Fisher Stevens is an F-List Hummingbird and Not a Real Indian
I was a pretty smart kid. Always aware of my surroundings. Watched adult TV shows like Moonlighting and Cheers. Read books and judged other little kids for using bad grammar and not knowing who Nadia Comaneci was. But I had NO IDEA until last Friday night that the Indian guy from Short Circuit was not a real Indian, but some Jewish guy from Chicago.
Fisher Fucking Stevens, aka Steven Fishbaum, was at The Pali House having drinks with a few twatty looking girls when our table spotted him and immediately got on their Blackberrys and iPod Touches to finger out exactly why he looked so familiar. We were a few drinks in when one of us figured out who he was and blurted his name like she had just won a cruise Bingo game.
He totally heard us talking about him and when the faux Indian walked by our table on his way to the bathroom, he lingered around us like a hummingbird for a few seconds, made a weird hand gesture, and then continued on his way to the bathroom. What the fuck was that?
Fisher Fucking Stevens, aka Steven Fishbaum, was at The Pali House having drinks with a few twatty looking girls when our table spotted him and immediately got on their Blackberrys and iPod Touches to finger out exactly why he looked so familiar. We were a few drinks in when one of us figured out who he was and blurted his name like she had just won a cruise Bingo game.
He totally heard us talking about him and when the faux Indian walked by our table on his way to the bathroom, he lingered around us like a hummingbird for a few seconds, made a weird hand gesture, and then continued on his way to the bathroom. What the fuck was that?
Comments
It's always interesting to note the disparity between US media's careful depictions of black characters, but make-upped/exagggerated representations of Asian sub-continenters (Apu, Short Circuit, etc.). I remember once seeing an episode of Third Rock from The Sun just a few years ago with a head-bobbing, bud-bud-budding Indian stereotype who was asked why he was wearing "a dishtowel on his head". We haven't seen the type of that on UK TV since the 1970s.
Not a jibe at the US particularly, the UK is hardly the most ethically pure. It's just interesting. I think of the US as being incredibly progressive about race, but it shows how much of what one thinks of as a total drive and pressure towards PC-ness is actually just toeing the line of pressure groups. When any people can get away with demeaning depictions of brown-skinned foreigners (i.e., when it's not a political issue in one's own country), they will.
Kieron, there were a few notable UK exceptions but you are right that this tended to occur before the 1980s: Peter Sellers was often blacked up—once for a Hollywood film but also The Millionairess (from where ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ came), and Michael Bates, who starred in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. (One difference was that Bates actually was born in India and could speak, I believe, fluent Hindi, but some believe the role should have gone to a south Asian actor.) However, I do agree with your underlying argument and am nit-picking.
As a Chinese man I am still surprised Hollywood seems to think we are asexual and I am yet to see one in a leadership position in a mainstream programme or film. The best east Asians ever did was Ensign on a Star Trek spin-off—mind you, if a Chinese guy were the captain, Voyager would never have got lost in the first place.