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Are media watchdog groups making progress or are they hindering it? By Jennifer Kim I was sitting in a movie theater mildly enjoying “Wedding Crashers” when Vince Vaughn’s character said something that gave me pause. He was reminiscing about the time he played mahjong for hours in order to seduce a Chinese bridesmaid. The reason for his behavior: “She was my first Asian.” The punchline got a laugh from the audience and an uneasy one from me.
I know guys can really talk like this, and I give kudos to the producers for making Vaughn’s character an “equal opportunity” wedding crasher. Still, as an Asian American woman, I felt conflicted by his racial and sexual comment. Was I just being oversensitive?
When in doubt if something’s offensive or not, Guy Aoki, founding president of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), a watchdog group that monitors media for stereotypical and inaccurate portrayals of Asian Americans, advocates using the “black test”— substitute Asian with African American in the questionable remark and evaluate how it sounds. Suppose if Vaughn’s character had said: “She was my first African American.” That didn’t sound good to me. A writer probably wouldn’t even try a joke like that for fear of bad PR. Yet on the Asian American community, it seems, that joke can be played and gotten away with. “There is a subconscious belief that people have that you can make fun of Asians because you can get away with it and we’ll take it,” Aoki says. “Many Asian Americans don’t want to rock the boat and make waves. … We laugh along to ethnic jokes about us, we’ll do anything to fit in. … That’s part of our problem. There’s a lot of self-hatred.” Who’s watching?
Aoki co-founded MANAA, the first Asian American-focused media watchdog group, in 1992 to “address the negative stereotypes long perpetuated by the media, which detrimentally affect all Asian Americans, hurting not only their self image but also how non-Asians treat them.” At the time, Aoki was angered by the news media’s negligent portrayals of Japanese Americans in their coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing. He says the absence of balanced coverage — presenting all sides of the story — led to hate crimes against Asian Americans including the desecration of a Japanese American community center. Since then similar groups have formed including Asian Media Watchdog (AMWD), which began in 2004 as an Internet-based activist Web site inspired by MoveOn.org. Located in New York City, AMWD’s mission is to promote “fair and balanced portrayals of Asian/Asian Americans in American entertainment/media.” The group sprang from a Yahoo! discussion board about the Fox program “Banzai.” Many Asian Americans found the show to be racially offensive because of its exaggerated mock Asian accents and the “slew of demeaning stereotypes,” according to the AMWD Web site. Within the past few years, both groups have been involved with a surge of successful protests against racial slurs, stereotypes, offensive and inaccurate depictions. Details magazine for its “Gay or Asian?” feature which bizarrely maligned both gays and Asians (2004), New York City radio station Hot 97 for their “Tsunami Song,” which mocked and racially slurred victims (2005), and Shaquille O’Neal for his ethnic slurs about Yao Ming (2003) were some of the more high-profile targets. (See sidebar for further details on campaigns.) “Letting those types of stereotypes go would perpetuate stereotypes of Asian Americans as foreigners,” says James Fujikawa, co-founder and campaign director of AMWD. “In this country, if you don't assert your rights, you will get stepped on.” Kevin Quan, communications director of AMWD, says they use e-mail letter-writing campaigns, online petitions and large formal protests to get corporate and media attention. In its Details magazine campaign, AMWD used CitizenSpeak, a free Web-based advocacy service that helps grassroots organizations launch e-mail campaigns. Both MANAA and AMWD also target advertisers if necessary and lobby for more quality Asian American screen roles. MANAA is part of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC) which meets with studio executives to review their voluntary diversity initiatives. For better or worse?
Despite all such efforts made by Asian American watchdog groups, the reaction by the community they intend to serve is often lukewarm.
Many, such as first generation immigrants, don’t even know these groups and issues exist because they only watch ethnic media, explains Jennifer Kuo, a program coordinator with the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance and a past president of MANAA. Others that are aware of the groups withhold from involvement because they don’t see media campaigns as a high priority. “I think it’s positive that so many young people felt so passionately about the issues,” says Alyssa Kang, a longtime activist and union organizer. “But I think there are other things that companies, like garment manufacturers, should be held accountable for that go deeper than racist images, such as exploitative work practices towards immigrants.” And then there are still others. There are those that know of the problems in the media and are aware of what is being done, but yet refrain from involvement because they feel the groups are too militant. “I think from the point –of view of the average Asian American who thinks protesting anything is dangerous, then yes, we look militant. But on the absolute scale, we’re very reasonable and sometimes we’ve been very strong,” Aoki says. “We don’t want to totally alienate the other side,” Fujikawa adds. “We always try to find a way to work together.” Karen Narasaki, chair of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, which puts out an annual TV Diversity Report Card, says despite such assurances from group leaders, it is a fine line. She says there is a point where watchdog groups become counterproductive. “All portrayals could be better. If you complain too much, writers get afraid. They’d rather be criticized for not writing then writing something that gets attacked.” Many Asian American actors are on a similar page with Narasaki. They hold that the groups don’t always know when to react and when to sit back, and as a result, they feel watchdog activists could be taking roles — which are already scarce — away from them. Current statistics show that Asians capture only 2.5 percent of screen roles but they represent 4 percent of the population, according to the Screen Actors Guild. “Some actors don’t realize that because of so-and-so sitting at that diversity meeting, they probably wouldn’t have gotten that role,” Kuo says. “I’d like the organization (MANAA) to take credit for getting better roles.” Fujikawa says they do understand the ramifications their protests can have. “We try to be sensitive about the fact that these actors need to make a living as well. So we are generally very sensitive about criticizing Asian American actors' work,” he says. Fujikawa also ensures that his organization works to inform networks and media executives that they want to help improve the portrayal of Asian characters “without violating their (the networks) creative freedoms.” Actor Ken Fong* is on the other side of the actor debate. He says the groups are valuable, allowing an actor to anonymously make a complaint without feeling she or he will be blacklisted from the industry. Fong and another Asian American actor recently walked out of an audition because they felt the material was “racist and perpetuated negative stereotypes of Asians.” The scene involved a Korean man eating a dog leg and saying it tasted like German shepherd. A do-it-yourself project
“I think a general attitude towards Asian Americans in media is that they can’t just be regular people,” says Phil Yu, creator of Angryasianman.com, which chronicles Asian Americans in popular culture and mass media and points out racism along the way.
“They have to be alien, and ASIAN. They fulfill some sort of role or function — the Chinese delivery guy, the foreign exchange student or gangsters in the special ‘Chinatown/Koreatown/Little Tokyo/Little Saigon’ episode of a cop show. Rarely do we get to see Asian Americans as regular people in a movie or a TV show. White, of course, is the default race.” While many, if not most, Asian Americans in the industry echo Yu’s sentiments, there is still debate over where to place the blame for the media’s shortcomings and stereotyping. Some feel that the lack of positive portrayals falls squarely on Asian Americans themselves. Those like Stan Eng, a gaffer in the Hollywood industry for eight years, who has designed lighting for films starring Jason Priestley and Mickey Rooney, says he hasn't seen many Asian Americans in his projects and he doesn’t have a problem with it. “There's no such thing as a right to be on TV or in a film. Anything remotely resembling a quota system violates the writer's or director's free speech.” Those that agree say you can’t expect Hollywood to just hand out roles; Asian Americans have to take on leadership roles. They have to get behind the camera and take action. Narasaki notes that Asian Americans are trying and do hold decision-making positions. However something else is at play. “There are vestiges of stereotypes and the inability of writers (non-minority) to picture Asian Americans playing a lead role or to carry a show. We have not been able to fully break down that barrier,” she adds. It is a barrier, that Narasaki and Aoki say affects not only those in front of the camera, but people in every industry and in every job. “How far you get in your position at work may be affected by people’s general view of Asian people,” Aoki says. Sarah Lim*, an assistant at a top talent agency, agrees. “The fact is that there still exists a very latent racism [in the film industry],” Lim says. “I sometimes wonder to myself why I was passed up for interviews with two agents at my agency. I was told I didn't have enough ‘experience,’ but then they went ahead and interviewed someone with far less experience.” Aoki says progress has been very slow even though meetings with the studios are becoming more productive and less defensive. “We hope for some breakout star in TV that would hopefully make it possible for other Asian Americans to be given a chance, but we don’t see that trend developing. … There’s no momentum for any kind of consistent presence in the media for us and that’s frustrating.” *Name has been changed to protect privacy. |
