Paul Thomas Anderson's 1970s-set awards contender has been accused of racist content.
The age gap discourse is inevitably baked into the film’s central premise, but the latter controversy feels like an unforced error. Two scenes, which make up a sliver of‘s 133-minute runtime, have marred many of its otherwise rave reviews and resulted in the watchdog group Media Action Network for Asian Americans decrying any awards recognition for the movie.
The scenes in question both involve side character Jerry Frick, the real-life owner of Mikado, the first Japanese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley. Played by John Michael Higgins, Jerry is first introduced with his wife Mioko in the offices of Gary’s mother Anita , a publicist working on promotional copy for the restaurant. After Anita reads the copy, Jerry turns to Mioko and asks for her opinion in a jarring, unnatural accent. Mioko responds sternly in Japanese, which is not subtitled.
Later, Jerry appears again when Alana and Gary go to Mikado to ask about placing ads for their waterbed business on the restaurant’s tables. Gary greets the woman standing next to Jerry as Mioko, but Jerry responds, “No, no, no, Mioko’s gone. This is my new wife, Kimiko.” As before, Jerry uses the same accent to ask his wife for her opinion about the business proposition, and Kimiko responds in un-subtitled Japanese.
As tedious and undermining as it is to attempt to explain comedy, it’s clear that Jerry’s final line of dialogue is intended to be the punchline, the payoff for the vignette sketched by the two scenes. It’s slightly less clear who is intended to be the butt of the joke, but there’s no doubt that Jerry remains the most buffoonish presence in the room, so he is certainly a candidate.
Yet regardless of whether the audience is laughing with or at Jerry , Jerry’s accent is identical to the syntax and tone used to mock and demean Japanese, Chinese and other Asian people across the U.S. for the past two centuries. The accent is undeniably grotesque, and its mere presence in a film that takes a rose-colored view of the old days is triggering for some viewers.
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