'Kumar' actor confronts racial stereotypes

Actor Kal Penn is best known for playing a pot-smoking medical genius, but he showed a serious side when he came to Penn last night.

Penn, who played Kumar in the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, took the podium before an enthusiastic sell-out crowd in Bodek Lounge.

Although he said he normally talks about his start as an actor when he speaks at colleges, in light of Asian Pacific American Heritage Week 2006 - an annual event celebrating Asian American culture on campus - he decided to make his speech "a little more issue-oriented."

Responding to criticism that the characters Harold and Kumar represented Asian-American men as "homophobic, spineless, sex-crazed misogynists," Penn argued that critics have missed the bigger picture.

"While Harold and Kumar may not represent every part of the diversity in the Asian-Pacific-Islander community, I think the film is groundbreaking in terms of smashing down certain well-ingrained stereotypes of Asian-American men being one-dimensional buffoons or generally objects of ridicule and hatred," Penn said.

He added that, whether Harold and Kumar are seen as "assimilated heterosexist pigs or as liberating sexualized men of color," they are still more complex than previous Asian male movie characters.

Still, Penn said the criticism that he has received is useful because it gets people thinking about the representation of Asian Americans in Hollywood.

He said that discussions about Harold and Kumar at "better colleges such as [Penn] - not Princeton" are important, and that he hopes students who participate in these discussions will go on to make films without stereotypes.

Then, he said, Asian Americans in film will be portrayed as "three-dimensional, flawed, real human beings."

After his speech, Penn showed trailers for two of his upcoming movies, The Namesake and Van Wilder: The Rise of the Taj and fielded questions from the audience.

The audience laughed at Penn's jokes and clapped loudly during and after his speech.

College senior Suma Chennubhotla, however, said that, while she enjoyed the talk, she still had mixed feelings toward Penn for taking roles that he himself agreed played into stereotypes.

"I understand that his role fleshed out away from the model minority, but I think that you still have responsibilities when you pick roles," she said.

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