At least we still have Jim Carrey's The Mask

But trying to justify the existence of Long Duk Dong 2.0 to someone who finds it offensive, that was fine. Cool, man.

The thing about all of that is it just doesnt work. Why try to be accurate about specifically making the character Vietnamese because "that makes the most sense in a GED class" then just make up a language and everything else? The specificity of him being in the class isn't the focal point of his character. They…

"My name is Buffy and I like to rap"

Sorry, I didn't see the rest of your comment. I do agree that I don't believe the writing team is doing anything out of malice and yeah, there certainly seems to be a "see what sticks" kind of mentality to this first season. It's typical. I don't blame them for that.
What I do see consistently is a great disconnect in…

That's the thing about the Asian perspective, there isn't one that's dominant over another. I definitely don't speak for everyone. I'm not only looking at things from a personal perspective but how these representations have a habit of affecting things in the bigger picture. We will all have different viewpoints. …

I worked in the GED program as well. I worked with plenty of native speakers. There issue here is that in media, asian almost always means foreigner. Kimmy is not in the class because she has trouble with english and neither are many other characters in that class.

That's a good point and kind of where I was leaning. These people are her entry point into a bigger society. Her isolation and easy acceptance to those that are so culturally far from her speaks to her resilience. Its early I know, I just want them to do more so eventually these people can exist individually from…

This show has been such an extensive showcase of her talents in that I'm having a hard time understanding why she isn't bigger than she is. This leads me to think she's just humble and not such a Kristen Wiig that I can't help but love her more.

As far as the interchangeableness of asians, sigh . . .I'm fine with it for now. I just want to see our faces on tv in hopefully a positive light. I'm asking for very, very little at this point. I don't believe there's a maliciousness in the portrayal of POC characters; I really don't. I do believe there is a great…

Yeah, it's certainly too early to write him off. I'm not expecting any drastic changes as I'm sure they need to at least maintain the central concept to the show but as Kimmy has quickly developed who she is, I at least hope they provide the same consideration for characters like Dong and Titus. Lillian is fine as is.

Every single character is a caricature, yes. I mentioned in another discussion that no, I'm not expecting any epic levels of character development like you'd see in Buffy for example. My issue is that they just went to such a tired, tired old well. I finished the show almost immediately and I found the end result…

to your first point: that's not what I meant so sorry if it came out that way. To elaborate, when I lived in an area with a large asian community I experienced a lot less racism and I cared less about reppin' the pride. Now I live in a place where the asian population is around 1%. So I witness the effects of media…

Fair enough.
But like I said, satire or not it falls flat when there aren't positive representations outside of this to fall back on. Maybe next season Dong loses his accent or becomes an investment banker. Who knows. I realize this is a Tina Fey show so we're not going to have epic character development arcs but when…

Yeah, I'm coming to terms about it being Tina Fey. I'm not expecting some Eddie Huang level of activism here. Ultimately my problem is that, as a Vietnamese american, it's exciting to hear that word on tv but then it's just "let's just make up a buncha shit about what they do". But like you said, baby steps.

Oook so now we're just going to condescend? Look, you clearly have zero problem with this character's depiction. What do you get out of arguing with someone that does? Also, using a dictionary to define something as complex as the history of problematic representation of asians doesn't really cut it.

Huh? I'm asking out of curiosity because it provides further context. It's none of my business but it's also a comment board. If he doesn't want to answer it then fine. But as I stated in my previous comment, I was curious because there was a time where I cared little about proper representation and I was curious if…

But what you described isn't satire of asians, that's just straight up stereotypes. I get how race can be used as an instrument in satire I mean, I love Sarah Silverman. But like I said in my previous comment, the lampooning of every character doesn't provide equal weight when not only do you have multiple variations…

You touched on a lot of things I've had issues with. https://medium.com/@emmieod…

thank you thank you thank you thank you