LOS ANGELES, May 30 — Korean-American rapper Dumbfoundead released a music video last week that challenges the purported “whitewashing” that’s going on in Hollywood at the moment.
In the video for Safe, Dumbfoundead is superimposed as the male lead in films and shows including Pirates of the Caribbean and Game of Thrones to critique the lack of Asian-American representation in Hollywood.
It also specifically references the Academy Awards (“The other night I watched the Oscars / And the roster of the only yellow men were all statues”).
Dumbfoundead, whose real name is Jonathan Park told NBC News that he wrote the song shortly after February’s Academy Awards, where host Chris Rock came under fire for using three Asian-American children onstage as part of a joke.
“The title Safe is a reference to how I felt Asians and Asian-Americans were being perceived: the model minority that’ll take it and smile, the punching bag of America,” he said.
He added, “I wanted to flip the script on the conversation everybody was having about the whitewashing of Hollywood and ‘yellow-wash’ some of the most iconic films starring white male leads.”
The issue of Asian actors being sidelined for lead roles has been a hot-button topic recently, after a series of questionable casting choices.
These included Emma Stone portraying Allison Ng, a character of Hawaiian and Asian heritage in Aloha, Scarlett Johansson being chosen for the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell and Tilda Swinton playing a Tibetan character called Ancient One in Doctor Strange.
