How John Cho Defeated the Asian-American Actor Stereotypes

Last year, I read a book by Alex Tizon called Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self, which I picked up even though the title too nearly resembled the Tobias Funke’s memoir from Arrested Development, The Man Inside Me. In the book, Tizon laments the representation of Asian men in popular media—or really, the lack thereof. He writes of Sex and the City: “Something like 2 million Asians live in the New York metropolitan area, but Asians hardly appear in the show at all—symbolic annihilation at its best.” Symbolic annihilation: the under-representation of a group of people, usually in media. Asian men rarely show up in TV or film. And when they do, they often are at best sexless nerds, and at worst offensive stereotypes.

Strangely, John Cho is an Asian-American man in Hollywood that has been able to avoid these stereotypes. It is why I love John Cho. It is why the internet loves John Cho enough to Photoshop his face into movie posters as a reaction to Hollywood’s whitewashing problem. With Star Trek Beyond out today, this seemed like a good time to look at John Cho’s most important roles.

The indie film Better Luck Tomorrow follows four Asian-American high school students who are obsessed with studying for the SATs. They are treated like nerds by their peers until they start selling drugs. John Cho plays the cool guy, as evidenced by this cool motorcycle is he riding like a very cool guy.

The Asian men in this movie are smart, industrious, hard working. They perform well in school and in the workplace. And yet, these stereotypes have insidious foundations as to what they imply: the Asian work ethic exists to compensate for a lack of creativity. Often this notion gets taken a step further, insinuating that Asians also lack compassion and ambition and leadership skills, that they are really best suited to take orders.

Still, while Better Luck Tomorrow is by no means a great film, it was the first time I’d seen any piece of popular media that was specifically about the Asian-American experience. In 2002, it felt mind-blowing that a movie starring people who looked like me could even exist.

Bonus: it would launch the career of director Justin Lin, who would go on to helm the Fast and the Furious franchise, the most diverse action franchise. Unless you count Transformers as people of color.

Cho had a small recurring role in the original American Pie trilogy. In the first one, he famously explains the definition of a MILF, then proceeds to chant "MILF" at a framed picture for several minutes. He is credited as “John (MILF Guy #2).”