Licorice Pizza Japanese Translation Scene?

What is the controversial scene in Licorice Pizza?

Licorice Pizza comes under fire for a scene with a fake Asian accent Published: 06:51 GMT, 26 November 2021 | Updated: 06:56 GMT, 26 November 2021

• Director Paul Thomas Anderson returns with his first feature film in four years with Licorice Pizza, which has come under fire for a controversial scene.
• The scene in question involves a restaurant owner played by John Michael Higgins, who owns the building with his Japanese wife, with the story set in 1973.
• The character speaks with his wife with a fake Asian accent, and he appears again with another Asian woman where he employs the same accent, which did not sit well with fans, even those who otherwise enjoyed the movie.

Under fire: Director Paul Thomas Anderson returns with his first feature film in four years with Licorice Pizza, which has come under fire for a controversial scene Neither Higgins nor director Anderson responded to requests for comment by, though a number of fans and critics are talking on Twitter.

‘Picture this: You’re watching Licorice Pizza. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature. The (mostly white) audience laughs. And now, you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film. Did you picture it? Because it f***ing sucks,’ said film critic Dave Chen.

Writer-director Karen Maine said she saw the film, which opens in limited release on Friday, last week. Picture this: ‘Picture this: You’re watching Licorice Pizza. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature. The (mostly white) audience laughs.

And now, you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film. Did you picture it? Because it f***ing sucks,’ said film critic Dave Chen Limited: Writer-director Karen Maine said she saw the film, which opens in limited release on Friday, last week ‘I saw #LicoricePizza over a week ago and it’s taken me this long to process it.

There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,’ Maine said. She added in another tweet, ‘It was beautifully shot and incredibly well-acted by all, esp Alana (Haim) and Cooper.

1. I thought it was too long and I never really connected enough with the two main characters for a worthy pay off at the end.
2. Maine concluded, ‘The whole Haim family and Bradley Cooper were my fave parts.
3. But that pointless, racist scene ruined the whole film for me, and more people need to call PT out on it.’ Great: Henry Ahn added, ‘Licorice Pizza is great but I was reminded that it has extremely uncomfortable scenes with a white man speaking in the most obscenely offensive mock Asian accent to his Asian wife.

Cringe was unbearable. Cringe at the scene but also at the theater full of white people laughing’ Henry Ahn added, ‘Licorice Pizza is great but I was reminded that it has extremely uncomfortable scenes with a white man speaking in the most obscenely offensive mock Asian accent to his Asian wife.

Cringe was unbearable. Cringe at the scene but also at the theater full of white people laughing.’ Filmmaker So Yun Um added in her tweet, ‘Damn, can’t us Asians ever have anything nice? Some of my fav white male Directors: PTA, Wes Anderson, Denis Villeneuve all have been making real amazing films lately and then there’s a fake Asian accent or a sneaky Asian character trope.

Let it end.’ Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen said the criticism appears to be warranted, because the film itself doesn’t take Higgins’ character to task for his actions. Nothing nice: Filmmaker So Yun Um added in her tweet, ‘Damn, can’t us Asians ever have anything nice? Some of my fav white male Directors: PTA, Wes Anderson, Denis Villeneuve all have been making real amazing films lately and then there’s a fake Asian accent or a sneaky Asian character trope.

1. ‘It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,’ Yuen said, though she admitted she hasn’t seen the film yet.
2. She did notice, though, the plot is, ‘not even about Asians or race, and what it does is normalize this violence, this casual anti-Asian racism.’
3. ‘Racist stereotypes like the accent are a cheap way of getting laughs because you don’t need to explain anything — even though there is nothing funny about accents,’ Yuen said.

Irresponsible: ‘It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,’ Yuen said, though she admitted she hasn’t seen the film yet : Licorice Pizza comes under fire for a scene with a fake Asian accent
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Is ‘Licorice Pizza’ anti-Asian racism?

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is being criticized by some on social media for including scenes where a white businessman speaks in a fake Asian accent with his on-screen wife, who is Japanese. The film, which rolled out in limited release over Thanksgiving weekend, is a coming-of-age comedy-drama that stars Alana Haim (of the Haim band) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), two young people growing up in the San Fernando Valley in California in the 1970s.

• It also stars Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and others.
• While the film has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and generated a ton of awards buzz, some have called out a particular part of the film that they describe as racist.
• In the film, a white male restaurateur, played by John Michael Higgins, speaks to his Japanese wife with a fake Asian accent.

He appears again in the film with another Japanese woman, his new wife, and he repeats the attempted gag. In a review from Slate, critic Dana Stevens described the film as a “blast” to watch. But she had one line noting the scene as a miss: “Not every attempt to ground ‘Licorice Pizza’ in a de-nostalgized past bears fruit.

A running gag about a white restaurant owner with a series of interchangeable Japanese wives seems meant as a joke about the character’s racism, but the joke lands gracelessly.” Some people on social media echoed similar sentiments. One TikTok user shared she was so disturbed by the scene she had to “literally leave the theater because it was so deeply upsetting,” advocating for others to not watch the film.

That clip has been garnered more than 250,000 views. And on Twitter, David Chen, host of a podcast called Culturally Relevant, wrote: “Picture this: You’re watching LICORICE PIZZA. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature.

1. The (mostly white) audience laughs.
2. And now you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film.” Karen Maine, a director and screenwriter, shared a similar perspective.
3. There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,” Maine wrote in a tweet,

Chen and Maine did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment. In August, a study of Asian American representation in the entertainment industry found that audiences are asked to laugh at nearly half of Asian and Pacific Islander roles.

The study — which was conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and Gold House — reviewed the top 10 grossing films each year from 2010 to 2019. The analysis showed that while less than a quarter of the API characters were comedic themselves, audiences were asked to laugh at almost half of them.

Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist, said criticism of Higgins’ character appears to be warranted because there is no clear pushback against his character in the film. “It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,” Yuen said. Though she hadn’t seen the film yet at the time of the interview, she noted it’s apparent that the plot is “not even about Asians or race, and what it does is normalize this violence, this casual anti-Asian racism.” “Racist stereotypes like the accent are a cheap way of getting laughs because you don’t need to explain anything — even though there is nothing funny about accents,” Yuen said.

• She explained it was “concerning,” particularly given the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.
• Anti-Asian hate crimes increased more than 73 percent in 2020, according to corrected FBI data released last month.
• That number was a disproportionate uptick compared to hate crimes in general, which rose 13 percent.

“This kind of representation gives permission for others to behave this way towards Asians, and it rehashes this trope of Asians as the perpetual foreigner — a trope that has been part of our society since the 1800s,” Yuen said. Culture writer Jourdain Searles said the Asian jokes in the film “don’t work,” adding that criticism of the racist scene and praise for the movie aren’t mutually exclusive.

1. You can defend the movie while acknowledging that fact,” she tweeted,
2. It does no good to pretend those moments work when they don’t.
3. Sometimes you love a movie and it has something f-ed up in it.
4. That’s normal.
5. Be honest.” Both Maine and Chen said on Twitter they liked the film.
6. But those scenes, for them, overshadowed the beauty of the film itself.

“The whole Haim family and Bradley Cooper were my fave parts,” Maine wrote in a follow-up tweet, “But that pointless, racist scene ruined the whole film for me, and more people need to call PT out on it.” Chen described the film as “otherwise excellent.” “But the heartbreaking thing is me imagining an alternate version of this movie,” he wrote, noting that the scenes mocking the Asian accent “added virtually nothing to it.” A representative for Higgins and Anderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

However, in a November interview with The New York Times, Anderson addressed the criticism. In the conversation, the Times journalist said the accent was “so offensive that my audience actually gasped.” The filmmaker responded: “I think it would be a mistake to tell a period film through the eyes of 2021.

You can’t have a crystal ball, you have to be honest to that time. Not that it wouldn’t happen right now, by the way. My mother-in-law’s Japanese and my father-in-law is white, so seeing people speak English to her with a Japanese accent is something that happens all the time.
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Does Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Licorice Pizza’ include fake Asian accent?

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is being criticized by some on social media for including scenes where a white businessman speaks in a fake Asian accent with his on-screen wife, who is Japanese. The film, which rolled out in limited release over Thanksgiving weekend, is a coming-of-age comedy-drama that stars Alana Haim (of the Haim band) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), two young people growing up in the San Fernando Valley in California in the 1970s.

1. It also stars Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and others.
2. While the film has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and generated a ton of awards buzz, some have called out a particular part of the film that they describe as racist.
3. In the film, a white male restaurateur, played by John Michael Higgins, speaks to his Japanese wife with a fake Asian accent.

He appears again in the film with another Japanese woman, his new wife, and he repeats the attempted gag. In a review from Slate, critic Dana Stevens described the film as a “blast” to watch. But she had one line noting the scene as a miss: “Not every attempt to ground ‘Licorice Pizza’ in a de-nostalgized past bears fruit.

• A running gag about a white restaurant owner with a series of interchangeable Japanese wives seems meant as a joke about the character’s racism, but the joke lands gracelessly.” Some people on social media echoed similar sentiments.
• One TikTok user shared she was so disturbed by the scene she had to “literally leave the theater because it was so deeply upsetting,” advocating for others to not watch the film.

That clip has been garnered more than 250,000 views. And on Twitter, David Chen, host of a podcast called Culturally Relevant, wrote: “Picture this: You’re watching LICORICE PIZZA. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature.

• The (mostly white) audience laughs.
• And now you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film.” Karen Maine, a director and screenwriter, shared a similar perspective.
• There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,” Maine wrote in a tweet,

Chen and Maine did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment. In August, a study of Asian American representation in the entertainment industry found that audiences are asked to laugh at nearly half of Asian and Pacific Islander roles.

1. The study — which was conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and Gold House — reviewed the top 10 grossing films each year from 2010 to 2019.
2. The analysis showed that while less than a quarter of the API characters were comedic themselves, audiences were asked to laugh at almost half of them.

Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist, said criticism of Higgins’ character appears to be warranted because there is no clear pushback against his character in the film. “It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,” Yuen said. Though she hadn’t seen the film yet at the time of the interview, she noted it’s apparent that the plot is “not even about Asians or race, and what it does is normalize this violence, this casual anti-Asian racism.” “Racist stereotypes like the accent are a cheap way of getting laughs because you don’t need to explain anything — even though there is nothing funny about accents,” Yuen said.

1. She explained it was “concerning,” particularly given the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.
2. Anti-Asian hate crimes increased more than 73 percent in 2020, according to corrected FBI data released last month.
3. That number was a disproportionate uptick compared to hate crimes in general, which rose 13 percent.

“This kind of representation gives permission for others to behave this way towards Asians, and it rehashes this trope of Asians as the perpetual foreigner — a trope that has been part of our society since the 1800s,” Yuen said. Culture writer Jourdain Searles said the Asian jokes in the film “don’t work,” adding that criticism of the racist scene and praise for the movie aren’t mutually exclusive.

• You can defend the movie while acknowledging that fact,” she tweeted,
• It does no good to pretend those moments work when they don’t.
• Sometimes you love a movie and it has something f-ed up in it.
• That’s normal.
• Be honest.” Both Maine and Chen said on Twitter they liked the film.
• But those scenes, for them, overshadowed the beauty of the film itself.

“The whole Haim family and Bradley Cooper were my fave parts,” Maine wrote in a follow-up tweet, “But that pointless, racist scene ruined the whole film for me, and more people need to call PT out on it.” Chen described the film as “otherwise excellent.” “But the heartbreaking thing is me imagining an alternate version of this movie,” he wrote, noting that the scenes mocking the Asian accent “added virtually nothing to it.” A representative for Higgins and Anderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

• However, in a November interview with The New York Times, Anderson addressed the criticism.
• In the conversation, the Times journalist said the accent was “so offensive that my audience actually gasped.” The filmmaker responded: “I think it would be a mistake to tell a period film through the eyes of 2021.

You can’t have a crystal ball, you have to be honest to that time. Not that it wouldn’t happen right now, by the way. My mother-in-law’s Japanese and my father-in-law is white, so seeing people speak English to her with a Japanese accent is something that happens all the time.
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How long is ‘Licorice Pizza’?

Licorice Pizza, the 1970s San Fernando Valley-set coming-of-age comedy from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of today’s most respected and versatile auteurs, is already a fixture in this season’s awards race, including landing eight Critics Choice nominations, accolades from critics groups and a best film win from the National Board of Review.

That makes the movie a prime target for rival campaigns looking to seize on two of its perceived points of scandal: the 10-year age gap between central “couple” Alana (Alana Haim) and Gary (Cooper Hoffman), and the inclusion of a white character who repeatedly breaks into an exaggerated caricature of a Japanese accent.

The age gap discourse is inevitably baked into the film’s central premise, but the latter controversy feels like an unforced error. Two scenes, which make up a sliver of Licorice Pizza ‘s 133-minute runtime, have marred many of its otherwise rave reviews (the film has a 92 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and resulted in the watchdog group Media Action Network for Asian Americans decrying any awards recognition for the movie.

• The scenes do not appear to be integral to advancing the plot, as MANAA noted, and serve mostly as “color” to flesh out the film’s hyperspecific, historically inspired setting — as well as to play into the well-worn trope of deploying casual anti-Asian racism in the name of art.
• The scenes in question both involve side character Jerry Frick, the real-life owner of Mikado, the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

Played by John Michael Higgins, Jerry is first introduced with his wife Mioko (Yumi Mizui) in the offices of Gary’s mother Anita (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), a publicist working on promotional copy for the restaurant. After Anita reads the copy, Jerry turns to Mioko and asks for her opinion in a jarring, unnatural accent.

1. Mioko responds sternly in Japanese, which is not subtitled.
2. Later, Jerry appears again when Alana and Gary go to Mikado to ask about placing ads for their waterbed business on the restaurant’s tables.
3. Gary greets the woman standing next to Jerry as Mioko, but Jerry responds, “No, no, no, Mioko’s gone.

This is my new wife, Kimiko.” As before, Jerry uses the same accent to ask his wife for her opinion about the business proposition, and Kimiko (Megumi Anjo) responds in un-subtitled Japanese. But this time, Alana asks for a translation, to which Jerry shrugs: “It’s hard to tell, I don’t speak Japanese.” As tedious and undermining as it is to attempt to explain comedy, it’s clear that Jerry’s final line of dialogue is intended to be the punchline, the payoff for the vignette sketched by the two scenes.

1. It’s slightly less clear who is intended to be the butt of the joke, but there’s no doubt that Jerry remains the most buffoonish presence in the room, so he is certainly a candidate.
2. Jerry’s wives are presented as disapproving straight men, and it’s ambiguous whether they are in on the joke.
3. Yet regardless of whether the audience is laughing with or at Jerry (or, as some viewers have reported, sitting in stunned discomfort), Jerry’s accent is identical to the syntax and tone used to mock and demean Japanese, Chinese and other Asian people across the U.S.

for the past two centuries. The accent is undeniably grotesque, and its mere presence in a film that takes a rose-colored view of the old days is triggering for some viewers. Some Licorice Pizza defenders have interpreted the scenes’ inclusion as “tell it like it was” social critique, and Anderson told The New York Times that his intention was “to be honest to that time,” adding that he has witnessed people speak English to his own Japanese mother-in-law in such a way.

• Regardless of whether one finds the Mikado scenes offensive, they serve as the latest evidence that the portrayal of anti-Asian expression remains a go-to creative device for American auteurs.
• Two awards seasons ago, it was Quentin Tarantino’s usage of Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) as a foolish foil for his fictional hero Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,

Tarantino has since continued to double down on his characterization of the real-life Asian American icon, insisting simultaneously that he was deploying narrative license and that Lee was an egomaniac. Also in 2019, Guy Ritchie’s gangster comedy The Gentlemen lobbed racist barbs at its Asian antagonists (repeatedly referred to as “Chinamen”), the old-fashioned yellow peril excused as part of Ritchie’s signature shock dialogue and true to the movie’s criminal lowlife characters.

• These three films have all incorporated Asian signifiers to serve different means, but what they have in common is a disinterest in exploring the interiority of those characters themselves as well as a blindness to the real-world context of the audience receiving their stories.
• Not much has been written about Frick’s real-life wives.

His first, Yoko, sued him for divorce in 1968, a year after he began dating his future second wife, Hiroko, who also was married at the time. Jerry and Hiroko were wed in 1971 and separated a decade later, after which they spent the next several years tied up in court disputes over division of property and spousal support.

1. A much richer vein of material exists in the public domain about Anderson’s Japanese mother-in-law, whom he referenced when talking about the scenes with the Times,
2. Imiko Kasai is a retired jazz singer who began performing in Tokyo clubs at age 16.
3. Signed to Sony Music Japan in 1972, she moved to the United States in 1978 and has recorded with such jazz legends as Herbie Hancock, Gil Evans and Paulinho Da Costa.

After 30 years, she stopped performing for the simple reason of needing a life change. “In Japan there is a phrase, owari no bigaku, which means ‘beautiful end,'” she said in a 2018 interview. “Quietly, I put a ‘full stop’ to all my musical activities.” The fascinating lives of the two Mrs.
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Does Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Licorice Pizza’ include fake Asian accent?

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is being criticized by some on social media for including scenes where a white businessman speaks in a fake Asian accent with his on-screen wife, who is Japanese. The film, which rolled out in limited release over Thanksgiving weekend, is a coming-of-age comedy-drama that stars Alana Haim (of the Haim band) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), two young people growing up in the San Fernando Valley in California in the 1970s.

It also stars Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and others. While the film has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and generated a ton of awards buzz, some have called out a particular part of the film that they describe as racist. In the film, a white male restaurateur, played by John Michael Higgins, speaks to his Japanese wife with a fake Asian accent.

He appears again in the film with another Japanese woman, his new wife, and he repeats the attempted gag. In a review from Slate, critic Dana Stevens described the film as a “blast” to watch. But she had one line noting the scene as a miss: “Not every attempt to ground ‘Licorice Pizza’ in a de-nostalgized past bears fruit.

• A running gag about a white restaurant owner with a series of interchangeable Japanese wives seems meant as a joke about the character’s racism, but the joke lands gracelessly.” Some people on social media echoed similar sentiments.
• One TikTok user shared she was so disturbed by the scene she had to “literally leave the theater because it was so deeply upsetting,” advocating for others to not watch the film.

That clip has been garnered more than 250,000 views. And on Twitter, David Chen, host of a podcast called Culturally Relevant, wrote: “Picture this: You’re watching LICORICE PIZZA. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature.

• The (mostly white) audience laughs.
• And now you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film.” Karen Maine, a director and screenwriter, shared a similar perspective.
• There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,” Maine wrote in a tweet,

Chen and Maine did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment. In August, a study of Asian American representation in the entertainment industry found that audiences are asked to laugh at nearly half of Asian and Pacific Islander roles.

The study — which was conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and Gold House — reviewed the top 10 grossing films each year from 2010 to 2019. The analysis showed that while less than a quarter of the API characters were comedic themselves, audiences were asked to laugh at almost half of them.

Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist, said criticism of Higgins’ character appears to be warranted because there is no clear pushback against his character in the film. “It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,” Yuen said. Though she hadn’t seen the film yet at the time of the interview, she noted it’s apparent that the plot is “not even about Asians or race, and what it does is normalize this violence, this casual anti-Asian racism.” “Racist stereotypes like the accent are a cheap way of getting laughs because you don’t need to explain anything — even though there is nothing funny about accents,” Yuen said.

She explained it was “concerning,” particularly given the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. Anti-Asian hate crimes increased more than 73 percent in 2020, according to corrected FBI data released last month. That number was a disproportionate uptick compared to hate crimes in general, which rose 13 percent.

“This kind of representation gives permission for others to behave this way towards Asians, and it rehashes this trope of Asians as the perpetual foreigner — a trope that has been part of our society since the 1800s,” Yuen said. Culture writer Jourdain Searles said the Asian jokes in the film “don’t work,” adding that criticism of the racist scene and praise for the movie aren’t mutually exclusive.

“you can defend the movie while acknowledging that fact,” she tweeted, “it does no good to pretend those moments work when they don’t. sometimes you love a movie and it has something f-ed up in it. that’s normal. be honest.” Both Maine and Chen said on Twitter they liked the film. But those scenes, for them, overshadowed the beauty of the film itself.

“The whole Haim family and Bradley Cooper were my fave parts,” Maine wrote in a follow-up tweet, “But that pointless, racist scene ruined the whole film for me, and more people need to call PT out on it.” Chen described the film as “otherwise excellent.” “But the heartbreaking thing is me imagining an alternate version of this movie,” he wrote, noting that the scenes mocking the Asian accent “added virtually nothing to it.” A representative for Higgins and Anderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

However, in a November interview with The New York Times, Anderson addressed the criticism. In the conversation, the Times journalist said the accent was “so offensive that my audience actually gasped.” The filmmaker responded: “I think it would be a mistake to tell a period film through the eyes of 2021.

You can’t have a crystal ball, you have to be honest to that time. Not that it wouldn’t happen right now, by the way. My mother-in-law’s Japanese and my father-in-law is white, so seeing people speak English to her with a Japanese accent is something that happens all the time.
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Does Licorice Pizza have a racist accent?

Licorice Pizza, a coming of age comedy set in 1970s Los Angeles, has been criticized for including controversial scenes in which a white character uses a racist accent to imitate his Japanese wife. Critics and audiences have debated whether the scenes simply depict a racist character, or whether they are racist as a whole since the film was released in November 2021.

But the issue resurfaced in March 2022, after director Paul Thomas Anderson won both a BAFTA and a Critics Choice Award for the film, when a clip showing the scenes went viral on Twitter, The clip shows two scenes from Licorice Pizza, which centers on high school freshman Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and his magnetic, mostly platonic friendship with wayward 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim).

With its colorful clothes and dreamy soundtrack, the movie captures the vibe of the ‘70s —and also incorporates the era’s politics, which includes an abundance of misogyny, racism, and homophobia. For example, in the universe of Licorice Pizza, no one thinks it very strange for a grown adult and a young teen to be hanging out together (another plot choice that has prompted debate in the discussion over the film).
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Did Licorice Pizza turn a buffoonish character into an Asian caricature?

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is being criticized by some on social media for including scenes where a white businessman speaks in a fake Asian accent with his on-screen wife, who is Japanese. The film, which rolled out in limited release over Thanksgiving weekend, is a coming-of-age comedy-drama that stars Alana Haim (of the Haim band) and Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), two young people growing up in the San Fernando Valley in California in the 1970s.

It also stars Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits and others. While the film has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and generated a ton of awards buzz, some have called out a particular part of the film that they describe as racist. In the film, a white male restaurateur, played by John Michael Higgins, speaks to his Japanese wife with a fake Asian accent.

He appears again in the film with another Japanese woman, his new wife, and he repeats the attempted gag. In a review from Slate, critic Dana Stevens described the film as a “blast” to watch. But she had one line noting the scene as a miss: “Not every attempt to ground ‘Licorice Pizza’ in a de-nostalgized past bears fruit.

A running gag about a white restaurant owner with a series of interchangeable Japanese wives seems meant as a joke about the character’s racism, but the joke lands gracelessly.” Some people on social media echoed similar sentiments. One TikTok user shared she was so disturbed by the scene she had to “literally leave the theater because it was so deeply upsetting,” advocating for others to not watch the film.

That clip has been garnered more than 250,000 views. And on Twitter, David Chen, host of a podcast called Culturally Relevant, wrote: “Picture this: You’re watching LICORICE PIZZA. It’s brilliant. Then, early on, a buffoonish character drops an Asian caricature.

The (mostly white) audience laughs. And now you gotta think about that laughter the rest of the film.” Karen Maine, a director and screenwriter, shared a similar perspective. “There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,” Maine wrote in a tweet,

Chen and Maine did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment. In August, a study of Asian American representation in the entertainment industry found that audiences are asked to laugh at nearly half of Asian and Pacific Islander roles.

The study — which was conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and Gold House — reviewed the top 10 grossing films each year from 2010 to 2019. The analysis showed that while less than a quarter of the API characters were comedic themselves, audiences were asked to laugh at almost half of them.

Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist, said criticism of Higgins’ character appears to be warranted because there is no clear pushback against his character in the film. “It’s irresponsible to use racism against Asians as a running gag,” Yuen said. Though she hadn’t seen the film yet at the time of the interview, she noted it’s apparent that the plot is “not even about Asians or race, and what it does is normalize this violence, this casual anti-Asian racism.” “Racist stereotypes like the accent are a cheap way of getting laughs because you don’t need to explain anything — even though there is nothing funny about accents,” Yuen said.

She explained it was “concerning,” particularly given the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. Anti-Asian hate crimes increased more than 73 percent in 2020, according to corrected FBI data released last month. That number was a disproportionate uptick compared to hate crimes in general, which rose 13 percent.

“This kind of representation gives permission for others to behave this way towards Asians, and it rehashes this trope of Asians as the perpetual foreigner — a trope that has been part of our society since the 1800s,” Yuen said. Culture writer Jourdain Searles said the Asian jokes in the film “don’t work,” adding that criticism of the racist scene and praise for the movie aren’t mutually exclusive.

“you can defend the movie while acknowledging that fact,” she tweeted, “it does no good to pretend those moments work when they don’t. sometimes you love a movie and it has something f-ed up in it. that’s normal. be honest.” Both Maine and Chen said on Twitter they liked the film. But those scenes, for them, overshadowed the beauty of the film itself.

“The whole Haim family and Bradley Cooper were my fave parts,” Maine wrote in a follow-up tweet, “But that pointless, racist scene ruined the whole film for me, and more people need to call PT out on it.” Chen described the film as “otherwise excellent.” “But the heartbreaking thing is me imagining an alternate version of this movie,” he wrote, noting that the scenes mocking the Asian accent “added virtually nothing to it.” A representative for Higgins and Anderson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

• However, in a November interview with The New York Times, Anderson addressed the criticism.
• In the conversation, the Times journalist said the accent was “so offensive that my audience actually gasped.” The filmmaker responded: “I think it would be a mistake to tell a period film through the eyes of 2021.

You can’t have a crystal ball, you have to be honest to that time. Not that it wouldn’t happen right now, by the way. My mother-in-law’s Japanese and my father-in-law is white, so seeing people speak English to her with a Japanese accent is something that happens all the time.
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Is Licorice Pizza a good movie?

Licorice Pizza, the 1970s San Fernando Valley-set coming-of-age comedy from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of today’s most respected and versatile auteurs, is already a fixture in this season’s awards race, including landing eight Critics Choice nominations, accolades from critics groups and a best film win from the National Board of Review.

That makes the movie a prime target for rival campaigns looking to seize on two of its perceived points of scandal: the 10-year age gap between central “couple” Alana (Alana Haim) and Gary (Cooper Hoffman), and the inclusion of a white character who repeatedly breaks into an exaggerated caricature of a Japanese accent.

The age gap discourse is inevitably baked into the film’s central premise, but the latter controversy feels like an unforced error. Two scenes, which make up a sliver of Licorice Pizza ‘s 133-minute runtime, have marred many of its otherwise rave reviews (the film has a 92 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and resulted in the watchdog group Media Action Network for Asian Americans decrying any awards recognition for the movie.

1. The scenes do not appear to be integral to advancing the plot, as MANAA noted, and serve mostly as “color” to flesh out the film’s hyperspecific, historically inspired setting — as well as to play into the well-worn trope of deploying casual anti-Asian racism in the name of art.
2. The scenes in question both involve side character Jerry Frick, the real-life owner of Mikado, the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

Played by John Michael Higgins, Jerry is first introduced with his wife Mioko (Yumi Mizui) in the offices of Gary’s mother Anita (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), a publicist working on promotional copy for the restaurant. After Anita reads the copy, Jerry turns to Mioko and asks for her opinion in a jarring, unnatural accent.

1. Mioko responds sternly in Japanese, which is not subtitled.
2. Later, Jerry appears again when Alana and Gary go to Mikado to ask about placing ads for their waterbed business on the restaurant’s tables.
3. Gary greets the woman standing next to Jerry as Mioko, but Jerry responds, “No, no, no, Mioko’s gone.

This is my new wife, Kimiko.” As before, Jerry uses the same accent to ask his wife for her opinion about the business proposition, and Kimiko (Megumi Anjo) responds in un-subtitled Japanese. But this time, Alana asks for a translation, to which Jerry shrugs: “It’s hard to tell, I don’t speak Japanese.” As tedious and undermining as it is to attempt to explain comedy, it’s clear that Jerry’s final line of dialogue is intended to be the punchline, the payoff for the vignette sketched by the two scenes.

It’s slightly less clear who is intended to be the butt of the joke, but there’s no doubt that Jerry remains the most buffoonish presence in the room, so he is certainly a candidate. Jerry’s wives are presented as disapproving straight men, and it’s ambiguous whether they are in on the joke. Yet regardless of whether the audience is laughing with or at Jerry (or, as some viewers have reported, sitting in stunned discomfort), Jerry’s accent is identical to the syntax and tone used to mock and demean Japanese, Chinese and other Asian people across the U.S.

for the past two centuries. The accent is undeniably grotesque, and its mere presence in a film that takes a rose-colored view of the old days is triggering for some viewers. Some Licorice Pizza defenders have interpreted the scenes’ inclusion as “tell it like it was” social critique, and Anderson told The New York Times that his intention was “to be honest to that time,” adding that he has witnessed people speak English to his own Japanese mother-in-law in such a way.

• Regardless of whether one finds the Mikado scenes offensive, they serve as the latest evidence that the portrayal of anti-Asian expression remains a go-to creative device for American auteurs.
• Two awards seasons ago, it was Quentin Tarantino’s usage of Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) as a foolish foil for his fictional hero Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,

Tarantino has since continued to double down on his characterization of the real-life Asian American icon, insisting simultaneously that he was deploying narrative license and that Lee was an egomaniac. Also in 2019, Guy Ritchie’s gangster comedy The Gentlemen lobbed racist barbs at its Asian antagonists (repeatedly referred to as “Chinamen”), the old-fashioned yellow peril excused as part of Ritchie’s signature shock dialogue and true to the movie’s criminal lowlife characters.

These three films have all incorporated Asian signifiers to serve different means, but what they have in common is a disinterest in exploring the interiority of those characters themselves as well as a blindness to the real-world context of the audience receiving their stories. Not much has been written about Frick’s real-life wives.

His first, Yoko, sued him for divorce in 1968, a year after he began dating his future second wife, Hiroko, who also was married at the time. Jerry and Hiroko were wed in 1971 and separated a decade later, after which they spent the next several years tied up in court disputes over division of property and spousal support.

A much richer vein of material exists in the public domain about Anderson’s Japanese mother-in-law, whom he referenced when talking about the scenes with the Times, Kimiko Kasai is a retired jazz singer who began performing in Tokyo clubs at age 16. Signed to Sony Music Japan in 1972, she moved to the United States in 1978 and has recorded with such jazz legends as Herbie Hancock, Gil Evans and Paulinho Da Costa.

After 30 years, she stopped performing for the simple reason of needing a life change. “In Japan there is a phrase, owari no bigaku, which means ‘beautiful end,'” she said in a 2018 interview. “Quietly, I put a ‘full stop’ to all my musical activities.” The fascinating lives of the two Mrs.
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