Oct 14, 2002
Project Anti-Disguise
Wow, what a difference a week can make.
While toiling away, lamenting my own existence, I found out last week that a costume manufacturer was selling this to kids:
And hey! Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I thought, why not try and be productive by starting an online petition? You can check it out at http://petition.yellowworld.org
Before anyone tries to minimize the effect of this costume, please read on:
1. Ugly masks are indeed worn on Halloween, but none that single out a particular race or ethnicity for their respective features, and certainly not ones that so closely resemble imagery that has historically been used to demean.
2. To the casual observer, there would seem to be an inconsistency — because there is, and given the overwhelming imbalance of positive images between whites and Asians on the whole, this is understandable. More simply, white people don’t have memories of being mocked or heckled for being pirates, but many Asians can point to their own “ching-chong-chinamen” experiences.
3. It would indeed be as “harmless” as other archetypes, as most leave the real stereotyping up to people. But in this case, the manufacturer’s took the effort to firmly cement, unequivocally, that when they mean Kung Fu masters, they’re referring to slanty-eyed, buck-toothed Asians — not sure of the image we had? No problem! Here’s an exact representation of what we’re talking about. And like a cherry on top, they authenticated his Asian-ness by having him wear a headband with a Chinese character: “Loser.” How many other costumes — whether they’re pirates, pharaohs, porn stars or pilgrams — come with masks, much less masks that single out a people?
4. None of their other costumes even broach the idea of a joke — they’re all straight-laced, direct representations that leave nothing to the imagination.
5. Their limp defense of “it was just a joke!” is contradictory to a statement made by Jeff Coppins, the company’s marketing director. In an interview with the North County Times, Coppins gravely tells the reporter that Disguise, Inc. spurns requests to make costumes of “questionable taste,” referring to requests for a mask of Osama bin Laden: “We’ve had people ask us to make a costume of bin Laden, but we won’t do it. There are some things that are more important then something that may get some sales.”
Pissing off Asians isn’t one of them, apparently.
6. Finally, as adults we can go ’round and ’round forever about perception, but this being Halloween, we should be a little bit more concerned about how children can negotiate those perceptions.
