While I was growing up, teachers and classmates pushed me toward a career in business or medicine by encouraging enrollment in math and science classes, and for thirteen years it never occurred to me that they did this because I was Chinese American. In the 8th grade, I won the lead role of Nancy in the musical Oliver!, which is set in England and has only Caucasian characters. I was definitely subconscious about the fact that I did not look like I belonged in Charles Dickensian England, but I hoped my talent would speak for itself about why I was chosen to play that part, and that my ethnic background would be ignored in this case of color-blind casting. However after the last performance, one of my Caucasian classmates came up to congratulate me, and said, “Wow! You did pretty well for a Chinese girl.” When I asked him to explain what he meant, he said that he rarely ever sees Chinese characters on television playing “artsy folk” because they were always doctors or gangsters or restaurant owners. He just assumed that Chinese people were not good at acting because he had rarely ever seen Asian Americans in movies or on television. For much of Asian American history, cinema was lacking in Asian American presence because of discrimination, and thus the history that was immortalized in these films lacked an accurate depiction of Asians. In recent decades following the massive civil rights movement following the murder of Vincent Chin, Asians are appearing more frequently in films and television, but their roles are limited. Furthermore, roles in American films that could be taken by Asian American actors often go to Asian actors, who were not born in the United States. This causes an identity crisis because Asian Americans have either foreign Asian or Caucasian characters as role models.
Casting directors often pass over Asian Americans because of their “oriental” appearance, especially when there is money to be made. In his essay “The Centrality of Racism in Asian American History,” Ronald Takaki writes that Asians are different from Caucasian immigrants in that they cannot shed their original identities and hide behind an indiscernible ethnicity (Kurashige 11). Because of this, they are denied many opportunities in the film industry, which is heavily based on appearances. I was lucky in the 8th grade to have gotten the chance to play a lead in a traditionally Caucasian musical. However, once I entered high school and I was supposed to start narrowing my future career possibilities and figuring out what I want to do, the theatre teachers explicitly told me that I would never get a lead role. At first I thought it was because my high school classmates were more talented than I. However, one of the two theatre teachers, both of whom were Caucasian, pulled me aside after the auditions for Footloose, and said to me, “I’m sorry, but we wanted an American to play Ariel. I hope you understand. Maybe next year we’ll get the rights for Miss Saigon.” My theatre teacher believed that Asian Americans were not actually Americans, which Takaki says is a result of the Asians immigrants’ inability to drop their foreign qualities. Furthermore, Hollywood executives often operate under the assumption that the collective audience in the United States would not want to sit for hours watching a “Chinaman” (Kurashige 474). As a result, Asian Americans are rarely ever cast in lead roles in movies and television shows that are supposed to cater to a multiethnic audience.
Asian characters in movies or television often have amplified foreign characteristics so as to further distinguish these characters from the others. Using actors who authentically have these characteristics serves to mitigate offense as well as lend credibility to the overall film. In other words, these portrayals of Asians as foreign should not be offensive because they actually are foreign. According to Hollywood, this import of foreign Asian actors is the reverse of what happened in the early 20th century to Asian stars with American roots. Before World War II, the first Chinese American superstar Anna May Wong had to go to Europe because good acting opportunities were denied. Similarly, according to the document “Hollywood Recruits Asian Stars from the Hong Kong Cinema Industry”, martial artist superstar Bruce Lee had to go to Hong Kong to start his career (Kurashige 473). However, Bruce Lee spent his early years growing up in Hong Kong and did not return to the United States until he was eighteen years old. The course of his life actually may qualify him to be an Asian actor that Hollywood recruited. The author calls this the “Crouching Tiger” effect, a reference to a successful kung fu movie that launched the craze of kung fu, allowing other actors whose careers are based on their ability to “karate chop” their opponents like Jet Li or Zhang Ziyi to enter Hollywood. The popularity of kung fu actors like Bruce Lee occurred only after World War II, which indicates the emergence of China as an ally to the United States may have had some influence on the acceptance of these “foreign imports.” However, this also indicates that Asian Americans did not benefit from this newly accepting attitude unless they subscribed to this exotic, stereotypical Oriental paradigm.
This causes an identity crisis that is unique to Asian Americans in the entertainment industry. Like Anna May Wong, I was expected to only fill roles that are meant for Asian actors. The only time I was considered for a non-chorus part in a musical was when my high school was producing Little Shop of Horrors, and the part of the Chinese plant vendor was expanded to be a mystical dragon lady who oversees the carnivorous plant’s mutation throughout the entire plot. My predicament was very similar to that of Anna May Wong. In her essay “The Racialized Image of Anna May Wong,” Karen Janis Leong explores Wong’s experience as one of the earliest Asian American Hollywood stars and the implications her experience has for other Asian Americans in the entertainment industry. In the United States, Wong’s access to roles was limited because of the perceived conflict between her American qualities such as speech and “flapper image” and supposed underlying “real” Chinese identity (Kurashige 210). Similarly, my high school teachers seemed to believe that casting me as the dragon lady villain would be appropriate because not only do I look Chinese, but also because my inherent Chinese qualities would prevent offense.
I never actually got the part of the Chinese villain in Little Shop of Horrors, because it went to another Chinese American girl who made frequent trips to Beijing, China, and as a result had more “authentic” foreign qualities. I know she was chosen because of this because she had no performing experience and had not even auditioned. After that last straw, I sought opportunities in a different environment, much like how Anna May Wong and Bruce Lee had to go some place other than the United States in order to gain momentum. I only found more opportunities in an Asian Pacific American performing troupe, where my fellow cast members were also Asian American, and there was no room for discrimination. This suggests a bleak future for the increased presence of Asian American characters in the media. However, the increased acceptance of Asians in the media is a step towards equal opportunities for Asian Americans. Asian Americans will not have to choose between being Asian and being American.
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