"Mixed Asian representation in American popular culture parallels how mixed Asians are often perceived by the public—as fair-skinned, ambiguous, and exotic, but whose identities are constructed through their positionality to others. In shows that are white-led, they remain not quite white, their ambiguous faces the butts of the punchline (at times self-referentially), their backgrounds barely mentioned. They serve the story as entrancing secondary characters with no evidence of their Asianness (or whiteness, for that matter), but whose likenesses cause the audience to discern whether they’re mixed Asian on and offscreen."
"In HBO/Crave’s queer hockey romance series adaptation, Shane Hollander (Korean-Dutch Hudson Williams) Japanese-Canadian background, never specified as Japanese, is mentioned three times. First, Shane’s manager congratulates his team on breaking barriers by signing him. Next, his mother (Taiwanese-Filipino/white Christina Chang) reminds Shane of the community he represents. Finally, Shane mentions to his white date he was one of two Asian boys who played hockey. Despite this. Heated Rivalry includes no gestural or cultural signs of Shane’s Asianness throughout the season. Even when Shane and his love interest Ilya Rosanov (Connor Storrie) eat dinner with Shane’s parents, spaghetti is what’s on the menu.
The lack of development in Shane’s identity is more pronounced by the pervasiveness of Ilya’s Russian background, which includes relationships with other Russians, language, an accent, and distinct customs. Ilya’s identity informs how he moves through the world, a navigation threaded throughout the season, that Shane simply isn’t allowed to experience."
I'm so glad this gets talked about how Russianness is so overwhelmingly part of the story vs Shane's mixed race is nothing more than the way he looks and there is no cultural underpinning whatsoever. I know fandom has complained about it since the dawn of time, but it's nice to see it written about. The examples the article cites are almost all things Jacob added to the script because of how in the book, Shane is fully reduced to his "exotic" face and hairless body.
For the people writing big RR defense essays in the tags about assimilation:
Yes, assimilation is a thing and could certainly be part of Shane's plotline. But it's not written anywhere. It's not addressed in any meaningful way by RR. She literally made Shane a fetishist caricature, and if you don't recognize that, you seriously need to engage with stories not written by white people about pocs.
Shane being assimilated could be a very interesting path to take if she bothered to actually research and do something meaningful with it. Because while it's possible that Shane has ZERO connection to his mom's culture (and like possible but highly implausible, bc even if you take Hudson himself as an example, who clearly doesn't speak Korean fluently, at least he has Korean aunties teaching him about K-beauty and some very subtle Asian mannerisms - I'm not asking Shane to make a tea ceremony or wear kimono but some acknowledgement of being BI-racial could take much more subtle forms), the fact that he enters the league as an Asian-looking person in itself generates a conflict of him not feeling different from any other Canadian player but is being othered because of his looks.
Also, this is a blog that is openly critical of RR's writing. I think the racial representation and biases in all the books is absolutely terrible, and I we need to talk about that and acknowledge it as a fandom so people realize it's not normal to write an Asian character be "exotic, hairless, small, bottom, submissive, stupid with a tiny dick who is evil to be more ambitious than his big, sexy, VERY INTELLIGENT, traumatised, talented big-dicked white love interest" and get diversity awards for it. Book!Shane is one of the worst caricatures I've ever seen in my life and I frankly don't know how an editor didn't point this out.
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