Picture this: Hollywood comes out with a movie. Your typical boy-meets-girl rom-com. But the boy is problematic; he’s nerdy and quirky and the type that you wouldn’t expect to find love. But he does. A young, problematic nerdy and quirky boy watches this movie. He is moved and uplifted and feels that there is hope for him after all. Media, whether we’d like to admit it or not, has a huge impact on this generation. Today’s America is very diverse; no longer does identifying as “American” pertain solely to white people. Specifically, Asian Americans make up 5.6% percent of America’s population and are very relevant in society.  Media affects them to. Yet Asian Americans tend to be either misrepresented or not represented at all.  This impedes outsider’s understanding of their culture, further ostracizing them. Films such as ‘The Great Wall” or “Aloha” paint a picture that Asian culture is at the will of Americans who are free to interpret it however they please. The development of Asian American activist’s movement evolved from a process of self-actualization and continued to progress in the media through comedy.

Media portrays Asian American’s as either dull smart square people or minimizes them to socially incompetent robots. Producers are under the impression that the only way to get a box office hit is to cast white people for every main character, even if it seems a bit far stretched. For example, the greatly debated Hollywood film “Aloha” was under fire for casting the very white Emma Stone to portray the half Asian character Allison Ng. This would have been a perfect opportunity to give the lead role to a non-white actress, breaking the monotonous cycle of whitewashing. 

 Directors argue that they do have POC in their films. Yet when we dig deeper we see these characters are the politically disenfranchised or socially negligible people of society. These characters are submissive and quiet or highly emasculated. for example: Pitch Perfect. They had an Asian American, sure, but her quirk was that she was quiet (as in subtitles were used when she spoke), and what came out of her mouth painted her as an irrelevant freak. This is an example of how directors portray people of color — instead of making them interesting characters with depth, they stick one attribute to them and make everything about that character surround that one single attribute. Those behind the scenes have this presumption that the only way to have POC characters is to portray them as inferior to the white lead characters. As if it will offend white viewers if there are ethnic characters with depth in their movies.

Whitewashing in the media is a vicious cycle that continues to be preserved even after all the backlash. A source working on the remake of Peter Pan says, 

“There’s a misconception about the ethnicity of the original character (Tiger-lily) and we felt no obligation to perpetuate that misconception. We looked at Native American actresses. We looked at African-American actresses. We looked at African actresses. We looked at Middle Eastern actresses. White actresses. After a very exhaustive casting process, we ultimately went with the best actress for the part” (Hope). 

Let’s say this man is telling the honest truth. After much thought and consideration, they decided that the best acting was done by the white actress (Rooney Mara). Based on his logic, this ‘unspecified’ character acts as a blank canvas, therefore creating a plethora of opportunities for how they could have chosen to go with this character. Yet he insists that out of all the colorful humans on this entire planet, only one singular individual could be found to portray this character and she just happened to be white. Hollywood groans and protests and uses every excuse in the book to skew plot lines so they can use white actors/actresses. But by challenging the story and claiming the character was unspecified he painted himself into a corner. ultimately his actions showed his lack of faith in ethnic actor’s ability to produce box office hits.

Asian Americans have scarce opportunities for real exposure in film and media. This is due to the deeply rooted idea that the lead characters must be white. Hollywood is concerned that “…Asian actors can’t be “bankable” stars…” and hence there has not been a show featuring mainly Asian American characters in the past 20 years (Lee), (Hess).  Back in the early 20th century, the ratio of white people to non-white people used to be higher in America. Although tactics like black face or yellow face are generally frowned upon, the fact that the majority of the actors/actresses were white in media and films was more accurate to the times. 

Now, being a rather progressive society today, shouldn’t media and film continue changing with the times to accurately represent what is now a much more diverse populace of people in America? Sadly, this is not the case. Asian Americans cannot get the necessary exposure and practice to be noticed for big time roles because no one will give them a chance. Creating and producing films have been reduced to simply cranking out money making moving pictures for the average consumer, only to reach a mediocre level of entertainment. Due to this phenomenon, many Asian roots in films are completely erased. Ghost in Shell, Speed Racer, Avatar the Last Airbender, etc., all were whitewashed. This was completely unnecessary seeing as how the pool for Asian actors is so large. Ghost in the Shell, starring Scarlett Johansson, struggled to make ticket sales simply because fans were outraged and confused at the pointless whitewashing of this classic icon in anime history.  It’s hard to sympathize with studios who continue to insist on white leads for these expensive projects when all available evidence suggests it doesn’t improve audience response. (Frank). 

Although the industry is harsh towards Asian Americans, that didn’t stop them from creating their own paths to success. A movement has slowly begun to form among those who were tired of the suppression. Asian American stars such as Aziz Ansari, Constance Wu, Mindy Kaling, etc., have made names for themselves with different projects they started in hopes of creating change. Aziz Ansari’s Netflix original comedy, Master of None, which won critic’s choice for best comedy, is a progressive piece that does everything Hollywood would never dream of doing. Ansari’s idea was that if no one was going to cast him for roles other than terrorists, he was going to create something he could be a part of without limitations. India Ross, a writer for Financial Times, writes about her and Ansari’s conversation where he poses the question, “Who are you thinking of when I say, ‘leading man’?”. The idea behind the show is that it’s all about social constructs. It’s about dating, family, race, sexuality, and everything in between. Plus, the lead characters are majorly Asian American.

 Ansari’s project isn’t just about proving that Asian actors are, in fact, ‘bankable’, but rather it has turned in to a more progressive enterprise that deals with heavy topics in society using comedy. His role as a producer and lead character is to bring to life the raw parts of our society that are hard to navigate at times. For example, the episode “Thanksgiving” tells the story of Dev’s friend Denise coming out. The holidays unfold as Denise brings home different girlfriends each year and we watch as her mother slowly warms up to her daughter’s new identity. The episode ends with Denise’s mom laughing and bonding with the current girlfriend, symbolizing she has come to terms with who her daughter is (Jung).

Constance Wu is another advocate of the movement whose support stems from her portrayal as Jessica, the mother on ABC’s sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat. Being the first Asian American sitcom in the last 20 years, the writers of this show take great care to make sure the jokes are never based off of stereotypes. Constance responds to those who were wary about the show simply making fun of Asian culture by explain that having “…Asian leads…carrying a story instead of supporting a white person’s story — takes away that burden of stereotypes”. She also brings up an interesting point about the response to the “stereotypical accents”. Their accents. An accent is an accent and pointing it out as a racist flaw only shows the deeper worldviews of the people pointing it out. Says Constance, “It’s just a fact of life: immigrants have accents. Making the choice to have that is a way of not watering down the character and making it politically correct. It’s choosing authenticity over safety…” (Feeny). This show is unique because it gives a fresh perspective on Asian lifestyle being the norm. it flips the lens by showing the familiar things Americans take for granted as foreign to them. A simple depiction like this gives white people a glance into the mind of an immigrant, knocking them down a couple pegs by showing them that their culture is not the standard that all other cultures are held to. 

Analyzing how these comedic takes on the Asian American movement have begun to successfully impact our society, let’s take a look at the root of the movement. The movement has always been self-aware, or aware of lack of self. Michelle Chen writes an insightful piece on the beginnings of the movement and states, “...the movement itself revolved around the essential question of self-definition. The stories, interviews, propaganda, and print culture artifacts featured in Ishizuka’s history of the movement speak to a kind of rectification of names that Asian Americans underwent as they sought to carve out a place for themselves in the landscape of America’s civil rights struggles.” Here she is paralleling how Asian American’s are, again, looking for where they belong in our ever-changing society as they once did during the civil rights movement. Today, the oppression is coming from media and trying to assert their place in society.

 Mindy Kaling wrote an episode in her hit comedy, The Mindy Project, titled: “Mindy Lahiri is a White Man”.  Mindy wakes up in the body of a white man and quickly finds all the privileges that come with the color. Mindy’s character already has the confidence of a white man and so she wanted to explore what would happen if she was actually a white man. The episode follows Mindy in her new body as she takes on her day to day life as a white man. But the episode wasn’t written simply so she could man-spread on the subway, but rather to shed light on how biased our society is towards white people. The day before she wakes up as a white man, Mindy is rejected for a job that she was overly qualified for (it goes to a white man). The episode brings forth elements of the identity crisis that Asian Americans face in every area of life, always coming second to white people. 

The movement is progressing and change is occurring. The product of modern oppression towards Asian Americans has only flourished into something bigger: advocacy for equality across the board. Asian Americans are not just fighting for their representation and voices, they are fighting for all types of minorities as well. Comedy provides a neutral platform for Asian Americans to not only take a stand against the stereotyping and whitewashing, but to show the ones doing it what accomplishments they could be making. Stemming from the search for self-actualization, the Asian American movement is quietly taking over society’s thoughts and worldviews by infiltrating it through comedy.
