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It’s Hard to Find Good Books

Let me clarify: it’s hard to find good books with ethnic character lead.

Books have a special place in my heart.  When I was younger, I was literally scolded by teachers for reading books during a class.  I stayed up at night, reading with a flashlight under the covers.  I couldn’t get enough.

And yet, despite all the books I’ve read, all the characters I’ve loved, I can only think of a handful of characters that were of differing ethnicities.

I’ll make this clear:  I still love the books I’ve read.  They have greatly impacted me and their themes have stuck… however, looking back, it’s a little bit disheartening to realize that next to none of the characters had backgrounds anything close to mine.  It wasn’t something I noticed as much as a child, but it’s certainly something I notice now.

Now Young Adult novels are really popular, and not just for young adults.  They often have themes that a lot of people can relate to.  However, in an informal study done about two years ago, a young woman found that out of some six hundred YA books, ninety percent had white models on the cover.  Strangely enough, when minorities were present on the covers, they were usually in the background, surrounded by white models, or were cut off at the head/not looking directly at the reader (so we’re not allowed to see their faces).

Another young lady found that the number of ethnically diverse characters and authors in the YA section basically remained flat from 2012 to 2013.  So there was no improvement in the amount of diversity found in these novels.

As an avid reader, it’s sad to see that there aren’t a lot of books coming out with more diverse casts.  We can’t usually count on the classics to portray three-dimensional, ethnically diverse characters, so it would seem like as the world progresses, so would the books we read.  No such luck.

Thinking about the other posts I’ve written (if you haven’t read them: poor representation of Asians in media, negative effects of whitewashing, negative effects of stereotypes), then you might be able to understand why it’s so concerning that there these characters don’t exist.  Not having diverse characters in our mainstream books simply means that anyone who reads those books are not being exposed to different cultures, ideas, and concepts.  There is no chance for stereotypes to be disproven.  No chance for further understanding of minorities.  It is not inherently wrong to read, write, publish, or consume books that are not diverse, but becomes so when we combine a lack of diversity with a supposedly diverse, forward-thinking country.

Even worse to me is the fact that there are virtually no articles, no research at all to be found concerning the poor representation of minorities in books (although this– the only concrete thing I could find- was a very interesting read).  I always look to add some sustenance to my articles, but as of yet I’ve only come across a few articles, most of which deal with the pictures on book jackets, not the actual content.  Other than that, there is a plethora of posts from parents looking for diverse books their children can relate to—telling me that parents definitely are paying attention.

How do you feel about this?  Do you feel that it is as big a problem as I do?  Should we start advocating for more diverse books, featuring a cast of all ethnicities (and while we’re at it, all genders, all sexualities, all disabilities)?  Are things find the way they are?

And more importantly, I want you to answer this honestly… if the book had a cast that was completely diverse, would you read it?  The truth is that some people won’t.  Just because.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.  I personally believe that more diverse books, and support for these books, will result in more diverse movies or television shows and a higher level of acceptance and understanding for other cultures/ethnicities.  Tell me your thoughts!

 

**Please note that I definitely acknowledge the books with diverse characters that are already out there.  If you’re having trouble thinking of some, like I did, then may I suggest to you:  There Will Come a Time, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, The Book Thief, Kindred, Cinder, Kite Runner, The Help, A Thousand Splendid Suns…

 

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Why Stereotypes are Bad

Today, I’ll be talking about media and stereotypes.  In particular, I’ll help you understand why stereotypes- even “good” stereotypes- are bad… and why you should care.

First off, let’s be clear on what a stereotype is: according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary…

  1. Verb: to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same
  2. Noun: an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic

 

Why stereotypes are wrong

–          People don’t really like being stereotyped because truthfully, you can’t say something is true for every member of a group.  This overlooks individuality and small differences.

–          It perpetuates a divide.  I can think of at least two categories I’ve noticed Asian women fall into: “Dragon Lady” (I did not invent that phrasing) or “submissive damsel” (I admit I invented that).  You see Asian women doing crazy martial arts moves and throwing ninja stars or you see a shy girl in a sailor outfit giggling behind her hand.  This is not representative of all Asian women, but some people actually believe it is.  (Check out the creepy white guy tumblr to see what I mean.)

–          Stereotypes linger.  According to one study, negative stereotypes have a lingering effect on those who experience them.  People perform poorly in situations where they feel they are being stereotyped, and they were still more likely to be aggressive and lacking in self-control even a while after stereotyping happens.  Remembering a situation where you felt prejudiced against will also negatively affect their moods.

–          They affect more aspects of life than you think.  This study shows that one of the reasons women don’t go into computer science fields is because of the stereotype of “geeky” men is a turn-off.  Ouch.  What about when you say that all women are bad at math?  Does this account for why women don’t often go into math-related fields?  Stereotypes cab be a self-fulfilling cycle.

 

But what about good stereotypes?

Is it really so bad to promote positive aspects of a group?

To be blunt, yes.  Positive stereotypes are just as harmful as negative ones.

In one study, Asian-Americans were divided randomly into two groups, one of which experienced stereotyping.  Turns out that the participants in that group severely disliked those who stereotyped them.  They felt depersonalized and angry.  The same results happen when you tell women that they’re nurturing and in touch with their emotions, or tell someone tall and dark-skinned that he must be good at basketball.

Another study has found that believing in a positive stereotype will reinforce the beliefs of negative stereotypes.  For example, people who were exposed to the stereotype that blacks are superior at sports unquestioningly believed it; later on, these people had much stronger negative feelings and beliefs about other stereotypes, such as “Blacks are violent.”

 

Back to the movies

Stereotypes pop up everywhere in the media.  The strict Asian mom, the nerdy Asian kid who only studies, the awkward Indian man who can’t talk to women, the martial artist, sexy Asian order bride, foreigners who can’t speak English, model minority…  the list goes on.

These stereotypes, of course, are not only limited to Asians.  They’re everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.  And they’re bad.  Seeing these stereotypes time and time again on television or in movies reinforces our belief in them.  We unquestioningly think they’re true.  We treat others in day-to-day life based on often incorrect stereotypes.

 

This is what you should take away:

Stereotypes are not a good thing.  They do not promote harmony within our country.  They divide the “United” States.  Stereotyping in media = widespread belief of stereotypes = angry stereotyped people & hardcore believers who will not see things in any other light.

 

If you find yourself stereotyping someone (and we all do it.  I do it.  All the time.  So do you.), take a step back and ask yourself why.  Why do you believe this?  Is there evidence to back it up, or is all of your evidence anecdotal?  And how might your stereotype be a bad thing?

By combatting stereotypes in real life as well as in the media, we can facilitate better understanding between people and cultures.  We can make a nicer world in general.

So stop with the stereotypes.

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The problem with Whitewashing

Before I start: if you have the time, please check out this video (it’s short and actually really cute) about stereotypes of Africans in the Western media.  It’s about changing perspectives and it’s definitely worth a watch. 

 

Do you know what whitewashing is?  If so, good for you.  If not, I’ll take a moment to explain.

Whitewashing boils down to one thing: you take a character that should be one race, and you replace that character with a white person.

For example, there is a book by Justine Larbalestier that features a black protagonist.  When the book first came out, the cover featured a Caucasian female.  The publishers quickly fixed this problem, but it still drew a lot of backlash.

The first Dragonball movie to ever come out had white actor as Goku (and I can guarantee you there was a collective sigh from the Asian community when we found this out).

dragonballjustin

            In Avatar: The Last Airbender—the main characters were white.  The villains were people of ethnicity.  Not white?  You can be a bad guy.  Not exactly what we’re going for.

Even Katniss from “The Hunger Games” was supposed to be not-white.  In the book, she is described as having dark, olive skin and grey eyes.  Jennifer Lawrence is an amazing actress, but with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, she doesn’t quite fit the bill (though she was a bit tanner in the second film).

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            I could go on for ages.  Even though whitewashing is still prevalent now, it was even worse in the past.  A 1937 film version of “The Good Earth” (it takes place in China, with… well… Chinese characters) was portrayed by an all-white cast.  By that, I mean that every single actor was white.  They used heavy makeup to portray the characters as Asian (called yellowface), but that is essentially the same as blackface (and we’ve all realized that blackface is a no-no).  “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” had Mickey Rooney portraying a Japanese man with so many stereotypes it should make your head spin.  Oh, was it bad.

So what gives?  Why is Hollywood taking PoC (people of color) and replacing them with Caucasian actors and actresses?  Well, at its heart is a single argument:  People don’t want to read books unless someone white is on the cover.  People won’t watch movies unless the main character is white.  Someone read between the lines: roles of ethnicity just don’t sell.

Is this true?  Well, I guess we’ll never know.  There haven’t been enough non-white movies to tell.

Whitewashing is bad, especially when the subject matter the movies draw from was Asian to begin with.  If we can’t cast an Asian lead in Dragonball or Akira or The Last Airbender, what hope is there for Asian leads in mainstream Hollywood films?  What hope is there for a fully developed character being the lead in the film… who just happens to be black, or Spanish, or Latino, or Indian?  What is the hope of actual representation?

This all ties in with racism.  Because there are so few movies or shows with Asian or PoC leads, when (by some miracle) we actually do get these shows and movies, there tends to be massive criticism.  For example, even though Rue in The Hunger Games was clearly written to be black, a lot of people were surprised and angered by the young actress’s skin color.  When the information was released the Michael B. Jordan (a black actor) would be playing the human torch in a Fantastic Four reboot (traditionally played by a white actor), the internet blazed with indignation and backlash.  But why?  When we whitewash characters, we hear a very small amount of criticism, if any.  When we reverse things, we’re upset that we’re not staying true to the story line.  Something doesn’t click there.

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Have you heard of Wong Fu Productions?  They’re a (really funny) group of popular Youtubers who happen to be Asian-American.  Their friends often star in their short films (and their friends are often AA as well).  Their videos get a lot of ignorant comments.  “Why is everyone Asian?” is just as common- and just as inappropriate– as “slanty eyes.”  I mean, how often do you watch a movie and ask yourself, “Why is everyone here white?”  The content of the movie, show, or book should be more important than the ethnicity of the characters.  If it’s funny, meaningful, poignant, well written… why does it matter if it’s not white?

wong-fu

Whitewashing ultimately accomplishes nothing.  What it implies is that different ethnicities will not be popular with viewers.  It cuts back the chances for potentially talented actors and actresses to have their time on the big screen.  It can promote racism.  If we really want to progress with our acceptance of other cultures (or, you know, not alienate half of America), giving these actors and actresses a chance to star in films, movies, or on the covers of books is a good step.

 

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Maggie Q and Lucy Liu

My last post was a general overview of the relationship between Asian-Americans and the media.  There are a lot of negative portrayals of AAs on TV and in movies, but I thought it’d be nice to start off with something more positive—here is what TV is doing correctly.  These two shows are examples of Race-Bending: where in other iterations of the show, the main character might have been white, here we have an Asian-American taking the place.

Have you heard of the show Nikita?  No?  Then drop everything you’re doing and watch this trailer right now.  It’s amazing and you should most certainly obsess over it, not only because of the lovely Maggie Q, but also because it’s entertaining, action-packed, and includes beautiful people.

nikita

            The premise of the show is that a young woman, Nikita, is arrested and sentenced to jail.  A secret branch of the government ‘rescues’ her, destroying her previous identity and training her to be a killing machine (I mean that literally).  She eventually breaks free and makes it her goal to stop the agency, which has gotten out of control.  There’s a lot of action, a lot of kick-butt women, and even a dash of romance.  In the show, Maggie Q’s Nikita is amazing—and do you know what else she is?

A person.  Not an Asian person, but a person.  Not one place in the entire show (up the point I’ve watched, that is), is it exaggerated that she’s Asian.  Yes, there seem to be a few stereotypes involved: Nikita can speak Chinese, she can beat a man or women in up in point five seconds and seems to have that killer-dragon-lady vibe going on.  However, those traits seem to be mostly a product of the situation she’s in- she was trained in hand-to-hand combat and can speak multiple languages, not just Chinese- so the audience gets the feeling that no matter what ethnicity she was, she would be able to do these things.  It’s a bit upsetting that the entire rest of the cast- and I mean entire, with the exception of one lovely women who was killed in season one- is white, but I guess that’s the exchange you have for casting an AA lead.

Have you also heard of the show Elementary?  Now I’m not completely familiar with the show itself, having watched very little of it, but I am certainly familiar with what inspired it: Sherlock Holmes.  Here we have Lucy Liu, an Asian-America actress known for roles in Aly McBeal, Kill Bill, and Charlie’s Angels.  She plays a gender-bent version of John Watson (her name in the show is Joan) and, as you would imagine, helps an eccentric Sherlock Holmes solve cases for the police department.  From what I’ve researched on the internet, there are a lot of things that could be critiqued about the show; but many people are glad that Lucy Liu has had the opportunity to play in a role that an AA women would not usually receive.  And let me add this is wonderful, considering that the other popular Sherlock Holmes series (BBC’s“Sherlock,” a show that I really do love) has an all-white cast.

Sherlock-season-3-Full-cast Elementary

            In the show, Dr. Watson can be slightly anti-social, and she is a doctor (stereotype right there), but she has a normal, non-sexualized love life and she actually had a catastrophic failure in her occupation (which resulted in her being paired with Holmes).  It seems that the shows actively tries to balance out what could easily be stereotypes with other aspects of her character.  Liu did receive a lot of backlash when it was revealed that she would be Watson (She can’t!  She’s too Asian/too American/she’s, well, a woman) but she has done a fantastic job with her role so far and she’s keeping her head up through it all.  Her character continues to grow and develop while Joan Watson helps Holmes with all of his cases.

This is good.  This is very good.  This is exactly what we need.  We don’t exactly need any more Awkwards, which the Asian-sidekick/friend wears strange clothing and can never hang out because of tiger parents.  We don’t need more Japanese horror films that eventually get placed by an all-white cast.  We don’t need more episodes of Dads, where an Asian women, Brenda Song, dressed up in a sailor’s outfit.  We don’t really need any more martial arts films.  What we need is a setting where we have an Asian person, or a person of ethnicity, acting exactly like a person.  The admirable thing about these shows, and others like it or other that will follow,  is that the characters have all of the complexities of actual people: they love, they get insecure (well, not Nikita), they win and they sometimes lose.  And at the end of the day, that speaks to everyone—not just a white person, not just an Asian person.  So why don’t we add a little more diversity to our roles?

 

Each word is a link.

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Civis Issues #1

I want you to think about any book you’re recently read.  Focus on the main characters.  Who were they?  What did they look like?  Think about movies.  Ask the same questions.

What about television shows?  Who are the main characters of, say, Bones?  Criminal Minds?  The Office?  Mad Men.  Breaking Bad.  NCIS.  Friends.  Glee.  Big Bang Theory.  How I Met Your Mother.

Think of The Hunger Games.  Harry Potter.  The Fault in Our Stars.  Think Frozen.  Iron Man, The Avengers, Despicable Me, Warm Bodies.  Oz the Great and Powerful.

 

What do these things have in common?  Have you guessed it yet?  Well, these books, these movies, these television shows… are all predominately white.  The actors, the actresses, the characters themselves, are mostly Caucasian.  Sure, every once in a while we get a Life of Pi.  Hushpuppy.  The Joy Luck Club.  Nikita.  The Mindy Project.

But for the most part, where are our black characters?  Latino?  Indian?  Asian?  America isn’t the most diverse country, but it certainly has its fair share of differing ethnicities.  Where is the representation for the rest of us who aren’t white?  Why haven’t many non-white people made it big as the main character in a movie or TV show or book?

US Census shows that by 2043, the white majority will be gone.  Even now, more than half of the children in American under 5 years of age are in an ethnic minority.  So with such a diverse group of ethnicities in America- the Melting Pot, the Salad Bowl, the Mosaic, and even the Kaleidoscope- why hasn’t the media reflected this yet?

For my civic issues posts, I’ll be focusing on how Asian-Americans in particular are portrayed in American media, and how that might result in wider, cultural problems.  Being half Chinese, I feel like I’ll be able to appropriately convey how it feels being a minority in a country that isn’t supposed to shy away from differences.

 

What is your first impression of an Asian person?  Do we all look alike?  Do you ask us for math help?  Do we only drink tea and eat white rice with every meal?

Did you say yes to any of the questions?  If you did, you really wouldn’t be alone.  These stereotypes, and many others, must be dealt with on a daily basis for Asian-Americans.  From my friends sometimes speaking nonsense Chinese words to me (ching chong) to being told “You’re so Asian” when I complete a math-related task, I’m almost constantly reminded of how I am different.  Sometimes, I even partake in the humor (“I’ve been studying all day—how Asian!”), but I realize this doesn’t serve to bridge the cultural gaps between me and my friends.  The truth is that even though I smile and laugh it off, I feel a bit insulted whenever someone tells me I can’t drive because I’m Asian or expects me to be able to read Chinese characters (honesty time—  I know next to no Chinese.)

How does this relate to the media?  Well, movies, books, and television shows often perpetuate these stereotypes.  Sure, films with Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, or Jet Li have Asian lead characters.  But they also have a lot of crazy kung fu that I guarantee most of us don’t know.  There aren’t many movies with us leading normal, everyday lives— ninja and action free.  I think it’s time America sees some of those.

The problem with this minimal representation is twofold: we can’t identify with characters in the media, and the media continues to feed false information about us to the public.

Growing up, I didn’t really idolize any character or celebrity because I couldn’t identify with them.  I couldn’t relate to books too well, and every time I turned on the TV I saw people who just didn’t look like me.  I often felt a bit alienated.  That’s not to say I didn’t love Harry Potter or other amazing books and movies, but it is to say that it was, and still is, difficult to find relatable representations of Asians in the media.

And although America has made great strides in treating other ethnicities as equals, we aren’t quite there yet.  I’m sure some of you are familiar with the controversy surrounding the Superbowl Coca-Cola commercial.  Examples like this are popping up all the time in the news.  While I will never say that media is to blame for the negative opinions of some Americans, it’s true that the media does greatly influence how we see other ethnic groups.  When we see the stereotypes that are perpetuated in movies and television, we never get to experience the true diversity and cultural understanding that the United States can offer.  Plus, a lot of the second and even third-generation Asian-Americans simply don’t act the way you think we do in movies.

 

We’re just as American as the rest of America.

 

 

Things to check out if you’re interested:

Why Aren’t Asian Actors Getting Leading Roles in Hollywood

Negative Stereotypes of Asians in Films

Restrictive Portrayals of Asians in the Media and How to Balance Them

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