Asians in the American entertainment industry have been discriminated against since the silent era of film. With rare exceptions, the basic caricatures of Asians are the same today as they were in the early years of film. The lack of evolution in roles available to Asians in American entertainment perpetuates the perception that Asians are alien, foreign, and “other.” Their absence from film and television demonstrates how underrepresented Asians are in American entertainment. The scarce representations that do depict Asians, are predominantly worn-out stereotypes, yellowface, and whitewashing of roles originally intended for Asian characters.
Historically, Asians have been represented as a single group of “Orientals” instead of seen as individual …show more content…
The award for one of the most offensive representations of yellowface goes to Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of the Japanese landlord, Mr. Yunioshi, in the 1961 movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” This over-the top-caricature’s fake buck teeth, squinty-eyed makeup, and ridiculous accent make it one of the most racially offensive characters in the history of Hollywood. Yellowface has not encountered the same stigmatization that blackface has. This could be due to several reasons, such as the historical perception of passivity and assimilability of the Asian American community compared to the Black community (which goes back to the Model Minority stereotype). Regardless of the reason, the performance of yellowface is just as offensive as blackface, or any other type of makeup that imitates an ethnicity. Unfortunately, the negative outlook towards yellowface still has not become mainstream. Major Hollywood films and television shows still use yellowface by dressing up non-Asian actors in stereotypical roles. This offensive method of portraying Asians distorts, misrepresents, and appropriates Asian cultures. A recent example of yellowface was seen in the show “How I Met Your Mother.” The episode was conceived as an homage to martial arts films, by presenting a clichéd plot to master the “Slap of a Million Suns.” In the episode, three of the main cast members don yellowface in …show more content…
After the episode of “How I Met Your Mother” was aired, the hash-tag #howimetyourracism began to trend on the major social networking site, Twitter. Many people posted messages such as: “Really, you couldn't even bring yourself to hire Asian actors for this?”, “HIMYM better get it to together. Who the hell thinks it's ok to do racial caricatures for laughs in 2014?!”, and “Way to mock a culture for cheap laughs” (Broder Van Dyke). Two days after the lead cast for Avatar was published, an online writing campaign called “Ang Ain’t White” was created, as well as a site called “racebending.com,” as a protest of the film’s whitewashing. Mike Le, of “racebending.com,” commented on the movie’s whitewashing: "To take this incredibly loved children's series, and really distort not only the ethnicity of the individual characters but the message of acceptance and cultural diversity that the original series advocated, is a huge blow". By denying Asian actors lead roles, and reducing them to playing stereotypical and/or supporting characters, Hollywood is reinforcing the discrimination that has inundated the industry since its creation. With the evolution of a more internet-based world, where communication is done largely through social media, representations of Asians in American media have hopes of changing in the coming years, as more people openly express their offence at such