Dong and Mr. Yunioshi. These characters have traits that could be considered racist today. For example, Long Duck Dong has been mentioned as “a weird Chinese guy” by the main protagonist Sam and uses a fork and spoon like chopsticks to eat a quiche. While Mr. Yunioshi is played by a yellow-faced Mickey Rooney who pronounces ls as rs like Ms. Golightly becomes Ms. Gorightry, he can’t seem to quit at the fake interpretation of a Japanese accent. These two characters are both ousted by the main characters of the film and are regarded as the film’s comic relief. A definite good thing about Sixteen Candles was they used an actual Asian which was an improvement from Breakfast at Tiffany’s which used a Caucasian to portray an Asian character.  

In an article for Deseret News, Maganini states that the “Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership, recently told the Sacramento City Council that Rooney’s buck-toothed Japanese character with thick glasses and exaggerated Asian accent perpetuated “offensive, derogatory and hateful racial stereotypes detrimental and destructive to our society.”

Maganini also states that Rooney’s opinion on the reaction on playing this character: “It breaks my heart. Blake Edwards, who directed the picture, wanted me to do it because he was a comedy director. They hired me to do this overboard, and we had fun doing it.”

Gedde Watanabe (Long Duck Dong), his opinion on playing the character was not that negative. In a NPR article, Chow mentions “ [Playing Long Duck Dong] Was in retrospect, he realizes he was ‘a bit naive’ about.”

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“I was making people laugh. I didn’t realize how it was going to affect people,” he said.

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The people that played the characters thought it was only to make people laugh and wasn’t something serious to offend someone.

A key main similarity that the characters have are that they are not the main character, but rather a side character which sole purpose is to make the plot more interesting and to create a contrasting personality from the main character.

Many Asians were not happy about these roles being still accepted in the US because it has been a long time since the 50s and 60s. When Asian-Americans watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s, many were either horrified, extremely amused, or offended so much to the point of boycotting or protesting. When Breakfast at Tiffany’s was going to be screened at a theatre in NY, many Asian-Americans protested about the film, saying it was extremely offensive to Asians. After Sixteen Candles first premiered in theatres, many Asian students were called Dongers and forced to recite lines from the movie which scarred many Asian-americans who grew up in that era.

Because of these typical movie roles portrayed in American Media, many Asians tend to experience a lot of racism. This causes many Asians to have minimal-to none role models. Now there have been some movies and television shows that feature Asians in a realistic main role including Fresh off The Boat and Crazy Rich Asians. But Yellow Face is still prominent in Hollywood, for example in Ghost in the Shell and other movies like that. To make it more diverse we should keep petitioning for more diversity in the film industry to create role-models for this demographic. To make it less racist, hire more Asians in leading roles.