Videos from two years ago about Tina Fey’s problematic portrayal of Asians are going viral on TikTok and raising the question, just what is up with Fey and the Asian community?
Fey is undoubtedly one of the most influential female voices in television comedy, but her track record on racial sensitivity has been sketchy at best.
In 2020, she came under fire for her use of blackface and yellowface, as well as a negative stereotyping of Native Americans in her hit TV shows “30 Rock” and “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Twitter also called out her treatment of two Asian characters in the movie “Mean Girls.”
Subsequently that same year, Fey requested that streaming and syndication platforms remove several “30 Rock” episodes that featured blackface. According to Vulture, Fey wrote an accompanying statement that read, “I understand now that ‘intent’ is not a free pass for white people to use these images. I apologize for pain they have caused. Going forward, no comedy-loving kid needs to stumble on these tropes and be stung by their ugliness.”
Six days ago, Vietnamese vlogger Bui went viral after he posted a video addressing a recent uptick in searches for old TikTok posts in which he had pointed out Fey’s troublesome portrayals of Asian characters not only in “Mean Girls,” but also in a 2014 interview on “The Tonight Show” with fellow ex-SNL cast-member Jimmy Fallon. As of this writing, Bui’s latest video has over 1.7 million views.
“She’s trending right now for the same thing that I talked about two years ago,” he tells his viewers in his latest post.
“Also I’m not trying to cancel ‘Mean Girls,'” the creator adds, noting that he had taken the original posts down some time ago because he felt they were “rage-baity.” But, Bui says, “I just think Tina Fey has a weird obsession with Vietnamese people.”
@cafesua.daddy #tinafey #meangirls #vietnamese #viet #asian ♬ original sound – Bui
The video then cuts to Bui’s original post from two years ago, where he discusses a scene in “Mean Girls.” In the movie, he says, there is a point when a character speaks in Vietnamese and the speech is translated as “N-word, please.” Sometimes the same phrase is translated to “B-word, please,” but, Bui notes, that’s not what the character says at all.
“She said, ‘Come on, please.’ That was the direct translation.”
He alleges that the movie’s creators mistranslated the sentence “just for the shock factor.”
Bui calls out the joke for being inaccurate and further, reminds viewers that Fey named her Vietnamese character, “Trang Pak … [which is] a half Korean name and a half Vietnamese name.”
In a follow-up video, Bui reposts the other since-deleted TikTok showing Fey’s 2014 interview with Fallon. “Just, why? Why would you say that?” he asks his viewers.
In the interview, Fey compares her infant daughter’s broken baby talk to that of a sex worker in a Vietnam War movie. She goes on to use a mock Vietnamese accent to repeat her daughter’s words.
@cafesua.daddy Replying to @neenehenehsh #vietnamese #tinafey #meangirls #jimmyfallon ♬ original sound – Bui
In the comments, one user agreed with Bui, writing, “I was always bothered by it.”
“I was always curious what they actually said,” another viewer wrote. “It felt so odd to me for them to say that instead of something like “girl please.”
“I noticed this too. thank you for talking about this. I’ve watched a lot of Tina Fey stuff and even though I’m a fan, I have a ton of questions and criticisms. I’m just saying…kinda weird, right? SNL, 30 Rock her projects, etc. It’s come up a lot,” someone else added.
However, a few viewers stood by Fey, including one user who defended her, saying, “Y’all so corny, it was a joke!”
Fey has made no statement regarding the portrayal of Asians in “Mean Girls” or her Jimmy Fallon interview.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Bui via TikTok for further comment.