There’s more stuff from East Asia available here than there was even 10 years ago, I know that much. Africa has a much closer relationship with China than it used to (SA especially with BRICS), but even Korea is making inroads locally.
Can’t say I’ve noticed a change in T-Shirt models, though. Or a larger presence of East Asians in general local media. Lots of K-Pop, and K-Drama (and Chinese shows) on streaming. But that’s a global medium. So not a Southern African thing
Your “desperate” attempts to make sense of it have likely included online searches that include “Asian” and “models”. But sure, nothing you’ve done online has had anything to do with a group of people.
Why are you “desperate” to make sense of this, anyway?
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Our overreaching principle is “don’t be a jerk”. One of the rules supporting that principle is that we don’t allow posters to attack each other outside of the BBQ pit. Here in “in my humble opinion”, the post I’ve quoted is overly aggressive towards the other people in this thread.
Feel free to ignore posts that you don’t think deserve an answer. Your can also point to previous posts. Or point out exactly what’s wrong with a post. But “you guys just keep repeating the same fallacies” (which is aimed at other posters’ behavior, rather than actually pointing out fallacies in their posts) is not an appropriate way to engage.
Thanks.
When you get right down to it, OP, you’re asking us to explain a subjective impression of yours - that there is a sudden influx of East Asian faces in American media. But we can’t explain why you suddenly feel like you see a large number of East Asians in media. In the past decade or so, there has been a slow increase in East Asian representation in our pop media - K-pop bands, Squid Game, Shang Chai and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the growing popularity of anime, the movie career of Awkwafina.
Your own OP suggests that you’ve only recently returned (to the US or UK, I imagine) after several years living in Sierra Leone, so I suspect that what we see as a slow trend to you looks like a sudden surge, simply because you haven’t been here to see the trend develop. And now having noted it, I also suspect confirmation bias - you’re especially noticing East Asians when they appear on your TV or computer.
Just my $0.02.
I’m another American who disputes this premise.
Please provide an example. I can’t think of one.
Partly what is happening is that the rest of the world has begun to recognize how large a proportion of the world’s population lives in East Asia. If you draw a circle with its center in Mong Khet in Myanmar that has a radius of 2050 miles, that circle contains half the population of the world. It contains China, India, the countries of southeast Asia, and parts of several other populous countries. These countries have also begun to increase in average gross domestic product per person to something closer to what it is in Europe and the countries that are mostly of European ancestry. All this means that East Asia has begun to have more financial and cultural influence on the rest of the world than they have had for the past couple of centuries.
I just want to state that the answer to my original post had already been pretty much provided by some of the commenters very earlier on the thread. I believe I now have a clear understanding of what is going on. While the suggestions I offered may definitely play some role, I think it also comes down ultimately to aggressive lobbying by certain demographic groups in the US as well as a form of pandering by media corporations to what they’ve come to see as a hugely growing market - to them, in fact, the most important market at least for the time being. I should have expressed this realization earlier, but I needed time to reflect on the information provided by some of the earlier respondents, and also to do some of my own research in light of the information. Also, much appreciations.
I’m pleased to hear that in light of the clear consensus in the responses here that your prior skepticism about whether the phenomenon is real has been dispelled. And thank goodness that you have now been convinced of the truth of the matter, that this very real phenomenon is a sinister global politically and commercially motivated conspiracy. It’s shocking isn’t it - I bet you had no inkling of this until you asked the question.
You’re welcome. I can’t wait to hear your next question!
Nothing is going on. This is a delusion that you are experiencing.
Not it doesn’t. This is nonsense. Flubbedy flub.
Or…
Please provide examples, as there are none actually in America, as it is currently constituted.
Not in the United States of America. The one in North America. On Earth.
I have no idea, I do not watch TV or pay attention to adverts.
But I would like to point out that Cape Town, South Africa, where we both live, is both 9366 km (5813 miles) away from Sierra Leone, and has a completely different culture to there. Africa is big. REAL BIG. And diverse.
I know much about southern Africa, but next to nothing about west Africa, aside from loving the music.
I can tell you information about some countries in the vast continent that is Africa but I cannot speak as an expert or even as a resident of Africa for all countries.
Is there an increase in American media representation of Asians?
Yes.
Whether or not that is “huge” is a judgement call but I think assessing it as such is reasonable.
Even several years back the popularity of K pop was driving a surge in Korean language study.
It really is specific to Asian representation.
Of course some of that is chasing a market that increasingly has discretionary income. I’ll also posit that it has to do with the supply side as well: Asian Americans are achieving highly including as part of the creative intellectual property creators. There is a drive to tell stories informed by your specifics, even as they serve more shared generalizable experiences. Think Turning Red for example. Jewish writers had done the same in past years.
The two of course feed off each other. Exposure to Parasite and Squid Game and Everything Everywhere All at Once and Crazy Rich Asians feeds interest in Korean and Chinese media and images; success of those products motivates others similar getting the greenlight. It becomes a safe bet.
I am still unclear whether the OP is asking about a phenomenon they have observed in Sierra Leone or in the USA or somewhere else. If in Sierra Leone, then it’s understandable that people who don’t live in Sierra Leone have not observed the same phenomenon.
My own observation, living in Ireland (and somewhat alert to this issue because I am married to an East Asian) is that East Asian faces continue to be underrepresented in Irish media, and diversity in representation tends to involve including black people in ads, posters, etc.
Faces on t-shirts isn’t really a big thing here.
Take a note of this:
What should we note of it?
It’s the tenth year of China’s Belt and Road Initiative with large investments and loans given to get Chinese state owned companies building African infrastructure and that link’s main point is that it is hard to really know how much they have spent on it?
Not much there about how that has impacted media representation of the Chinese across the continent. Or the rest of the world.
FWIW the following article contrasts China’s infrastructure investment with India’s media presence soft power tactic increasing Indian cultural representation across that continent.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-les-enjeux-de-l-information-et-de-la-communication-2016-2-page-225.htm
Yes, I was going to say something like that. While it’s not clear to me exactly what the OP is talking about, there’s no doubt that Asians have become a massive part of US pop culture over the last decade or so. Before 2010, it was very rare for an Asian group to get onto the US Billboard charts. Now, it is routine.
Well the OP’s claim of “almost exclusively” compared to “European” certainly overstates the case. And the “top down” speculation?
@neitherscout, what specific group do you speculate is exerting this top down control?
My own sense of it is that Crazy Rich Asians was a watershed event. It made Warner Brothers a boatload of money.
It was not made with an Asian cast because the power brokers decided society needed Asian representation. It was made because the author of the book refused to alter the material into White characters and took a lesser offer from Warner Brothers than Netflix was offering to get it on the big screen. As the creative talent he had enough power.
The movie had broad appeal across the mainstream, and other Asian focused products have also had mainstream success. Couple that with the purchasing power importance of the American Asian market and increased representation is a no brainer for any bean counter.
And more obliquely, Elemental, which was shaped by director Peter Sohn’s upbringing as a Korean-American.
Just this morning, I happened to be watching a podcast episode by Tucker Carlson in which he had a certain guest on. And, to my utter surprise, almost out of the blue, the very issue that I raised in this thread was briefly brought up and touched upon during the conversation in a way that completely resolved all the questions I had been having about it in recent months… And it was entirely by accident: I don’t even normally watch TC’s show unless I just happen to come across one where he has an interesting topic or guest on. The revelation that was made was pretty much what I had already suspected anyway particularly due to my observations about recently imported t-shirts here in Africa which I mentioned earlier.
During the interview, the guest revealed that the PRC government has been very actively pushing highly racial policies in recent years, even to the extent of channeling huge amounts of money into Hollywood. It basically confirmed what I mentioned earlier, that this is very much a top-down driven thing, as much as some people may want to pretend otherwise.
As I said, even before coming across that interview, I had already pretty much figured out that this is what is going on (or at least part of it). It’s easy to see why the events of international politics in recent years has incentivized as well as given opportunity to the PRC to engage in this sort of behavior. On a psychological level, I see where they’re coming from, though it is also equally clear to me that they have no idea where they are going with it - they’re just sort of taking the ball (seizing the moment) and running with it. Equally obvious is the fact that totalitarian regimes have always seen racialism as a way of basically bribing their core constituent populations, given the right political contexts.
Of course, that alone doesn’t answer the other part of the question, which is why the US establishment itself goes along with it. But, again, given what has been going on in recent years in terms of Western politics, it is painfully easy to see why: It fits pretty nicely with the modern globalist, neo-liberal agenda that we’ve been witnessing in recent years. And, specifically in terms of indigenous politics, it also fits well with the whole anti-white agenda of the US establishment. It’s really that simple. I know that saying these things might make me come across as ‘racist’ to some people, but I really am not. As I mentioned earlier in response to some other poster, I am just the kind of person who doesn’t like being manipulated by people in power, especially if it is obvious that they are also hypocritical. If they were actually open and honest about what they are doing, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem at all, What drives me (and I suspect a lot of other people) is the often clandestine nature of their policies.
By the way, I need to clarify two things that were in the initial post (because it unfortunately gave rise to a lot of specious counter-arguments). First, my use of terms like, European, African or Asian and so on was not a reference necessarily to people actually living in those regions of the world. Rather they referred more broadly to people’s primary places of origin. Secondly, when I talked about observing trends on Youtube (specifically in terms of videos having gigantic numbers of views) that was not a reference to my own personal Youtube feed. It had nothing to do with the contents regularly suggested to me when I use the platform, though there are indeed some occasions where videos show up when you’re browsing that have nothing to do with anything you’ve ever watched or given a damn about. Instead, I was referring to things I had occasionally noticed online in general - as well as on TV and other media. So I hope that clears up whatever may have been inspiring those phony arguments earlier.
Anyway, that’s all. I’m sorry to have revived this thread again, I had long since gotten over and pretty much forgotten this issue weeks ago. But after accidentally coming across that surprising interview, I felt I simply had to express that confirmation here and bring a sense of complete closure to the topic.
@neitherscout It doesn’t surprise me that you heard such a story / interview on TC’s show.
China is currently the boogieman of America politics; for both sides of the aisle but particularly the right wing.
Tucker has a history of being dishonest, and knowingly lying to his audience. “China plots” are a story his audience wants, and he doesn’t care about whether it misleads.
I will give Tucker credit though in this podcast episode. In talking about Chinese money it was good that he talked a lot about Trump admitting to accepting ~$5 million from the Chinese while president, and Ivanka getting her Chinese patents approved the day after meeting Xi.
Oh wait, what’s that? No mention whatsoever of those things? Ah shucks, why do I continue to give him the doubt benefits?
What a fascinating accidental coincidence that a right wing talking point that had previously occurred to you completely spontaneously (and definitely did not originate as a right wing talking point) suddenly came up out of the blue as a right wing talking point when you happened to be watching race-baiting scaremonger scumbag Tucker Carlson, something that you most definitely do not do regularly.