Portrayals of Asian Men and Asian Women in media/ entertainment

Cafe Society
21

The TV shows that I watch on a regular basis have two Asian males: Law & Order and ER (Yoshi). Interestingly, both characters are gay. And compared to the other characters, they are both low-profile.

Speaking of ER, I find Ming-Wa’s character Deb to be particularly relavant to this discussion, but with a different twist. Almost all of her love interests have been black males. She even had a child by one, but she gave it away. There was one white guy that she dated but she didn’t like. She’s never been with an Asian guy since she’s been on the show. Now that I think about it, ER has a thing for interracial relationships. Dr. Benton had a relationship with Elizabeth (which Eric Lasalle didn’t like…since he didn’t like how it contrasted with his “negative” relationships with black women). Dr. Green and the Hispanic nurse (Chewie) had a short fling. Carter also had a fling with a Hispanic intern. Kerry has had two interracial relationships: one with an African dude (from waaaaay back) and one with the Hispanic woman she’s with now. Earlier this season Yoshi revealed that he is a converted Jew, which makes me wonder if his partner is ethnically Jewish.

No other show that I can think of has had so much interacial lovin’. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s good, but jeevmon’s post is making me wonder…

22

Well, it’s not the interracial lovin’ so much that’s the issue. It’s the fact that when an interracial heterosexual relationship involving an Asian is shown in the media, it is invariably the woman who is Asian, and the man who is not. I think we can agree that this is a more problematic phenomenon.

23

Well, I did see in passing an episode of Charmed in which a Chinese man (I think; I didn’t see all of the ep) was presented as a potential love interest for one of the sisters (Piper, I believe it was; whichever one ended up with Cole later). Unfortunately, he was a ghost, so the relationship couldn’t work out. Of course, this was to add pathos to his departure at the end of the episode, but the fact that this was done even with a Asian character was, even to a Japanese guy like me, somewhat surprising, which again might add weight to the OP…

24

Hey! No one has mentioned Daniel Hae Kim who played “Gavin” on the TV show “Angel” on the WB. Granted, he was an evil, opportunistic, blood-sucking lawyer, but he was a handsome, evil, opportunistic, blood-sucking lawyer. I thought he was hot, but YMMV.

25

BOBBY TRENDY

26

He was not, however, portrayed as any sort of romantic interest… which is precisely the point under discussion. Even the good-looking Asian men are seldom portrayed as objects of love, lust or romance.

27

Hmm, in Asian movies and media, seems to be quite different. Generally it is males and females from the same race. Rarely do you see mixing of say Japanese/Chinese. When it involves a caucasian inter-racial relationship, there are first a lot of stereotypes of say rich asian men and blond bimbos, a “good” asian girl and some loser white guy that ruins everything, etc.

However, there are a lot of Asian male-white female pairings outside of the stereotype. An interesting movie would be one that I can’t remember the name of. Set in Viet Nam with a French girl in love of a rich Viet Namese guy. Role reversal as the french family had enjoyed a high colonial status and the father died and the daughter was more or less the mistress of the Vietnamese guy. It’s been a while, but there was some pretty steamy R rated scenes.

There are also Asian female-white male pairings as well. No idea on the ratio but my gut feel is that they are reasonably balanced. Certainly not 90% white guys/Asian women.

28

I am a white girl that loves Asian men (got one of my own!) and I know a fair amount of other white (and black) girls who love them just as much as I do. (Search on google for “Gackt” for an example.) Almost none of my Asian male friends have trouble getting dates and many have “fangirls”.

Still, there not enough sexy Asian men on American TV! Something needs to be done about this horrible problem.

29

B.D.Wong was in an afterschool special called Magical Makeover. His character was called Johnny Angel but functioned more like a wish-granting genie for the white girl main character. She goes through several magical makeovers trying to impress the cool (white) guy at school before she realizes she wants someone who likes her just the way she is…someone like that angel guy (romantic tension has been building). He then shows up as the new guy in school. Romance presumably ensues (the special ends as significant looks are exchanged)

There, an Asian guy and a white girl.

30

To continue with China Guy’s slight tangent, take the Jet Li movie “Fist of Legend”. Li’s master is killed by bad guys, and he and the master’s son are rivals to take over as the master of the kung fu school. Both of them have relationships that they keep secret from the school. The master’s son is having an affair with a prostitute, and when this is revealed, she is easily accepted into the school’s household. Li’s fiancee (and later wife) is a Japanese woman from a prominent family, but Li is rejected from the school as a result of his relationship with her. I thought it ironic at first, but if you imagine the two men as white, and the fiancees as a white prostitute and a middle class black woman, it would make as much sense.

In “The Bodyguard from Bejing”, Li plays a bodyguard hired to protect a pampered rich Hong Kong girl. They fall in love, of course, but in the end he leaves her because he’s mainland Chinese, and she’s from Hong Kong–the cultural differences would just be too great you see.

In Jackie Chan’s formula, he almost always has a girlfriend, but she’s usually incidental to the plot. Jet Li’s movies, on the other hand, often mix as much romance as martial arts. In “Fong Sai Yuk”, the Li character is able to induce an orgasm in his new wife by reciting poetry to her, something his father does for his mother earlier in the movie.

31

**China Guy **seems to be talking about the Lover. i can’t beleive i didn’t think of it, i usually bring that one up when discussing this issue.

32

Towards the end of what film? For the mainstream US releases: In several, including Supercop, his girlfriend was Maggie Cheung (yowza!). In Shanghai Noon, he ended up with either Lucy Liu or the “Native American” (it feels weird using a PC term in such a non-PC movie) woman, I forget who ended up with whom. As has already been mentioned, in Tuxedo he ended up with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

There are two things that really bug me about this thread, in the sense that they’re just missing the point. One, there’s all this talk of “Asian” men, including Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc., all of which have very different cultures with different takes on masculinity and romance. I don’t see how this gross generalization is any better than the perceived slighting of East Asian and Asian-American men in the first place.

And second, it smacks of “quota television,” which is just backwards-thinking. If you’re looking for problems with the portrayal of different ethnicities in the media, there’s a whole lot more wrong than just “East Asian guys never get to make it with white women!!!” Take the fact that we’re in 2003 and we still have separate-but-equal series, for instance. You can choose the white sitcoms with token black characters on NBC, or the black sitcoms with token white characters on UPN. And shows like “Greetings from Tuscon” get all kinds of press because they have – gasp! – a predominantly Latino cast!

And while I’m complaining, the whole comment about Apu from “The Simpsons” being “troubling” is really missing the point. The show is not about creating positive portrayals of different ethnicities; the character is a stereotype and it’s supposed to be a stereotype. I think that the show has just been on for so long that it counts as “established” and doesn’t have any satirical edge that it once had.

There was a movie called One Night Stand that came out a while back. I didn’t see it myself but I remember seeing the trailer and being extremely impressed. It starred Wesley Snipes and Ming-na Wen as a married couple, and Snipes has an affair with Nastassia Kinski. The thing that impressed me, from the trailer at least, was that the whole focus of the movie was on the infidelity drama, not on all the interracial relationships going on. I was hoping that Hollywood was finally taking steps to be truly colorblind. (For all I know, though, that was a major subplot of the movie. It got lousy reviews so I never bothered seeing it.)

33

I believe the Sikh (Indian) character ‘Kip’ in The English Patient gets some.

34

Don’t forget Hoshi on Star Trek.

35

To elaborate…

Linda Park plays Hoshi Sato on Enterprise. She is a Korean playing a Japanese woman. This suggests to me that the writers feel that all East Asian cultures are just alike.

I have lived in China and Korea and the people may look similiar, but the languages and the cultures are totally different. The Japanese occupied Korea for about 50 years and there is a lot of animosity in Korea over Japan.

Park is one of the most common family names in Korea.

Which begs the question on why Hoshi could not be a Korean instead of a Japanese?

36

ding ding ding, we have a winner. The Lover complete with a photo:

An adolescent French girl becomes the lover of a well-to-do Chinese man in 1920s Saigon, but their love is forbidden by the social order of the era. Filmed in Vietnam. Not really a war movie, but well worth watching just for the spectacular Vietnam scenes. Writers: Gerard Brach and Jean-Jacques Annaud, from the novel by Marguerite Duras. Stars: Jane March and Tony Leung.

Duras, Marguerite. The Lover (1984). Set in the early 1930s, the autobiographical novel, which tells the story of a young French girl and her Chinese lover, evokes pre-war Indochina with passion and intensity. Their different races present huge problems, and the hatred generated tears her family apart. Duras won the Prix Goncourt with this novel, which was written fifty years after the events described. [KNIGHT LIBRARY: PQ 2607.U8245 A62613 1997].

Didn’t realize it was a book. Anyhoo, Thanks Tars for the name.

37

I saw it. It came on TV and I hadn’t heard anything about it. IIRC there are no racial issues in the whole film. Pretty light film on the whole:

The movie ends with Wesley Snipes and Kyle MacLachlan swapping wives. Bit more complicated than that, but not really. I think Kyle got the better deal anyway :).

It was a nice change to Spike Lee’s movies about how mixed-race couples don’t work.

38

Whoops! I forgot something in the spoilerbox: Kyle MacLachlan is Nastassja Kinski’s husband.

39

Because the writers created a Japanese character. Whether the character was played by an actress of Japanese ancestry makes no difference. If Patrick Stewart can play a Frenchman I don’t see why a Korean can’t play a Japanese person. Heck, in The Sand Pebbles the Japanese actor Mako played a Chinese man.

Marc

40

Well, in many cases, it is obvious if it is a Korean playing a Japanese. Okay okay, this isn’t science. One gets to play the great guess what ethnicity I am game. Guess right, and well you’re right. Guess wrong and you’re at best an incompetent dickhead. That said, some people look very stereotypically Korean, or Japanese, or Chinese or Cantonese or Taiwanese. Having an “Asian” act as another “Asian” just reinforces the stereotype of “Asians”. It’s about the same as saying a “European”, eg a meaningless sweeping generalization.

Patrick Stewart might actually be of french ancestry or look like it. Using a Korean to play a Japanese is somewhat akin to using a Spaniard to play a Greek. That is, they may both be of Mediterranian blood but generally there are differences that can be seen by those familiar with both groups.

The closest thing to a pan-Asian construct just might be “Asian American.” With the exception of Asian MTV there isn’t any meaningful pan-Asian anything that I can think of off the top of my head.