asian american as stereotype

There are close to eighteen million Asian Americans living in United States; they make up six percent of the population. Many Asian Americans here are doctors, lawyers, engineers and CEOs. Despite this, Asian Americans are portrayed as geeks, gangsters, or geishas in Hollywood movies. When it comes to lead roles they rarely get the roles that they deserve and they are often represented as stereotypes.

During the 1930s, the movie industry was predominantly run and funded by the Anglo Americans including playwrights, producers, actors, actresses, and other casting member. Westerns were popular during the ‘20s and ‘30s, and in these movies, Caucasian men were acting as Asian American rather than hiring Asian American. As Hollywood movies industries progress further with focusing on greater audiences and making more profitable. They movies industries began to introduce other characters. At the beginning of late ‘50s and ‘60s various minority roles were introduce into the Hollywood movies. Most of the roles were stereotypical and marginalized by one dimensional such as servant, housemaids, etc. It’s about Cambodians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Indians Indonesians Laotians, Malaysians, Thai and Vietnamese all are coming together in same continent. Last fifteen years after World War II Vietnamese in the United States still suffered from the pain of exile of their identity in media and movies. They are the people who are former generals, former peasant spies’ school teachers, and physicians, but in movies they play servant characters. Asian American makes 10% of population in California but out of 10% only 1% is in television. Every movie shows Asian women as girlfriend of white man. They are always shown sexualized character...

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...an Asian fellow, which Hwang called yellow face casting. When the show was first time opened at New York City in 1990, most of Asian theatre artists protested, including David Henry Hwang.

Thus, we see the movie industry is a powerful form of mass media in our society that provide the perception of what American culture looks like and how we treat each other in the society. The Hollywood movie industry is driven by the box office profit and glamour. There is virtually no track record for financially successful films starring an Asian American or any other minority group. The filmmakers do not even consider minorities as potential customers. Even now, most of the time, big corporations are reluctant to investment or promote any movies where they are not making significant amount of return investment. Making money is the underlining theme of these industries.