Hollywood Racism: "2 Broke Girls"

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When the networks were hyping their shows in July at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, CBS brass approached a number of critics (this one included) and made a point of talking up the disappointing sexism in NBC’s The Playboy Club and ABC’s Pan Am. You know, what a shame it was and how regrettable, in this day and age, both shows were. Despite being done in a mostly casual manner, the point was pretty clear: Are you guys going to hammer them over that or what?

Since I agreed about the sexism (and the fact both shows were bad), driving home the point wasn’t going to be an issue. However, I did mention that CBS might want to fix that, ahem, disappointing racism in 2 Broke Girls.
In life, there’s so much letdown for all of us. While The Playboy Club is dead, the vapid Pan Am flies on (a little lower each week, but still), 2 Broke Girls continues to trot out the character of Han Lee (Matthew Moy), the Korean immigrant who runs the dive diner where the two broke girls in question, Max (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Beth Behrs) work.


Never mind that there’s already been a joke about him being Chinese, or that one joke had him changing his name to Bryce Lee so that the writers could get that Bruce Lee joke in – the writers being no strangers to lame and obvious punch lines – but each week Han’s broken English gets played like some sorry minstrel show (oh, yeah, there was that whole karaoke thing, which seemed like yet another reason to mock Han’s language and point out how funny the letter “r” sounds when you’re fresh off the boat).
In one episode, when Han got a new iPad, he said “Spread the words.” To which Max said, “Word.” And guess what Han did – step aside from the neon freight train of obviousness – he said “Word!” like it was a rap thing.
Sigh.
Every time Han gets to say something on 2 Broke Girls, the undercurrent is that it’s funny because it’s broken English. Plus he’s really short and geeky and non-sexual (there may have been other stereotypes to plop on top of him, but maybe creators Whitney Cummings and Michael Patrick King thought too much was enough, which would certainly stick with the general theme of the show). In any case, what CBS is doing every Monday night is trotting out one of the most regressive and stunning racist devices a network has produced in five or more seasons.


So, congratulations CBS. (Don’t worry, a follow up column on the sexism of Pan Am is on the way, in case you were worried).
Han’s head-shaking caricature almost let’s you forget that there’s also Oleg (Jonathan Kite) the Eastern European cook whose only role is to be lecherous and onerous.
In a TV world where the Irish and the Italians have all but given up getting pissed off about stereotypes, you have to wonder if people of Russian descent also figure to be heavy-accented thugs and goons for all of eternity. Certainly Asians aren’t making much progress getting the TV industry to move beyond stereotypes (much less cast them in roles).
There was also a scene in 2 Broke Girls where ex-society princess Caroline tries to haggle with a woman at Goodwill over the cost of a pair of shoes. “I can’t believe you tried to shoe her down.”
Oh, clever. A Jew joke. Wink-wink.

In the same episode, a Latina woman who was also at the Goodwill – and therefore must swear in Spansh when she gets angry, right? – says flippantly to Max: “You snooze, you lose, puta.”
Oh, CBS, you’re so cute with all of this stuff.
Of course, to quarrel over race jokes on 2 Broke Girls is to miss a larger point – that its go-to jokes are mostly sexual. This is a show that has to have at least one vagina joke an episode. It’s not above turning "a wad of cash" in someone’s face into a joke about a wad of something else in someone’s face (again, if you didn’t see that coming five miles away, you’ve never watched 2 Broke Girls).
One episode focused on the stifling heat of New York and Max says, “Stop fighting it. Just give in to it. I don’t know why I’m quoting a rapist.” And the laugh track roars its approval.
Have there been rape jokes on Pan Am? Sexist what?

Every joke Oleg says is about sex, even if it’s about salami at first (see that train coming yet?) or his eyes widening when Christine puts finger in her mouth and closes her lips around it. “You just made it into Oleg’s spank bank,” Max tells her.
Man, 12-year-old boys must be eating this up, if 12-year-old boys know about CBS.
Lots of shows run on sex jokes and bodily functions. The trouble with 2 Broke Girls is that they’re all so incredibly obvious and juvenile that you wish Dennings and Behrs had better material to work with. The duo are the only reason to tune into 2 Broke Girls and even their comic timing and improved character development are making that a harder decision because the writing on the show is so woefully bad.
It’s probably too late to get CBS to do anything about the unfortunate racism in 2 Broke Girls – the time to send notes was during the pilot process, when the Han character should have been nixed without hesitation. And forget the show cutting back on its “that’s what she said” sexual joke simplicity. After all, CBS loves series where one theme gets hammered home relentlessly (fat jokes on Mike & Molly, nerd jokes on The Big Bang Theory, etc.).
There’s chemistry – and maybe even a whole show (preferably one without that stupid horse) that can be pulled from the considerable talents of Dennings and Behrs. But until that happens, 2 Broke Girls remains the most disappointing new sitcom of the fall, because unlike so many others it actually had potential but has squandered it away every week on cheap, predictable and unfunny jokes.
Consider that if you watch tonight. Or better yet, don’t watch.

Critics claim '2 Broke Girls' uses racial stereotypes

New CBS comedy series “2 Broke Girls” is attracting criticism for their portrayal of a Korean character and their alleged use of racial stereotypes.

The character of Korean immigrant Bryce (Han) Lee, as played by Matthew Moy, runs the diner where the “2 Broke Girls” (played by Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs) are employed. As we mentioned in our recap back in September, the only drawback to the series premiere was that Moy's character certainly "walked the line of turning into a stereotype."
CNN's Henry Hanks called it "truly disappointing to see this on an otherwise smart show," and other critics have since chimed in.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that “each week Han’s broken English gets played like some sorry minstrel show.” Questionable jokes include emphasizing Lee’s problems with pronunciation.
Blog Racebending observes that “Lee can’t wear his pants correctly, can’t speak English properly, and doesn’t understand the concept of holidays.”
And it’s not just Bryce Lee. “[T]he ensemble of stock ethnics gave me a migraine,” commented New York Magazine writer Emily Nussbaum of the show’s population.
HitFix reports that the show’s creators, Whitney Cummings (who also stars in “Whitney”), and “Sex and the City” writer Michael Patrick King, claim the diner is representative of the multi-ethnic neighborhood (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) it serves.
"By ethnic characters, I'd say the hipsters,” King said when the question of stereotypes came up during the Television Critics Association press tour. “And Max is sort of the lord and ruler of that diner, so she's going to take everybody down, the hipsters, the immigrants, the girls, and most importantly, herself."
As for the accusation that Bryce Lee is a stereotype, King and Cummings don’t see it. "There's a comic sweetness to him that's an innocence, and the fact he's an immigrant from Korea is part of his character," writer/producer/director King said, noting that the character will be rounded out as the season goes on.
“The character is not dumb,” Cummings added. “He just moved to the country six months ago. He literally doesn't know the language. That doesn't mean he's dumb. In the subsequent episodes, we're going to see how smart he truly is.”
King may be an equal opportunity offender. When asked if a joke about Stephen Hawking (who suffers from the motor neuron disease ALS) would stay in the show, King replied in the affirmative. "Yeah. I think it's funny," he said. “I'm sorry."
“2 Broke Girls” airs Mondays at 8:30 ET/PT on CBS.

Review of CBS’s “Two Broke Girls”

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In February 2011 we called out CBS for its depiction of an Asian character, “Bryce” Lee in it’s upcoming series Two Broke Girls. After an email conversation between Racebending.com and CBS’s Office of Diversity and Communications, CBS offered us a DVD screener of the show to preview and submit feedback. Two Broke Girls premieres on Monday, September 19th.

Our initial concerns about the character of Han/Bryce/Rice Lee (played by Matthew Moy) came from the casting sides, where Lee can’t wear his pants correctly, can’t speak English properly, and doesn’t understand the concept of holidays. In the pilot a lot of these cliched stereotypes have been removed– largely given the role of Lee in the episode is greatly reduced compared to in the sides.
Even though most of the offensive lines/scenarios are nowhere to be seen in the first episode, from an Asian American perspective the character is still a problematic stereotype. “Bryce” Lee plays like a caricature of failed American Idol contestant William Hung. Perhaps this was deliberate, since Two Broke Girls has a very 90′s-sitcom aesthetic, but the character is anachronistic. Because the actor clearly sounds like an American actor attempting to affect a foriegn accent, and given his emasculated personality and ignorance about English is played for stereotype-based laughs, it’s hard to see this character resonating with Asian American viewers at all.

While the character is not as horrifying as initially proposed, our feeling is the Asian American community will likely still view Bryce Lee as a regression from the same studio that brings us multidimensional roles for Asian Americans on shows like Hawaii 5-0.
We do want to applaud CBS for featuring a comedy with two strong women in lead roles. But in the pilot, minorities seemed to exist to add, well, color–ranging from Bryce Lee’s broken English, to the lusty Eastern Europeans, to the black lesbian with poor boundaries, to the black guy who greets the girls at the door and randomly makes offensive statements (like a cringe inducing Duke rape joke).
The best characters in comedy are ones that audiences can both laugh at and laugh with. Kat Denning’s role in Girls, Max, is a perfect example of this. The audience can both laugh at her circumstances and at her wisecracks. Being laughed at can be marginalizing and hurtful; being laughed with helps build connection and empathy. (This balance is why CBS’s Big Bang Theory is successful with geek viewers, rather than alienating.)
Historically, minorities have frequently been laughed at, and have only rarely been laughed with. This is the fear we have with the character of Bryce Lee. The type of derision many Asian American immigrants face in their daily lives is not a laugh track. Dispelling assumptions people have made about you (because of crappy media representations and stereotypes) is no walk in the park, either.

We really appreciated having the opportunity to preview the show and to send in our feedback. CBS has made a strong effort to support diversity, which is why Two Broke Girls feels like such an inconsistent letdown. Because Two Broke Girls is set in Brooklyn, it offers CBS an opportunity to develop a very diverse cast. 65% of Brooklyners are people of color; one out of five are Latino. This is something CBS and the production of Two Broke Girls can take advantage of, rather than avoid. While it could have been a lot worse, this characterization of an Asian American is still far from ideal. 

Chicago CBS Affiliate Makes 4-yr.-old Sound Like a Thug, Says Sorry

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Over the weekend, Chicago CBS-affiliate WBBM apologized for misquoting a black 4-year-old boy and making him out to be a future thug.

It all started out when a freelancer was shooting video interviews at a crime scene and met the child, who was standing nearby when a drive-by shooting took place. In the news segment, the child tells a reporter that such shootings don’t scare him and that, when he grows up, “I’m going to have me a gun.” But it turns out the station left out a key part of the story.

The Maynard Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to training journalists of color, transcribed the conversation between the cameraman and the boy as broadcasted by WBBM:

Boy: “I’m not scared of nothing.”

Reporter: “When you get older are you going to stay away from all these guns?”

Boy: “No.”

Reporter: “No?

What are you going to do when you get older?”

Boy: “I’m going to have me a gun!”

Bartelstein ended the story saying, “that was scary indeed.”

However, an unedited version of the interview shows the boy’s words were taken completely out of context. It turns out he wants a gun because he wants to become a police officer.

Gawker.com has published the station’s apology:

We accept responsibility for the mistakes that were made, both in the reporting and editing of the story. The video of the child should not have aired. As soon as news management identified the problem, they took immediate steps to ensure that the video would not air in subsequent newscasts. In addition, we have followed up with our employees to make sure that we all have learned from the mistakes that were made.

Boyce D. Watkins, a professor and columnist, writes that it’s easy to dismiss this incident as a simple mistake, “but it’s much deeper than we might think” because of how black men are portrayed in the media already. Watkins goes provides another local black figure who’s famous for being misquoted:

Even more challenging is the frustration that millions of educated, hard working, law abiding black men feel when the world typecasts us as being less than human. This little boy is already growing up in a city, Chicago, where a brilliant and hard-working man by the name of Rev. Jeremiah Wright had his 40-year legacy crippled by a Fox News sound bite that presented him to be the kind of unpatriotic, hateful black man that Fox News loves to present to its audience.

In the video posted above, Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, called the edits in the video “disturbing.” Jealous, who’s also a former journalist, went on to say it’s important to tell the whole truth because “when you’re telling half the truth, you’re in effect lying.”