On Lost this week 4 characters, Charlie, Jin, Desmond, and Hurley (I'm guessing you know more or less who they are) went camping. They're sitting around a fire and Jin is holding a flashlight under his chin, and talking in a sort of ominous voice, in Korean of course, since his English is just emerging. He ends his little story with "Boo" and everyone kind of jumps.
Okay, that's what happened on TV. Then on the TV Guide podcast they were chatting about how it was a funny scene, but that they didn't quite get it at first. One guy said, "Yeah, I thought he was doing karaoke at first". They kept chatting saying that it was cute that everyone jumped, and that campfire ghost stories transcend language. Then the same guy repeated his "joke" - "It was funny, but I thought he was doing karaoke at first". This raised my hackles quite a bit - Jin was obviously not singing, and he was sitting in the dark around a campfire with a flashlight under his chin. I asked around about it and it was suggested maybe the guy meant to say "kabuki" (traditional Japanese theater), which actually would have been mildly clever rather than mildly racist in my opinion. It's a bizarre Asian stereotype and the joke actually makes no sense. Also, it shows that the guy doesn't think of Jin as a multi dimensional character, just as "Asian guy". It just seemed like a weird way to try to get a laugh.
I will post more interesting things about Lost later, I just wanted to get this out.
1 comment:
On a tangentially related note, I was so excited that the plot centered on Jin and Sun this Wednesday. I've missed their full-scale participation in the show. The producers have generally of late short-shrifted the characters I find the most interesting.
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