Whenever I watch a movie involving an Asian character set anytime before the 2000s, I get a little worried.
It’s been a long road for Asian representation in media and entertainment, but sometimes looking into the past can be painful.
Beloved movies like Sixteen Candles and Breakfast at Tiffany’s leave me with a sour taste in my mouth, not because I couldn’t understand Sam’s very American girl struggles as a teenager or because I wasn’t enchanted by Holly Golightly’s eccentricities, but because those movies contained caricatures of people who look like me.
They turned Asian faces into the butt of the joke.
This was always my fear and why I avoided The Karate Kid.
The idea of a wise and experienced Japanese man teaching karate to a white kid from New Jersey was something I instantly thought: Nope, I’ll pass on that slice of nostalgia.
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