Asian American Stereotypes Analysis
Asian Stereotypes and Representation America has grown very much over the past couple of years when it comes to the representations of race, gender, class and sexuality. In America today many people are aware of the issues that different people have faced and the problems they are currently dealing with. Breaking a stereotype is a hard thing to do for any minority but it has been especially hard on the Asian community. From the early days of media Asian men and women have been portrayed a very specific way in film and television. In the 1950’s and 1960’s Asian women were portrayed as sexual objects, they were evil goddesses with slanted eyes or smiling, cunning, sexual deviants. This objectified Asian women to only two choices,
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However Asian males today have been predominantly reduced to two major roles. One of these two roles is pretty easy to figure out, that role would be the kung foo action role. If I said, name a couple of Asian American actors the first that come to mind are Jackie Chan and or Bruce Lee. Everybody knows or has seen a couple of the films these two stars have been in. Another role is the role of the villain. Many Asian characters do not have big roles unless they are the bad guy. They are often linked with gang activities such as prostitution, gambling and murder. Here are some examples of these stereotypes and representations. The first one is the movie trailer for The World of Suzie Wong. This movie is about an American writer who is struggling in life and falls in love with a Chinese prostitute. Although it is a love story and Suzie Wong is the main character you can just tell by the trailer what American men think of Asian women at the time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnepiAcqb_g The next clip is a more modern movie. It stars Lucy Liu who is a very successful Asian actress. This movie is obviously a step forward, in the 1960’s an Asian woman fighting crime would have been thought of as blasphemous. Although her role in this movie is a strong woman who fights crime there is still a little bit of sexual objectivity here and in many other scenes of the movie.
However Asian males today have been predominantly reduced to two major roles. One of these two roles is pretty easy to figure out, that role would be the kung foo action role. If I said, name a couple of Asian American actors the first that come to mind are Jackie Chan and or Bruce Lee. Everybody knows or has seen a couple of the films these two stars have been in. Another role is the role of the villain. Many Asian characters do not have big roles unless they are the bad guy. They are often linked with gang activities such as prostitution, gambling and murder. Here are some examples of these stereotypes and representations. The first one is the movie trailer for The World of Suzie Wong. This movie is about an American writer who is struggling in life and falls in love with a Chinese prostitute. Although it is a love story and Suzie Wong is the main character you can just tell by the trailer what American men think of Asian women at the time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnepiAcqb_g The next clip is a more modern movie. It stars Lucy Liu who is a very successful Asian actress. This movie is obviously a step forward, in the 1960’s an Asian woman fighting crime would have been thought of as blasphemous. Although her role in this movie is a strong woman who fights crime there is still a little bit of sexual objectivity here and in many other scenes of the movie.