Will the American society ever dispel ignorance among Asians in the media?

Great Debates
1

I came across this pretty interesting paper, regarding the perceptions of Asian-Americans in the media:

http://mahdzan.com/fairy/papers/asian/asian02.htm

Maybe this article will “knock” some sense into those are keep on stating Asian men are paranoid fucks whining about the media.

Reality Check …

Despite the fact that Asian Americans have lived and flourished in the United States over the past century, Asian Americans are commonly portrayed as newly arrived immigrants who speak fortune cookie (broken) English and cannot assimilate with other members of the American society. Other negative depictions include greedy Asian bandits out to destroy white civilization and defy its man-made laws, and Asian women who are weak, passive and allow themselves to be sexually and emotionally abused by men.

The Typical Asian American Male

  1. Evil Asian Men
    More often than not, Asian men have always played the role of the evil and greedy gangster in popular adventure movies such as Lethal Weapon 4, Rush Hour and The Year of the Dragon. The myth that Asian American communities such as Chinatown breeding with illegal activities like drug dealing, prostitution and gangster movements all get their emphasis in movies such as the ones mentioned.
    […]

Conclusion

Although our findings overwhelmingly display Asian Americans as negative characters in movies, it must be emphasized that these findings were a result of viewing popular movies over the last two decades. We cannot deny, however, that Asians have played some positive roles in some movies and television programs. For example, TV program Martial Law features two Asian police officers helping Los Angeles Police Department get rid of its criminals. Movies starring Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan also often feature them as the heroes who save the day when they single handedly defeat villains.
However, Asian characters in popular American movies continue to portray negative stereotypes. Considering what make these movies popular are the consumers themselves, boycotting these movies and educating the American public about these unfounded stereotypical Asian American characters would be two steps that we as a community could take to decrease the number of movies that glorify Asian American misconceptions. Many web sites on the Internet such as “A Memo from MANNA to Hollywood: Asian Stereotypes” (http://janet.org/~manaa/a_stereotypes.html) are dedicated to educate people about these issues that we have presented

Ok, I do know sterotypes of Asians do exist, and even experience many racism as a kid. Why does it seem “Ok” to mock some aspects of Asian culture and get away with it, especally in the media? Will this perception of Asians in the media progress or will it remain like this due this Asians being minority (2-4% pop. in US)?

[Edited due to copyright concerns. Do not post the full text of a copyrighted article on this message board; links or short excerpts ONLY. --Gaudere]

2

Ah, they’re 1920’s style “Death Rays”.

3

When I read the thread title I thought you were saying that Asians who work in the news media are ignorant. To answer your actual question, probably not. Kind of like the white male businessman. When was the last time you saw one of these guys portrayed sympathetically in a movie?

4

Interesting post… Thank you.

I think many people (even most people I guess) underestimate the influence they undergo when watching such movies. (or when reading similar books but the impact of movies is in my opinion much greater).

However: Hollywood Asians will never completely beat the Hollywood Arabs. We are not only extremely mean to women… We are constantly out on hijacking, abduction, torturing and other such interesting activities. The women are of course locked up and constantly beaten and if one isn’t, she is hunted down until she dies or until she is finally domesticated. Poor Arab women looking for The Perfect White Male. Blood revenge on its way.

Ha… You can’t imagine how that comes across and how I feel about that. Me being the most charming nice good looking person in the whole universe, who has to ask the most adorable women constantly not to throw flowers at me since I’m already safely married.
When I watch such Hollywood Arabs taking once again over a plane, I have a vague feeling of loss… like if I miss some action in my life.

I wonder if the Asians looking at their Hollywood Act feel the same.

Salaam.

5

I would ask about latinos, but that is not hte OP´s point. I could also ask about black people.
Anyway I wasn´t aware of such stereotypes in recent american films. You see, they mentioned Lethal Weapon 4 in the paper, but wasn´t there this chinese policeman working with the main characters? He seemed a very nice lad and quite integrated too.
Anyway I´ve noticed that not only asian americans, but in lots of american films, the baddies are either froma minority or foreginer (in the Lethal Weapon series it was… or so I recall).
I don´t think we´ll see too much “bad asian americans” in films to come (at least in the short term) because nowadays most asian people in movies are playing “good” roles (Lucy Liu in Charlie´s Angels or the movies Jackie Chan has been making in the USA as a couple of examples).
But I´m unpleased as how often minorities or foreignes are ridiculized or alligned with the bad ones in USA movies.

6

Yeah, that’s well thought-out.

Let’s use Lethal Weapon as an example.

LW1: Bad guys are a cabal of American soldiers. All white from what I recall. None sympathetic.

LW2: Bad guys are South African gun runners. Definitely all white. Only sympathetic one is the cute and soon-to-be-dead woman.

LW3: Bad guys are American. Main one is a white male ex-cop. None sympathetic. Pretty much just a bunch of generic psychopaths.

LW4: Bad guys are a group of Chinese (I wanna say Hong Kong) gangsters. None are sympathetic, but the Chinese families being used as slave labor are.

I’m not saying that asians aren’t necessarily portrayed as evil or ignorant, or whatever. I don’t think they are, but it’s not something I see being worth arguing.

My complaint is the use of crappy examples, such as the Lethal Weapon movies.

Kinda like a psycho walking into an office and shooting a black, a white, a frenchman, an englishman, and an asian. And the everyone pointing out that it was a hate crime against whichever group they feel like making a victim.

-Joe

7

While the white male businessman is usually the Evil Guy, they are also regularly protrayed as heros through law/medical dramas. There were few normal asian roles without having the ‘token gesture’ stigma attached to it (along with other minorities) until the late 90’s.

Mind you, it is getting better. There’s now a few ads featuring asians for mainstream products. I’m still a bit annoyed with the ‘asian as martial arts expert’ stereotype, but at least it’s better then the ‘Charlie-Chan/Rickshaw’ image that’s been sticking around since the 70’s.

I’m more thick-skinned about it nowadays. Considering that Asians tend to be earn more money of average (see bottom of page) than others, I can think of better uses of my time. Yes, it’s pretty bad growing up as a foreigner in another country, but you get used to it. :slight_smile:

8

Law #429792: The quality of a the treatment of minorities in an instance of media varies with the quality of the instance of media itself.

Watch Law & Order or NYPD Blue or a Star Wars or Matrix movie (shut up if you don’t like either of those movies compared to their predecessors, they’re still better than most of the crap coming out of Hollywood). You’ll see Asian characters doing positive things or, more likely, acting just like everyone else. The latter seems more important: when an Asian actor can be cast in a role where his race doesn’t even make a difference, it’s an even better step than showing him as the heroic cop translating the Chinese suspect’s confession.

9

Addendum for PC:

Before anyone spouts off about my use of statistics, I wasn’t trying to imply that Asians are superior than anyother race. It was there to show that being Asian isn’t necessarily all doom and gloom. I still remember that bit in Futurama with with Doctor fighting over the number of asians in his lab…

10

Hollywood seems to always be a generation or so behind America’s reality. The Asian-American population has grown and spread across the country in the past thirty years and European-Americans are more accustomed to seeing Asians in the workplace, at school, and out on the street. Many have worked hard at becoming markdiscordia’s “everyone else” and this is beginning to be reflected in movies and TV. For now there are mostly roles FOR Asians but there will be considerably more roles WITH Asians in the years to come.

And is ANYBODY shown in a particularly good light in action movies? In the Lethal Weapon movies it’s bad bad guys, real victimy victims, Gibson as a nutcase, and Joe Pesci as an Italian joke. Only Danny Glover is a positive character and that’s because he’s so damned lovable.

11

Has anyone read The Chinese in America by Iris Chang? It’s a good book depicting the struggles of the Chinese in America. (yes i know)

Ever heard of Wen Ho Lee?

12

If there’s one thing that irritates me it’s fake studies that are in fact propaganda tools.

Geez, try to think of how often certain American minorities are portrayed positively in Holliwood. See if you managed to spot any of these Holliwood stereotype-trends in films you wiewed:

Italians – mafia (enough said); accents that border on speech impediments
Hispanic Latinos – gang warfare, brutality, machismo, criminal activities, narcotics
Arabs – mysoginy, brutality, terrorism, religious extremism, intolerance, fanaticism

I’d hazard the guess that the Asian stereotype isn’t anywhere near as bad as the OP tries to persuade us it is. At the very least, I imagine you’ll find rather more filmic negative stereotypes from any one item of the short list above than you will of Asian stock.

At least Asians enjoy the redeeming nature of martial arts films, which are appreciated the world over. Don’t tell me that Jet Li and Jackie Chan, not to mention Bruce Lee, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and derivatives like Lucy Liu, aren’t international super stars. It seems to me these actors are popular not just around the world but in the American market as well.

Feeling dejected because Asian actors seem to be most successful in martial arts flicks? Yes, success can be such a drag, and so demeaning. Much preferable to have a preresentative of your ethnic group portrayed as a mafioso, a terrorist, or an illiterate gang member.

In other words, less whining and more substance is required. The “study” linked in the OP really is not very impressive, I would in fact label it as “pathetic” at best – it tries really hard to justify its foregone conclusions rather than examine the material and form a reasonable, supported, and falsifiable hypothesis.

Someone ought to explain, at the very least, the concept of confirmation bias to the writers of that nonsense.

Additionally, I think there are errors of stereotype throughout the document. For example, they define “dragon lady” as an “Asian woman who is perceived as seductive, desirable but at the time she is untrustworthy”.

Which is not the definition of the term dragon lady as I know it. A dragon lady is a dominating and powerful (hence the “dragon”) woman, often in a position of power in the household or even business or society – someone you don’t willingly mess around with because she has a capacity for ruthlessness. A dragon lady is almost always Chinese.

Perhaps the writers of the report should relax, let go of a few preconceptions and go watch the excellent Big Trouble in Little China. A brilliant John Carpenter film in which a swaggering white trucker is caught up in the world of Asian stereotypes (martial arts, wise old men, undead Chinese tyrants and all) and desperately tries to cope as best he can.

13

Not that it really bothers me, but I’ve noticed that Hollywood fims tend to portray Indian-Americans as either doctors or cab drivers. Now I’m wondering how long it’ll be before the computer geek will be added to the list.

14

Urgh I had realized now a big mistake I made here. I was mixing two series here, Lethal Weapon and another one which name i can´t remmember right now, in Spain it was called Jungla de Cristal and was starred by Bruce Willis, I think the baddies were German or something, at least in the first and the third movies.

15

Perhaps you’re thinking of Die Hard.

16

Yup, Die Hard. Of course, Die Hard II, the baddies were a bunch of corrupt American soldiers running drugs or weapons or something.

17

You forget that all English men are nasty psychopaths too*. And they almost always look like Stephen Berkoff, Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons.

*Unless they happen to be suave Lords of Manors who sweep naïve Californian cuties off their feet.

18

jjimm, you´re forgeting that they also have bad theeth :wink:

Anyway, what unpleases me is not that minorities star the evil characters, is that quite often they are ridiculized, that´s what really unpleases me.

By the way, am I the only one who very often consider the evil characters to be more interesting that the good ones? Whoaw, i´m seeing a new thread here, exceuse me.
:jumping to IMHO forum:

19

I agree. Villain roles are often the best parts of the movie. Foreigners are commonly put into them because they bring

(a) A touch of the exotic
(b) They are cool
© Sometimes the accents sound worldy and urbane

20

Don’t forget:

(d) Human xenophobia makes foreign villains seem inherently more menacing than domestic ones