Charlie’s Angels Sequel Under Fire

The crime-fighting female trio that captivated America with their mastery of espionage, martial arts, and skin-tight leather pants is back again. Teenage girls across the country may be ecstatic about the film sequel to the blockbuster hit Charlie's Angels, but some fans aren't so pleased with Full Throttle. Among the skeptics is an organization of Asian American moviegoers that is somewhat goaded about scenes in which Lucy Liu's character, Alex, introduces her parents: a white father, played by John Cleese, and a Chinese mother, who only appears in an old photograph.

Much uproar from the Asian American community has surrounded Lucy Liu for her over-sexualized “dragon lady” role in Ally McBeal, but for the most part, her role as Alex Munday in the first Charlie's Angels film was celebrated as an attempt to show the non-stereotypical side of Asian Americans. Alex Munday was portrayed as an Asian American woman with vigor and confidence, an exceptional rendering that wasn't constantly epitomizing cheap Oriental clichés. But the implication that Liu's character is biracial -- half Asian and half white -- has the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, an organization dedicated to monitoring the media and advocating balanced and sensitive portrayals of Asian Americans, steaming.

"The casting of John Cleese as Alex's father leaves us confused and angered," MANAA president Aki Aleong states in a letter to Full Throttle director Joseph McGinty Nichol. "You infer that Lucy's character (Alex) is half-Caucasian. This is problematic since it is obvious that Lucy Liu is not of mixed race. At the same time it nullifies the wonderful statement you made by casting her in the first installment." A MANAA press release also declares that they want "to make clear that we are not against movies portraying bi-race or multi-race people ... To now imply that [Lucy's character is] half Asian belittles the pleasure and relief Asian Americans and fair-minded audiences had when they saw an Asian woman standing up for justice and overcoming great obstacles."

Once confirmed by McGinty's publicist in the fall of 2002, another discovery about Full Throttle only served to rub salt in the wound. Turns out that in the original production script for Full Throttle, producers had written the scene with Alex's parents to be an exchange of comedic banter between a Jewish mother and an Asian father -- a biracial marriage that American audiences rarely see on film or television. For unexplained reasons, the script was later changed to put forward a white father and an Asian mother, the Asian mother reduced to a meager photo who sets the backdrop for the funny and charismatic white father, Cleese.

Many admirers applaud Asian Americans such as Lucy Liu and Connie Chung for gaining increasing visibility in the mainstream media, but their praise overlooks the fact that the Asian Americans who are achieving star status are all female; meanwhile, Asian American men hide behind the disparaging roles of immigrants with "fortune cookie" (broken) English or are reduced to receiving respect only for their karate chops and kung foo punches -- that is, if they're lucky enough to get even these parts.

		If Asian women are consistently equated with the stereotypes of either the exoticized and eroticized dominatrix or the meek and blushing China doll...these portrayals will begin to reflect themselves in the Asian American reality of this country.

"We probably need not emphasize to you that a serious lack of substantial roles for capable Asian-American actors has rendered them nearly invisible in television and movies," Aleong's letter to the Full Throttle director states. "By casting John Cleese as [Lucy's] father ... you've robbed the role from an Asian-American male actor." In addition, the decision to cast a mere extra with a non-vocal, non-descript role as Liu's Chinese mother obviously was a decision given little consideration, as it only perpetuates denigrating Asian American stereotypes of submissiveness and "Oriental" exoticism.