NPR’s “All Things Considered” has been doing a series called ‘In Character’, which chooses an iconic character and examines that character’s influence on American culture. The series opened with a discussion of the Lone Ranger and has since covered Captain Ahab, Elmer Gantry, Blanche DuBois, and Walter Mitty, among others. Yesterday, to this distinguished company was added . . . drumroll, please . . . Long Duk Dong.
I was certain I had heard wrong. Long Duk Dong, aka The Donger? From “Sixteen Candles”? Huh? Yes, Dong was an amusing and memorable character, but he was a distant second to The Geek, the underdeveloped man-child freshman who was in a determined and hopeless pursuit of Molly Ringwald. The Geek exemplified the well-meaning hormonal loser whose obliviousness was second only to his romantic ambitions. Indeed, the role of The Geek was only reason that Anthony Michael Hall wasn’t euthanized after “The Breakfast Club”.
So why Long Duk Dong?
The show quickly cleared up my confusion. The Geek resonated for me for precisely the reasons that Long Duk Dong did not: because I was white. Well, still am, but you get my drift. For Asian-American guys of a certain generation, however, ‘The Donger’ quickly became the derogatory nickname of choice. Long Duk Dong was and still is widely decried by the Asian-American community as one of the most shameful stereotypes that Hollywood has given us.
Long Duk Dong enters the movie as a foreign exchange student who lives with Molly Ringwald’s grandparents and is treated by them as a houseboy. His hair is combed into an unflattering “butt cut” (parted down the middle), he is obsequiously polite, his English is workable but unpolished, and his manner of clothing later prompts the police to ask (in polite seriousness) if he’s retarded. Later, he gets so shit-faced that he grabs a guy’s crotch, drunkenly mistaking the guy for his new girlfriend.
Yes, it’s funny. It’s also enough to make any Asian-American guy want to cringe and crawl under his seat. I can see why they feel that way.
But.
I don’t entirely agree. Maybe because I’m white, probably because I’m an asshole, I don’t think Long Duk Dong is a shameful stereotype. Embarrassing and cringe-inducing, perhaps, but not shameful. Dong was a dork . . . so to speak . . . just like most of the guys in the movie. Unlike most of the guys in the movie, though, it wasn’t his fault. When he lamely attempts American slang, he doesn’t sound any worse than Americans who try the same in a foreign country. He was obsequiously polite because he was in a foreign land as the guest of foreign people, and any decent guy is going to be as nice as he can until he figures out where the boundaries are. His host family was a pair of old, self-satisfied exploitative jerks, who were directly responsible for his embarrassing hairstyle and manner of dress.
So Dong was a dork only because he was foreign. No other dork in the movie has that excuse. Indeed, no other dork in the movie has any excuse other than being excruciatingly dorky. The two trekkies on the bus with phasers in hand and jock straps on their heads . . . they were 100% American, and they were pathetic in any language, any culture, any country.
So Long Duk Dong gets drunk and makes an ass of himself. So what? Everyone else in the movie does the same, and some don’t even get drunk when they do. And, frankly, the Donger comes off better than any of the rest. He has the time of his life, he totally scores with a chick that he’s only just met, and he trashes the automobile of the old, self-satisfied jerk host family, and he comes out of it with nothing worse than a hangover and a black eye.
You want a shameful stereotype? Try the upstairs neighbor in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, who was a walking caricature in the movie: a white actor in heavy makeup with a comical accent, coke-bottle glasses, a massive overbite, and a drooling need to take naked pictures of Holly Golightly. That was truly shameful. Long Duk Dong, on the other hand, was just another dorky kid who was out of place in a movie about dorky kids being out of place.
Which is to say, just another kid in high school.
