Expecting More

Being doubly disadvantaged in this country as a minority, you would think that I would have seen enough to not be disappointed when stereotypes and racism crop up around me. Maybe it's my upbeat demeanor that gets the better of me and I get let down. Recently I've been watching my fair share of television to a horrifying degree and I cannot express my frustration enough at the portrayal of women and Asians within US media. Being a misrepresented racial minority in the US is one thing but to be so poorly portrayed as a female in Korean media leads me to believe that I will never get the best of both worlds. I first ran into my first conflict of interests when I got into Buffy. Classically known as a very female empowering series for the time, Buffy is one of my favorite characters of all time. I was ready to gladly dive into the Whedonverse. Yet upon further research of Joss Whedon and his work with the show Firefly, my feminist euphoria was dampened. It doesn't take much critical analysis to see that Firefly is guilty of racism against Asians much to my chagrin. So I tried again to find a show that I could gladly pin my badge of approval on. Bones was next on the list. While I love that Brennan is an incredibly sharp and assertive female lead, the show starts off with the portrayal of career women as being detached and unable to form families. While the show allows her character to grow out of this stereotypical mold, I still ran into the problem of having almost no Asian representation in the show. For a show so centered around academia and the sciences, I find it odd given that statistically no Asian individuals are portrayed in any circumstance. I find the same difficulty with Criminal Minds where there is racism in that there is no representation whatsoever. The one episode where there is an Asian unsub in Season 10 (it took them 10 seasons to get here), they go for the very tired stereotype of the strict Asian parent that just got me worn out. I have trouble admitting that American cinema and television has made any real strides in progressive depictions of Asians, specifically Asian women. The fetishism of Asian women as Oriental, submissive dolls is seen in older films is still seen in movies today. It may not be as blatantly present as before, but subtly thrown in as background noise. I watched to movie The Other Woman recently, which was problematic on the feminist front for various reasons, but I was outraged and disgusted when there was this scene where they are in some sort of Oriental restaurant where the schtick is that the guests use no hands. Rather, Asian women are gratuitously paraded as servants that service them by feeding them and sensually massaging their guests. I baffles me that this kind of scene is just thrown in.

So for a very brief period of time I turned to Korean media to see if I could get away from this kind of fetishism. But alas, I was wrong. Korean television at its core is built off of it's celebrities and Korean dramas popularity is fed off of star power. Thus the beauty ideals are what dictate which actors and celebrities are the most beloved. The women are expected to be extremely thin, pale, and youthful. I recently watched this show where the whole premise is that this forty year old woman is unhappy because she is unmarried and desperately attempts to maintain her youth so that she is an eligible bachelorette. The fixation of all the women in the show on marriage as the ultimate end that determines self worth was despicable to me and I couldn't believe that television today still maintained such antiquated values. But television also reflects the values of the society at the time, so I'm sad to say that those values are still very much at play in Korea. Another aspect of the drama that I found so uncomfortable was the fact that the women were portrayed in this juvenile, submissive sort of manner that is called aegyo. Basically the women are supposed to be cutesy and coy in a way that diminishes their credibility. The women aren't depicted as serious individuals and more often than not they are preoccupied with the men in their lives. The part of me who strives to be a commanding, confident woman cringes at these two dimensional women that have no real substance or character.

So I feel as though I am pitted against the two sides of myself. I can't help but feel embarrassed by how women are portrayed in Korean media because I feel the critique of Occidental feminists. On the other hand, the depiction of Asians in American media seriously offends me. I want to embrace my culture and my gender, but I feel as though I'm forced to sacrifice one or the other to some degree. Is it too much to ask for a well-rounded, well-established, well-portrayed Asian woman in media? I guess I'll take my chances with Elementary and fingers crossed that Lucy Liu can do us justice.