Topic > Vietnamese American Teens in Movies/TV Shows

Asian Americans in the United States have experienced challenges related to racism or ethnicity. When it comes to the media, Asian Americans have experienced devastating effects following presentations that cast them as members of another world. When a tsunami hit Asia in 2005 killing one hundred thousand people, a popular radio program in the United States played the song The Tsunami which referred to the victims as idiots before hurling humorous insults before the intervention interrupted its airing (Ono & Pham, 2009). Although the show's hosts apologized for the misdeed, the harm done to Asian Americans would long linger in their minds and many of them became reluctant to refer to themselves as Asian Americans. The use of offensive communications against the Asian community within the United States has led many Asian Americans to question whether they are living in a post-racism era. However, the negative perception of Asians within American society can be attributed to the Yellow Peril. Under Yellow Peril racism, Asians and Asian Americans were perceived as intruders, who would take over, invade, or negatively Asianize the entire nation of the United States along with its culture and society (Ono & Pham, 2009). According to Yellow Peril, Asians were seen as racial stereotypes that would harm the United States regarding their culture and negatively affect society. All fears are based on outsourcing, orientalism, and the structural entrenchment accorded Asians within the United States since time immemorial. The mass media have played a crucial role in spreading yellow peril fears that are rooted in truth or lies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The mass media in the United States has been racialized at the expense of Asians. Hollywood film production has used yellowface characters to refer to people of Asian descent. The logics of Yellowface span employment discrimination, mocking humor, visual technologies, anxiety about miscegenation, the need for misrecognition, and the cultural imagination of Orientalism (Ono & Pham, 2009). Yellowface logic plays a critical role in sustaining and maintaining unequal relations between Americans and Asians in terms of power. In most cases, transparent masks are used to represent Asian characters and such presentations lead to suspension of disbelief among Asians. Similarly, cloud masks are used as a racial masking tool against Asians. In some cases, frenemies are used to imitate and mock people of Asian descent, known to Americans. Asians in the United States have been victims of the hyper-information society, unwilling to keep up with ever-changing technologies. The American mass media has been at the forefront of spreading racism regarding gender and sexuality. Instead of referring to Asians as males or females, the mass media has consistently referred to them as studs or sissies or femmes or butches, respectively (Ono & Pham, 2009). By referring to people of Asian descent with coined names, the mass media has created a negative intersectional difference between Americans and their Asian-American counterparts. By using different terms to refer to Asian-Americans, the mass media has created a kind of new understanding among Native people, which lays the foundation for future expectations aboutdenomination of Asian-Americans. However, the mass media ignores the fact that race or ethnicity are not personalities. It is necessary for the American mass media to be neutral in imposing knowledge and understanding within society to avoid negative implications from Asian Americans. One of the main reasons why the mass media has continually exposed Asian-Americans as underdogs is due to the threatening stereotype-based approach of model minorities. Americans are assumed to be highly educated and more civilized than Asian Americans and are therefore familiar with current trends in all aspects of society (Ono & Pham, 2009). In the understanding of many Americans, Asian Americans constitute a small portion of society and deserve little inclusion in shaping the greater society of which they are a part. Surprisingly, the model minority stereotype supports the empowerment of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in matters concerning their social, educational, and economic well-being. Under the provisions of the MMS, AAPIs are seen as people who are easy to associate with and as immediate members of society. However, it is important to note that in most cases AAPIs have been viewed as lazy and defiant employees. As a result of Americans' misplaced understanding towards Asian-Americans, there has always been a need to avoid the situation and bring some order to everyone regarding mass media intervention in AAPI issues. Through reactive solidarity, in which all Asian Americans protested the misconceptions attributed to them, the community had to challenge the negative mistreatment meted out to them by Americans through the use of independent mass media, which would later be channeled to the mainstream media. In 2012, Asian Americans had something to brag about within the mass media as The Mindy Project, the first network television show starring an Asian, aired thus improving the representation of Asian Americans in the mass media (Lopez, 2016 ). Since then, the Asian American invasion of mass media has never returned as other shows like American Girl twenty years earlier and Fresh off the boat entered the airwaves even though they faced mixed reactions from society. The Asian American pursuit of media presentation had taken off as pioneering shows hit the airwaves with great acceptance from the Asian American people. Following the efforts of Asian Americans to break into mass media, there have been challenges in marketing their films. Existing media controllers were busy ensuring that the new development did not succeed. Asian-American films faced daily blows from other existing distributors, but Asian-Americans were happy with their films as they challenged existing limitations of racism that inhibited their career and employment advancement (Ono & Pham, 2009) . However, Asian American turnout at Asian shows has not met expectations. There was a need for new market approaches for Asian-American filmmaking to enter the market. Asian Americans have turned to new media, primarily the Internet and garment printing, to form identities and representations that were not common within dominant media (Ono & Pham, 2009). Fortunately, the new approach was successful and Asian Americans had something to boast about as they were able to respond to the dominant representations and institutions working to create alternative media. Although Asian-Americans enjoyed itof the entry into the mass media, the mainstream media wanted to bring ruin on the new development. Asian-American actor Ken Jeong, in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, was filmed being beaten by other American actors and the producers of the film had nothing to apologize for (Lopez, 2016). The Asian-American role in the film was a true manifestation of how anti-Asian the media was. Following the increase in instances of negative portrayals of Asian Americans in the media, alliances of institutions and individuals came together to formulate a media policy that would henceforth examine the processes of creation, distribution and ownership of media content . As a result of the many challenges experienced by Asian Americans in venturing into media, several mass media movements have arisen to address the issue. There was the Asian Reform movement that worked to ensure that Asian Americans assimilated into the American way (Ono & Pham, 2009). After countless insults by the American mass media towards Asian-Americans, anti-Asian protests began and their image in society was restored. The main agenda of the protests was based on hateful language that encompassed offensive references and stereotypes against Asian Americans. However, there are exceptional cases of assimilation into American culture, as demonstrated by boxing icon Manny Pacquiao (Dave et al., 2016). Subsequently, Asian American media activists called for fair play within the mass media. The entry of Asian Americans into mass media had attracted the majority of consumers, and like other consumers, they would respond to advertisements and products that understood and catered to their culture and individuality (Lopez, 2016). There was a need to employ more Asian Americans in the mass media industry to make mainstream media acceptable to all members of society as it could no longer be ignored. Through consumer activism, Asian Americans were presented as the opposite of their previous counterparts, who were seen as poor and victims of discrimination by the American mass media and society at large. To effectively venture into the market, Asian-American mass media has turned to the Internet to reach more people. YouTube was in fact a new platform through which films could be broadcast to the public without the interference of existing mass media influence. Videos posted on YouTube received many views in a very short time, and viewers could share their rating and mark them as favorites (Ono & Pham, 2009). The use of the Internet as a new mass media proved fruitful on the side of Asian Americans and their films would be seen by their members whenever they wanted, and no physical or political attempt would stop them from accessing information from the Internet. After numerous Asian-American filming success stories, many celebrities have emerged and it has become easy to bring new artists into the filming industry and merge them with celebrities to promote them. Many of the artists who became famous on YouTube owe it to their collaboration with Asian Americans who worked in mainstream cinema such as Jamie Chung and Justin Chon (Lopez, 2016). Celebrities facilitate intersections between YouTube and mainstream media. To date, Asian American Youtube celebrities such as Jeremy Lin have come out to show that racism was a part of his life while growing up and his involvement with young people has had positive implications as he inspires many of them (Lopez, 2016). The internet has played a significant role in the development of Asian American cinema and.