Asian Misrepresentation in Media | Peter Westacott | TEDxIthacaCollege

I work as a tour guide here and there is a part at the end of each tour where you have to stay and answer questions that families might have felt too uncomfortable to ask you during the tour, questions like what the holidays are like here. Or is it true what the Daily Mail says about marijuana use on campus, so I feel uncomfortable, they feel uncomfortable, it's a good time, but one day after a tour, a parent came up to me and told me He said where are you from and I said well? I'm from Lancaster Pennsylvania and he said but where are you from originally?

So I told him well, I was born in Hershey Pennsylvania and then he said to me, but where are you from? So I said, well, my mom is Korean, if that's what you want. you're asking me Korean I knew I knew I knew what I knew what I knew you speak Korean do you speak the language uh no why not well maybe it's because I was born in Hershey Pennsylvania and I grew up in Lancaster Pennsylvania and Has anyone ever been to Lancaster, Pennsylvania ? Our two highest demographics are the Amish and the cows. They won't speak any Korean, but what I mean is that people will always identify you based on your appearance and rely on a schema.

Asians expect or predict how you behave, so a schema is a way of categorizing behaviors or objects. and the relationships between them and this is a natural process of the human brain. It will be a quick way to categorize behavior to simplify the environment around you, so an example of a schema could be for a waiter. You could have someone in an apron carrying a tray of food with a jug of water saying, "There, can I refill your glass?" In other words, it will just be a quick way to categorize the behavior and it's also another way to explain stereotypes, so one way we form these schemas is through the

media

.

I work on a research team called Cree TV and we represent the Center for Research on the Effects of Television and we have found that Asians are the least represented minority in the

media

by a wide margin, a recent study gives a racial breakdown of some characters in film, as you can see here, and this is a problem because the television paradigm is a very powerful medium that influences how we perceive the world around us and form expectations about social roles and groups of people and when There aren't as many representations of Asians in the media, when the only representations are the same stereotypes over and over again, there is less variety of behaviors that form those schemas and therefore the result is a very limited set of expectations that Asians Media produces for Asians, which makes it very difficult to navigate and maintain a racial identity because the images you are bombarded with are not representative of who you are or what your culture is.

I think it is important to recognize the glass ceiling that exists for Asians in the media so we can do something to change it, so when I was a kid there weren't many people on TV that looked like me. I remember playing an icebreaker game during summer camp where you have to choose an actor to play you if your life ever becomes famous enough for a movie to be made about it and I remember being so jealous of everyone else. kids who had this plethora of actors to choose from, while the only actor who was famous enough at the time to play me was Jackie Chan, not that there's anything wrong with Jackie Chan, but it's nice to have options, so there are a couple of reasons for the underrepresentation of Asians in the media.

The first is that they have There have been several cases of characters written specifically for Asians being given to Cauc

asian

actors. This is a process known as whitewashing, so some examples of this include the film Aloha in 2015. Emma Stone was cast as a Chinese-Hawaiian woman a year later in Marvel's 2016 Doctor Strange. He had cast Tilda Swinton in the role of a Tibetan monk, but perhaps the most recent controversy over Hollywood whitewashing can be seen in 2017's Ghost in the Shell, a distinctly Japanese narrative that centers on an Asian woman named motoko. kusanagi, but when casting for the feature film the Hollywood producers chose Scarlett Johansson to play the lead role, another thing was that they said that visual effects would be used on Johansson to make her look more Asian for the film.

This isn't the first time Hollywood producers have dug themselves a deeper hole and tried to fix the whitewashing. Yellowface is the process of using makeup and prosthetics on Cauc

asian

actors to make them appear more Asian on screen, so an example of this can be seen in 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's, the character. Sir. Yunioshi is a Japanese landlord who was played by Caucasian actor Mickey Rooney. Not only was it a cringe-worthy stereotype, but makeup and prosthetics were used on Rooney to make him look more Asian for the film. This process reduces our race to mere physical appearance. our culture and community in a costume Scarlett Johansson returns home at the end of the day and is white again.

I don't have CGI creating all of this here and I know it's hard to believe, but the yellow face and whitewashing sent a very subtle image. message that Asians are not wanted in Western culture and that Asian visibility is not important to carry out in our own stories, on the one hand, Hollywood producers do this for economic reasons, at the end of the day, the industry Entertainment is a business and therefore, By attaching a cast list to movies, they will maximize revenue and unfortunately there aren't that many A-list Asian actors, but due to the scarcity of roles in the first place, it's not like we can dispense with those roles, so selecting the casting. one of those Asian rolls on a list could possibly turn on a new non-white star and by refusing to do this, Hollywood simply keeps the problem cyclical, how are we supposed to have a list of sinful actors if everyone in the A list?

Asian roles go to Caucasian actors, it seems like the only time Asians are visible in the media is to fulfill a stereotype and don't get me wrong, stereotypes exist for a good reason in the media, it's a quick way to get a correct reference. so you have the skater, the head cheerleader, the football jock and it goes back to that word scheme. It is a quick way to categorize behavior to simplify the information that comes from your environment. It will be a huge time saver to see a skateboarder and I know he will be 0% responsible, 100% high, but these stereotypes become harmful when they refer to race because they are dangerous when all you see is the same stereotype over and over again. time and there are no other stereotypes of that race to counteract it.

We're starting to see them as legitimate, so let's talk a little bit about some of the stereotypes that are generally available to Asians. For women, there is the dragon lady or a very sexualized eroticized Asian femme fatale, there is the tiger mother or a very authoritarian strict one. mother who only cares about playing classical instruments and getting good grades and then there is the rebellious Asian girl with the bold hair who is always trying to rebel against her tiger mother and then for the men there is the kung fu master and the rest They are also very emasculating.

Sexualized roles like the socially inept foreigner or the nerdy math expert, and I think foreigner is interesting because it applies to both Asian men and women, but you can see examples of this in Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany's the character long Duk dong from sixteen Candles the incredible yen from Ocean's eleven but I like to use the example of 2016 Suicide Squad the character katana is a Japanese character who only speaks Japanese in the film and his disdain for criminals simply distances himself from the rest of the team and the rest of the main cast and don't get me wrong, it was great to see a visible Asian in a superhero movie, but this character had no depth, no real backstory, etc.

This highlighted the notion that she was an outsider or other and that's exactly what this foreigner trope does: it reinforces the notion that Asians don't belong and that it doesn't matter what our culture is, where we come from, what our stories are, We are not Americans because of our appearance, and that is not just for Asian Americans, but also for Pacific Islander Americans, Latin Americans, Hispanic Americans, a broader America has promised American citizenship over whiteness and Stereotypes like this don't help, the problem is not just with these. stereotypes the problem is that these characters are just these stereotypes there is no depth these very narrow representations of characters maintain the schemas that make up those terrifying stereotypes they do not expand the range of behaviors available to Asians on television, but rather they reinforce the existing ones that are already are associated with us and therefore these misrepresented images create misleading one-dimensional simplified characters that make it difficult to believe that Asians cannot be just any character with any personality, by serving as a place to reinforce and perpetuate these harmful stereotypes, the media plays a paper.

By maintaining systemic racism, whether they intend to do so or not, Hollywood producers influence our implicit biases by excluding Asians in the media through processes such as whitewashing or yellowface or by assigning them very important roles. Stereotyped as humans, we unconsciously engage in a series of complex cognitive processes. The processes that allow us to analyze and react quickly to incoming information from our environment, the way Asians are portrayed in the media, shape those schemas and this categorization of behavior influences all aspects of our cognition in our interaction. daily, we automatically access the incorporated information. in those schemes for drawing inferences and making predictions about people of your race, you'd be surprised how many people tell me things like you're really attractive to an Asian guy or you know I don't normally like Asians but you're the most attractive one I've ever seen.

Seen in my life, it obviously sounds like he's trying to make a shameless advertisement. I'm not, but Asian men are rarely portrayed in the media as romantic leads and that definitely has an effect on the way we are viewing it and it is important to note that the way Asians are portrayed in the media does not cause racist behavior, but being exposed to these stereotypes and only these stereotypes influences how we perceive the world around us and therefore the media becomes a power in how we develop racial meanings and attitudes if this problem is not confronted , producers, directors and writers will become comfortable with the underrepresentation of marginalized groups in the media, allowing processes like whitewashing to continue, the media shapes our worldview and shapes an individual's worldview.

Society is shaped by refusing to use its position of influence for social good. Film industry insiders are complicit in maintaining a racist system, but there are some things we can do to fix the problem as an audience and we can implore dynamic, empowering, versatile roles that are representative not only of the Asian community but of the black community, the Latino community, the lgbtq+ community in media such as film, television or news, it is important to recognize the glass ceiling that exists not only for Asians but also for other marginalized groups of people and minorities. in the media so we can come together he expressed his concerns and called for change and this works in august 2017, english actor ed skrein was cast in the role of ben de mio, a japanese-american character for the 2019 hellboy reboot, but after numerous complaints of whitewashing by fans. on social media accounts screen voluntarily left the role to be cast properly a month later, Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim was cast in the role, so knowing about these issues and the effects they have, they were able to speak out. against the injustice and inequalities faced by marginalized groups, it is important to recognize that the television paradigm is a powerful medium for these groups to have a voice, so we must demand roles and stories that China highlights about what differentiates us, what makes us unique. and celebrate those differences so we can have empowering and well-rounded characters that are representative of everyone, thank you