Asian American and the history in media

It’s not easy at all for movie makers to create characters in films which could portray various kinds of people in the society accurately, and it’s really challenging for them to create the image of marginalized groups. That might be the reason why you might not list many names of TV shows with the image of Asian American, and I couldn’t either. The most impressive film to me is Wendy Wu - Homecoming Warrior of Disney Channel.

In spite of being an Asian African, Wendy Wu is a girl who knows very little about the history of China and is not interested in it while she is supposed to know at least the basic things about China where her ancestors come from. You are taught to show respect to your ancestors by that way, right?.Wendy’s family are portrayed with losing many cultural traits when they do not know what is the mooncake- the traditional cake in mid-autumn festival and also do not know when the festival is. You know, to a Vietnamese (like me) or Chinese, mid-autumn festival is one of the most important one in a year. The grandmother is really surprised when Wendy asks her about the history :“I've never seen you this excited about Chinese history before.” They also admit that they did not care about that when they were kids. Moreover, Wendy rejects to put Chinese on her cupcakes to gain more votes from friends in a competition. It might be because she does not find the link between her and the culture heritage. Even her mother has troubles with “Chinese stuff”. She did a lot of the research, but feels like” missing some of the folklore and legends”. When the granma emphasizes that she had told her the stories, Wendy’s mom says that “It was too little to appreciate them. Anyway, it's not like I missed having that chinese culture in my life.”. And the grandmother, who appreciates and knows about the Chinese culture the most in the family emphasizes the fact that “Just because you don't miss it doesn't mean it isn't missing.” What Wendy and other family members experience in the film is called cultural assimilation which means that someone was losing themselves, giving up their original cultural identities and moving into full participation in the new culture. That is the process of absorption into an established and larger community.

When Disney did well in presenting the assimilation of many Asian American, they present the sterotypes of them as people who do not care much about their origin and do not appreciate the tradition. Because the number of films about Asian American is not much, I hope that the stereotypical portrayal of them should be minimized or avoided as much as possible. The film might make the audience think that Asian American people (including parents) do not pay attention to their traditional culture any more while it’s just part of the case. Additionally, the film raises the issue of assimilation, but does not offer any effective solution to it. It just focuses on the image of how little Wendy knows about the Chinese history and she finds no interests in studying it. The purpose of learning the traditional culture is just for the exam, which does not emphasize the real importance of learning the history. Each culture has its own value and the differences between them actually build a society and make it stronger. By creating the stereotypes people especially children will find that the it’s something normal and acceptable when they don’t know much about their ancestors, what they should do might be just study hard to get high scores in exams. The movie also does not make American to show respect to other cultures because even when Asian American don’t really care about it, or some way they underestimate it and take it for granted, why American need to appreciate it and they also might have the chance to promote their hegemony.

I think that Walt Disney should explain the importance of the traditional culture for audience in addition ways. What about promoting the cultural diversification by let Woo have more votes from friends by offering them moon cakes? That might attract the interest of American with other cultures too. Or at the end of the film, the whole family could make mooncakes together, so that family members could foster the solidarity (one of the best characteristics of Asian people). The long-term solution may be that Walt Disney should invest more in producing films about the marginalized group and bringing a closer look of them to the audience, so that watchers could know more about the culture of marginalized group.

Post-Coby Show Era and the case of "Suits" series

The time when black people are portrayed as not qualified to have equality in the society might have partly gone, as we are trying to achieve the “post- racial” society. The progression could be seen on TV shows and movies. There is a time when enlightenment racism (Jhally) promotes the myth that the black could not achieve the equality is because they have not worked hard enough and they have just themselves to blame for that. One of the remarkable point in the film history with a “new” black representatives is the TV's biggest hit in the 1980s - The Cosby Show- an American television sitcom about an upper middle class African- American family. The Post-Cosby era witnessed a lot of changes in how the black are represented on TV and today I will take “Suits” Tv Series by Universal Cable Production  as an example.

Jessica Pearson is a character in “Suit” series. She is portrayed as a black lawyer who appears cold- hearted and strong. Working as a Managing Partner in Pearson Hardman- a law firm in New York city, Jessica Pearson is the most powerful and smartest woman on the show. She helped to built the firm and try to protect it as her own family. She is the women who is not just driven by money and power, she acts to be respected by people. Jessica Pearson is a typical example of representation of the black in Post-Cosby era when there are more African American characters on network television than before. Those characters are represented as people from upper middle class. They might be lawyers, doctors, etc, but they are rarely from the working class. The images of large African American families on TV are now replaced by the image of individual characters. Most of the African America characters on TV show now do not involve in intra-racial romantic relationship and pairings or exist in positive relationship with family. (For example, How to get away with murder or Scandal series or Grey's anatomy.) In the case of Jessica Pearson, she has divorced with her husband Quentin Sainz and kept fulfilling her ambition alone. She has the familiar relationships with Harvey Specter, Louis Litt and Mike Ross who are the three white lawyers of the firm. We could see that the workplace of Jessica is disconnected from other African America.The problem is that in the Suits show, the connection between race and class is obscured when in reality that’s not the case. Another problem is that the show reinforces the idea that the black could do things well when they have worked hard and do it in the separation with their community. By doing this, the film series do not portrayed the real experience of African America which might fit into the stereotype of black women.With 4 seasons from 2011 till now, Suits has received approximately 8.2/10 rating scores. This means that the series are confirming the stereotype of black women with unreal images to a large number of audience over time. More series with the same stereotype of black people might make the audience lose their interest in the film because it is supposed to make a progression in portraying the true image of African America in particular and the society in general in comparison with the previous era.
We might turn back to the familiar issue of the media about stereotype. Is it fair to the African American people to be portrayed apart from their own community to be successful? Is it really progressive to reinforce the myth that the black could make their dreams come true by just working hard and class and race do not have any impact at all? It’s high time Universal Cable Productions (UCB) to make the real progress to speed up the development of company. The media is supposed to bring the truth to audience, you know, and that’s what film producers should focus to put it on their products. So the question is what could UCB do? One suggestion is that the black female characters should be “on aired” with a variety of representations, ranging from married to single characters, and their family and communication should also be portrayed more frequently. Another suggestion is that the divorced characters such as Jessica or other single ones need to be married or find their new sources of happiness along with their current jobs in upcoming episodes. Their characteristics could be displayed their more clearly and the character could become more attractively. A variety of characters with different types of personalities portrayed will make your movies more interesting. I think that that’s enough to show the characteristic of black women who are just good at their jobs. Black women do well than that, you know, and alienating representations of various types of them should be avoided.

The Hufflington Post and social responsibility

As a Vietnamese girl, I was really surprised when I was asked about top 5 most popular topics covered on the news. The answer from American friends and mine is likely to be the same: Politics, War, Education, Tax and Poverty. However, when I look at American mainstream newspapers such as New York Times or USA today, things is much different. On the column of Hufflpost’s big news pages, we could find Politics, Media, Entertainment, Business, etc, but poverty even is not in this list of The Huffington Post.

Poverty, which is known as a severe social problem, is not reflected in the media as accurately as we think. The percentage of poor people in reality is much larger than what is portrayed on The Hufflington Post. What did you think of when reading a post mentioned “the poor”? Is it the image of a group of thin people living in houses in bad condition? Or are they the black? There is a fact that when you enter the Poverty part of The Hufflington Post, you could find nearly a half of posts using the image of the black, especially black kids. By selecting some images of the reality of the black poor family and making them more noticeable to the audience, the reporters make us pay more attention to that image rather than others. This explains why when we talk about the poor, people have tendency to think about black family with many children. Poverty is also portrayed as a threat or suffering of the whole society on the media. Here are titles of some typical posts on The Hufflington Post: “Low Poverty Rates Mask Deeper Despair In Many States”, “More Cities Are BasicallyMaking It Illegal To Be Homeless”, “45 Million Americans Still Stuck Below Poverty Line”, etc. Such words as “despair”, “illegal”, “stuck” partly frames what the audience think about the poor. By framing, I mean when the media focuses attention of audience on some events provided with certain meanings.

The Hufflington Post is known as a liberal website, whose audiences are expected to care much about the social situations. When one of the issues of society is framed in such particular way (that might be found in other pages but not expected to be shown on The Hufflington Post), this becomes a problem. On many pages, stories of the poor are often represented without the social context. There are many reasons causes poverty, such as the lack of basic resources, or the consequences of earthquakes, floods, or when poverty is handed over from generations to generations. But these outside factors is barely mentioned on many online newspapers. The poor, in general, is also portrayed as experiencing their own culture instead of having no other options. The Hufflington Post- as one of the mainstream media channels- did a good job in reflecting the social issue with its underlying cause. However, that’s just the case with the context of their posts. By framing through images of black people and the title of the posts, The Hufflington Post implicitly reinforce the stereotype of the poor on their page. By doing that, audience who wants to access the accurate information about poverty and who are willing to take actions to solve the problem could be misled to feel sympathy for the poor instead of taking actions as soon as possible to manage the problem.

As one of the mainstream newspapers, The Hufflington Post should make a change to give the audience the good frame of the reality. It might be really difficult for small and unpopular pages to do that because they did a bad frame for their post, but to The Hufflington Post, the task is much easier. They just need to change their frame in some ways, such as using more suitable images for their posts, or considering the match between posts and images more carefully. Treatment recommendation for the problem or calling for actions is also needed in their posts so that their goal of doing social outreach could be attained. The media plays an important role in shaping public opinion and the media channel hold a part of responsibility to improve the social condition. By representing the real problem with the adequate image and providing the good treatment recommendation, The Hufflington Post could not only keep it position as one of the mainstream media channels but also fulfill their social responsibility.