Jason Michael Fong's Short Film 'Bite Me'

January 6, 2009

The eight-minute film skewers the singles scene by creating a clever parallel between dating as an Asian American male and dating as a vampire. Fong employs the notorious dating archetypes we've all grown to know and love: the Asian American female who refuses to date within the race and the white woman/gay white man with a ferocious Asian fetish.

There are a few missteps which, luckily, do not detract from the meat of the film. The appearance of a cute, wholesome Asian American gal who's looking for a good man, with or without fangs, is a bit of a pat romantic comedy technique. The opening scene was a bit drowsy and not representative of the energy that appears in the subsequent scenes. And does every comedy need to feature a sassy black woman?

Fong does a great job of letting his character actors cut loose; despite being a vampire, Fong's protagonist Drake is actually the normal one. Bite Me is a good sport about ribbing the dating scene while also expressing hope that Asian Americans will find that man, woman, or vampire of their dreams.

Check out the trailer for Bite Me above and go to Cacchi.com to watch the short in its entirety.

This blog entry is graciously sponsored by Toyota Matrix. Check out their website dedicated to the best in Asian American film.

Toyota Matrix

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Sylvie Kim

contributing editor & blogger

Sylvie Kim is a contributing editor at Hyphen. She previously served as Hyphen's blog coeditor with erin Khue Ninh, film editor, and blog columnist.

She writes about gender, race, class and privilege in pop culture and media (fun fun fun!) at www.sylvie-kim.com and at SF Weekly's The Exhibitionist blog. Her work has also appeared on Racialicious and Salon.