Two hundred thirty-nine million dollars.

That’s how much money the American romantic drama “Crazy Rich Asians” has earned since its release in August 2018. Two months later, the film became the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the last 10 years and the sixth highest in the history of cinema. The film also won the Critics Choice Movie Award for Best Comedy and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie: Comedy in 2019.

However, despite the film and its counterparts’ successes, the statistics don’t even begin to compare to the earnings of American favorites. With the 2023 film “Barbie” grossing more than $1.5 billion, the film industry has yet to be penetrated by Asian actors, actresses, and behind-the-scenes workers. 

And to many, this is a problem.

“There’s a lot of room for improvement. It’s not perfect yet, but progress has been made,” said Caleb Pascual, a recent San Francisco State University graduate with a Master of Arts in the upward development of Asian representation.

Images and mass media from Hollywood and the film industry dominate American culture and extensively influence society’s overall perception. Since the beginning of media, minority groups have been incorrectly represented or entirely omitted. 

This inaccurate representation can be seen in a scene from the movie “The Sympathizer,” where an American soldier confronts a Vietnamese villager. However, the villager speaks Cantonese, a primarily Chinese language, rather than Vietnamese. Representation of people of Asian heritage, or the lack thereof, has formed overgeneralization and negative stereotypes due to the skewed portrayal of Asian characters. 

Throughout the past decade, topics of minority representation and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become more prevalent in the news. Additionally, with the increasing popularity of Asian culture within the U.S. comes a more accurate portrayal of cultural practices within American media, removing the previously normalized stereotypes. However, the overall impact of these changes is up for debate.

Asians on the surface

The topic of false Asian portrayal in media cannot be discussed without acknowledging the lack of representation. In the past, characters of Asian backgrounds have been missing on the big screen and were, in turn, replaced by “yellowface characters”, the practice of casting Caucasian actors and actresses to portray Asian roles. 

Due to the limited number of films that have any distant connection to Asian culture or characters, many associate negative traits with Asians, categorized under one umbrella term. According to a journal article by Anurima Banerji, an associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Culture at the University of California Los Angeles, the classification of all 18.5 million Asians and Asian Americans in the U.S. under the same stereotypes hides the individuality of each. 

As a result of these limited opportunities for filmmakers to truthfully depict Asian culture, false stereotypes have been set and normalized within society.

It was not until the late 1900s, with the success of actress Anna May Wong’s earlier film, “The Toll of the Sea,” and Wayne Wang’s comedic mystery film “Chan Is Missing” in 1982, that Asian Americans became a prevalent aspect of the Hollywood world. 

“In the past decade, they’ve started highlighting a little more of the experiences of our community. The film ‘Joyride,’ which came out in 2023, upholds the true experience of what Asian Americans have been through,” Pascual said.

During this time, Asian directors became involved in the filmmaking of Hollywood movies, allowing for a more explicit representation from behind the scenes. 

“We need to have Asians covering Asian stories, and we need people who have cultural sensitivity and awareness who would represent the Asian community,” said David Louie, a retired news reporter for ABC and the first Asian American hired on Channel 7.

Outside influence 

In recent years, the U.S. has seen a spike in the popularity of Asian culture, such as Japanese animations, Korean popular music (K-pop), Chinese dramas (C-drama), and Indian Music (Bollywood). According to a research article on anime in the U.S., the Japanese government reported that, in 2003, anime exports to the U.S. reached a historic high of $4.8 billion. 

The penetration of foreign culture into U.S. media is partly due to the cultural bridge created by fans, drawn in by the unique forms of media and new perspectives of Asian society. This connection has also been made possible by the continuous spread of short-form content as a transporter of cultural ideas. With the easy accessibility to the internet and social media platforms, messages from around the world are easily shared and consumed with the click of a few buttons. 

“Media is just like a telescope. You can zoom in on a particular, small pocket of the sky, but the telescope is seeing only a pin in the grand scheme of the sky,” said Andrew Chau, the co-founder and current chief executive officer of the nationwide boba store, Boba Guys. 

There are other forms of representation in which Asian culture has become more widespread, such as in the drink industry. Boba, formally known as bubble tea, has become widespread and appreciated. For the Asian community, this represented a massive step toward the legitimization of Asian representation, as the drink was invented in Taiwan. 

Boba Guys easily represents increased awareness of all-inclusive Asian culture. However, Chau recognizes the remaining stigma around Asians. 

“Our DNA has not always been mainstream because we were always in the margin. People see adversity as a lack of opportunity. They’re always saying, ‘Oh, no non-Asians drink boba. Boba is only for Asians,’” Chau said. 

Historical portrayal

From the weak, nerdy pushover to the ultra-feminine prostitute, the media traditionally portrayed Asians with a consistent set of characters. With the lack of Asians in the media comes the depiction of Asians in a certain light, forming inaccurate stereotypes. 

In a guest column on Variety, Yale University professor Grace Kao and Canadian actor Peter Shinkoda discuss the typical roles that Asian male and female characters play throughout Hollywood. According to the article, Asian men are most commonly objectified as “passive, geeky, and unattractive” in contradiction to Asian women as “sexually submissive.” Kao and Shinkoda also share that many characters are normalized to be sly, sneaky, and mysterious. 

In addition to Kao and Shinkoda’s statements, a research article by Shilpa Davé, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, states that Asian accents in films are most often “used in conjunction with comedic narratives and representations.” 

Davé highlights that Asians are cast in leading roles almost always from comedic genres. An example of this is Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, cast in the 2016 sitcom “Kim’s Convenience” and Jimmy O. Yang, cast in the 2014 sitcom “Silicon Valley.”

“If you look at comedy, they have Asian American actors, but the actors are forced to put on an accent to make them seem so foreign. Why do you have to keep upholding the belief that, so long as somebody’s Asian, English is not their first language?” Pascual said.

Continuous change: For the better?

With the current increase in overall Asian representation in American media and the increase in accuracy of portraying characters who are Asian, there has been a shift in how Asian characters are represented in the film industry and beyond. 

As seen in the comparison of box office profit, “Crazy Rich Asians” is one of the first films with an all-Asian cast and successfully stripped the characters of the typical aromatic personality. In such films, Asian-represented characters’ ordinary problems are brought to light, rather than being overshadowed by cultural stereotypes. 

“Many people ask, ‘Why wasn’t ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ made 20 years ago?’ Well, it just didn’t have the right script. The odds were probably against you. Back then, it was probably one in 100; now it’s one in 10. In the future, it’ll be like every other story,” Chau said.

However, Pascual contradicted Chau’s statements by referencing a stereotype that the film contains.

“‘Crazy Rich Asians’ upholds this stereotypical belief that, ‘Oh, Asians are gold diggers.’ But that’s not always the case,” Pascual said.

According to the University of Los Angeles’ Center for Scholars & Storytellers, the increase in Asians in American media allows the ever-growing Asian population in the U.S. to internalize how their heritage is portrayed.

Despite the stereotypes of Asian culture in today’s media, an increase in representation is significant in enhancing new stereotypes.

One of the most dominant stereotypes in society depicts Asians as the model minority. Unlike previous stereotypes, the model minority stereotype portrays Asians as overachievers with financial stability. Despite this seemingly positive depiction of Asians, the model minority stereotype does not come without a negative impact.

An article by Richard Lee, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota who studies race and ethnicity, shared that the model minority is a conventional tool, allowing for the monetarily forgetting of white supremacy. 

Looking past the surface layer impacts that such ideas have, the stereotype has a more significant psychological impact on Asians, mainly Asian youth. With this seemingly unrealistic expectation, children are born into a society that sets standards for their academic success. Inaccuracy in Asian representation heightens these expectations.

“I feel like the model minority influences the cultural norm, and it shaped my identity because it led me to realize, ‘Hey, I could do better or just as good, without having to be in a stereotypical profession,’” Pascual said.

In addition to the model minority stereotype, Asian representation in different genres of film contributes to existing stereotypes, including those that characterize all Asians as good at martial arts.

“‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ if you ask me, still reinforces this action genre stereotype that the Asian is always some cool martial artist,” Pascual said.

Despite these prevailing stereotypes, recent educational institutions have begun to spread the message of equal representation among students. In California, the ethnic studies program aims to foster the importance of equity and justice.

“Young people continue to be developing a racial literacy so that they can critically look at what’s going on and see beyond sort of the racial common sense that maintains these categories,” said Scott Tsuchitani, an artistic scholar and professor in ethnic studies at Foothill College.

The future

The previously mentioned stereotypes continue to be a concern within the Asian American community inclusive. Relating to the necessary steps to address the lack of representation, the acknowledgment of continual Asian hate as a result of these stereotypes is vital, specifically the recent COVID-19 pandemic that revealed the persisting Asian hate in the U.S.

With the pandemic came the reemergence of Asians as victims of hatred for the perceived actions and generalizations of all Asians as one group. In March 2023, the FBI released a Supplemental Hate Crimes Statistics report and showed that the number of anti-Asian reported incidents increased 167% from 279 in 2020 to 746 in 2021, as published by the FBI in a compilation of hate crime statistics.

Despite this seemingly detrimental period, positive outcomes still arose, illuminating a progressive future.

“There is a strong bond that has formed between Asians in the media and the community when they saw that they could cast a light on the experiences of Asian Americans,” Louie said.

With such positives that arose from seemingly problematic occurrences, progress has been made, with an increase in Asian representation and honest representation of culture throughout the media. Specifically in the film industry, the 2024 drama “Interior Chinatown” depicts the main character, an Asian male, as someone who believes he is just a background character in everyone else’s world. 

“We want to challenge those dominant stereotypes, expressing what it’s like to be who we are,” Tsuchitani said.