A thriller set in Vancouver about triad gang violence has Asian
Canadians watching closely, but producers of the miniseries insist
they have made every effort to make sure concerns about racism
have been addressed, ALEXANDRA GILL writes
ALEXANDRA GILL
VANCOUVER -- A group of thugs gun their way into a dingy Vancouver
apartment. They have been sent by Movie Star, a ruthless drug dealer
with connections to a Hong Kong triad. When the low-life apartment
dweller fails to come up with the money he owes, they savagely carve his
face with a butcher's knife.
The gruesome segment is the opening scene of /Dragon Boys/, a gripping
two-part miniseries that premieres tomorrow night on CBC Television.
Directed with pulsing momentum by Jerry Ciccoritti and written with
layered complexity by Ian Weir, the series has been hailed for its depth
and realism by some of the most celebrated Asian stars in Canada, Hong
Kong and Hollywood, who leapt to be part of it.
The executives at CBC Television are so pleased with the miniseries they
have already told the producers at Omni Film to go ahead with /Dragon
Boys II/, a movie, and are now touting it as a "prime example" of their
network's new programming strategy to reach untapped audiences and rake
in higher ratings.
But some members of the Chinese community are warning the series could
face a backlash. "Members of the Chinese community can't wait to watch
it and expect to be infuriated by the stereotypes," Nancy Nam-Ju Han
writes in Ricepaper magazine, a Vancouver-based quarterly about Asian
Canadian culture that details the controversy in its current issue.
Critics have argued that a drama in which the criminals are
Chinese-Canadian can be nothing but racist, but others say the series
could be the beginning of a new era of complexity in depictions of Asian
Canadians on television.
Executive producer Michael Chechik was not prepared to concede that as
Caucasians, he, Weir and Ciccoritti had no right to make the series, as
some have been saying.
"If Ang Lee, a heterosexual Chinese director, could win an Academy Award
for /Brokeback Mountain/, a movie about homosexual cowboys, why
shouldn't we be allowed to make a television drama about another racial
group in Canada?" he said last month, at an advance Vancouver screening
for cast and crew.
Weir, an English-speaking Canadian of Scottish descent, stresses that
the series isn't just a crime story. It's a human story, he says, about
families, the immigrant experience and Canada's West Coast.
"When I moved to Vancouver in 1978, it was essentially a small town.
Now, it's a world-class Pacific Rim city. It has been completely
transformed, for the better. More than any, it's the Chinese culture
that has transformed it. And if you're looking to tell a story about the
West Coast today, you need to look at Chinese culture as an absolutely
dominant part of that story because it's had such a big impact on
shaping the community we live in."
The negative response to the miniseries could be muted by the
pre-emptive efforts of the producers to address concerns raised early in
the production's life. As soon as /Dragon Boys/ was added to the CBC
lineup in June 2005, Colleen Leung, a Vancouver documentary producer and
community activist, took it upon herself to track down the producers and
warn them about the negative buzz that was already building.
"Throwing money into a drama themed specifically on criminals of the
Chinese Canadian variety is subtle and devious wanton racism and is
utterly unforgivable," said one of the anonymous community leaders Leung
later canvassed for opinion and whose comments are quoted in the
Ricepaper article.
To answer such charges, the producers hired Leung and historian Jim
Wong-Chu as cultural advisers to look over the script and highlight what
rang true or what might be insulting.
The subsequent changes were small and subtle, but powerful, says Weir,
who had already spent years researching Asian gangs with the help of the
local RCMP and learning as much as he could about the Chinese-Canadian
experience by picking the brains of his friends and reading contemporary
literature.
For example, when Wong-Chu read an early draft, he took an extreme
dislike to Inspector Buckles, a lunkheaded -- white -- senior RCMP officer.
"You're not getting it," Wong-Chu complained to Weir. "Why is the boss
always white? Why can't it be a Chinese asshole in power?"
Weir later added a second senior RCMP officer, who was Chinese, and
added a new layer of complexity to a subplot about generational differences.
As helpful as the community advisers may have been, Weir says his
greatest resources, as far as cultural content is concerned, were Byron
Mann and Tzi Ma, the show's lead actors.
Ma, a familiar face who has starred in countless Hollywood productions
including /The Quiet American/ and/ The Ladykillers/, was so impressed
with an early script he simply presumed it was written by a Chinese
Canadian or American.
"It rang so true to me," Ma explained by phone, while shooting /Rush
Hour 3/ with Jackie Chan in Vancouver.
"It reminded me of the seventies in New York, when a huge influx of
Asian immigrants flooded the city," says Ma, who was doing some social
work in Chinatown at the time.
"The city infrastructure couldn't absorb it. The kids were bored because
they couldn't communicate. It was easy for gangs to recruit them," says
Ma, who plays a father whose son falls in with a gang.
Ma says /Dragon Boys/ is a "seminal" project because it was the first
script (or at least the first that he had read) about Asian crime that
fully addressed the victims and their families.
"Every character is flawed. It represents us well. It gives us
three-dimensionality."
What everyone wants to avoid is a repeat of 1991. That year, CBC Radio
aired a miniseries entitled /Dim Sum Diaries/. Its fifth episode sees a
new immigrant from Hong Kong cut down two rare sequoia trees in his
front yard because they interfere with his property's/ feng shui/
(design harmony). The episode, narrated by a fictional white speaker,
was based on a nearly identical incident which had occurred in the tony
neighbourhood of Kerrisdale. The aim of the episode had been to combat
racist preconceptions. By the end of the segment, written for
Morningside by Mark Leiren-Young, the narrator's racist preconceptions
undergo a complete sea change.
In real life, however, the drama only heightened racial tensions and
sparked an explosion of protest that ricocheted from Vancouver to the
House of Commons and back to the CBC in British Columbia, where an
apology was eventually issued to representatives of the Chinese-Canadian
community, who alleged that the production was racist.
For all its gritty realism, and precisely because of it, /Dragon Boys
/obviously won't please everyone.
Steph Song, the Canadian actress who plays a Southern Cambodian factory
worker who is forced into prostitution after coming to Canada, says she,
for one, was actually relieved when she heard that the miniseries was
being written and directed by Caucasians.
"I was worried that if it were directed or written by Chinese Canadians,
there would be too much sympathy," she explained at the preview
screening. "I was worried that they would sweep all the drugs under the
carpet, that it would be too sanitized, that they might not expose the
truths. The truth is what makes a good story."
