Asian Americans: Telling Their Own Stories

U.S. media history has been plagued with limited representations of Asians and Asian Americans. Specifically Asian American female roles have been limited to stereotypes such as the Lotus Blossom/Madame Butterfly and the dragon lady. The Lotus Blossom and the Madame Butterfly stereotypes are seen as being sexually attractive, alluring, passive and obedient. On the other hand the Dragon Lady is seen as sexualized, sinister and conniving. These stereotypical representations of Asian females are what Darrel Hamamoto refers to as “controlling images”. The repetition of these loaded representations within contemporary media has created a limited perspective of Asian American images. According to Hamamoto in “Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV”, controlling images involve the process of objectification, subordination, and justification. These images are used to create a hierarchy of gender, race, and class; this hierarchy can also be understood as media racial hegemony. In their book “Asian Americans and the Media” Kent Ono and Vincent Pham articulate media racial hegemony as the way people think about how race is represented through media and how media representations help guide and regulate beliefs and actions of those within society in indirect ways.

Though contemporary media continues to create stereotypical images they can be contested and renegotiated through alternative and independent sources. In Renee Tajima’s essay “Moving the Image: Asian American Independent Filmmaking 1970-1990” she posits that artists of color will not sit in the center or margin of media but instead “as the links of a new cultural matrix” (MTI, 32). While traditional media continues to be constrained by dominant hegemonic representat...

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... It is apparent that Asian Americans are able to create representations that refute lingering stereotypes in alternative and independent venues, but can that continue into mainstream media? In order for this to happen Asian Americans need to be involved at the center of telling their own stories. Both of the venues that Cho and Lee participate in allow them to tell their stories the way they want them to be told. No one else is getting in between what they have to say and what is seen. This freedom of self-expression is what allows for a wealth of counter hegemonic images that act to subvert and renegotiate previous stereotypes. Asian Americans need to be present in the production of mainstream media, telling their own stories the way they should be told. This will allow for new representations of Asian Americans to emerge and be present for a much grander audience.