I am Caine

Picked up "Kung Fu: Season 1" on DVD. OK, though I wish they had put an actual Asian in the roll of Kwai Chang Caine, they did put in as many Asians as they could in that series. Watching the background interviews, they said that though they went through just about every Asian actor in Hollywood, there was no one they thought could do the part. Hell, even Bruce Lee barged into the producer's office hoping to score the role only to be rejected because, "they couldn't understand his English." I think it was more that they didn't think America was ready for an Asian male lead actor. Even today the major networks haven't put one on.

When they chose David Carradine, the Asian American community protested and demanded an Asian replace Carradine. What they got was request number 2, the show needed to get an Asian/Asian American historian and various other Asian expert consultants on the set. ABC didn't want to "offend" the Asian community. (which is perhaps why 20 years later they get an "Asian consultant" for Margaret Cho's "All American Girl," so Margaret would be a "real Asian," someone should tell ABC being Asian is not a formula.)

My all-time favorite characters were Master Kan (Philip Ahn) and Master Po (Keye Luke). Master Kan, the head of the monestary, always keeping a watchful eye on students, waiting for them to be able to take the pebble from his hand and Master Po, the blind master, who always called Caine, "young grasshopper."

And who didn't try to reenact the "walk the rice paper" and the "scorching pot" scenes? We tried to learn to step so no one could hear us, but our parents had ears like Master Po.

Kung Fu, prior to then, was not really known outside of Chinatown like many of the other martial arts. Though in the SF Bay Area, the Capital of Martial Arts, folks were slowly bringing the teachings outside neighborhood lines. So, these words like Tao, and Kung Fu, and chi weren't in most people's vocabularies.

The pilot episode centers around a railroad camp that Caine comes to work at. In one sense, I liked how the actors weren't forced to use some fake Asian accent to make their portrayal more "authentic," like Pat Morita did in Happy Days. The Asian characters discuss how they know they are being treated "less than human" and the harsh conditions of the camp for very little money.

"Kung Fu" did not have a regular writing crew. They picked up stories from wherever, but wrote all the temple scenes because they had the Asian consultants to write that.

Speaking of non-Asians playing Asians. I had watched "Hawaii 5-0." In this episode, Carlo Montalban played a Japanese man who had assumed someone else's identity during World War II because he had jumped ship on a Japanese submarine. I enter the show watching Steve McGarrett interviewing Montalban's character about his past. He talks about coming to the islands as a young man to the (sugar) cane fields and how when the US came to round up all the Japanese to be interned, he fled through the fields.

I kind of have mixed feelings sometimes about the shows. In one sense, they brought a lot of Asian faces to the television screen. (How many Asian faces did you see on Bay Watch Hawaii?) Yet, because there haven't been other shows, I wonder how "Kung Fu" in particular has contributed to the continued stereotypes of Asians on screen as the "Kung Fu Fighter" even though on the show, only Caine knew any "ancient" fighting moves.

Maybe when I'm able to snatch the pebble from someone's palm, I'll know that answer.