On Stereotypes

          

            The professor brought up a really interesting point the other day. While we extensively discussed the stereotyping of black people in media, we briefly touched upon Asian stereotypes. The topic we started consisted of how Asians in pop culture is often victims of positive stereotyping. It was made clear how negative stereotyping could be a detrimental cycle; that stereotypes come from nowhere, and are oft made-up and self-perpetuating. And so, naturally we’d ask: what about positive stereotyping?

            In my opinion, stereotyping is necessary to a minute degree. We use it to get ideas across efficiently, to parody or to poke fun. A personal rule of thumb to keep in mind though, is that if you decide to poke fun at one party, you should poke equal amounts of fun at everyone else. It’s all in relativity. I see stereotyping to be a spectrum ranging from good to bad: For example, making a black man love fried chicken can be seen as bad; next to a white man bathing in money, and an Asian man on a calculator, and all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem as offensive, because everyone else is subjected to the same level of prejudice.

            In today’s media, this rule doesn’t seem to be applied much at all. Black characters (I refuse to say African American in this case, because it’s not an exclusive phenomenon to the United States) are often put into small-time crime roles, for instance. In recent days, it’s getting better; for one, we don’t have blackface as a standard depiction, and there is an emergence of actors in Hollywood of African descent. I point towards characters like Ian or Curtis, from Utopia and Misfits respectively, or John Luther from Luther…even Jerwayne from Phoneshop, as examples of characters in the right direction.

            Asian characters, however, don’t share the stereotyping spotlight. It takes a lot to mark any Asian character as stereotypical; in illustration class, someone literally had to draw a Fu Manchu clone for it to be branded a stereotype. But this isn’t the case. We aren’t all good at math, or all good at music. We aren’t all good at kung fu, and Asian girls aren’t all obedient wives. All of these can, arguably, be good or bad, but they’re usually seen as a good thing in the media. As a result, characters of East Asian descent suffer positive stereotyping. The effect is that there are rarely any well developed oriental characters in recent western pop culture. Mako from Pacific Rim, for example, served as the kick-butt girlfriend to the white American main character. In DC, we have China White the female Asian assassin; Shado the female Asian assassin; Katana the female Asian assassin, Cheshire the female Asian assassin and, yes, you guessed it Huntress is indeed a female Asian assassin.

            That is not to say there aren’t any other characters. There are plenty of Asian characters in the various comic-verses. The issue is, there aren’t any unique ones; they all share a stereotype of some sort, like the female Asian assassin; in Ryan Choi as the Atom’s case, the brainy Asian guy, or the Mandarin, another Fu Manchu clone.

            Someone tried to convince me once, that I was overthinking it. There were plenty of Asian main characters in pop culture, as I quote, “[…] like Jackie Chan, or Bruce Lee and Jet li.” This highlights the limited roles an East Asian can play in the current mass media; we’re evil, good at fighting or female.

            Asian females especially, get a lot of damage from this. There is a sense in popular culture, that East Asian women are repressed, obedient and highly desirable. This leads to websites like Creepy White Guys, which shares the various types of racist and misogynist messages Asian women get. This is a whole other topic for another time, but it highlights my next point.

For some odd reason, if the main character weren’t white, the comic, movie or television show, wouldn’t be popular. There is always a sense that White is better in popular culture. For example, Akira, commonly hailed as a milestone in animation, was on the verge of being turned into a live-action film. The premise, however, was that, instead of being set in Neo-Tokyo, it would be set in Neo-Manhattan. It was rumored that Garrett Hedlund or Zac Effron would play Kaneda.

Another example: The Raid, soon to be a trilogy, is an Indonesian story, said to be one of the best set of action movies of all time. Soon, it will be remade, still called The Raid, but instead, Chris Hemsworth will be playing the main character. The Raid is already a live-action film; post 2000s, why it has to be remade with white main characters is still foreign to me.

            Jumping past the recent and obvious examples of 47 Ronin, Avatar and live-action Dragon Ball, let’s discuss the upcoming movie from Disney, Big Hero Six.  Based on the Marvel comic book series of the same name, in the comic, they were all Japanese. Sadly, their translation to the big screen meant they had to be “less stereotypical” and “more diverse”. And so, we now have a range of characters from different places in the world. One thing that still bugs me though, is that even though the main character Hiro looks oriental, his description on various sites always starts with “[…] He is Half Caucasian”; and the only other Asian character on the team is, yes, that butt-kicking Asian girl.

            I hope that perhaps someday, another Bruce Lee emerges in the entertainment world to reorient our views on how Asians can be represented in media, but until then, all I can do is hope, and try. Maybe I’ll wake up one morning, and finally find a hero in western pop culture that I can finally latch onto and say, “look, he’s like me!”