Existing Stereotypes
There are different stereotypes for each gender that are represented in the media. For women, there are about three main ones that are often seen in films.
The Geisha Girl: This idea of Asian women is completely opposite from the Dragon Lady. The Geisha Girl is generally shown wearing a kimono, speaks little English, and is subservient and submissive. Their only goal in life is to please their men. An example the video gave for this stereotype was in The Teahouse of August Moon, a Marlon Brando movie. In that particular film, the main character, who is a white man, falls in love with a Japanese woman. She wore a kimono, and she was portrayed as helpless and subservient. |
The Dragon Lady: the woman is fierce, over sexualized, violent, and foreign. An example of this is in Quentin Tarantino’s film, Kill Bill. The actress, Lucy Liu portrays a cold, violent fighter that leads a group of evil ninjas. |
The Tramp: If Asian women are not portrayed in one of these two roles, then often they play peasants or prostitutes. According to the snippet of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, this idea of Asian women stems from war. Soldiers often took advantage of impoverished women in the countries where they were stationed, and this over sexualized view of them emerged.
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The film industry only offers these limited roles for Asian women in films, but for Asian men their options for characters are even slimmer. Often times, they are desexualized or presented as undesirable in films. Finding an example was hard, considering how infrequently Asian men hold a significant role in films. However, the documentary Slaying the Dragon gave two examples. In the classic film The Goonies one of the main characters in the group was a young Chinese boy that had numerous inventions and was portrayed as nerdy. Another example given was the famous film, Sixteen Candles, in which the main character has an exchange student living with her named Long Duk Dong. He is constantly hitting on the main character, and being consistently turned down. He is a prime example of Asian men being portrayed as ‘undesirable’ in films. |