Raptorific (original) (raw)
I think we as a society tend to forget that the movie “Freaky Friday” starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Mark Harmon hinges entirely on the narrative’s assertion that Chinese people have magic powers
The 2003 movie. The movie that came out like 20 years ago. There is no plot without the movie asking the audience to believe, without explanation, that a random middle aged Chinese woman has the ability to very easily place mystical curses on people
The funniest part of it is the running joke that this Chinese lady/Restaurant owner/Wizard has a daughter who implies she does this shit all the time, to customers, and is FED UP with her mother’s mystical nonsense. Like obviously it’s a blatantly racist plot element, the writers would certainly never would’ve had the plot kicked off by a curse cast by Mama Ravioli at the Spaghetti Warehouse, and it was specifically the Orientalism of it all that led them to write “and their bodies switched because they had a fight in a Chinese restaurant in front of the owner, and of course Chinese people have Powers” but also like. The dynamic with the restaurant owner and her daughter, who desperately wants her to stop supernaturally meddling in the lives of strangers, is so much more interesting than what’s going on with Jamie Lee Curtis and whoever played the daughter in that movie. They could make a banger Disney+ show out of “The Chinese Restaurant That Curses You To Resolve Your Issues If You Have A Fight There” except that it would absolutely remind people that Disney, in Avril Lavigne’s America, released a movie that depended entirely on the audience’s willingness to believe Chinese people are secretly wizards
Obviously old Italian ladies have magic powers in real life but this is a post about how different groups are portrayed in movies. Also, I can’t stress this enough, when an Italian puts a curse on you it’s not to help you come out happier and healthier on the other side. It’s to make bad things happen to you until you die.