CRE 151: Why Asian American Representation in Media is a Social Justice Issue
Why Asian American Representation in Media is a Social Justice Issue
1.
2020 -anti-Asian hate incidents spiked 149%
across larger cities in America
a.
Even as hate incidents overall declined
2.
Over 10,000 anti-Asian incidents from 19 March
2020 – 30 Sept 2021
a.
44.4 percent occurred in 2020/55.7 percent in
2021
3.
Such violence is not new, nor intersectionality
of law, politics, and media affecting their lives
a.
Date back to their arrival centuries ago and
continues today
b.
What role does the media play in shaping Asian
culture and harnessing its power for creative change
II: Why Media Matters
1.
Media creates the narrative foundation for how people
of color are perceived and treated in real world
2.
Negative portrayals have profound consequences
3.
Seeing Asian Americans as foreign creates an “in-group/out-group”
mentality
4.
Easier to treat Asians with hostility/engage in
acts of violence and discrimination
5.
Looking at seventy-nine primary and secondary
films featuring Asian and Pacific Islanders in 2019 revealed that 25 percent of
the characters died, all but one violently.
a.
Anna May Wong once said when I die, my epitaph
should be 'I died a thousand deaths remarking on the many times her character
died in the movies she starred in.
6.
80 % of media consumed worldwide is made in the
United States
7.
Thus, Hollywood profoundly impacts globally how
cultures and communities are portrayed and perceived.
8.
Since the COVID-19 epidemic, this has exploded
as viewership increased from 117.7 billion in December 2019 to 132 billion in
December 2020.
9.
So what happens when viewers are overexposed to
White-centric narratives that marginalize or, even worse, erase and demean the
experiences and narratives of other communities?
10. George
Gerbner and Larry Gross coined the phrase “symbolic annihilation.”
a.
Effects of being erased in media.
b.
Representation in the fictional world signifies
social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation
c.
If people don’t see themselves or those like
them reflected in the fictional media they consume, they are deemed insignificant
or unimportant in the real world
II. Why stereotypes Are so Harmful
1.
Stereotypes of Asians in America have persisted
throughout history, largely propagated by the media.
2.
Tropes such as model minority/perpetual
foreigner have led to real-world harm against these communities. including in
corporate America.
3.
Asians are most likely hired but least likely to
be promoted.
4.
Tropes such as hypersexualized Asian
women/emasculation of Asian men have detrimental real-world consequences.
III. Model Minority myth
1.
Coined by White sociologists William Petersen/first
published in 1966 New York Times Magazine article “Success story: Japanese
American style
2.
Presents Asian Americans as studious, educated,
successful, smart, and hardworking.
3.
Translated to the screen as the overachieving
Asian person, the nerdy sidekick, the IT person, the math whiz
4.
The 2010 Pew Research Center report found that
Asian Americans have a large wage gap compared to any other racial group.
5.
90/10 ratio is commonly used to measure the
income gap between the top percent and the bottom 10 percent ends of the
earnings spectrum
a.
2016 -the 90/10 ratio for Asians was 10.7,
meaning those in the 90th percentile had 10.7 times the income of
Asians at the 10th percentile, which is higher than any other community
studied.
b.
The wage gap of Asians has increased 77 percent from
1970 to 23016.
6.
On average, AAPI women earn 85 cents for every
dollar earned by White men. Even when broken down into subgroups, a very
different picture emerges.
7.
Taiwanese and Indian women make approximately $1.21
for every $1 earned by a White man. But at the other end of the spectrum,
Burmese women earn just .52 per every dollar made by a White man.
8.
According to 2017 Census data, Filipino
Americans faced a 6 percent poverty rate, compared to the 16.2 percent for Hmong
Americans.
9.
The model minority myth is therefore extremely
detrimental to policy arguments for economic support for Asian communities at
lower end of earing spectrum.
III. Perpetual Foreigner: Native born Sunisa Lee was told to
“go back to where [she] came from -presents another stereotype of Asians as the
perpetual foreigner.
1.
Often depicted on-screen as foreign, exotic, and
inherently un-American.,
2.
Exaggerated foreign accents, non-Christian
religious practices, and an adherence to outdated and barbaric practices such
as eating cats or dogs.
3.
The other-ness becomes the butt of jokes, and
Asians are mocked, denigrated, and singled out as being the other. Such concepts
as:
4.
Yellow Peril -1850 Asian immigrants arriving in
significant numbers to the U.S. West Coast;/quickly exploited as cheap labor by
White American Industrialists.
5.
Fear of competition and xenophobia from White
Americans led to the rise of racist, anti-Asian sentiment
a.
Often capitalized for political gain by the Workingmen’s
Party of California and the adoption of the phrase “The Chinese Must Go9”
b.
Yellow Peril images in the early days of film
and television often painted East Asians and Southeast Asians as sneaky,
villainous, foreign threats to Western values and life.
6.
Brown Peril /Islamophobia -South Asian presented
as counterpart. Portrayals escalated considerably in the wake of 9/11 and the
so-called war on terror over the past 2 decades.
7.
Islamophobia takes up mental space where the Yellow
Peril once stood.
8.
Brown faces are seen as the face of terrorism,
various South Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African ethnicities being
conflated with one another.
9.
Yello and Brown Peril still exist in modern film
and television in nameless form, such as Yakuza, ninjas, triads, tongs,
Communist invaders, terrorists’ plotlines, and seemingly ubiquitous Chinatown
episodes in every procedural series.
10. In
many of these, the Asian characters are nameless, faceless, and storyless.
11. They
tend to have no lines, no motivation, and follow commands mindlessly, closely resembling
props instead of characters.
12. Often
subject to racial slurs and often violently killed
III. Dragon Lady/Mata Hari -when Asian women are viewed,
they are often depicted as nefarious, untrustworthy, and sexually available and
immoral.
1.
Troupe goes back to the late 19th century, where
Chinese women immigrating to the U.S. were believed to be prostitutes, and
likely to spread foreign diseases via sex work.
2.
So pervasive that it led to the passing of the
1875 Page Act. And later, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
3.
“Mata Hari” is the cultural shorthand for a
lethal double agent who uses her powers of seduction to extract secrets from
her lover.
a.
Stage name of a Dutch sex worker falsely claimed
Indonesian heritage.
b.
Capitalizing on society’s fascination with
orient and the sexual objectification of Asian women
c.
She exploited the trope of hyper-sexualized
Asian women
i.
Accused of and eventually executed for
espionage.
IV. China Doll/Lotus Blossom/Geisha Girl
1.
Direct opposite of Dragon Lady, the China
Doll/Lotus Blossom/Geisha Girl presents Asian women as meek and submissive,
often in sexualized contexts, needing to be saved and willing to make
tremendous sacrifices for their master.
2.
Troup was adapted in Giacomo Puccini’s popular
opera Madam Butterfly -adapted into five feature films by 1932 and continues to
live in mainstream consciousness due to the popular musical Miss Saigon.
3.
Hypersexualization of Asian Women -clearly one
example of how these images in film and television have real-life consequences…from
the phrase “me so horny: me love you long time: from the 1987 film Full Metal
Jacket by Stanley Kubrick, still used more recently by 2 Live Crew’s “Me So
Horny” on Billboard top for thirty weeks in 1889.
4.
Past 30 years, not much improvement -Asian women
continue to be hypersexualized on screen
5.
A recent study of 1300 popular films from 2007
to 2019 found that nearly twenty-five percent of API women were clad in
provocative attire, and 25 percent were portrayed with some type of nudity.
6.
In a 2021 study, female Asian and Pacific
Islander characters were more likely than females of any other race to be
objectified on screen. pp
V. Emmasculation of Asian Men -often emasculated and humiliated,
dating back to the 1850s. with the initial wave of Asian immigrants.
1. Asian men have historically been limited to domestic work
traditionally done by women, such as nannying, cooking, and laundry.
2. Consistently a tactic of war propaganda.
3. Important to recognize the percentage of Asian men as
unattractive/sexually undesirable in the product of the media.
4. Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa -first Hollywood sex
symbol in the early days of the entertainment industry.
5. His popularity with White women sparked public fear,
leading to reinforcement of policies against showing interracial relationships
on screen.
6. Called the Hays Code or Motion Picture Production Code,
which set regulations on moral content in films. Hollywood imposed on itself to
preempt outside censorship.
7. Depictions have changed gradually, yet analysis of
top-grossing films of 2019 revealed that 58 % API male characters had no romantic
relationships compared to 37.5 % of API female characters.
VIII. Potential Solutions
1.
Stories by Us, for everyone -changing the
narrative changes the world by telling the stories by us for everyone,
universal narratives through specific lenses.
2.
More stories, centering on API characters, and
experiences rather than just as a sidekick or underdeveloped love interests.
3.
Recognizes the danger of a single story, or a
single set of stereotypes. Counter-narratives are important.
4.
Must chow the breadth, depth, and nuances of our
multi-ethnic, varied communities, and more presentations of the API community
in broader terms.
5.
Who gets to be the hero, whose story is central,
and who is telling the story, that does not center around a White male
protagonist.
VIII. More Intersectional stories. Older women, more LGBTQ,
more with disabilities. Most API characters
were predominantly young, largely male, straight, and able-bodied in the top
500 movies from 2015 to 2019.
IX> Tell stories that break or subvert stereotypes.
More content that actively breaks stereotypes and tropes,
including
Working-class, loud, crass Asian families.
Having more than one Asian actor in the main cast who
grapple with issues unrelated to their race.
Resilient but kind Asian heroines.
Coming-of-age stories with young Asian women with agency
over their own sexuality
Attractive -and still smart Asian men.
Asian himbos. What the
hell:
Rise of the Asian Himbo
Hire Asian American Talent behind the camera as
creators/executives at all levels with meaningful positions.
Asian American writers, from the beginning, not just at the
end, add a bit of authenticity or a little soy sauce or cultural flavor to the script.
More positions given to Asian American crew members -casting
directors, hair and make-up workers who know how to work with Asian hair,
appropriately applying makeup…
Lighting crews who know how to light different skin tones,
set designers, costume designers, editors, marketing, and publicity.
X. Provide Equitable Pay -emerging talent, including support,
need to be paid a living wage. This often
prevents people from less privileged backgrounds from entering the business.
Thus decreasing the diversity of the pool.
80% of assistants reported earning $50,000 or less in Los
Angeles County; $63,100 is considered low income. 35% of survey respondents
made less than 30K in 2020, many without health benefits or sick days. Vacations
not guaranteed. Also consider holding white actors to the same compensation and
expectations: consider what Asian actors are typically hired with these minimum
skills:
·
Foreign language proficiency or
fluency.
·
Martial arts skills.
·
Additional time and resources to train
the right Asian actor.
·
Support and resources for accent or
language work.
·
Work beyond the hired role (e.g.,
translating, cultural consulting).
Representation in the media can greatly influence society.
Only this way can Asian Americans and others reclaim and combat harmful
stereotypical narratives…
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