We really need to discuss East and Southeast Asian female representation in the media – a conversation that is essential and long overdue. Especially in a time when absolutely despicable hate crimes towards East and Southeast Asians have risen, we have never needed more representation in the media, and the need to amplify our voices, than now.
When watching TV or films, I often find that I search for faces like mine, only to be extremely disappointed by the lack of representation – maybe there is the occasional scene with an Asian actor playing a doctor or an extra working in a Chinese restaurant – but this is just simply so disheartening to see, and demonstrates how invisible Asians are in the media. There is so much work to ensure that all groups within Asia are given a voice in the media. Of course, there are difficulties when it comes to representing a community made up of so many distinct races, languages and cultures, and so, I would like to state that, because I am a writer of East Asian descent myself, my focus here will be on East and Southeast Asian representation.
There has been a history of yellowface, Orientalism, fetishising, blatant racism, ignorance, exclusion, and more unfortunately, towards the community. Many East Asian faces have been victims of abuse and racism, posed as antagonists in popular white culture. For example, Yoko Ono, a successful artist who was married to John Lennon from The Beatles, was berated for supposedly being the reason why The Beatles broke up, and the media launched disgusting racist attacks on her. The podcast ‘You’re Wrong About’ inspects these unspoken racist and misogynistic narratives that surround Ono in the episode ‘‘Yoko Ono Broke Up the Beatles’’. Similarly, Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series, revealed in ‘Ep14: Katie Leung aka Cho Chang from Harry Potter joins me!!’ of the podcast ’Chinese Chippy Girl’ that she faced racist abuse from fans of the series, which is incredibly saddening to hear. As of March 2021, not a single East or Southeast Asian female actor has won an Academy Award in the ‘Best Actress Category’, and Miyoshi Umeki was the last East Asian actor to win in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category… in 1957… Unfortunately, hardly any progress has been made.
Moreover, although Miss Saigon is a musical that I love because of its absolutely stunning music, it is very problematic. To give it the benefit of the doubt, it was a show in which I saw actors who looked like me for the first time, and provided visibility and a platform mainly to Southeast Asian actors on the West End stage. Nonetheless, the musical, which is based on Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, is so problematic because of the narrative that it perpetuates: an Asian woman who obsessively relies on a white male saviour, and some argue that the musical, which has a history of yellowface performances in its original production, glamourises trauma of the Vietnam War. This is highlighted and discussed by Eva Noblezada, who was the lead in the 2014 West End and 2017 Broadway revivals of Miss Saigon, in the ‘Eva Noblezada’ episode from ‘The Deadline Podcast: New Hollywood’. She continues to represent the Asian community within theatre and inspires with her incredibly empowering voice.
There has been some change within mainstream Hollywood with films like To All the Boys I’ve Loved, Crazy Rich Asians or the Disney animation Raya and the Last Dragon, but this is only the start, and just because these films have now reached global audience, certainly does not mean that they are wholly representative of different Asian communities or void of issues themselves. We must, still, praise these films for paving the way and demonstrating the importance of representation.
I would like to use this space to praise some actors of East and Southeast Asian descent who have been representing the community in the media. For instance, Sandra Oh has been a legend both in film and television, from Grey’s Anatomy to Killing Eve, and let’s not forget her iconic role as Principal Gupta in The Princess Diaries. Also, stars like Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Lana Condor, Kelly Marie Tran, and Chrissy Teigen, to name but a few, have all been figures in the media who have all shown the importance of representation and amplify female Asian voices and culture. Furthermore, this is not just constricted to Anglophone media: Spectros, a Brazilian Netflix series which is about the Japanese-Brazilian community living in Liberdade, a district in São Paulo with the biggest Japanese population outside of Japan, incorporates a mix of both Brazilian and Japanese folklore/supernatural culture, and exhibits Asian representation within Latin American popular culture.
In 2021, we are seeing more Asian faces on screen like in the Korean-American film Minari, and more Asian filmmakers such as Chloé Zhou who has directed the critically acclaimed film, Nomadland, and the upcoming Marvel film, The Eternals. Change is coming, slowly but surely. It is time to ensure that space is provided for Asians creatives to raise their voices, as well as to work with other communities to ensure that they are no longer marginalised. Enough is enough. Representation matters.