Asian American Representation in the Media

A blog focusing on how Asians and Asian Americans are represented in various forms of media in the U.S., including film, television, and advertising. Our mission is to bring awareness to the impact of negative portrayals and encourage positive representations of Asians and Asian Americans in the media.

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"Asian F" Glee Episode After Mike receives an "A−" on a chemistry exam, his father is upset by this "Asian F" and the danger it poses to his chances of attending Harvard. He insists that Mike focus more on his studies by giving up glee club and his girlfriend. This portrayal in this episode is reinforcing the stereotype that Asian Americans always excel in school and that one A minus will ruin their lives forever by "hurting" their chances of getting into an ivy league school. Overall, they wrapped up the episode well in that the morals are: (1) to follow your heart/dream no matter the circumstances and (2) parents should always support their child in whatever career choice they may desire. (Rachel Shim)

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Compared to Lucy Liu's older characters, her role as Dr.Joan Watson in the show "Elementary" (2012) is new and refreshing. What's amazing is that Dr.Joan Watson is a normal, 3-dimensional character with her own unique thoughts and feelings! Her character does not embody the typical Asian stereotypes of being a nerd, dragon lady, or kung-fu master.

I think her character is well balanced and very relatable.  She is neither submissive nor heartless.  She is kind and caring but also stands up for herself without being scary.  Throughout the show, we get to see that she has her own issues just like everyone else.  This allow us to empathize with her and not see her as an alien or an "other."  

What's also great is that Joan Watson's Asian heritage is a part of her background, but it doesn't take over her character. Furthermore, Joan is not over-sexualized and has an entirely platonic relationship with Sherlock.  They are essentially equals and they make a great team.

There needs to be more roles like Joan Watson where Asian Americans are depicted in a more accurate and relatable way. With more well rounded characters like this, the stereotypical Asian characters will slowly but surely disintegrate.

(Nana)

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Ming the Merciless – Flash Gordon

Fu Manchu is a fictional character created by Sax Rohmer. This character represents the ‘Yellow Peril’. Fu Manchu is a mysterious intelligent man who commits cruel murders and uses magic to seduce white women for sexual domination. This character type influenced a large amount of art pieces in various mediums during the 20th century.

            One of the most notable characters that inherited the stereotype of the evil villain is Ming the Merciless. Ming is the villain in the Flash Gordon comic strips, films, and television series. A white actor who is given a stereotypical Asian name plays Ming. Ming the Merciless is a alien who is threatening the white world. Ming is given the attribute of the outsider. This is a stereotype given to most Asian Americans.

            The elements of Ming’s character derive from Fu Manchu. The Fu Manchu character has caused the majority of male roles in the media to be criminal minded conniving individuals. This stereotype causes society to view the Asian men as one-dimensional. It does not provide audiences with a objective representation, instead of portrays all characteristics of the Asian male culture as exotic. Characters that contain the Fu Manchu stereotype are dehumanized, for they only possess the desire for power, violence, and sex.  Fu Manchu has caused the majority of Asian Men to be viewed as threat to society, for they have no desire to better society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJOmUW5QyqQ

This clip is just a example of the evil undertone given to his character. The clothing of Ming the Merciless and his followers are silk robes which could be considered copied from traditional Chinese clothing. 

Avni Milush

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Accidental Racism video by WongFu Productions

 ”Where are you from from?”

This video, based off the Perpetual Foreigner concept, accentuates the need for us to be culturally aware, competent, and sensitive in order to avoid awkward situations/accidental racism. =)

(Rachel) Shim

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Margaret Cho on All American Girl on PBS

All American Girl (1994)

Being the second American sitcom with a focus on an Asian American, All American Girl was marred with conflicts between the show’s main casts and the production crew. The show attempted to chronicle the life of a twenty three year old Korean American woman named Margaret Kim and her relationship with her more conventional family. According to creator and star, Margaret Cho, the show was supposed to center on themes, such as finding identity in the United States while maintaining a relationship with the native culture and trying to combine family life with personal life—the ideas of a collectivist mindset versus an individual one. However, the cast was pressured to succeed from the start and in doing so, had to succumb to mainstream standards. Cho intended the show to be a semi-autobiographical account of her own life, but it was soon overcome with the need to cater to a wider audience and become the idealized American sitcom family. The family, composed of non-Korean actors, were urged to act more Asian and often enacted stereotypically Asian behavior.

Despite its failed run on television, the fact that All American Girl ran for even one season is surprising during the 1990s. Even now, there are virtually no series featured around an Asian character, except for The Mindy Project, and none featuring an all Asian cast. There are no shows currently on television that really detail the struggles of young Asian Americans and their need to be seen as Americans and not as the eternal foreigner. If you are interested in such a show, however, watch Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat on YouTube.

All American Girl is also available on YouTube.

(Yuan Gao)

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Asian Americans are underrepresented in American media.  The few Asian American actors and actresses that we do see often play stereotypical roles such as the Asian nerd, Dragon lady, or Kung-Fu master.  Lucy Liu is one of the few well known Asian American actresses that made it to the big screen. Although she is seen as a positive role model, some of the roles she has taken on have depicted Asian Americans in a stereotypical way.

In the video shown above, we see Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii (who is half Japanese & half Chinese-American) in "Kill Bill"(2003).  O-Ren Ishii is the leader of a crime organization and she is the epitome of a Dragon lady. She is portrayed as a ruthless, cunning, and aggressive woman.  In this scene, she decapitates the man without even blinking an eye.  In fact, she barely shows any emotion at all and her cruelness is emphasized.  These traits are so exaggerated that they are actually terrifying, and it promotes the idea of Asians being a perpetual foreigner.  The dragon lady trope alienates Asian women because it creates an image of a callous and unfeeling sex object with hardly any other human emotions.  It's almost as if we are a completely different species and reinforces the "us vs. them" mentality.  It's time that we break away from these stereotypes and had more realistic portrayals of Asian Americans in the media.

(Nana)

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Jackie Chan is one of the most known Asian actors in the world. The majority of Jackie Chan's films are in the action/adventure genre. Chan portrays the Martial Arts stereotype which has been a permanent label for most Asian actors in Hollywood films.

Jackie Chan enforced the kungfu-outsider role in most of his films. The success of his films has influenced film makers to assign these roles to individuals who are unable to play such roles. Jackie Chan was trained in martial arts and was a perfect candidate for the movies he took part in. In short, he was the perfect person for such kung fu films. This role he played is forced on other Asian American actors who do not have the same attributes as him. 

This stereotype robs Asian actors of their dimensions. The element of love and affection is usually absent in such films. It causes American society to associate Asian men as merely fighters with little personality.

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MAD TV - Miss Swan at McDonald's

Miss Swan is the epitome of stereotypes used to represent Asian American women in the media. She is a Asian American character played by a white actress. Asian Americans became enraged by this negative portrayal of their ethnicity. 

Miss Swan is a nail salon owner who has a unusually strong accent. This is done to send the message in which all Asians Americans speak very poor english. Miss Swan is given a fake ethnicity in the show, for she is representing all Asian Americans collectively. This damages the status of Asian women in American society. Miss Swan enforces the stereotypes in which all Asian women are foreigners to their own country, and that they all speak broken english. She is seen as a hyper sexualized women. 

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Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) trailer

Charlie Chan

Perhaps one of the most famous examples of Yellow Face in the earlier film eras, Charlie Chan is demeaning in our modern mindset, but also inspiring through the perspectives of those in the early 1900s. The character was initially created by Earl Derr Biggers to counter the Yellow Peril stereotypes. Being the benevolent and foolish foil to the cunning and evil Fu Manchu, Chan was a welcome addition in film during a time when Asians, specifically the Chinese, were viewed as wily and calculating. Though Chan seems to possess all these positive qualities, he reinforces the views that many impose on Eastern Asian men—emasculate, subservient and weak. Chan also does not speak fluent or coherent English despite being a successful detective stationed in Honolulu. All these contribute to the image that Asians are not assimilable and therefore, cannot be true Americans. Rather they are visitors from another country and the perpetual foreigner.

Although the modern audience may despise Chan, he was lauded in his time because of the departure from the negative images that Hollywood had cast on Asians, immigrants and citizens alike. The original Chan films were viewed successfully in China and became one of the most popular American film series there, solely because Chan was the opposite of Fu Manchu. It seemed to the Chinese audience that the Chinese were actually welcomed in America.

On an interesting note, the actor that had played Chan’s “number one son” in a number of films, Chinese-born actor Keye Luke, successfully went on to portray Mr. Wong in Phantom of Chinatown, a character much like Charlie Chan, but without all the orientalism. His depiction of Mr. Wong did not contain any racist values. He was merely of Chinese descent and was able to speak Chinese.

While Charlie Chan seems to be a step back for Asian Americans, it could also be seen as an improvement from the Yellow Peril stereotypes.

There are full Charlie Chan movies on YouTube if you are interested.

(Yuan Gao)

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Yellow Fever (2006)

WongFu Productions

While not featured on mainstream media as much, many Asian Americans have utilized the internet in advancing their goals of becoming more apparent. An example would be the YouTube trio, WongFu Productions!! (Please excuse the excitement, I love them.) Initially three students from UC San Diego, Philip Wang, Wesley Chan and Ted Fu started making videos detailing everyday occurrences, which just happen to feature Asian Americans. Mostly known for their YouTube videos, they have since created an apparel brand, Nice Guys, which funds their freelance lifestyle and have toured internationally speaking at many venues, mainly at universities. With their online presence becoming stronger, the three are starting to branch into mainstream media through commissions from companies, such as ATT and Subaru.

Though WongFu seems to create a positive image for Asian Americans, they are also being criticized for doing just so. Their videos often feature other prominent internet stars who are also Asian, creating a sentiment that they, perhaps, only utilize Asians to create their videos. WongFu Productions does use conventional Asian stereotypes, however, they use it as a comedic device to actually dispel those views of AAs. One of their most popular short films, Yellow Fever (2006), is one such example. It explores a young man’s dilemma over why Asian girls seem to like white men more? Was it their “hairy arms”? In the end, this problem is explained through a seemingly racist form of another young Asian man. So while the group seem to indulge in racist stereotypes of not just Asians, they do so in a manner to ridicule these images and help their audience to incorporate Asians into popular media.

(Yuan Gao)

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Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (2013-present)

In one of the most popular TV shows on primetime, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD not only features one but two East Asians as its main characters. We have the bubbly and curious, genius hacker Skye, played by a biracial Chloe Bennet, and the mysterious, muscle of the group, Agent Melinda May, portrayed by Macau-born Ming-Na Wen. As a tie-in with the Marvel’s Avengers franchise, it features agents of a top secret organization which was created to protect the world from strange occurrences. Although the show is fairly liberal in a sense in its rendering of Asian characters, it still gives into conventional Hollywood stereotypes of Asians as a homogenous group of orientals.

Having watched a few episodes, I can say that the two female characters feature certain Asian stereotypes, but this can easily be forgiven by the fact that the characters themselves are well developed, Skye being more so than Agent May.  Bennet, being a biracial actress, can easily be perceived as a non-asian, which some might think explains her larger role on the show. Wen, on the other hand, has almost no presence on the show until recently, and even then, it is Bennet’s character who calls her a “zen warrior” (Season 1 Ep 22). Interestingly enough, Wen’s character was also originally named "Althea Rice" during casting and was changed thereafter.

Although the show does employ some stereotypes which might further highlight the perpetual foreigner concept of Asians in the US, it also attempts to develop the characters episode by episode. The show does not exploit any of the female characters as sexy or exotic. It does seem that the characters are Asian Americans and not just Asians. I think that as long as the media incorporates substance into their portrayals, it can be forgiven as a “coincidence” that some of these characters just happen to be “geniuses” and “warrior”-like.

*Above is a clip of Agent May beating some people up, as usual*

(Yuan Gao)

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People like to think that we live in a post-racial world, but that is clearly not the case. Some people are still very blatantly racist while simultaneously denying their racism. Here, we have Pete Hoekstra's extremely racist Super Bowl ad from 2012. He utilizes many negative and harmful stereotypes of Asian Americans in a span of just 30 seconds.

In this video, we are immediately hit with stereotypical Chinese music playing in the background. Then we see an Asian woman riding a bike in a field of rice paddies (because of course, there had to be rice). The woman continues to speak in broken English and says:

"Thank you, Michigan Sen. Debbie 'spend-it-now.' Debbie spend so much American money you borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie spend-it-now."

This not only ridicules the Asian accent, but also perpetuates the myth that immigrants are apparently stealing "American" jobs. It puts Asian Americans in a negative light and sets them up as the antagonist.  It is sad and infuriating that a public figure of a "post-racial" world could create such an ignorant and racist ad.

(Nana) 

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Pitch Perfect (2012)

Hidden within the hilarious plot and catchy music, I spotted underlying negative portrayals of Asian Americans in the media.

(1) Lilly Onakuramara, played by Hana Mae Lee, is portrayed as a shy, soft-spoken and meek Asian girl. In addition to being dressed in stereotypical Asian fashion (braids, bow headband) and having a frightened expression on her face, she speaks so quietly that no one can make out what she's saying. Because no one can hear her, she is often ignored by the rest of the acapella group members. When viewers can actually hear her lines, it's usually something odd, inappropriate and quirky, such as "I ate my twin in the womb," or "Do you guys want to see a dead body?" 

(2) Kimmy Jin, played by Jinhee Joung, is Beca's (main character) Korean roommate. Her role fits the Dragon Lady stereotype for her character is very mean and cold towards the protagonist. When she glares silently at Beca, Beca questions whether she can speak English by repeating her line slower. Throughout the entire film, she is referred by her full name, Kimmy Jin, as if to accentuate the point that she is a foreigner. She is also seen joining the Korean Student Association and playing video games with her stereotypical nerdy Asian friends; Kimmy is portrayed as a cold, non-assimilating Asian girl. 

(Rachel Shim)

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Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008)

In the sequel to the 2004 film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Kal Penn and John Cho return as the titular characters as the story continues where White Castle left off - the duo decide to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Amsterdam to follow a girl Harold has a crush on. However, their plans are derailed significantly when, through a series of hilarious events, they are mistaken for terrorists and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

The trailer above accurately shows the many ways in which this film uses racial stereotypes for humor value, and to point out the absurdity of these stereotypes. The entire plot centers around the fact that the two men are mistaken for terrorists based on their race, when what really happened was Kumar was just trying to smoke weed in the airplane bathroom and Harold just happened to be with him (and of Korean descent) at the time.

The Harold & Kumar franchise in general has done a lot to subvert common Asian American stereotypes for humor value, especially the "model minority" and "terrorist" labels, with great success.

It can be argued that Harold and Kumar still succumb to common Asian stereotypes, such as Harold's meekness and the fact that Kumar is good at math. However, the two characters are so well-rounded and three-dimensional that these traits become a part of who they are, rather than turning them into caricatures. Kumar actively rebels against his academic successes, while Harold tries to be more outspoken and "let loose."

Overall, this particular film (and the Harold & Kumar franchise in general) offers a well-rounded and positive portrayal of two Asian American characters while resisting most of the negative tropes of earlier films, and managing to poke fun at common racial stereotypes while they're at it.

(Liz Baillie)

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Sayonara (1957)

Just one year after his appearance in yellowface in Teahouse of the August Moon, Marlon Brando starred in Sayonara. His character, Major Lloyd "Ace" Gruver, is an American G.I. stationed in Japan just after World War II who is somewhat outwardly racist and strongly opposes the interracial marriage between his fellow G.I. Joe Kelly and Kelly's fiancee, Katsumi.

The plot centers around the military's disapproval of this union, and the many challenges faced by interracial couples in the military at that time. Kelly is eventually ordered to return to the U.S. (as was common among American men stationed in Japan who were married or in relationships with Japanese women) and he can not take Katsumi (who is pregnant by then) with him, due to the restrictive laws of the time. Eventually, he and his bride-to-be commit suicide as a result of the hardships imposed on them by the military and the U.S. government.

By the end of the film, the formerly disapproving and racist Gruver has fallen in love with a Japanese woman himself, and decides to marry her. In the final scene (above), we see the result of his turnaround.

Although this film does include an instance of yellowface (Mexican-American actor Ricardo Montalban inexplicably plays a Japanese man, despite the presence of many other Japanese actors in the film), it was still quite progressive for its time, especially in its overall sympathetic view of interracial relationships. The film also cast many Japanese actors and was filmed on location in Japan. However, the film also portrays its Japanese women characters somewhat two-dimensionally, usually writing them as stereotypically passive and compliant, with very little depth. Overall, this film is a mixed bag in terms of its portrayal of Asians; it has both positive and negative aspects.

(Liz Baillie)

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Disney's 1970 animated film, The AristoCats, portrays a negative portrayal of Asians in the media as well. Shun Gon is a Chinese Tonkinese cat voiced by Paul Winchell. As if the name Shun Gon isn't racist enough, the cat is playing the piano with chopsticks, singing, "Shanghai, Hong Kong, Egg Foo Young, Fortune Cookie always wrong," exhibiting offensive Chinese stereotypes. Disney films, targeted mainly for children, shouldn't depict racist themes and stereotypes for they can instill negative and unhealthy distortions of Asian Americans within children. 

Fun Fact: Tonkinese cats, originally spelled Tonkanese were first established/ breeded in Canada. Many believe the name to be related to the Tonkin region of IndoChina, mistaking the cat to be of China origin. The misconception has led to a change in the spelling from Tonkanese to Tonkinese. 

(Rachel Shim)

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To commemorate Audrey Hepburn's 85th birthday, here is a scene from the film, Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). 

Another "yellow face" casting is portrayed in this film for Mickey Rooney plays the role of Mr. Yunioshi. With squinty eyes, big glasses, buck teeth, and a Japanese accent, Mr. Yunioshi is Audrey Hepburn's nerdy/idiotic Japanese neighbor. The stereotype and depiction of Mr. Yunioshi has triggered many criticisms and petitions within the Asian American community. Even in the 1993 film, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Bruce Lee's wife Linda suggests they leave midway whilst watching the film when she sees Bruce upset with Rooney's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi. 

In a 2008 interview, Mickey Rooney defends himself stating, "Blake Edwards... wanted me to do it because he was a comedy director. They hired me to do this overboard, and we had fun doing it.... Never in all the more than 40 years after we made it – not one complaint. Every place I've gone in the world people say, 'God, you were so funny.' Asians and Chinese come up to me and say, 'Mickey you were out of this world.' He further mentions that he wouldn't have played the part if he'd known people would be so offended. 

A 1961 classic, Breakfast at Tiffany's, is now coined the most racist movie of all time. 

(Rachel Shim)