On Monday in class, we were debriefing the class visit to the Museum of Chinese in America. Our discussion of the Museum led to many topics relating to Chinese Americans as well as Asian Americans in the US. The topic of discussion that I found particularly contentious and worthwhile examining was Asian people in Hollywood movies. The problem with these movies is that there aren’t a lot of Asian actors acting in them. To make matters even worse, there aren’t even Asian actors or actresses playing the parts of Asian characters in the movies. As it was mentioned in class, Katherine Hepburn played an Asian character in a movie and wore makeup to look the part, something called “yellow face.” Katherine Hepburn wasn’t the only actress of her time that wore a yellow face to portray these specific characters. Professor Rosenberg mentioned how this wouldn’t very well pass by people today because it’s very demeaning and derogatory. But, I find it funny how even though yellow face doesn’t occur as frequently today as it did before, there are still non-Asian actors and actresses who play Asian parts in Hollywood movies. To some, it might seem trivial that this still happens today and that it doesn’t have to mean anything in the greater scheme of things. But to think that would be ignorant to the fact that Asians are not only underrepresented in these movies, but misrepresented. Why does this happen? The only parts that Asian Americans are able to get are usually the stereotypical roles such as kung-fu or martial arts characters, especially with Chinese Americans. I’m not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing since several Chinese actors, such as Jackie Chan, were able to take advantage of this gap that Hollywood badly wanted in their movies to be viewed as worthy in the movie industry. But I think that in a nation with so much diversity, why don’t we see this diversity in the movies we watch? Minority characters are so rarely seen in these films and usually they’re never the main lead as they’re usually the supporting characters at the most. Personally, I don’t think that’s as bad as the idea that Asians are misrepresented. I think once we fix the misrepresentation of Asian characters in Hollywood movies, we can focus on fixing the underrepresentation.
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