Music N' More: Asian Media Stereotypes

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Asian Media Stereotypes

In pop culture, there was a character named Charlie Chan, who was supposed to be a Chinese-Hawaiian detective, which was based on an actual Chinese-Hawaiian detective named Chang Apana. The character Chan was not once played by any and I mean ANY Asian actors, but white British or just white actors, such as Sidney Toler, Roland Winter, or Warner Oland.

An example of the martial arts expert is that of Chow Yun-fat's character in the 2003 movie Bulletproof Monk, where he played the Monk with No Name, who was an expert at martial arts, despite Chow Yun-fat not knowing martial arts in real life, he is not a martial artist but simply an actor.

An example of the supergeek stereotype is that of Long Duk Dong, a geeky Chinese foreign exchange student played gy Gedde Watanabe in Sixteen Candles.

An example of the asexual martial artist is that of Jet Li's character Han Sing in the 2000 movie Romeo Must Die. There was supposed to be a scene at the end of the movie where his character and Aaliyah's Trish O'Day share a kiss, but some people felt it would be bad to show an Asian man and a black woman kissing and also to portray an Asian man in a sexual light.

These stereotypes are very common, along with movies showing Asians as being part of the Triads or Chinese Mafia, basically this gives everyone the impression that Asians are bad people.

Famous Asian people:

B.D. Wong