Typecast
Even before Kal Penn walked onto the stage at Goldstein Auditorium Saturday night, shouts of ‘Kumar!’ rippled through the 800-person audience.
Penn, the co-star of the ‘Harold and Kumar’ movies, spoke about the portrayal of minorities in mass media today. Penn spoke intelligently, but he tried to keep things light with humor.
‘Dude, when did I become an advocate?’ Penn asked the audience at the beginning. ‘I’ll try to live up to the expectations.’
Penn discussed the question of whether the media should entertain or represent minorities. White culture still visually dominates. Studio and network executives are afraid to change what’s worked in the past, Penn said.
When Penn received the script of ‘Van Wilder’ and was offered the role of Taj_final Mahal Badalandabad, he didn’t really know if he would do the movie. The character of Taj wasn’t what he expected or wanted to play.
‘From an artistic perspective, I thought it was boring,’ Penn said of the characterization of Taj. ‘I wanted to play something a little more dynamic.’
Penn accepted the role. He and the two writers, Brent Goldberg and David Wagner, changed Taj a bit. But the writers wanted to follow conventional wisdom as much as possible and include several racially insensitive lines, Penn said.
‘Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle’ broke away from a scripted formula, thanks to writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, Penn said.
‘They wanted to write a script for the sake of writing a funny script,’ Penn said of Hurwitz and Schlossberg.
If the two writers had followed the examples of past successful movies, ‘Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,’ would have been something much different, Penn said.
‘The movie would have been called ‘David and Jason go to McDonalds,’ ‘ Penn said.
David Seon, sophomore sport management major, said he came to see Kal Penn after several of his friends at Northwestern University told him about hearing Penn speak. Seon also said he thought the price to hear Penn was cheap.
‘I loved ‘Harold and Kumar,” Seon said. ‘Three dollars for a ticket? Can’t beat that.’
Even TV shows today with diverse casts, like ’30 Rock’ or ‘Lost,’ don’t deal with race or diversity in the plots, Penn said. And there’s the problem of a few businesses dominating the media industry, Penn said.
There are five big companies that control the media, Penn said. But today, Penn pointed out, people have more opportunities to get their message out and to show off what they can do by using Web sites like YouTube.
Penn remembers three friends in college working odd jobs while making small independent short films on the side. The trio struggled to get going.
But after they put their material on different Web sites, they were noticed, Penn said. Now the three write for ‘Saturday Night Live.’
Penn encouraged the audience to put their own work online because they’ll get instant feedback on what works and doesn’t work.
‘You have the ability to mold the mass media,’ Penn said.
When Penn opened the lecture to questions, the audience quizzed him on various issues. One student asked Penn if he would consider marrying her sister. Penn’s response showcased his keen comedic timing.
‘Hit me up on MySpace,’ Penn said.
Penn was later asked about the characters he’s played. In addition to Taj and Kumar, he also appeared on ’24’ as Ahmed Amar, a terrorist who takes a family hostage.
‘I loved working on ’24’,’ Penn said. ‘That was so awesome to play, honestly.’
Penn said the ethnicity of Ahmed Amar didn’t faze him. Penn, who said he had never fired a gun before, was more concerned about how he was going to pull off the action scenes.Penn warned the audience of reading too much into movies and other parts of the media.
‘I think ultimately, ‘Harold and Kumar’ is just about hamburgers and french fries.’
Published on November 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm
