Asian American Essay Example for Free

Asian American Essay 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, be naive and hopeless or untrustworthy and devious. Now a days the media has obviously tried to eliminate these stereotypes. Their attempts have worked to some extent however there still are not many big name Asian women actresses. One of the biggest Asian actresses in Hollywood is Lucy Liu. Although is she a very successful actress all of her roles are very sexual. Is this a good or bad thing for the Asian community? Yes she is very famous but is she playing right into Asian women being sexually exploited in the media. Asian males have faced a very similar problem over the years. Although the term Asian American covers about 30 different ethnicities, in the media they are almost all portrayed in the same way. In the early days of American media you barely saw any Asian males on T. V. One of the most prominent Asian characters on T. V. in the early 30’s and 40’s was the character of Charlie Chan. Charlie Chan was a detective who appeared in over 40 different films, his character was very wise, smart and witty. The only problem was this Asian character was played by three different white actors over the years. The reasoning behind this was that all the good characteristics Charlie Chan had were because the actors were white and all of his negative characteristics were due to the fact that the character was Asian. Once again in todays society we have progressed significantly since the days of Charlie Chan. 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.www. youtube. com/watch? v=cjyqWsrpQAA This next image is an image of Charlie Chan. You can tell by the picture that the actor that plays Charlie Chan is white. They use make up and he talks with an accent to make the character Asian. This truly makes no sense to me at all. The character is Asian but could not be played by an Asian because his good values would not seem realistic, but all of the negative qualities he has is because the character is of Chinese decent. http://beyondmediaonline. com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/chan. jpg. This next clip is from Rush Hour 3 and it pretty much plays into all the stereotypes I was talking about before. Jackie Chan is the star of this movie and he is a detective who specializes in martial arts and the man they are interrogating in this scene is a French/Asian gangster. Now once again not every Asian actor is a martial arts star or portrays a gangster in a movie now a days. It just seems that the major roles Asian actors get are ones like this. http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=tfEZwRukZOo Nittle, N. (2013). Asian American Stereotypes. Retrieved from http://racerelations. about. com/od/hollywood/a/Five-Common-Asian-american-Stereotypes-In-Tv-And-Film. htm Is Lucy Liu a heroine or a curse? (2003, January 29). Gold Sea Asian American Daily. Retrieved December 4, 2007, from http://goldsea. com/Air/Issues/Liu/liu. html. Chan, C. (1988). Asian Stereotypes. Retrieved from Chan, C. (1988). Asian American women: The psychological responses to sexual exploitation and cultural stereotypes. The Politics of Race and Gender in Therapy. Ed. Lenora Fulani. Haworth, 31-38.