Ernie had previously blogged about Asian American doctor AND actor Ken Jeong when he first appeared in the comedy hit Knocked Up; Ken has been making the rounds lately and was most recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live promoting The Hangover, where he plays an angry gay crime boss.
Over this past weekend, I got an email from my high school friend Gordon — who isn’t Asian — who saw The Hangover and wrote: “I think 8Asians needs to call for a community boycott of The Hangover, which had the worst Asian stereotyping in years. It was uncomfortable to watch.” I sent that comment out to our internal 8Asians email list and someone who saw the film replied:
“I saw the movie last night, but I didn’t really find it offensive because they didn’t really make any outright Asian jokes, especially since he was pretty funny in it. He plays a gay Chinese gangster in Vegas, so he has an accent in it, but they certainly didn’t play up anything else about it. It could have been a lot worse.”
AngryAsianMan.com picks up on this on-going “controversy” and provides a nice roundup of Ken’s character “Mr. Chow” and his offensive stereotypical portrayal of Asians and gays. The movie has been getting pretty fantastic reviews so far, so I’m definitely inclined to see the movie.
The Los Angeles Times recently had a nice profile on Ken, who has put his medical career on hold to pursue his career in acting, similar to the doctor who put his medical career on hold to do MacRumors.com full-time. Ken’s wife is a doctor as well, so I guess if the acting gig doesn’t work out in the short-term, his wife can support the family in the mean time.
Had I known that I could have been a doctor AND actor, maybe I would have gone to medical school (And, you know, be able to act.)
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3 Comments to “The Hangover’s Ken Jeong”
johnklin wrote:
So I saw The Hangover last night… It was pretty hilarious.
As for the gay Chinese gangster that Ken Jeong plays… I wasn't really offended by him. Though I thought the guy's gay and foreign “accent” was a bit exaggerated….
I think I was more disturbed seeing the guy completely naked…
Posted on 13-Jun-09 at 8:20 pm | Permalink
joesmith666 wrote:
are you kidding me! This portrayal is beyond offensive! When will Asian men and women get roles as normal regular human being, asians are not born odd, born wierdos! We have families and careers just like everyone else, why does Hollywood continue to portray Asians in such disgusting light?
I will boycott anything Ken is in now, he sold out his race for a career, he is a race traitor!
Posted on 14-Jun-09 at 1:35 pm | Permalink
8Asians.com » The Summer of Ken Jeong wrote:
[...] other night, I caught actor/doctor Ken Jeong on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It only seemed like a few months ago I saw Ken in The Hangover and I thought the movie was hilarious, although I have second thoughts about how Ken’s role [...]
Posted on 10-Aug-09 at 9:31 am | Permalink
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