Why 'Aloha' also means 'forget it!'

Emma Stone in Aloha is not the only one shedding tears.

ALOHA, the latest motion picture written and directed by Cameron Crowe and released last weekend, is a bad movie. B-a-a-a-d!

But for a bad movie, it is sure getting a lot - I mean A LOT - of ink. Most of the press has not been the sort that would induce people to spend $20 to see it in a theater with Dolby sound and wide screen.

Much of the criticism centers around the casting of Emma Stone as Allison Ng, a hapa (quarter Chinese, quarter Hawaiian, half Swedish}. I love Emma Stone. I think she's one of the best young actresses around, but asking the audience to suspend their disbelief and accept her in this role is a tough, tough task.

In his defense, Crowe posted a statement on his website in response to the criticism:

"I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice. As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one. A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that."

I don't want to appear to defend him, but Crowe has fallen into the same trap that so many other Hollywood decision makers fall into when casting roles meant for minority or people of mixed heritage. They always opt for the familiar. And since most of these producers, writers and agents are white, they pick the people who look like them even when new data  indicates that the American movie-going public is undergoing a steady demographic shift towards audiences of color.

Crowe notes in his apology that that he and his crew are "extremely proud" to present Oahu, its people and the film community with "many jobs" over the four months they worked there. But despite "tireless research" conducted by Stone and others, Crowe writes that he is "the one to blame" for any controversy and upset his casting decision might have caused. 

RELATED:Interview with Asian American actorsWhy all the Oscar nominees are all white

The Media Action Network for Asian Americans issued this statement:

“Caucasians only make up 30 percent of the population [of Hawaii], but from watching this film, you’d think they made up 99 percent. This comes in a long line of films (‘The Descendants,’ ’50 First Dates,’ ‘Blue Crush,’ ‘Pearl Harbor’) that uses Hawaii for its exotic backdrop but goes out of its way to exclude the very people who live there,” MANAA founder and president Guy Aoki said in a press release. “It’s an insult to the diverse culture and fabric of Hawaii. [The native Hawaiians featured in the film] didn’t even have names. How can you educate your audience to the ‘rich history’ of Hawaii by using mostly white people and excluding the majority of the people who live there and who helped build that history — APIs?”

Crowe tried to temper the cultural discussion by including a lot of references to the Hawaiian culture in his movie but often times, they seem disjointed and out of place in a movie focused on the main characters - all white.

In a somewhat unprecedented move to counter the harsh criticism, Sony Pictures released the first eight minutes of the motion picture to allow the public decide for itself whether Aloha is a bad movie or not. Here it is below:

Even the film's title came under fire. Janet Mock, a native Hawaiian, explains on her MSNBC Shift show So Popular!

"Most who invoke the term aloha do not know its true meaning. Aloha actually comes from two Hawaiian words: Alo – which means the front of a person, the part of our bodies that we share and take in people. And Ha, which is our breath. When we are in each other's presence with the front of our bodies, we are exchanging the breath of life. That's aloha. 

"When writer-director Cameron Crowe uses the language of a marginalized, indigenous people whose land, culture and sovereignty have been stripped from them, he contributes to a long tradition of reducing native Hawaiians to his own limited imaginings — and this is dangerous."

Of course, Emma Stone is a big box-office draw. Her fans will go see the movie no matter what we write here. However, it's not like there isn't any actresses of mixed-Asian heritage who could have played the role of Ng: Olivia Munn, Kristen Kruek, Vanessa Hudgens, Maggie Q come to mind as big-name actresses; and the next tier of actresses there are dozens more.

Crowe said he spent years of research for his movie with many trips to the island state. At least he got some tax write-offs. Save your money.

Some good may come out of this cinematic fiasco. 

“I am grateful for the dialogue. And from the many voices, loud and small, I have learned something very inspiring,” said Crowe. “So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.” Let's hope so.

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Fresh Off the Boat renewed for 2nd season

The Huang family will come back in the second season of Fresh Off the Boat.

FRESH OFF THE BOAT, the landmark TV situation comedy featuring an Asian American immigrant family has been renewed for a second season by ABC.

Despite a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings that hovered in the 1.5-2.0 range throughout the season, fans of FOtB were nervous about the series' future.

The show about a Taiwanese American family adjusting to life in Orlando, Florida had garnered good reviews from critics but to members of the Asian American community, the show was more important as a cultural barometer of how Asian Americans could be accepted in America. Would American audiences accept Asians as relatable characters? Would it open their eyes to the problems immigrants have in this country?

Considering the last show that attempted to break that barrier, Margaret Cho's All American Girl, failed and was 20 years ago, FOtB's success was a good indication of how far this country has come in two decades.

The show was seriously criticized by its creator, Eddie Huang, whose memoirs the show is (very) loosely based as being so white-washed that it was unrecognizable as his life story. 

At least, we'll have another season on which to ponder these questions. We hope the show moves toward's the tone of Huang's original memoir and becomes more edgy without losing the first season's audience. It can become darker without losing any of its laughs. 

First off: The writers need to realize that the Huang family is not the Partridge family. 

Secondly: The fish-out-of-water premise is not enough. The show needs to incorporate an underlying message about how wrong the anti-immigrant view is, That rare category of a having a serious message within a comedic context is not without precedent.

The anti-war classic, M*A*S*H, dealt with death and pathos and it was one of the highest rated shows and critically acclaimed series TV has ever produced. Yet - and yet - it is described as a comedy.

All In The Family starred one of America's biggest bigots, and it still managed to get its anti-bigotry message across with laughter.

It's a balancing act between message and laughs without being heavy handed. It may be more difficult to attain, but it can be done. If done right, it can spell the difference between being ordinary and greatness.

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Why the Oscars' acting nominees are all white

Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot

A LOT of effluent has been stirred up about the lack of racial diversity in the acting categories of the Motion Pictures Academy Awards this year. Sunday, the motion picture industry will hold their annual celebration of themselves but this year, the tinsel and glitter surrounding the Oscars has been sullied and stained.

Why should it matter to us? Unfortunately - like it or not, wrongly or rightly - most people form their opinions and world views through the movies, television and the Internet.

All of the 20 acting nominations went to all white actors. A lot has been written about the composition of the Academy members and to no surprise, the overwhelming majority are older, white men who tend to vote for what they are most comfortable with, you know, people with whom they can relate - other white people. I'm not defending this attitude of privileged familiarity, but I do understand it. More details here. Huffington Post had a good article explaining just how exclusive the Academy is.

Of course, it doesn't help the diversity issue when they have relatively few actors of color to choose from. Not that there aren't any actors of color, there are more than you'd think. There just aren't that many roles in which minority actors can show off their acting prowess.

That sorry situation falls in the laps of the directors and producers who decide who - or "type" - to seek when filling the roles. It doesn't occur to them to go beyond the stereotypes that minority actors find themselves auditioning for. Color-blind casting is much talked about but in reality, rarely used.

A recent example of color-blind casting was the choice of John Cho on the short-lived TV series Selfie. The producers were not really looking for an Asian male to play the romantic lead, but Cho's audition made his selection a no-brainer. Adding Cho to the cast added a whole new dimension to the comedy even though "race" was never made a central issue on the series.

The other side of the coin is, all things being even talent-wise, producers will choose the white applicant because in their own mind, white actors are more marketable. Never mind the data that shows the growing number of American moviegoers, tube watchers and social networkers whose skin color is not white (or pink, or light beige, ... whatever.);  never mind that in a few years, people of color will be majority in the United States; never mind that in the international market, the largest audiences are in Asia;  That is the particular lens they view the world; it just is.

"Why was Selma the only film that was even in the running with people of color for the award?" asks Ava DuVernay, director of the critically acclaimed Selma  which was nominated only in two categories, Best Picture and Best Song. "You know what I mean? I mean, why are there not—not just black, brown people? You know what I mean? Asian people, indigenous people, representations that are more than just one voice, just one face, just one gaze?"

That brings us to the other hurdle facing the industry. There's not a strong interest in investing in source material from which they could develop strong story lines featuring black, brown, yellow and red actors

It's not only important for writers to diversify their own characters and tell stories around minority themes and issues; producers need to widen their search for source materials beyond Marvel comic books (OK, Marvel is doing more to diversify it's own characters than the movie industry is; but that's the subject of another post.)

Despite the power and influence of successful minority producers like Tyler Perry, Dean Devlin and Oprah, Hollywood's culture has hardly moved an inch towards inclusion.

I can empathize with those actors of color who study their craft for years but are reduced to playing stereotypes.

I once auditioned for a role on a popular TV series. I read the lines given to me and the casting director was so enthusiastic and encouraging over my reading (which-  I figured out later - was the normal Hollywood B.S. way of speaking.) Then he said, "Now try it with an accent." What accent? I think to myself: A Filipino accent? Chinese? Japanese? Vietnamese? French? British? "You know," he said, "an Oriental accent."

Needless to say, I didn't get a call-back. That's why I became a journalist.

Ava DuVernay

Sorry for straying away from the topic; back to the bigger question of why there are no actors of color nominated for this year's Oscars. DuVernay, got down to the meat of   the motion picture industry's problem.

“The obstacle, it is systemic. It’s systemic," she said in an interview in Democracy Now. "It’s a system that’s been set up in a certain way. Times have changed, ideas have matured, and the system might not have caught up with that or stayed up with that, ... “Perhaps all of the hoopla this year will trigger some action.”

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