wrong with swapping gender roles, on-screen or off. What's icky about this relationship is how the filmmakers present it... Dong's femininity makes him weak, and we're meant to laugh at this." Catherine Driscoll, writing in Teen Film: A Critical Introduction, said Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984), and Maria in West Side Story (1961) all represent "the homogenization of racial difference in US popular culture including teen film". Driscoll said of John Hughes, who directed Sixteen Candles and several other teen films, "Even critics who praise Hughes's sensitivity to adolescent drama acknowledge that his is a very partial picture of adolescence. The Hughes teen is white, suburban, and normatively middle-class... non-white characters appear in the background or are crass caricatures like Sixteen Candles Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe)." In the 2007 book Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, Long Duk Dong is described as defying stereotypes, noting that "uberdork Long Duk Dong proves himself to be a party animal" and "by the nights end the school's entire social strata will have turned upside down" with Samantha, the freshman geek, and also foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong finding romantic and social success. Gedde Watanabe commented that perhaps John Hughes thought he was breaking a stereotype with the character because Long Duk Dong was not the stereotypical nice studious Asian boy and was instead interested in going out and partying. A 1980s cover band based in Lexington, Kentucky calls itself Long Duk Dong after the character. Band founder Shaun Justice said, "It's odd that a character that's not a primary character would have so much notability. But that one certainly did." See also Portrayal of East Asians in American film and theater References Bibliography Further reading External links 'Fresh Off the Boat' Tackles a 1980s Asian Caricature: Long Duk Dong at Wall Street Journal The death of Long Duk Dong: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ puts tired sidekick trope to rest at The Houston Chronicle Fictional Asian people Film characters introduced in 1984 Male characters in film Ethnic humour Race-related controversies in film Fictional high school students