George Takei obligingly rips Marvel Studios a new one for forging yet another link in the infinite chain of Hollywood hypocrisy by turning “the Ancient One,” a character in the upcoming “Dr. Strange” film, from an Asian to a Celt so that he/she can be played by non-Asian Tilda Swinton without subjecting the studio to accusations of racism. Somehow, people noticed that changing a character from Asian to non-Asian was just as racist as casting a non-Asian as an Asian. Very sneaky, those Asians!
Afterwords
Way back in 1957, which is way back indeed, Stan Freberg had the last “coast-to-coast” network radio show, which featured a parody of radio westerns, “Bang Gunleigh, U.S. Marshall Fields”,1 which is maybe funny if you’re even older than I am, which you’re probably not. Bang had a sidekick, “Pedro”, who did nothing but speak in a ridiculously cheesy “Mexican” accent. Despite the accent, his nationality was identified as “Swiss”—“That way, we don’t offend anybody,” he would explain. Somewhere, I hope, Stan Freberg is laughing.
-
There was once a famous department store in Chicago called Marshall Field’s. The heirs and owners of the store were successively named Marshall Field and were often famous in their own right. ↩︎
