I thought the character was so stereotypical and I'm not Asian.
-
adresher-1 — 9 years ago(June 17, 2016 07:00 AM)
You are correct about the industry changing, I personally will be retiring from the industry soon. A new opportunity has arisen which I jumped on and will be using the money I have made from my career to invest.
I have mentored many of the interns and helped many land jobs. I have told them that trading desks are dying and many desks will be gone in 5-10 years, if not sooner. I encouraged them all to look for jobs in private wealth, asset management, accounting and to think long term. Meaning take a job that you do not like for a few years that will open doors.
Point you are missing is that an internship at our firm opens doors. I was able to help one land a job as an analyst at big pension. Another one I helped land a job at top private wealth management firm. Both of those position have huge upside and they have the potential to make seven figures some day. I have called in favors from the contacts and relationships I have and helped them land numerous interviews for the interns we have had over the years. Ironically one of the interns who left hear after a few days called us up and asked for a job recommendation and needed us to confirm he worked here. I do not believe HR complied with his request.
The issue(s) with millennials is they never want to take any job which is not to their precious little snow flake ideals. If you cannot handle a summer internship at our firm which requires you to make tons of calls, crunch numbers, get us lunch, etc. because it is not your idea of "fun" or because you are not working on some big "cause" you are not going to make it in the work force. You are going to end up doing so kumbaya type job living in your parent's basement or asking them for money for rent every month. -
melinda2001 — 9 years ago(June 17, 2016 03:24 PM)
So you justify being a slave driver by the training it provides so people can please other slave drivers, and you wonder that the slaves hope for something else? It's normal for youth to have passions for things that the older population feels is superfluous or pipe-dreams, and it's good for them to follow those passions even though most will certainly fail. That's because they are young enough to start over several times while the older population can't afford such risk. The kids are the ones who make all the technical and cultural breakthroughs, and their failures are important learning opportunities.
Yes, a raising number of young adults are living with their parents or moving back in with them, but that's not because they're doing something wrong. They're doing that because of the crushing costs of college tuitions and the Great Recession caused by multiple financial crises created by people like you who used their wealth to lobby congress to deregulate Wall Street so they could shift their risks onto the taxpayers. Well thanks for nothing. The kids are alright and are being burdened with taking care of us even though we clearly don't deserve it. -
adresher-1 — 9 years ago(June 20, 2016 06:56 AM)
NOPE! I would hardly call having interns getting you lunch, making calls and crunching numbers slave driving. It is the same thing they would would be doing your first year at any firm. Those who thought they were too good to do those simple things are going to be in for a very rude awakening if they ever land a job.
As for college debt, my generation had college debts too. Difference is we worked hard and paid it off. Nobody cried that it was unfair and that society should pay for their student loans. A friend of mine who graduated with over $100k in student debt said "yeah, I should have gone to a state school instead." He never once cried "it's so unfair!" He got a job and paid them off.
Millennials were protesting outside our building years back as part of the "occupy" crowd crying that they want to play guitar, make paintings, put on puppet shows (my personal favorite) and they want society to first pay off their student loans and then give them a salary so they pursue this pipe dream. If you want to be a musician, artist or puppeteer go for it. Just know the odds are heavily stacked against you and that society does not owe you anything. If you want to be an artist, make art and sell it. -
melinda2001 — 9 years ago(June 20, 2016 05:02 PM)
They are interns? That makes it even worse. You're supposed to make it easy for them. They're there to get some first-hand visibility into fields of interest. They're definitely not there to fetch your lunch.
College debt today is nothing like it was in our day. I found it easy to pay off my debt because tuition and related costs were much lower than today and grants were more available.
The millennials know what the risks are for their careers of interest. They even seem to know better than we did because they are saving at rates much higher than we did, probably because they watched us as cautionary examples and don't want to end up in the same position. -
cocobuttr72-311-53542 — 9 years ago(July 17, 2016 07:01 AM)
I was offended and I'm not a millenial, but I'm African American. There was subtle waspy racism throughout the film from her bff's almost epileptic seizure when she assumed Samantha wanted to do it to a big, black guy to the brother's flippant remark to the mom about boiling the sheets after the China man leaves.
The humor in this movie reminds me of the racist back-handed joking whites used around mixed company to see how far they can go or when they get too familiar with you. -
theoffice11 — 9 years ago(September 05, 2016 09:49 AM)
I'm Asian and it's an offensive portrayal. It was offensive back then but Asians tend not to speak up as much and when we do, people tend to discount it. And these portrayals do affect people cause you have stupid kids and ignorant people repeating these sorts of things to make fun of any Asian person they come across.
-
drfunk-18075 — 9 years ago(December 20, 2016 02:54 PM)
Interesting as my wife is Asian and this is one of her favorite movies. Just because they portray one ethnic character in a certain way does not mean they believe every member of said race or ethnicity act that way.
-
Thomasina — 9 years ago(September 15, 2016 04:56 PM)
Nobody period was offended with it when it came out
That is nonsense. Maybe nobody WHITE was offended then, but that generation of Asian-Americans were horrified and tormented by this movie. Here are some articles about this:
Mr. ERIC NAKAMURA (Publisher and Editor, Giant Robot Magazine): Every single Asian dude who went to high school or junior high during the era of John Hughes movies was called Donger.
MacADAM: That's Eric Nakamura. He and Martin Wong co-founded the magazine Giant Robot, which covers Asian and Asian American pop culture.
Mr. NAKAMURA: I mean, if you're being called Long Duk Dong, you're comic relief amongst a sea of people unlike you. And you're also being portrayed as a non-Asian American person. You're being portrayed as a guy who just came off a boat and who's out of control. It's like every bad stereotype possible loaded into one character.
Just the gong that, you know, appears behind them magically every time he's on the screen, gong, you know, that's awful.
Mr. NAKAMURA: I mean, I feel bad for the guy in the end because he's had to live with the fact that all these Asian American men hate him.
Mr. MARTIN WONG (Co-founder, Giant Robot Magazine): Yeah. It's baggage for him, just like it's baggage for us.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88591800
Played by Gedde Watanabe, the Donger, as hes referred to in Sixteen Candles, is a cultural boogeyman to many Asian Americans, especially those who came of age in the 1980s. Jeff Yang, a Wall Street Journal columnist whose son Hudson plays the shows young protagonist, Eddie, has written that hed long hoped for an antidote to a decade of Long Duk Dongs, of Hollywood images that marginalize us, make us comic relief and cannon fodder for heroes of another color.
Melvin Mar, an executive producer of Fresh Off the Boat, says his personal experience with Long Duk Dong was a lot darker than the one portrayed in the show. He grew up in a Los Angeles suburb as the only Asian kid in a predominately Latino school, and recalls being held upside down by bullies replicating the characters debut scene, where he greets Molly Ringwalds character from the top of a bunk bed.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/11/04/fresh-off-the-boat-tackles-a-1980s-asian-caricature-long-duk-dong/
If you grew up Asian American in the 80s, you can't help but be somewhat scarred by the racist portrait of Long Duk Dong.
http://mixedraceamerica.blogspot.com/2009/08/remembering-john-hughes.html
AsianWeek columnist Phil Chung wrote in 2005:
But if youre Asian, and especially if youre Asian and male, Sixteen Candles may well be the movie that made your childhood a living hell.
For those not familiar with the film, I give you the three words that traumatized a whole generation of Asian American men: Long Duk Dong.
http://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2007/8/16/sixteen-candles-offensive-or-over-it
"Asian Americans who grew up in the second half of the 1980s complained that they were called 'Donkers' in junior and high schools," Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a researcher at Georgetown University, wrote in the book Theological Reflections on 'Gangnam Style.' "They were taunted with quotes of Dong's stilted English lines, such as 'Oh, sexy girlfriend.' "
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/06/384307677/whats-so-cringe-worthy-about-long-duk-dong-in-sixteen-candles
Why I Don't Go to the Movies
I was a teenager in the 1980s, and like most teenagers growing up in predominantly-white suburbs at that time, I watched a lot of John Hughes movies. The one that had the greatest impact on me was Sixteen Candles, which cast Gedde Watanabe as an Asian foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong. If you don't know the movie, Long Duk Dong was basically a yellow Sambo, yukking it up for mostly white teenage audiences with his FOB highwaters, malapropisms, and pathetic lust for white women. He was the nadir of high school loserdom against whom Samantha (Molly Ringwald's character) measured her self-worth. In Jeff Adachi's excellent documentary on Asian male roles in Hollywood, The Slanted Screen, Korean American comedian Bobby Lee speaks the sad truth about the character:
"My nickname was 'Long Duk Dong' in high school because of that character, and I think every Asian guy that ever went to an American school's nickname was Long Duk Dong because of that character. That means that you're not going to get any girls."
http://professorshih.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-don-go-to-movies.html -
Thomasina — 9 years ago(September 19, 2016 09:53 AM)
Just last night:
"Theres 17 million Asian Americans in this country, and 17 million Italian Americans. They have
The Godfather
,
Goodfellas
,
Rocky
, and
The Sopranos
. Weve got Long Duk Dong. So we have a long way to go. But I know we can get there, I believe in us, its just gonna take a lot of hard work."
Alan Yang, accepting his Emmy for cowriting an episode of
Master of None
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/09/18/alan_yang_aziz_ansari_win_emmys_for_master_of_none_encourage_more_asian.html