It's a toughie

Someamongus passed on a link about how asian characters are portayed in cinema and mass media - I dug up Margaret Cho's take on it, and she raises some interesting humorous points. Her comparison to blackface at the end stands out for me - I've had to start questioning if I equate my own crappy ingrained racial prejudices equally across all minorities.

There is a sense of the invisibility of Asians, particularly 'Oriental' characters, in media today.
I heard somewhere that part of Rob's Marshall's rebuttal to the attack on him for using a Chinese actress to portray a Japanese Geisha in Memoirs... (which I'm going to see tonight, although Ian doesn't know yet) is that he cast Queen Latifa in the role of Mama Morton in Chicago, at a time when there were no black prison wardens, because she so embodied the role that he felt she had to play it. Also, I saw somewhere that Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls were meant to be figments of her imagination, hence, they didn't speak. Apparently interviewers would ask her about them, while they sat behind her, and she would be like, 'what girls? where?'
And I say fair enough to both points, to both circumstances. Doesn't change the fact that the closest thing we have to a household Indian character is Apu. And it doesn't make it okay that everyone seems so surprised that Sayid in Lost would be the Republican Guard soldier with the heart of gold. The closer you look at Middle Eastern and Far Eastern characters in mass media (let's face it, American media) the more diluted these characters seem to become. The casting people on Lost hired an British actor to play the Iraqi Sayid.

Is it wrong? Is it really justifiable? Sure, the guy's got a six-pack you could grate cheese on, but doesn't it make his portrayal of his character's back story seem thin? But isn't that what acting is - telling stories, being part of a story where you enact the emotions and responses of a character different to your own life, your own personality?

Yeah, I've lost myself here... 'Lost', eh. Chuckle. It bears considering, even if the answers don't present themselves.
I'll let you know what I think of the movie, having just finished the novel. I'll probably spend the whole time looking for bits they've left out.