#sorry i promised myself not to rant but i did
I just watched the 8 episodes of Leverage: Redemption, and though I love the crew, I was not especially thrilled to learn that as an Asian American I can be a new money casino mogul, a sycophantic programmer who is willing to sell out nerd-dom for his high school jock friend to like him, or a socially awkward programmer with no sense of the dangers of privacy invasions. Woo hoo so many options to choose from!
You know what I would have liked? To have Harry Wilson be Asian American. Someone who worked his way up the corporate ladder, sticking to traditional definitions of success, never wanting to cause a ruckus because his parents said that’s the way to succeed in America, and then one day all of his crimes were too much and he decides to steal a Rembrandt. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? An Asian American character who gets to have his own character arc and moral complexity.
@dayspring-askanison That’s true! I didn’t know those were the people that Leverage was specifically referencing. Thank you for pointing that out!
That said,
(a) I don’t deny that there are bad guy Asian Americans out there, and honestly, I’m fine with there being Asian villains in Leverage … but I feel like it needs to be balanced out with some positive Asian roles, yanno? This is why I feel like not having Harry Wilson be Asian is kind of a missed opportunity
and
(b) I don’t know that much about how Bobby Jindal and Hoan Ton-That are in real life, but did their Leverage versions need to be such caricatures? Yes, I know that nuance isn’t what Leverage is known for, but … Parker, playing the role of a southern belle, telling Bobby-Jindal-equivalent that his immigrant money isn’t going to cut it? It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. The Casino guy was like “you guys have all your inherited money, I earned mine by working hard” and I was like “what a great moment to both accept that the immigrant experience is distinct but also point to the systemic privileges that one gets as a model minority, with a side of “stealing other people’s homes isn’t ‘working hard’”. But instead he just gets told that his money isn’t enough.
I want to pause for a moment and briefly imagine whether those characters would have been written differently if they weren’t Asian. Would the silicon valley tech guy have had a clearer understanding of the dangers of his own algorithms and been more clearly intentional? Would he have, instead of yelling at the barista, done some social media thing to tank the coffeeshop’s ratings? Would he have been more of a Chaos/Wil Wheaton kind of tech guy instead? Would the casino guy have had a more equal partnership with the Russian mob? Would the interaction with Parker-as-Southern-Belle been as much about new immigrant money vs old entrenched money, or would it have been the standard “hey new guy stop honing in on my territory” talk? I kept expecting Breanna to convince the nerdy algorithms guy to turn on his jock friend in the card game episode – I feel like a standard Leverage episode would have played it that way. Or maybe everything would have stayed the same – I’m not sure.
And I hate that I’m not sure, because that’s been my personal experience in a nutshell – did I not get x thing at job because I’m Asian, or is it because I didn’t work hard enough or didn’t know the right words to say? Why is it that my white colleagues are given more responsibilities and more opportunities – is it that I don’t advocate for myself enough, or is it that people write me off before I even get a chance to advocate for myself?
Anyway, the tldr is: yes, you’re right, but also – an Asian Harry Wilson would have been nice, as would maybe a leeetle bit less caricature.
