The Old School Lunch

I knew Rush Hour 3 was going to have the usual stereotypical Asian folks do this, Black folks do that jokes (”You can’t be Black, there’s a height requirement!”) but I didn’t know it was going to have an awful scene where the Chris Tucker “Carter” character goes on to berate and say how he would’ve beat a woman if she really was a man.

Spoiler Alert.

Basically, Carter is making out with this attractive woman with medium length hair (the reason for me including this detail will become relevant later) and they’re about to have sex. A fight breaks out and their party is interrupted. Later, it is revealed that a special clue is tattooed onto the head of the woman and she takes off her wig (which of course reveals that she’s nearly bald). Carter freaks out at the sight of her not having practically any hair and starts ranting about how he “kissed a frenchman.” He goes on in hysterics about he is “Brokeback Carter” even though the woman clearly says that indeed she is a woman. Carter isn’t so sure about this and asks Li (Chan) to “check the equipment” and says that if they do find male genitalia, there they’re going to “beat his ass.”

So what does this tell the young kids watching this? The young girls? Boys? That the “right” sort of gender identity looks like this? That, if you’re a girl, you better not try to shave your head or else you’ll be mistaken for being a boy and if you do ask out that boy in your math class, you might deservedly get your ass beat? That, if you’re a boy, it’s OK to police around gender conformity because girls and women have to look like this in order for you to see them as women? That it’s OK to use physical violence or the threat of physical violence to police people around?