Asian pop culture tally as of August 17, 2009

When I did my interview with Margaret Cho for Hyphen Magazine (yes, this is a shameless name drop) I asked her about the state of Asian Americans in entertainment and she answered…

There’s a great crop of (Asian American) talent. There are a couple of more Asian faces here and there – that is great. The “Slumdog Millionaire” win at the Oscars is super exciting and is great for the community. There also needs to be more Asian Americans behind the scenes – not just with movies, but with television, music and other forms of entertainment.

I also did another interview with John Cho a while back (shameless name drop #2) and he practically said the same thing.

That said, I am going to keep a running tally of the Asian Americans I see under the pop culture umbrella – particularly in movies, television, fashion and arts. I won’t necessarily pinpoint every single Asian American involved in a movie or TV show, but I will do my best. (I also welcome leads…)

So here is my list starting from August 1, 2009:

1.) Charlyne Yi in Paper Heart: According to Wikipedia, “her mother is of Filipino-Spanish descent and her father is of Korean, Irish, German, French and Native American.”

2.) Thakoon Panichgul in The September Issue: Thai fashion designer who does brilliant prints…CFDA wunderkid…a Michelle Obama favorite…and cute as a button.

3.) The Asian dude in all those AT&T commercials.

4.) Ang Lee, the Tawainese director of the upcoming film, Taking Woodstock. (I got to see a pre-screening of it and interviewed the brilliant director at the beginning of the month – yes, I am bragging.)

5.) The G.I. Joe movie may not have been the BEST, but it did have some Asians up in there: Gerald Okamura (credited as “Hard Master” – whatever that means), Brandon Soo Hoo (plays young Storm Shadow) and Byung-hun Lee (plays the older Storm Shadow).

6.) Season 4 America’s Best Dance Crew has a whole mess of Asians up in there: Hiroka “Hero” Mcrae and Mami Kanemitsu in the crew, We Are Heroes; select breakers (I think four of them) from the b-boy crew, Massive Monkeys; and ALL SEVEN of those kids from Fr3sh (why did the Asians have to get eliminated first?). We’ll collectively count this as 13.

7.) Just saw a How I Met Your Mother re-run titled “Three Days of Snow” and the recurring character of the cab driver Ranjit (played by Marshall Manesh reps the Asian American community!

Asian pop culture tally as of Aug. 17: 21

Not bad.

And I realize that this may border on the line of cultural vanity, but I am just going to follow Margaret Cho’s lead when she said, “I am into being self-righteous (laughs) I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”