 Netflix's new series Three Body Problem is based on a Chinese novel, but this new series is being accused of being anti-Asian male, and we're gonna break down. No, let's be clear here. It's probably anti-Chinese male. In fact, Three Body Problem is problematic. We gotta talk about it, and the original source material is from this writer right here, former engineer Liu Xixin. It was written in 2008. It got translated into English in 2014. It got turned into a 10-cent mini-series. Well, actually, it's 30 episodes. You can find it on Amazon Prime. Then it got adapted by two white guys from Game of Thrones with the help of one Asian guy, and it just came out on Netflix last week. Right, and I feel like there is mixed reactions to this show. Obviously, a lot of people like it. I'm watching some episodes right now. I like aspects of it, but I can't help but, you know, see that there's not a lot of great Asian dudes in this show considering that the original source material takes place in China with all Chinese characters. It does seem like they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like some of the Chinese stuff, but let's just take out any good male Asian characters and make them like super wack and one-dimensional in our version because that's what'll work in the Western world. So, yeah, we're gonna go through why that always happens. Do Asian guys or Chinese guys have the right to want themselves to be represented well right now? Let's talk about it. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the hot-pot boys. Check out SmalaSauce at SmalaSauce.com. Yeah, they did have the help of this guy, Alexander Wu, and I'm not saying that the Cultural Revolution was a good time. I'm not talking about that part. I'm just talking about how they just squeezed in a bunch of, you know, they squeezed in a white male Asian female romance. They really didn't need to be there, but I felt like the creators put it there because they're like, otherwise nobody's gonna want to watch this. People don't like Asian guys. People like Asian women, and I'm trying to sell this show. I need a follow-up hit after Game of Thrones got canceled. Everybody says we fumbled that season finale or that series finale, so I'm gonna give people what they want, and I'm gonna play it safe. Listen, if I'm putting on my non-Asian hat on and I'm taking myself out of being an Asian guy, okay? Chinese guys specifically, right? If I'm taking myself out of this body and I'm putting myself in the body of a producer who's trying to get this show done and release this series and capture a new audience who has never heard of the original source material and never knew that it took place in China, then yes, I think they're doing a decent job in a way. Like, now some of the characters are unrealistic because all like the physicists are like really good-looking, and they're all model-like, and they talk like not like physicists, I guess. But, and there definitely should be an Indian or Asian guy on the squad of physicists. There are 100% should be. But I guess they don't care about our opinion, David. They don't care about the Asian guy's opinion, and they don't care that Benedict Guang is the only half-decent Asian guy character, and he's still like a bumbling detective. Well, you know, listen, Chinese things aren't too popular right now, so we can't really highlight the original source material. And of course we put in a bunch of white male and Asian female relationships in it because look at how horrible the men were at the time. Why would these pretty Asian women want to get with any of them? That's the thought process, and that's what we're selling to the Western world. And here's the crazy thing. Like you said, Andrew, it'll work, and that's what it took to get the show done, and that's our larger takeaway here, guys. Listen, we're not just going to give you your typical like angry Asian male on the internet points. We are going to provide to you a three-dimensional breakdown of why these things seem like Andrew. They constantly happen forever in Hollywood. Yeah, and listen, I'm not saying this show is the worst violation. I know that there's Asian guys out there who are not going to be offended by this show, but if you count the amount of Asian dude characters that fail in the first three episodes, there's the guy in China who gets that girl, gets the scientist locked up because it's his book, and then he doesn't rat her out, and obviously he's disloyal. Even though he's gonna hit. And then not only that, too, Dad just, I don't know, he just gets killed by a belt, and you know, he's just weak, killed by a belt, and who gets killed by a belt. And then Benedict Wong, he's a good actor, but he's kind of just a, he hasn't figured it out yet. I wouldn't want to look like Benedict Wong. He's like a cool dude, but that's not somebody I look up to. Yeah, so anyways, guys, let us know in the comments down below what you think about the series so far. There is aspects that I do think are cool. No, no, no, there are aspects of it that are well made. Listen, they got all these like award-winning people on it, but it just seems like it's a 50 or 60 year old Irish guy's conception of Chinese things, because I will say the representation of Chinese culture is very chintzy, or dare I say, I can say this, chinky in the versions. Like I said, you guys still might like it. Anyway, somebody said, how come when they were advertising this new series, they never mentioned that it was from the original source material? And somebody else said, yes, because Chinese people won't want to watch it if they know it came from a Chinese book. Yeah, no, it's literally a Chinese story that had to get translated into English, but it was a huge hit. It is one of the, I believe, one of the most popular definitely science fiction novels of its era. It's considered one of the greatest ones in the decade. Right. Somebody just said, you know, the only Asian guy they have in there is Benedict Wong, and he's very bumbling and chubby. Somebody said, why are you shoving all these different multiracial relationships, obviously with all the Asian women and all the dudes that even do get with Asian women, they turn out to be evil and like double cross them and do like bad stuff. Yeah. In the, there's this relationship between Mike's Evans and Ye Wenjie, which feels very forced. Other people are also saying that originally, in the original Chinese book, she actually is trying to recruit the aliens from out of space to help them from essentially like the Western world dominating everybody. That's the original source material, but they changed it to in the story Andrew, she contacts the aliens to destroy the world because the Communist killed her father. Right. So essentially as of now, and we're only two, three episodes in guys, the story as I see it is that this girl is so mad that during the Cultural Revolution, her father got killed because her mom sold her father out. By the way, that stuff did happen. Yeah. It did happen. The Cultural Revolution was terrible. But basically then the, I guess the spoiler alert is that then she tries to call the aliens to destroy earth. Right. Right. So she so it's a Chinese girl who hates her life so bad. She wants to destroy earth. Right. Right. Because Chinese men ruined her life is so bad. I guess that's what the thing is. Other things Andrew, there's a scene where they're going into video games and they're teleporting to different worlds. It's supposed to be talking to the Chin Emperor, but they changed it to talking to Genghis Khan because obviously people in the West, they don't care who the Chin Emperor is. They don't care about any of the dynasties. Right. So I guess you have to make it more relevant. Like I said, Andrew, it's, I'll tell you this. I think that they did play out Asian dudes in this, but I also kind of wonder what people expected. Right now the West is at odds with China. These two old Irish guys who translated it, that's their conception. You know, they're very much like Euro files. They made Game of Thrones. They're thinking almost like a guy who's like a hundred years old when it comes to like thinking about China. Right. So I'm just saying like the way it doesn't shock me at all the way the West reinterpreted this novel or I don't even know if they watched the original Tencent series. I'm just saying, but I'm kind of like, I guess at some point, do us as Chinese guys, do we bear any responsibility or are we just going to get mad now that it happens? Because I feel like just like, you know what I mean? Like Korean guys, they've done their thing to kind of have their own image and Japanese guys kind of have their own image. And, but it's like Chinese guys, I don't know if we've done enough collectively as a group. I'm not saying there's not Bruce Lee and all the stuff like that, but like to shake this, like we're the wackest guys. Like not that we're not smart because clearly there's a lot of smart Asian guys even in this film, but people just in the Western world think that Chinese guys are just wack and they'll just, there's no sense that they even need to balance it out at all. Yeah. I mean, I think it feels like that maybe we've allowed them to think that or we've done enough things. I mean, we do have the martial artists, you know, Simu and we got some other guys and every time you see like a badass Asian guy, all right, you know, I know that in warrior, he's not the actor Andrew Koji is not actually Chinese, but he plays Chinese or whatever. So then I guess, you know, it's unfortunate, but I think with all the content that is out there, we can't expect to be represented well in every piece of content. You know, there's going to be some content that's for us with us in it by us in it. And then there's going to be stuff that was actually made from source material from a Chinese guy, but not going to have like good Chinese men in it. And I think that no, I don't think there's a single good tight Chinese male character in the whole thing. Yeah. Well, we're only three episodes in, but I have not seen any from what I've heard. Somebody said, why don't you guys just watch the 10 cent version? Please watch it on prime. But then other people were like, I don't know, it's pretty long. Obviously, this one was made for a completely different audience. Andrew, the version that with the subtitles in English on Amazon Prime, it's way, way, way more science heavy, way more philosophy heavy. And they were saying they had to dumb everything down because Andrew, what do Americans hate? They hate philosophy and they hate science. Well, I mean, this is listen, guys, Netflix shows is just like anything else. They need a good thumbnail. They need a good trailer. They need to keep their retention. It's all about audience retention too, because you didn't go to a theater to sit down. Most people that go and walk into a theater to sit down and watch a movie, even if they fall asleep, they don't walk out. So that counts as full retention rate. But when you're on Netflix, Netflix knows when you stop watching a show. It's just like a YouTube video. So just like all those tricks that Mr. Beast talks about of like, oh, they need to capture the attention. They need to keep you watching. Oh, they need to keep you playing the shit. They need to shift frames every seven seconds. Yeah, exactly. Get a hot chick in there. The things that the funk bros are trying to do, you know, we try it. But that's all what Netflix does too. So when they show you this panel of physicists and I'm looking at it right now, if I didn't know what show this was, I would think that these are like a pair of like college counselors and not like top tier physicists. That's why. That's why. Well, the main character girl is really hot. She's so hot. She's so hot. Somebody said, well, China has a dark history. Y'all just need to deal with it because y'all sure make it easy for us to depict y'all badly. Those are, hey, that's just what it is, man. When you did a bunch of bad stuff and we make you look bad in the West, that's our prerogative because you gave us the ammo to do it. And I feel like that's like actually, if Asian guys really or Chinese guys did really want to complain, I feel like that's like a lot of people's reaction to it. I'm not saying everybody, but like, I feel like a lot of people are like, well, no, that's what you get for so many of you guys being wack and doing all that wack stuff. That's really what I think is the perception of it. And obviously people can argue over that. Somebody just said, man, there's a lot of DEI in the casting for the Netflix version, but it's really good because it might inspire different demographics that aren't normally interested in science to pursue science. So this was one of the comments from Amazon. Far it's not super science. It is science heavy, but it's not as science heavy as like Oppenheimer. Right. Well, people might be watching this like, oh man, you're a scientist. You got to go kill yourself after when you got a little tick and time clock with the aliens. I don't want to do science. This guy said, I'm a white science fiction fan. So I'm not concerned with representation, but I was a huge fan of the book and the 10 cent series. I give the Netflix series a five out of 10 at the very best. So basically Andrew, what's going on? It goes from China in 2008. It blows up. It gets translated into a science fiction novel. The science fiction novel goes insane. There's three books in it. Then it goes into a 10 cent series. There's a little long winded heavy on the science 30 episodes in China. You know, good guys are Chinese, bad guys are Chinese, women are Chinese. The Chinese guys are Chinese comes to America. All the wack guys are still Chinese. The good guys become white and black. And the hot girls are still Chinese hot girls. But now they get with white guys. Is this a very archetypical stack? If I had no idea where the source material came from, and I was just watching the show, probably the only thing I would wonder is, hey, there should at least be an Indian or East Asian scientist is England. There's more Indians. At least one. There should be an Indian scientist. All right, there. I'll compromise. Put an Indian guy on the side. You know, there's eight Indian astrophysicists on that squad. Like, you know, there is quit playing around. Asians make up probably 30, 40% of the high level scientists. Yeah, I get it. You can't make half the cast Asian. I get that. But let's make one of them Asian. Not just like, yeah, I guess there's Asian. There's Asian girl. But there's plenty of Asian girls. So I'm saying, just make make them. Give me one good Asian guy character, one very solid all around Asian character. Benedict Wong barely getting it done in the show. I'm not gonna lie. Man, he don't even seem like a good detective. He gets shook. He's scared by white girls thinking that they're going to kill him. Yeah. So I'm just saying, give me a good character. It's not a bad show. Let's be honest. It's not a bad show. No, because the people making it know how to make a good show. But as far as Asian male representation or Chinese male, I'm gonna give it a one out of 10. Oh, all right, guys, you let us know what you think in the comments down below. Have you watched this series? What do you think of it? Could they have put easily an Asian scientist that would make an Asian guy scientist that wouldn't get here's my two final takeaways, Andrew. One, I guess I'm still glad that it got made because Lucy, she got paid out. So maybe it'll just like be a candle that has to burn. It's like an uncomfortable candle that everybody will just have to deal with if you're in the Asian male representation. And number two, Chinese guys, we got to come together and have a have a pow wow and get a get a plan together, man, because we getting played out because the Japanese got shogun Koreans got a ton of stuff right now and we got played out in three body problem. We got to look at ourselves to see what we're doing or not doing. Yeah, man, there's gotta have been something cool in like Chinese that is like before 1920, right? Like, wasn't there some cool Chinese stuff? Let us know in the comment section below until next time with the hot boys. Peace.