Zhang Ziyi as a Japanese geisha in “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Jakie Chan as a policeman in “Rush Hour 2”. “Xiao Mei”, the Chinese maid in “Desperate Housewives”.
If Chinese actors & actresses aren’t playing seductresses, kicking someone in face, or working in the US illegally, they may be out of a work.
“The problem is that there just aren’t a lot of Asian characters to begin with,” said Thomas Huang,Texas Living Editor of The Dallas Morning News .
US graduate student Michael Hurley, a former English teacher in Beijing, said typical Chinese characters usually have poor English and are also “very agile and can do a lot of acrobatics”.
Huang mostly blames writers and directors for continuing the Asian stereotypes.
“The actors could refuse these roles, but they’ve got to make a living as well,” said Huang, who also contributes to the media-critique website Poynter.org.
“I suppose one answer is to encourage more Asians to go into writing, directing and producing – so that they’re the ones making decisions.”
Movie fan Eric Ye,31,said Asian stereotypes persist in the US bacause Asians in general – and Chinese in particular – are “not in the mainstream”.
“As a whole, they are not outspoken and have a weaker influence on US society Than Latinos and African-Ameri-cans,”he said.
Still, organizations like the Asian Media Watch (AMW) and Media Action Network for American media (MANAA) are trying to combat Asian stereotypes in the American media.
In a prominent 2004 example, AMW protested an episode of NBC’s “law and order :Special Victim’s unit”, a popular American crime drama. In “Debt”, a large group of Asian actors played immigrant workers with broken English, mailorder brides, prostitutes, and villains.
But Huang has hope.
“I think we’re making some progiess,”he said . “In “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle’, It was refreshing to see two Asian guys who were funny, coarse, and willing to express themselves emotionally. John Cho got to kiss the girl at the end. When’s the last time you saw an Asian guy do that on the screen?”