American media continue to stereotype Asians and Asian Americans

Written by Walker Shumock-Bailey

In the Spring of 2021, the United States was reeling from the multiple homicides of an Atlanta killer who killed eight people including six Asian women, and the media furiously debated the motives of the killing. The Boston Globe called the murders racial terrorism and, with the gravity of the crimes towards the Asian American community, it seems as if it is time to take another close look at long-standing racist tendencies within the US.

According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, during the Covid-19 Pandemic, 40% of adults in the United States believe that it has become more common to openly discriminate against Asian people through the expression of racist views.

Yet according to a collaborative poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal only 34% believed that Asian people were being discriminated against. These facts beg a deeper dive into the way that Asian people in America are discriminated against, not only in the pandemic but before it as well.

A key area that has paradoxically excluded Asian people while also discriminating against them is in Hollywood films and network television shows. According to Professor Qiu Ping from the University of Denver, who holds a doctorate in American Studies and who focuses on the Chinese diaspora in the US, Asian representation in film and television is focused on the idea of the perpetual foreigner syndrome.

“The idea [of the perpetual foreigner syndrome] is that Asian Americans are not Americans. You are either regarded with fear, both sides have fear underplaying it, however, a lot of people seem to be more accepting of the model minority,” said Qiu about the idea of the perpetual foreigner syndrome and the stereotypical representations of Asian people in American media.

The main issue with the representation of Asians in film and television that Qiu brings up is that it is misrepresentation in two ways. The first is that they are underrepresented which leads to the invalidation and disempowerment of the Asian American experience. The second is that when they are represented, they are misrepresented through stereotypes of either being villainous or a model minority.

Neither of these things lends themselves to a real character with depth; rather they are usually contrived plot devices or comic relief.

“I think that the way that Asians are viewed in the media right now has had a negative impact on the way that Asians have been perceived in society. When I look at media roles, I see them as more comedic or nerdy in that sense and we’re not seen as powerful,” said a third-year, Chinese-American University of Denver Student Colton Bobbitt about the effect of Asian representation on societal perceptions.

The disempowerment of the Asian identity that Bobbitt mentions is something that has been studied in academia. A 2018 honors thesis for the Dominican University of California contends that the aforementioned model minority myth which portrays characters as being smart, hard workers, and ambitious (compared to other minorities) disempowers the Asian identity by boxing characters into stereotypes, not real characters.

In reference to the idea of the harm that these stereotypes cause, Qiu said, “For Asian American kids who grow up in the US with a lack of representation and misrepresentation. It has a tremendous damage to their psychological development and so there no good role model for them to grow up with and emulate.”According to a 2019 academic article entitled, “Asian American Media Representation: A Film Analysis and Implications for Identity Development”, the connection between media and identity for kids is crucial.

The authors argue that media plays a key role in socializing kids and teens which helps to create parts of their identity. With inaccurate media portrayals using harmful stereotypes like the “model minority” comes a damaging psychological effect for Asian kids who see characters in movies and television that have no real nuance.

“The model minority myth is damaging too, so a lot of people will not have space for them to talk about their issues because people don’t think they have issues, they don’t have problems,” said Qiu on the idea of the societal damage that the model minority myth can do.

Taking a deeper look into the inaccurate media portrayals themselves leads to an examination of the types of Asian characters broken down into female and male stereotypes. These stereotypes are unique for each of the genders and come with their own sets of problems and implications for their effects on society.

For Qiu, there is a problem with the over-exotification or sexualization of Asian female characters in American media. They are either dragon ladies who are Femme Fatales who are oversexualized and usually as an exotic side piece to a white male lead or lotus flowers who are submissive, helpless characters who are also used as sexual objects for the male leads to protect and rescue.

“They [Asian women in American media] are either considered for their overpowering sexual appeal or for their passivity, so kind of the subservient attitude towards men,” said Qiu about the rigid duality of female Asian portrayal.

According to the previously mentioned 2019 journal article, this lotus girl trope was also associated with the characters requiring the help of a White male partner to become more assertive which reinforces the idea that Asian women will/should be submissive to a white male.

“I feel like the Western culture focuses on [male dominance], and since they are extreme in the other way where they make the men a lot more aggressive and more dominant, they like to have this idea that because they’re dominant they should have submissive girls around them, and Asian girls are a good target for that,” said second-year, Korean American University of Southern California student Seong Kim on the idea of lotus girls.

This again has huge implications for the psychological development of young Asian girls and women who grow up seeing these oversexualized images. According to Qiu, this can lead to an abundance of mental health problems for Asian women related to body image and their sexualization.

For Asian men, the problem is on the other end of the spectrum according to Qiu. They are usually typecast in roles such as servants, restaurant workers, sidekicks, foreign students, or gangsters/villains and are almost never given the lead romantic role. This can be invalidating and dismissive of their sexuality which leads to perceptions of being sexually undesirable.

“I feel like we [Asian men in media] are put into a box of that nerd, smart, geek, IT kind of feel, just for comedic relief. I think this is kind of hurting the male view in society as well, because if we are seen as just a comic relief in movies then we are not taken as seriously in society,” said Bobbitt on his personal experience with the way representation affects societal perception.

Media is king in America and so much of the social fabric of the country is based on its consumption. The effects that media have on Asian Americans’ perception in society, as well as their self-perception, are colossal. However, for the future, there is some hope for closing the gap in representation for Asian Americans.

There has been an emergence of more representation for Asian Americans in media over the last couple of years. The 2018 smash hit Crazy Rich Asians which featured an almost entirely Asian cast grossed over 238 million dollars at the box office, the series Fresh off the Boat which follows a Taiwanese-American family sits at six seasons with a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and at the 2020 Oscars Parasite, a Korean film directed by Bong Joon-ho won Best Picture.

While these all represent massive successes for inclusion from some perspectives, one scholar writing for the journal Lateral contends that films like Crazy Rich Asians seek to sell themselves as a “multicultural redemption narrative” which somehow absolves society from the past racial violence that has occurred. She argues that simply having a diverse cast does not somehow redeem society from the racial violence that was or is being committed (such as the Atlanta killings). Suffice it to say, many still believe that there is a long way to go.

Qiu shared her thoughts on the balance between the progress and what has to be worked on and she said, “I do think there are some positive changes, I’ve seen progress in the diversity and more complicated storylines and more interesting characters” however, “the stereotyping is staying, it has never gone away. It is either this stereotype or this stereotype or a new stereotype, in order not make it a stereotype you have to make it an All-American character.”