Week Nine- Asian American Portrayals in Mainstream Media

This week, we will be taking a huge shift from studying marketing and distribution practices of young adult films to something that is in dire need of attention- representation and portrayals of Asian people in media. With this shift, I will be addressing issues, posing questions, and overall, focusing on the collective identity that is created by whatever representation that we are exposed to.

"[In studying representation] it is important to first understand from a sociological standpoint that hegemonic ideology in media emerges from the way power relations have been historically constructed before seeing how alternative media responds to hegemony. "  The old tried and tested theme in Hollywood that “imagery and themes are polarized around fixed relations of subordination and domination,” stems from a history of colonization and oppression, and as a result, legitimizes white superiority and non-white inferiority in popular culture. To understand the collective identity being created and how it reacts to this, we must understand how Asians are portrayed in media.

Close your eyes. Think about the last movie/TV show/magazine that included a person of Asian descent. What did they look like? How did they act? Who did they interact with? Did you like the character or hate them? If the character was a girl, I can almost predict your answer. She was either a beautiful, virginal, timid girl, quiet and demure, or a fierce, skimpily clad warrior princess, who used her womanly wiles and her devastatingly sensual personality to destroy anyone who stood in her path. If the character was male, he was either a geeky, nerdy boy who loves computers or a born martial artist, doing karate kicks every so often and a master of Kung-Fu and eight other fighting styles. Was I close?

Analyzing gender representations is the first step in understanding what media thinks of Asians. It is interesting how popular media has imagined and created Asian women and men to be polar opposites. The two most popular tropes for females is the virgin and the whore, the chaste, submissive character and the cunning, sexy character. The way Asian women are shown through mainstream media eroticizes their race and culture, legitimizing white male power.

On the other hand, Asian males are shown as polar opposites too- the hyper-masculine gangster/martial art master OR the "asexual, geeky computer nerd", unattractive and unassuming. In this case, mainstream media completely desexualizes these men, immediately making them less powerful and ultimately inferior to other men. Here, the "Asian male identity's role is to also bolster and reaffirm the white male image over all other minority masculinities."

These gender roles have been perpetuated by American media since the beginning, and "when we look to alternative media to challenge dominant imagery of Asian Americans, we are stepping away from any parallel structuring to the hegemonic and a restructuring that encourages, appreciates, and celebrates “a multiplicity of racial, gendered, sexual, and classes identities” in Asian American men and women ."

Article- https://hyphenproject.wordpress.com/laying-the-groundwork/asian-american-portrayals-in-mainstream-media/

Citation- Asian American Portrayals in Mainstream Media. (2010, November 21). Retrieved

February 6, 2015, from https://hyphenproject.wordpress.com/laying-the-groundwork/asian-american-portrayals-in-mainstream-media/