Johnny Mnemonic is one of the movies that combines the most stereotypes. The protagonist Johnny, is a man who uses his own brain as a medium to carry data. After he uploaded too much data which exceeded the upper limit of his brain, he used Qigong to relieve the discomfort he was feeling. After doing several breaths and moves, he immediately felt better, well enough to fight several assassins. The movie did not mention that Johnny has any kind of martial arts training. I am not saying that Western people cannot learn Qigong, but the way the movie portraits Qigong does not make sense in the context of the story. Instead, the movie just abruptly inserted this scene about Qigong to demonstrate how Asian kung fu is “cool” and effective. If Johnny had learned kung fu and used it to escape from danger throughout the movie, then it would make more sense for this scene to appear.
Although there are so many Asian culture reference in the movie, the only important Asian character in the movie seems to be Takahashi, who is the executive of Pharmakom, which is a large pharmacological company, in the United States. But in the movie he was portrayed as a father who was blinded by his daughter’s death and does not want to face the truth or listen to other people’s advice. Compared to this stubborn and pathetic character, the artificial intelligence who lives in the cyberspace who is the wise mentor for everyone is a white women. In fact, all the wise and influential characters in the movie are white. One might argue that the movie mostly took place in Newark, but how come all the assassins and bad guys are Asian?
There is also a trend of fetishizing Asian female characters as desirable figures. There are always a beautiful perfect Asian woman. However, they are usually not important characters, instead, they usually either belong to someone or are inferior to someone. They are always obedient and never be the one to overturn the situation.