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But Hong wasnt interchangeable, even if viewers didnt know him by name.
He was Faye Dunaways stoic but devoted butler inChinatown.
The genetic designer who gets ambushed by replicants in his subzero lab inBlade Runner.
The maitre d who stonewalled theSeinfeldcharacters in The Chinese Restaurant.
The ancient sorcerer inBig Trouble in Little China, leaning into the Orientalist tropes and making them gleefully absurd.
What could you do?
To be a character actor meansaccepting a degree of typecasting.
(These breakthroughs were almost always centered on Chinese or Chinese American stories, too.)
What was particularly perverse is that Asian Americans were also freely sidelined in materialaboutAsianness.
I was like,I cant believe this show.
I mean, this is such a horrible stereotype of Asian women, Lee observed.
You dont reconcile the fact that it is a stereotype.
You just live with it; you just accept it; you do it; you move on.
These benign parts had more dignity, or maybe just more respectability.
Conversationsabout the Asian American experience seem consumed with representation onscreen.
Even as film and television have opened up, some old, ugly images remain.
Resurging xenophobia recalls Hollywoods repeated images of Chinatown as a dark warren of yellow peril.
