Sixteen Candles

July 25

There are so many things that are offensive about Sixteen Candles. Homophobia, sexism (particularly what is portrayed as acceptable sexual harassment and rape), but for the purpose of this blog, I'm just writing about Gedde Watanabe's role as Long Duk Dong. 

In one interview I read, Watanabe, born and raised in Utah to Japanese-American parents, said he knew he needed to audition with an "Asian accent", as if all Asian's sound alike, so he hung out with a Korean friend of his. Then he showed up talking like Long Duk Dong, and John Hughes was convinced he was from somewhere in Asia until Watanabe finally came clean and spoke as he normally does. Hughes was fooled. He had no idea which Asian country Watanabe was supposedly from, but he was convinced he was from one of them. 

During the filming of Sixteen Candles, Watanabe did improv for a couple of the scenes that ended up in the movie. He knew what Hughes was looking for and he offered it up. In a number of the interviews I read, Watanabe says that looking back he was "naive" when he arrived at the Sixteen Candles set. He showed up to do his job and he did it well, as evidenced by the fact that you can say Long Duk Dong and most people who were alive in the 80's will know which movie you are talking about. It is an iconic film from the 80s and so people struggle to let it go. In one interview I read, the interviewer commented that while Long Duk Dong is a stereotype, so are many of the other characters. The unattractive nerd boy, the dumb blond girl . . . Does someone really have to point out the difference? There are plenty of unattractive white men in movies who are smart, dumb, good, evil, flawed, loving, lovable, interesting- COMPLEX. True, roles for white women continue to be given mostly to super attractive white women, but there are lots of them, and they are on the news in varied roles, and in books, etc. You could never say, "remember that white man or woman in the 1980's movie. . . who was that?" But I bet you could say, "who was that Asian man in the 1980's movie?" and many would respond, "Long Duk Dong." If one semi-major role is going to be given to an Asian character in a decade, then it will provide only a single story (Adichie's phrase) at best. This film offered up a new insult, now there wasn’t just “chink” or “Bruce Lee”, but now Asian males were called “Donger.”

We watch a lot of 80's movies with our girls, and I annoyingly pause them as we go along to point out sexism and racism (although there is significantly less racism because there are few people of color in 80's and 90's films), but I can honestly say, that I will never watch Sixteen Candles again.