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.