candles until I was in my 20s. As far as I can recall, I didn't get any Dongerisms in high school either, but I attribute that to my wardrobe alternating between a suit and fatigues. I got the First Blood and Wall Street quotes instead.
I am not asian, but I don't remember anyone in my high school doing that to asian kids. I grew up on a navy base, so there was PLENTY of diversity, maybe that's why. As far as bad stereotypes goes, I've always thought that Mickey Rooney's Character, Mr. Yunioshi. The fact that they hired a white guy to portray the Japanese stereotypes makes it worse I think. You thoughts?
~L
@Lee: Yeah, Mickey Rooney's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's is pretty bad -- bad enough to get serious mention in one of the best books on Asian-American pop culture, Eastern Standard Time.
"Yellowface", as it's called, comes in all sorts of flavours from downright bad (such as Mickey Rooney) to pathetic (such as with Sean Connery's surgical transformation into a "Japanese" man in You Only Live Twice.
If you're interested in ideas about Hollywood's portrayal of asians and asian-americans, there's a new film out from Arthur Dong called Hollywood Chinese. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks pretty interesting.