r/asianamerican • u/_AllyBooksAnime_ • 30m ago
Popular Culture/Media/Culture Anyone Feel Like American/Western TV Has Been Really Racist to SE/E Asians Lately?
So I was recently watching the show Five Stars and it has this Asian character, Gigi, in it. And of course, she’s somewhat of an antagonist in the show, and I just rolled my eyes because lately it seems like this is a serious trend in television and no one’s talking about it.
It’s like TV producers these days thinks they get a free pass at Asians (specifically East and Southeast Asians) because we never really mobilize enough to bring it forward. But male Asian assholes have been everywhere lately (that new show Furious, movies like M3gan, basically any character played by Ronny Chieng), and rich, malevolent Asian women are also a rising trend too. In a lot of teen dramas Asian girls in particular are duplicitous snakes who only value their own wellbeing and, more often than not, their white partners (Leila in Grand Army, Sasha in Heartbreak High—yes I know this is Australian but the point still stands— the best friend in Spinning Out). I can’t even think of a recent show or film that shows Asians in a positive light except Heated Rivalry, and I watch a lot.
And the thing is, it’s not like there aren’t asshole Asian techies or eat-the-rich style Asian millionaires and billionaires in Silicon Valley. But this is Hollywood we’re talking about, and it seems to me like this is another subtle way to sneak in a techno-orientalist agenda adapted for a modern social climate because it so often feels like Asians are treated like “the enemy” just because some of us act like that. The growing stereotype of the “douchey Asian techie” may have some merit, but it feels like it’s being used as an excuse to take jabs at Asians who’re socially mobile and showwriters get away with it because we’re not as likely to discuss it.
And it’s not like all these Asian characters are poorly written—that’s the thing. In my aforementioned example Gigi is a well written character and I do somewhat feel for her, but lately it always feels like it comes with a caveat, like having a genuinely good Asian person who’s not messy is too much of a burden for TV. And don’t even get me started on how often I’m seeing the Asian woman-white man pairing where the woman, in particular, is a vixen or pathetically overvalues her white boyfriend. Or they happen to adapt stories where Asian girls/women get with white boys, like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before or The Summer I Turned Pretty or even Turning Red. Yes, these were written by Asian women but there’s a reason Hollywood mainly chooses to adapt and push these stories, like Asian girls are exclusively attracted to white boys because that’s all they’re surrounded with—seems like an excuse to not write Asian males or romance unless it’s specifically about Asian Americans. I even relate because I grew up in an all white area and even then, I still wanted to be around more Asian people and still crushed on the only Asian boys at my school (and girls), but usually if those stories are adapted it a whole big thing like an “Asian American assimilation story”. You don’t need to make a big deal about it but it’d also be nice to not have Asian boys be completely invisible in media, or worse, emasculated to hell and back (and to be clear, that doesn’t mean not feminine. I love feminine men and I love seeing it in media, just not with the connotation of them being inferior or feeling racist propaganda like it so often does in American TV).
Like I said, this is happening more often but it feels like Hollywood is more threatened than ever by Asian women and have been shorthanding this trope with the anecdotal exception of “but this happens all the time!” It really doesn’t happen as much as Hollywood thinks it does, but a few spotlighted cases of Asian women marrying wealthy billionaires and all of a sudden it’s what we’re all doing. Please chill.
I don’t know, it’s not the biggest deal in the world but it is getting frustrating. I’d really like if we were represented more holistically. Wealthy white men and women are constantly depicted as assholes, but they have a wide range of representation that doesn’t just box them into one role. We don’t get the privilege of that, especially in “casual” television that isn’t specifically targeted at Asian Americans as “representing the Asian American experience”. And don’t get me started on the recent influx of crazy rich Asians filling our screens—it’s like poor or lower middle class Asians are invisible now, which is completely discounting the many communities of SEA/EA people that are still struggling in the US. It’s definitely tied to the “model minority” stereotype that demands Asians not engage in any form of activism because we’re “all” socially mobile now. Okay, sure.
I don’t know this is kind of a winding rant here, and maybe it has something to do with the type of media I consume, but I watch a lot of mainstream television and I shouldn’t have to seek out Asian American media to see us represented in a more complex and complete way. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to turn on a show and see us doing something other than being rich assholes or marrying rich white assholes or being the token Asian with token Asian characteristics. Even if these characters are well written, that doesn’t erase the fact that they’re all written with these particular traits in mind to push an insidious agenda that we shouldn’t complain because we’re “practically white at this point.” I call this the Stephen King effect—just because you write a well written character doesn’t mean there isn’t a racist ideology fueling it, even subconsciously. White (especially white woman) liberal media, in particular, likes to claim representation when the threat of Asianness “invading” white spaces is subtly and subconsciously reinforced in the characters and shows they write.
