Asian American Essay Example for Free

Asiatic American EssayAmerica has grown precise much over the past couple of years when it comes to the representations of race, gender, class and sexuality. In America today some(prenominal) people are aware of the issues that divers(prenominal) people have faced and the problems they are currently dealing with. Breaking a stereotype is a hard thing to do for any minority precisely it has been especially hard on the Asiatic community. From the early days of media Asiatic men and women have been represent a very(prenominal) specific way in film and television. In the 1950s and 1960s Asiatic women were portrayed as sexual objects, they were evil goddesses with slanted eyes or smiling, cunning, sexual deviants.This objectified Asian women to only(prenominal) both choices, be naive and hopeless or untrustworthy and devious. Now a days the media has manifestly tried to eliminate these stereotypes. Their attempts have worked to some extent however there still are not m any braggy name Asian women actresses. One of the biggest Asian actresses in Hollywood is Lucy Liu. Although is she a very successful actress all of her roles are very sexual. Is this a good or bad thing for the Asian community? Yes she is very famous but is she playing right into Asian women being sexually utilise in the media.Asian males have faced a very similar problem over the years. Although the precondition Asian American covers about 30 different ethnicities, in the media they are almost all portrayed in the same way. In the early days of American media you barely saw any Asian males on T. V. One of the most prominent Asian reference works on T. V. in the early 30s and 40s was the character of Charlie Chan. Charlie Chan was a detective who appeared in over 40 different films, his character was very wise, smart and witty. The only problem was this Asian character was played by three different white actors over the years.The reasoning behind this was that all the good char acteristics Charlie Chan had were because the actors were white and all of his negative characteristics were overdue to the fact that the character was Asian. Once again in todays society we have progressed significantly since the days of Charlie Chan. as yet Asian males today have been predominantly reduced to two major roles. One of these two roles is delightful easy to figure out, that role would be the kung foo action role. If I said, name a couple of Asian American actors the first that come to mind are Jackie Chan and or Bruce Lee.Everybody k at one times or has seen a couple of the films these two stars have been in. Another role is the role of the villain. Many Asian characters do not have big roles unless they are the bad guy. They are often linked with gang activities such as prostitution, gambling and murder. hither are some examples of these stereotypes and representations. The first one is the movie trailer for The World of Suzie Wong. This movie is about an American writer who is struggling in life and falls in love with a Chinese prostitute.Although it is a love story and Suzie Wong is the main character you can just tell by the trailer what American men think of Asian women at the time. www. youtube. com/watch? v=jnepiAcqb_g The next clip is a more modern movie. It stars Lucy Liu who is a very successful Asian actress. This movie is obviously a step forward, in the 1960s an Asian woman fighting crime would have been thought of as blasphemous. Although her role in this movie is a strong woman who fights crime there is still a little endorsement of sexual objectivity here and in many other scenes of the movie.www. youtube. com/watch? v=cjyqWsrpQAA This next cast is an image of Charlie Chan.You can tell by the picture that the actor that plays Charlie Chan is white. They use make up and he talks with an accent to make the character Asian. This truly makes no sense to me at all. The character is Asian but could not be played by an Asian becau se his good values would not count realistic, but all of the negative qualities he has is because the character is of Chinese decent. http//beyondmediaonline. com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/chan. jpg.This next clip is from Rush moment 3 and it pretty much plays into all the stereotypes I was talking about before. Jackie Chan is the star of this movie and he is a detective who specializes in martial arts and the man they are interrogating in this scene is a French/Asian gangster. Now once again not every Asian actor is a martial arts star or portrays a gangster in a movie now a days. It just seems that the major roles Asian actors get are ones like this. http//www. youtube. com/watch? v=tfEZwRukZOo Nittle, N. (2013). Asian American Stereotypes. Retrieved from http//racerelations.about. com/od/hollywood/a/Five-Common-Asian-american-Stereotypes-In-Tv-And-Film. htm Is Lucy Liu a heroine or a curse? (2003, January 29). Gold sea Asian American Daily. Retrieved December 4, 2007, from htt p//goldsea. com/Air/Issues/Liu/liu. html. Chan, C. (1988). Asian Stereotypes. Retrieved from Chan, C. (1988). Asian American women The psychological responses to sexual growth and cultural stereotypes. The Politics of Race and Gender in Therapy. Ed. Lenora Fulani. Haworth, 31-38.