‘Licorice Pizza’ Faces Backlash For Anti-Asian Joke
The new movie Licorice Pizza has garnered backlash in the weeks following its release due to a recurring joke that many viewers are calling racist. The film, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, involves multiple scenes in which a white restaurant owner, played by John Michael Higgins, speaks to his Japanese wives with a fake Asian accent. “There’s an incredibly racist, seemingly pointless (other than a cheap laugh, which it got at the screening I was at) scene that mocks Asian accents,” wrote Karen Maine, a director and screenwriter, on Twitter. The film has generally garnered positi...