Accused of Triple Murder? Use Your Trusty Asian Accent

Neela Banerjee
December 7, 2007

Sakai is pinning the murder of the three people he is accused of killing on a police conspiracy against him. There is not a lot of explanation for his accent, except this:

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Tim Gough, Sakai, who was born Stephen Sanders but later changed his name to Sakai, claimed he'd been flown to Cambodia and Vietnam -- without a passport -- on a private jet by an Asian businessman interested in martial arts, beginning at the age of 5.

Whatever the case, the reporter seemed to have a fun time transliterating the accent, which he described as Sakai “consistently mispronouncing his l's as r's.” For example, he quotes Sakai saying: “During this trial, I've had to sit there and listen to rie after rie.”

This article made me think about black admiration of/imitation of Kung Fu culture. I am a die-hard Wu Tang Clan fan, but have always kind of wondered at the appropriation of the Kung Fu mythology. What do people think? Regarding Harry's post about the new David Carradine, does black appropriation of Kung Fu culture bother anyone less than white appropriation?

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Comments

Comments

erin wrote on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 4:09pm
re. WTC et al.: i see it as the opposite but-not-equal phenomenon to Asian Americans' appropriation of hip hop. in this and many ways, we live at the corner of imitation as flattery and appropriation as racist.
the questioner wrote on Sat, 12/08/2007 - 5:35am
i see him as chief hall monitor at nutso towers to be honest with you. any person that claims to have been flown to foreign countries for martial arts competitions and tries to defend himself in court on a murder rap is certainly a bit off. I suppose it might work as a nice insanity defense - play the part!the poser b-boys do get a bit tiresome. frontin' like 10.
houstonwriter wrote on Sat, 12/08/2007 - 7:26am
Weird-o. Perhaps there's a psychological attraction to such clearly defined roles. Those old Shaw Brothers movies have some pretty clear cut boundaries set--a definite good guy, definite bad guys, clearly defined objectives.Sometimes people who don't have many advantages feel they have to blur the lines more than others. If you're selling drugs to pay for medicine your mother needs because she's sick from an unhealthy workplace environment but she still has to work because rents have gone up and you all owe back taxes, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in this person's mind?Not that all hip-hop culture involves drug dealers; just an example. I have Wu Tang Clan on my iPod and I'm a marketing consultant.