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Misrepresentations of Asians

By Yongjie Li
When I firstly asked Americans about the impressions of Asians, Kung Fu and Jackie Chen are the things that they came to their minds. In fact, it cannot fully represent Asians, especially in recent developing years. According to government datas, the number of Asian Americans in USA is 21.4 million in 2016 and 6.4% of total populations (Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, 2018), however, they are invisible in media. In order to better analysis of this situation, the impacts and stereotypes of Asians are the focuses especially in the movie Crazy Rich Asians.

Both of typical Asians and the tag of them is unchangeable during centuries. During 1840s, Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan were famous persons for Americans and represented the feminization of Asian American men, while Asian females were depicted as hypersexuality (Chyng, 2015). During 1970s, due to influences of Bruce Lee, Kung Fu became another tag on them (Chyng, 2015). Unfortunately, based on the approach to examine other racial people opinions of Asians images in media, they are still invisible, even after mass media production, and Lucy Liu, Jackie Chen and Jet Lee are typical Asians in American perspectives for continuing ten years (Chyng, 2015).

The movie Crazy Rich Asians brings new images for the public. In Tomatometer, 93% reviewers think it as fresh. It is the movie with the majority of Asians. Moreover, the previous movie The Joy Luck Club was in 1993 (Da, 2018). As a result, this movie gains a lot of public attentions which breaks the images of rigid Asians and submissive females. Furthermore, it fully depicts cultural conflicts between Asians and Americans that confuses this immigration and daily life of them in this movie. Chinese newspaper comments it as “ a great moment insteads of a movie” which means the movie brings the real cultures to the American society.

This movie indeed brings new image, however, it is not as real as whole Asians. It is because most of characters display as super-wealthy and higher-classes. Thus, materialism will be prominent and new tags for Asian Americans. On the one hand, materialism might be the problem of today higher-classes Asians, but the truth of middle-class and lower classes needs to be explored. Although the author is willing to convey that love exceeds everything, all of designers clothes, shopping and homes is 1.2 millions dollars (Ishisaka, 2018). Therefore, the focus on loves shifts to money and it cannot be a real and holonomic image. On the other hand, because of well-known movies, what might be results of this portray promotes the discrimination in mixed races society.

Even in nowadays, the misrepresentations still are prevalent in media production. I agree that “conceptual limitation” which it is about a lack of education instead of imagination (Chyng, 2015). Media becomes the one of important education in today, thus, how the producers convey ideas influences children perspectives of viewing Asians. Even though in Crazy Rich Asians provides new perspectives of Asians higher-classes images, it still brings negative point “materialism” to people who are not familiar with Asians and cannot offer sense of belongings to immigrants, thus it fully misrepresents Asians.

References
Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: May 2018. (2018). United States Census
Bureau. Retrieved From
Chyng, S., Rachael, L., Allison, B., Sun, Y., & Rachel, W. (2015). Shifting receptions: Asian
american stereotypes and the exploration of comprehensive media literacy. The
Communication Review, 18(4), 294-314. doi:10.1080/10714421.2015.1085778
Da, X. (2018). Crazy Rich Asians. Retrieved From
Ishisaka, N. (August 10, 2018). ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is a parallel Asian world of values I don’t
recognize, but I hope it’s a hit. Retrieved From:

Word Count: 524

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Comments

  1. KHDecember 5, 2018 at 7:50 AM

    Good work, Yongjie. You are a budding media sociologist!

    I was especially impressed that you brought in contemporary census data on Chinese people living here in the US. The lack, or invisibility as you say, of Chinese and Asians in American media is striking in light of the statistics you cite.

    Equally important, you've located, discussed and made effective use of an academic study that examines the limited but frequently stereotypical representations of Asian-American in US popular culture. Your opening paragraph featuring anecdotal evidence of Americans' limited understanding of Asian (and Asian-American) culture reinforces this study's findings.

    Finally, you offer a relatively new cultural object, Crazy Rich Asians, to consider in light of this material. The film seems to be a welcome break from routine stereotypes. But your fears that the film may inscribe yet another troubling stereotype is well taken.

    I'd like to learn more about your thinking on this. And I'm certain your classmates would benefit from a more elaborate discussion as well. Likewise, you cut short your discussion of the "conceptual limitations" afforded by US media representation of Asian-American lives and experience.

    Nevertheless, apart from some nagging issues with formatting and word choice (i.e., holonomic) this is a fine contribution to our semester-long inquiry into the relationship between popular culture and identity.

    27 pts.

    ReplyDelete

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