Diversity and Representation in Media

Halle Berry? Kerry Washington?

Hey, John Cho? You know I love you, but you need to read this.

Summary: In a recent (otherwise great) interview, John Cho passingly mentioned that he thinks Asian-American men have it worse than Asian-American women. This article points out the many ways that that's bullshit.

I like that post but jeez it was long, and the first part sound reaaaally fangirl, and it hold for to long for what it was pretty much a misused of words.

To be fair, John Cho doesn't mention 'sexual desirability' specifically, and I do think I see more Asian actresses allowed to play serious characters instead of being used for comedic relief all of the time, but it's still a questionable statement from him.

I can't speak for Cho, but it sounds like he was focused on the way Asian males are presented as feminized and weak while making an unfortunate comparison. That's my feeling anyway, but he phrased it poorly.

Sure, it was more tone-deaf and indicative of his own unconscious privilege than directly offensive. The idea that Asian-American men have it worse than Asian-American women is not a new one - it's one I hear repeated all the time, by members of the community, and I think it's a problem. Sure, Asian women are arguably more likely to appear in major roles (although not much more likely - see: Ghost in the Shell, Doctor Strange, Annihilation). But that representation is conditional on them being content to be portrayed only as sexy, submissive love interests to the latest Mighty Whitey.

Being objectified, fetishized, and exotified are really not preferable to being desexualized and erased. Both suck, and playing Oppression Olympics doesn't serve anyone. Particularly when Asian women are already on the receiving end of a significant amount of entitlement and toxicity from Asian men.

And while Cho's right about there being severe problems with the way Asian men are presented with regards to gender roles, we need to be very careful about saying they're "feminized." Same goes for "desexualized." Because like the article said, saying that that's always a bad thing is disrespectful and marginalizing to the countless gay, bi, pan, trans, ace, etc. Asian-American people living in this country.

I feel like someone just needs to sit down and talk Cho through these subjects, and given his history, I think he would be responsive. All he needs to do is drop his privilege blinders and take a broader look at the situation.

Yeah, I think it's a bit of a stretch and unnecessarily harsh to read his comments as a dogwhistle specifically. Asian females get characters like Yukio, Miko Otomo, Blink from X-Men DOFP, and Mako Mori from time to time who are badasses with agency. Even if there's a lot of fetishization going on, Asian women get enough roles to go around overall that some fraction of them will be better. Meanwhile with Asian men, lead roles are just so uncommon that the amount of proactive heroic Asian men who are notable to the media and not in films that are not martial arts-based is much less.

Huh, interesting. Don't know most of the names on that list unfortunately which probably says more about me than anything else.

edited 24th Jul '16 7:34:39 PM by AlleyOop

A few reposted statistics from the letter.

This (by no means comprehensive) list of Asian American actors and filmmakers includes 1.5 times as many men as women, which dismantles the myth that Asian American female actors have an easier time creating fame in this industry than do men. (Update: this holds true if you exclude off-camera filmmakers from the list, and include only actors.) 3.5 times as many Asian and Asian American men have been nominated for (or won) an Academy Award in acting, directing, or screenwriting than Asian or Asian American women. In this year’s unprecedentedly diverse new Academy class, only approximately 2% of invited members are Asian or Asian American women, compared to easily two times as many Asian or Asian American men.

edited 24th Jul '16 7:30:46 PM by Tuckerscreator

Meanwhile, Asian men get characters like Glenn Rhee, Sunny, Harold, Devon Shah, Hiro Nakamura (well, Hiro's a debatable example), and Demitri Noh. You can go tit for tat on that one, and I'm pretty sure you'd run out of decent Asian women before you ran out of decent Asian men. Also worth noting that all of the characters you list there are, I'm pretty sure, also martial-arts based (with the possible exception of Blink).

But again, edging on Oppression Olympics here. We need more positive representation for Asian men and Asian women, and trying to say that one has it better or worse than the other just pointlessly sets everybody at each other's throats, when what we should be doing is ganging up on whitey.

And the numbers tell the rest of the tale.

Yeah, I'll retract my statement about roles; I didn't read the article as carefully as I should have.

I do think there's a fine line between "Oppression Olympics" and the need to recognize that different people face oppression in different ways; for example, I've heard a lot of discussion lately about how mainstream feminism is often more catered to white women and how it's important to recognize how gender discrimination intersects with racial discrimination.

Oh, definitely. "Oppression Olympics" can be an overused term at times, and it shouldn't interfere with discussions about how different people face different types or degrees of oppression.

For example, it's a fairly indisputable fact that women of color face more oppression that white women in the US. Yet as you say, white women and their experiences dominate mainstream feminism, sometimes at the expense of women of color. And they frequently do not react well when confronted with this fact - or even when you try to simply talk about the issues women of color face compared to white women. They can be just as blind to their own privilege as everyone else.

There's a very deep-seated and annoying "I Got Mine" attitude that many white feminists approach media representation with. Take the new Ghostbusters film, for example. Major respect to it for its all-female cast - but I know of many black women who resent the way it's hailed as a great feminist triumph when there are very real issues to be had with the character of Patty. In an even less subtle example, you see stuff like Doctor Strange, where there are people who try to defend Swinton's casting by going "but they made her a woman! It's so feminist!" Tacitly ignoring the existence of Asian women by doing so. Or even feminists who are the first ones to call out misogyny (rightfully), yet will defend things like whitewashing to the death.

But when you try to have these discussions with white feminists, about they way that they can perpetuate marginalization just as much as everybody else, you're likely to just get responses like "a triumph for white women is a triumph for all women!" Or, "well, it's not like Hollywood is going to solve all of its problems with one film. Why can't you just be happy for us?" They refuse to expand the conversation, intent on keeping it centered firmly on themselves.

"Not when that means you are seen as an object instead of a fellow human being. Or when women have these ridiculous, impossible beauty standards drilled into them their whole lives."

On the other hand the idea of being desired or being atractive play a lot in self steam, and asian men suffer a discrimiantion not heard in Black or Latino comunity who often are oversexualized, Asian men play the role or little, dwarft men with the sexual desirability of a lizard who often stay the way of protagonist and their love interest.

"Same goes for "desexualized." Because like the article said, saying that that's always a bad thing is disrespectful and marginalizing to the countless gay, bi, pan, trans, ace, etc. Asian-American people living in this country."

I have to disagree here, while he used the wrong work by saying feminize instead of desexualized, the idea saying is always a bad thing is asumption from the author and them punish him for making come with the asumption in the first place, also desexulized IS what happen with asian men, no other way to said it.

So this is partly a repost from the Western Animation thread, but I feel it applies since it also includes limited theatrical release.

So earlier this week was the release of the animated adaptation of The Killing Joke, one of the most iconic Batman comics (or even comics in general), but also one of the most controversial due to the crippling of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (something author Alan Moore has come to regret). The film thus sought to amend that by giving Barbara more screentime and her own subplot, but has come under under fire for making the situation worse and making Barbara hugely out of character.

Here's a link to a Storify to a live-tweet of the movie, as well as a call towards the end to diversify writing teams. Else it's leads to this. Again.

edited 26th Jul '16 10:49:27 AM by Tuckerscreator

Here's a link to a story that has more detail on the whole fiasco. The writers were handed one of the most infamous examples of fridging in mainstream comics and somehow found a way to make it worse. To summarize, Batgirl now has a thorny romantic entanglement with the (almost certainly considerably older) Batman.

And, when the writers get called out on it, they react very classily:

Gendered slurs are always such a great response to gender-based criticism. See, this is why we need women, PoC, LGBTQIA people, etc. to be in on the ground floor of these projects - to avoid shit like this.

And speaking of SDCC, to anyone who doesn't think mansplaining is a thing - they did a "Women In Film Production" panel there. Which was swiftly derailed by a guy who apparently felt entitled to just step in and take over, interrupting everyone, answering questions not directed at him, talking over the women present...then approaching one of them after the panel to wax passionately on about "females" and how to encourage them.

Best part? He wasn't even on the panel. He was basically there to hold the microphone, which did not deter him from hijacking the entire panel and acting like he owned the place. I'm trying to even imagine how someone could possibly think it's okay to be this insultingly patronizing about matters that don't involve or affect them.

edited 25th Jul '16 8:44:14 PM by RBluefish

Learning that Brian Azzarello was involved in this makes a scary amount of sense. The guy's becoming Frank Miller 2.0. Except back when Miller started doing stuff like this it was considered fresh

Terrible tone-deafness from that guy indeed. I just met Laura last Sunday; Rocket Jump was holding a Pokemon Go get-together. She was really nice and nerdy, and not at all deserving of folks like this.

Oh, and so it doesn't get overlooked on The Killing Joke topic: the comic includes a trio of Joker henchmen who have dwarfism. This is apparently known by DC to be an Unfortunate Implication, as lead artist Brian Bolland apologies for them in the 10th anniversary edition. However, the movie does absolutely nothing about this.

edited 25th Jul '16 8:57:25 PM by Tuckerscreator

I'm really disappointed in Azarello honestly. I know he's written a lot of stuff that people think is tone-deaf at best but that's pretty low.

So Joker doesn't discriminate based on height when hiring mooks. He prefers to hire big muscle guys, but he hired people who possess the genetic trait known as dwarfism for that particular caper. Sounds like Equal-Opportunity Evil to me.

If anything he should be criticized for not hiring more women. His only female henchman is usually Harley. Favoritism much?

Or more minorities. Lar, Mo and Cur were Caucasian, as presumably were Punch and Judy.

But height discrimination? Not a problem for Mr J.

Lovely. So between that and the way Barbara's injury was handled, The Killing Joke is rocking all sorts of ableism. Whose idea was it to adapt this again?

I wasn't really crazy about it being adapted in the first place. It's a comic with some interesting ideas but even Alan Moore himself (otherwise an extremely bitter man whose opinions on a lot of things should be taken with a grain of salt) regrets writing the story the way he did, and was sad that it was incorporated into the "main canon" of the comics since he didn't intend for it to be in the first place.

But it seems like the effort to fix some of the problems just made it worse. I don't think it's impossible for non-disenfranchised people to represent disenfranchised people well, but they'll probably need some help and advice in order to do so. That's not any different from doing research on anything else they might not know about.

Doesn't seem like that happened here.

They shoulda done The Man Who Laughs instead. The one where Bats meets Joker for the first time and blows up the aqueducts.

I don't think that mansplaining isn't a thing, but I do believe that it has become a meaningless term which is thrown around way too often, and way too often for no reason whatsoever.

Either way, this is the reason why I keep reserving judgement on DC's attempt to bring "diversity" on screen...their track record with female characters is frankly horrible.

Is "mansplaining" not a gendered slur? :hmm

I don't know, dismissing mansplaining kinda sounds like mansplaining to me. Although there is not only mansplaining going on, that's for sure.

edited 26th Jul '16 1:35:02 AM by Julep

Yeah mansplaining as a term has degraded pretty completely, due to often usage to dismiss and ignore any points. In essence, labelling everything "mansplaining" is the same shitty behaviour that mansplaining itself described, just from the other side.