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Okay - why is this guy important? What does his character say about the role of Asians in the movie?
Initially, it seems like the answer is remarkably little. After all, the Asian conductor doesn't do much; he follows Mason around and carries our her orders (but not the fighting or action related ones, because those are reserved for the two big buff white dudes), and fades into the background when he's not needed (in the scene we studied in class, in which Mason delivers her speech to the train dwellers, her two large pit bull retainers face the audience directly, whereas our Asian friend stands sideways, behind several of his peers, against a shadowy wall of the train.
If we consider the train a system centered around the Divine Engine, with Wilfred and Curtis and Gilliam and all the other characters as elements within it, the conductor doesn't even seem to fit in. Is he against the tail dwellers? It doesn't seem so, at least not directly - he never fights them or confronts them, he just follows his orders. Is he just a fanatic, brainwashed, pawn? That doesn't seem quite right either - his character isn't as colorful as the pretty blonde teacher with the cute blouse who smiled creepily as she attacked Curtis' companions with a sub-machine gun. Our conductor seems to do very little, aside from his job. He dials phones, makes announcements, and, when the plot so demands, dies. His actions are more akin to those of a mindless automaton, some other intrinsic mechanical part of the train, than of a human being.
No wonder we ignored him! He's freaking boring.
But as an Asian character, he holds a huge stake (exactly 1/3). So what does it say about the movie that of the three Asian character's portrayed, two are incredibly important (thank you, gate-opening man and fortune-telling girl!) and the other does almost nothing? What are the similarities and differences between these three characters? Are they completely separate? Or do they each speak to something about different archetypes of Asians within the movie (and society? *Ooo*)?
Quite a lot to think about, I imagine, but I'm already way over the word limit. Oops.
P.S note the
First off, Thank You (also very funny, thanks for that too). I agree though, I noticed this third Asian character and was surprised he didn't come up more. When watching the movie and taking notes, I simply wrote down "Asian captain" (yes I realize now he is a conductor, whatever). He indeed doesn't do much, but in terms of the Sacred Engine, he's probably pretty important in keeping the thing going. He seems to play a much more expected "Asian" role--an engineer in tidy clothes that obeys orders and doesn't get much screen time. Nam and Yona, however, seem less typical; especially in American societies, Asians are often not portrayed as drug-addicted criminals. We also have to remember that Nam was once also crucial for the engines success, and probably looked a lot like our Asian Conductor at one point, fitting a more classic role. The Conductor is both a good and bad asian; he's on the "bad team" of the train's elite, but obeys his orders, does his job, and causes little trouble, making him "good" where Nam qualifies as "bad". I think in many ways he represents Nam's counterpart-- or, if I'm using this correctly, his *foil*.
ReplyDeleteyo idk if you're gunna read this but there's no identifier so idk how ur gunna get graded cuz I can't tell who posted this
DeleteWow my life sucks I tried to post this and my internet cut out and I lost my comment
ReplyDeleteAnyway,
WOW THAT'S ACTUALLY REALLY COOL I DIDN'T THINK OF THAT
I was kinda taking notes on the movie itself, so I didn't really take note of the conductor. But I really didn't notice that, hey, of three asian people, I had no idea one existed.
For my personal thoughts: I don't think the conductor was intended to be a foil or make any statement about asians at all. I think the-person-in-charge-of-casting decided, HEY DUDE, WE NEED A CONDUCTOR, and thus the asian conductor-dude was born.
I think his existence is more indicative of the state of Hollywood. There's not a whole lot of Asian actors, even fewer male asian actors (this probably has some yellow fever implications and things that I'm going to gloss over for now. Minority woman+white dude seems to be more acceptable, though, and that's pretty janky), and pretty much no male asian romantic leads. I think the only one I've seen, ever, is Selfie, which was a truly bizarre series that I'm not quite sure why I watched. Probably because Amy Pond. Anyway, the dude in Selfie also played pretty much half of Hollywood's male asian characters that I can think of right now excluding Glenn from the Walking Dead, who's also pretty cool btw. There's a whole discussion on asian masculinity (seriously, how often does Calvin Klein use asian dudes anyway), and while I really doubt snowpiercer intended to discuss that, I think it's applicable.
For a while (in the 50s, 60s) Hollywood would cast Asians as the bad guys. You know, evil anonymous dragon master person...Hollywood was really into kung fu/fighting movies. And then Hollywood shifted towards the whole apocalyptic, white people are bad phase (like in Snowpiercer). So at this point in Hollywood casting, Asian actors/actresses are just now recovering from that whole time period when they really could only be cast as bad guys or in foreign films. At least we are now seeing most Asian characters on tv/the big screen (Fresh off the Boat, Nikita, etc.)
ReplyDelete-Lauren