Asian American Women In Films Essay

There’s a myth about Asian Americans, that generalizes us into one group. People create false images of us through stereotypes. These stereotypes have been manifested in books, movies, and literature, but they have repercussions for Asian Americans in society. We are often treated as foreigners, people leading us to believe that we don’t belong in American society, and that we have no purpose being here. Stereotypes are natural things that people will talk about.

Racial stereotyping is like giving a person a bad character from Star Wars to be, for example, Jar Jar Binks, and we can all agree that it sucks. But Asian Stereotypes are just the worst because if you’re Asian, you know it will feel like someone is making you Jabba the Hutt which feels pretty bad. Asian Stereotypes freaking suck you know why? Stereotype threat (or even racial stereotypes), a term coined by Stanford Professor Claude Steele, occurs when individuals whose group is targeted by negative stereotypes try to excel at tasks that are related to the stereotype. In these situations, simply knowing that there is a stereotype against them can lead individuals to actually perform more poorly on the task than they otherwise would.

Orientalism refers to a social group who is seen as uncivilized, backward, and outcast people by the dominant culture. In Jenn Fang's discussion, she explains the definition of orientalism and on how today’s society still tends to share orientalist views towards the Asian American people. For instance, the American society views the Asian American people’s fashion as edgy or cool because they dress differently and show no interest in conforming to societies norms. However, this is an orientalist view already since their fashion isn’t a mark of not wanting to conform to societies norms but how their culture dresses. Many Asian American artists have challenged the orientalist assumptions through the use of art.

Hollywood has been the most successful place in the film industry thanks in large part to their enormous budgets, a wide range of subjects, engaging stories, and willingness to push the boundaries of social norms. Due to Hollywood’s outreach, their influence can be felt all across the United States, and in many other developed countries. It is for this reason that Hollywood often becomes trapped by their desire for ultimate success, and they begin falling back on the artistic decisions that are considered “safe” and “appropriate” for the mass public. Despite Hollywood’s notoriety, at the end of the day it is a business seeking to make as much money as it can earn with each new project, and for this reason, the “unpopular” or less common characterizations

I am in the gym locker room, about to head out the doors. A boy enters. “Hey, Jeremy Lin, you’re pretty good at basketball. It’s so hard to play you though because I can’t tell if your eyes are open or not! It looks like you’re sleeping out there.”

Minorities have made significant strides towards equality in American society. In America the minority groups are being stereotype due to their ethnicity. The media has had a significant impact in passing the stereotypes to the work that have convey negative impressions about certain ethnic groups. Minorities have been the victim of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the "majority" at the expense of a minority group ideals (Horton, Price, and Brown 1999). Stereotypes have been portraying negative characteristics of ethnic group in general.

Many Top Charts movies have spectacular main actors. Although these actors are very talented, were any of the main actors Asian-Americans? There has been a controversy whether or not Asian-Americans are in enough movies or TV shows. In the 2015-2016 season, only 3%-4% of Asian characters made it. Of the Top 100 films of 2015, 49 had no Asian characters and 0 had leading roles that went to Asians (Levin).

First, one of the reasons that the Hollywood writers and directors have a social responsibility to avoid stereotyping ethnic character is racism issues. Racism is one of hot issues that people need to concern when it already happened in that past but still appear in nowadays. It is clearly present in the Hollywood film back in the days when the motion picture industry is only owned and controlled by the white people. Most majority of white actors and actresses were only people that could appear or had roles on the films, and there were neither Asian people nor African American people to act any roles on the film. Even there were Asian roles in the film, only white actors were hired to act these stereotypical characters.

In chapter three of The Hypersexulaity of Race: Performing Asian/ American Women on Screen and Scene, Celine Parreñas Shimizu explains the historical and performative impacts of stereotypical oriental femininity in Hollywood. She presents her argument by analyzing the movie stars, Anna May Wong, Nancy Kwan, and Lucy Liu. Importantly, Shimizu goes beyond simply pointing out the issue of stereotypical representations and delves into analyzing the roles and responsibilities of the viewers and performers within representation. To begin, Shimizu directly addresses how hyper-sexuality has been tied to Asian/ American women with countless examples from the acting careers of Wong, Kwan, and Liu. An example is The World of Suzie Wong (1960).

Almost half a century after the death of Jim Crow laws segregating African Americans, racism seems to be subdued publicly. The subject of racial discrimination has become more sensitive; any event that hint at racial inequality generally receive public condemn. There are rarely any requirement for government intervention or law modification to correct racism and relieve public tension. From the years of 2000 to 2017, there has not been a single legal case regarding Civil Rights according to the Library of Congress.

Ethnicity and Hollywood Racism is always issues which take a huge part of American history. Until the twenty-first century, although people tried to make the country becomes the freedom and equality nation, these issues are still happening everywhere. According to "In Living Color: Race and American Culture," Stuart Hall argues that racism is still widespread in the society and "it is widely invisible even to those who formulate the world in its terms" (qtd. in Omi 683). Indeed, situations about race quietly exist in the movie industry, which "has led to the perpetuation of racial caricatures" to the majority audiences and even minority audiences (Omi 629).