In 1984, the movie Sixteen Candles featured Chinese-American actor Gedde Watanabe played a character whose name was “Long Duk Dong.” At the time, Asian Americans got excited just seeing a person who looked like them on screen, and did not bother to consider Watanabe’s performance or his comical name. On screen, he was portraying a very stereotypical foreign exchange student with a heavy accent from an unidentified East-Asian country.
Asian actors –especially in earlier years of Hollywood– were accustomed to auditioning for parts that required them to use accents, not because that was all they were good at, but because many Asian Americans in film found that the roles available to them in the media industry rarely reflected their real experiences. Instead, they serviced white stories and were forced to lean on stereotypes. But as the years have gone by, the stereotyping and type casting have also started to go away.
In 1998, Disney’s Mulan was released, and it told a story about East Asians that hadn’t been seen on the big screen in America before. Mulan is about a young Chinese woman who dresses up as a man and goes to fight in a war in place of her father. It portrays Mulan as brave, courageous, and honestly a downright badass that so many girls (including myself) idolized growing up. Mulan went on to get a sequel in 2002, and again in 2004. Mulan effectively combined Asian identity with feminism, creating an inspiring narrative of a girl defying stereotypes, which was a big win for both women and Asians.
Since the 2000s, Asian Americans have made more of a mark on films and television in Hollywood. But while the world of Hollywood may have let us drop our accents, the stereotypes of Asian people still continued to this day. In the television industry, especially in shows for kids, younger Asian American actors played kids who were “nerdy” and “unathletic”. These shows included disney channels beloved Jessie and many tohers. And qucikly, the concept of “Asian American with super strict parents” quickly became overused. Asian Americans all throughout the country began to realize and rebel against the boundaries put on Asian American actors, demanding roles that extended past degrading cultural stereotypes.
The protests for better acting roles for Asian Americans started with social media. A variety of different hashtags and captions emerged that exemplified the fight for better characters available for Asians in Hollywood. At first, Hollywood didn’t respond very quickly. In 2014, a report from USC showed that Asian Americans made up 5.4% of the population, but they only represented 1.4% of leads in studio films. But as more and more people started to demand change in Hollywood, social media movements such as #OscarsSoWhite began to go viral, and the Twitter hashtag ##StarringJohnCho reimagined blockbusters as if they had starred the Korean-American actor. Slowly, people started altering the image of Hollywood and promoting racial diversity in films, leading to an increase in Asian actors in Hollywood and bringing a new wave of minority film executives at major studios who greenlighted projects that might previously have been deemed risky. This, in turn, allowed society to begin redefining the term “success” and the image it portrayed. Some notable minority representation includes ABC’s Samie Falvie, who helped with the production of Fresh Off the Boat in 2015 about a Chinese-American family trying to adjust to a western suburban lifestyle, and Quantico, a movie starring a famous Indian actress, Priyanka Chopra. Quantico became one of the first successful American TV shows to have a South-Asian as its star, and it bypassed every possible stereotype of an Indian woman. These two films kicked off the beginning of a new age in Hollywood, one that began to normalize Asian Americans in major roles without the stereotypes that used to go with them.
In the years that followed, more and more films that had an Asian actor/actress came out, such as Crazy Rich Asians in 2018, which immediately went from a box-office hit to the highest grossing rom-com in a decade. And later that year, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before , a rom-com starring the Vietnamese-American actress Lana Condor, was released on Netflix and became a favorite for many young girls across the nation.
Here in 2020, it’s safe to say that Asians in film have come a long way. In recent times, American-Indian comedian Hasan Minhaj wrapped up his six-year run on his show, The Patriot Act, and Lilly Singh was renewed for a second season on her late night talk show, A Little Late with Lilly Singh. Movies have started casting a lot more East and South Asian American actors in parts that don’t involve stereotypes or blatant generalizations. While it may not have been produced in Hollywood, the South Korean film Parasite did in fact win a multitude of Oscars, which I think is a fine example of people in Hollywood finally giving more recognition to those who deserve it. In television, Mindy Kaling’s teenage comedy, Never Have I Ever, starring the Indian-American actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, was picked up for a second season, and has received amazing reviews.
Asian Americans have endured a long and difficult fight for representation in film. In the last five years alone, the amount of Asians in film and TV has grown exponentially, and we, as Asians, should be immensely proud of the progress we have made as a community. In the years to come, there will be no shortage of Asian-led films. With sequels to hit movies, blossoming TV shows, and many more great productions to come, the Asian Americans in Hollywood today have opened so many doors for aspiring young actors, directors, and creators. Soon enough, these inspiring figures will have completely torn down the former status quo that surrounded Asians, and will have built a reputation that makes Asians proud to be who we are.