The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard - Controversy

The Angry Asian Man blog posted this today:
http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/08/paramount-doing-damage-control.html

According to the blog posting, Paramount Pictures has requested media outlets remove all trailers for the movie The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard which depict lead actor Jeremy Piven spouting some Pearl Harbor and Anti-Japanese rhetoric to motivate his sales force and then actor Ken Jeong gets beat up. This may be in response to protests which were held at Paramount Studios on Friday by various Asian-American groups.

Here's another Angry Asian Man blog posting on the trailer in question:
http://www.angryasianman.com/2009/08/hate-crimes-for-fun-and-laughs-in-goods.html

While I have seen the various advertisements for the movie, I wasn't really interested in the movie and never watched the trailer. Because of the controversy, I decided to watch the trailer that included the scenes described.

If you want to watch, the trailer is still on Youtube here but no guarantees it will remain there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeZMNxB0BOQ

My take on the scene? While I am not personally offended like many people are, I think the scene itself was unnecessary. The anti-Japanese rhetoric brings up bad memories for many people. One group of people would include the many Japanese Americans who were subject to internment during World War II. The other people who may be upset would be the folks who lived through the 1980's. Many American auto workers (non-Asian I have to add) did not like the "Japanese taking their jobs away" because Japanese cars grew in popularity at that time.

This brings up the biggest problem with the scene. Actor Ken Jeong (the only Asian in the scene among the many people) gets beat up after Piven spouts his rhetoric. Many older Asian-Americans remember the case of Vincent Chin. Chin was beat up and later died when a couple of American auto workers mistook him for a Japanese person.

Wiki will do a better job of explaining the Vincent Chin case than I can: Vincent Chin Case

I think many people (Asian and non-Asian) may also think the scene is non-offensive, they say so without knowing the history of Vincent Chin and the memories that is brought up by this scene. Plus, there is a question to be asked:

What if anti African-American rhetoric (the "N" word) was said and a African-American salesman was beat up?