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The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming! (Only It’s Not How You Think)
Holy shit, the Chinese are coming. But it’s not how you think. They’re not coming to take over a depressed, podunk American town and fight an insurgency of armed high school jocks. They’re not coming to buy up all of our real estate, convert the dollar to renminbi, or force us all to speak Mandarin (I mean, hello? This is America, where most people only speak American, so good luck with that). They are coming to America in record numbers as tourists, but that’s only a temporary phenomenon and, quite frankly, we could use the dough.
According to Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, the Chinese are coming…to take over the Internet. In a talk given at last week’s Gartner Symposium, Schmidt predicted that the internet in 5 years would be dominated by Chinese-language content.
For those who are “extremely terrified of Chinese people” and can only speak American, take heart. The scarier news that Schmidt delivered?
Today’s teenagers are the model for how the web will work in five years. You know, the same teenagers who we always hear are getting dumber. Schmidt’s exact words:
Talk to a teenager about the way they consume information, and remember that five or ten years from now, that’s your employee. It’s a little frightening, by the way.
A little frightening?!
Building my bunker now…
[ReadWriteWeb: Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years]
Filed under: Google, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, I Am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People, Predictions, Red Dawn, Teenagers, Teenagers Getting Dumber, The Chinese Are Coming, The Internet in Five Years, We're Taking Over Everything, Yellow Peril
Looks Like A Xenophobic Hot Mess: Scenes From The Red Dawn Remake
I found these photos from the Pontiac, MI set of the new Red Dawn movie over at reddawn2010.com, a site entirely devoted to the remake:
“Be Disturbed At Not Understanding“? Oh, believe me, I am.
Remember when I wondered if there was any way to remake Red Dawn with Chinese invaders without the movie being totally racist? The following set-photos–which have the feel of a wild, whiskey-soaked, Joe McCarthy wet dream–would suggest the answer is “no.”
Although I did find this amusing:
Yes, those “Obscene…Weapon(s) of Mass Distraction” appear to be donuts.
EVIL CHINAMAN ALSO FUNNY HA HA!!!
Filed under: China, Communism, Evil Chinamen, Fear of a Yellow Planet, I Am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People, Red Dawn Remake, The Chinese Are Coming, Xenophobia
The Red Dawn Remake: Good News! (Not Really)
More Red Dawn remake news:
We’ve learned via Angry Asian Man that 1) the updated story, where a small midwestern American town is invaded (this time) by the Chinese, is xenophobic, as feared, but 2) all of this is made up for by the presence in the script of a certain Erica Yu, “17 year-old knockout Asian-American captain of the cheerleading squad,” who becomes a member of the Wolverines resistance.
Or is it?
Because as of this week, that character–who was “Erica Mason” in the original and played by Lea Thompson–has already been cast, according to Entertainment Weekly, and the Australian actress playing her, Isabel Lucas, is decidedly not Asian.
Then again, EW’s description of what happens to Erica in the movie–“(a)fter the invasion she is incarcerated in an internment camp” (did someone say internment?!)–well, that makes her sound Asian at least.
Maybe they can slap some yellow face paint and chinky eye-makeup on the girl to complete the picture.
Sigh.
Meanwhile, check out actor Roger Fan’s post about his refusal to play all of the Chinese villain parts at the studio table-read of the remake script over at the delightfully-named, You Offend Me You Offend My Family.
[AAM: Chinese Invaders! First Look at the Red Dawn Remake Script]
[Latino Review: Exclusive: First Look At the Red Dawn Reboot!]
Filed under: Chinysteria, Hollywood Whitewashing, I Am Extremely Terrified of Chinese People, Red Dawn Remake, Roger Fan, The Chinese Are Coming
The Red Dawn Remake: The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming!
Red Dawn was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It starred my girlhood crush, C. Thomas Howell. It was released in 1984, a year after The Outsiders, and it reunited three of that movie’s cast members: Howell, Patrick Swayze, and Darren Dalton. Red Dawn was, in fact, a lot like The Outsiders, only this time, the kids were armed with machine guns and RPG’s instead of knives and chains, and they were fighting a much bigger enemy than the Socs.
It was also a movie about America being invaded by the Soviets (and the Cubans), and group of all-American teens who become freedom fighters in the resistance against them. If you watch it now, the story seems much more about the mujahideen in 1980’s Afghanistan than it does about America. But it seemed so plausible at the time–to me, especially, as a child–that we could be invaded by the Soviet Union, because we were still firmly in the grips of the Cold War, and Russia was our enemy.
A Red Dawn remake is in the works, scheduled to begin production in September. Most of the principal cast has been confirmed, the latest addition being Connor Cruise, 14 year-old son of Tom Cruise. Remakes are generally never as good as their originals, but what really worries me about the Red Dawn remake is that the foreign invaders this go-around are apparently going to be…Chinese.
This isn’t entirely surprising, given how much cultural anxiety people feel these days about China taking over everything. Shoot, I even wrote a post two years ago during all of that China toy-recall hysteria and gave it this label: “I Smell a Remake of Red Dawn Only This Time the Invaders Have Slanty-Eyes.”
But this is 2009 and not 1984. Everybody knows that if the Chinese are going to take over America, they’re not going to do it by military force–they’re going to do it by buying up all of our real estate! Which, I suppose, is less exciting cinematically than guerrilla warfare. But I do wonder how the filmmakers are going to pull this off, if there’s any way to do Red Dawn with a Chinese enemy without it being totally racist?
All I can say is we’ll be keeping an eye on this remake. One very skeptical slanty-eye.
Filed under: C. Thomas Howell, Chinysteria, Cold Wars, I Smell a Remake of Red Dawn Only This Time the Invaders Have Slanty-Eyes, Patrick Swayze, Red Dawn, Red Dawn Remake, The Chinese Are Coming
