Asian American Media

Great Essays
Asian Americans and the Media by Kent A. Ono and Vincent N. Pham targets the topic of Asian American representations and their presence in media. The book provides a critical analysis of Asian American studies, film studies, communication arts and sciences for an overview of Asian American representations in broad media. Broad media consists of film, television, radio, music, the Internet and the like. The book attempts to understand constraints as a result of historical and contemporary dominant representations. Examples of Asian American representations are addressed in the book with a theoretical approach to make palpable the broad historical and contemporary field of representations in which the group finds themselves.
The book is split
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colonization and Orientalism. The “yellow peril” is conceivably the longest standing stereotype held against Asians and Asian Americans. Yellow peril refers to the idea that Asians and Asian Americans are threatening to invade and Asianize the U.S. nation. Yellow peril discourse portrays Asians and Asian Americans as threatening while constructing whites as threatened. Discourse is often organized in ways that serve as a basis by which ideas are formed and knowledge is produced, and fundamentally for how humanity relate to one another and societies are formed and structured. By recognizing how discourse has been constructed historically and the continuation of its presence today, producers equipped with this knowledge may be able to evade trappings of yellow peril themes and instead create new representational strategies to tell more intelligent and accurate stories about Asians and Asian …show more content…
The original intention of the code was to curb immorality in films such as crimes against the law, vulgarity and sex. During that time, interracial marriage was illegal in 30 states. Depicting interracial relationships in film would imply the condoning of an illegal act. The code against miscegenation prevented white actors from engaging in romantic relationships with non-white actors in film. Laws and codes against miscegenation were relaxed in the 1960s. However, yellowface continued in spite of that.
Yellowface impersonation is part of representational practice that controls and excludes Asians and Asian Americans from self-representation. Explicit yellowface is when an Asian or Asian American role is played by a non-Asian or non-Asian American with the use of exaggerated makeup or the actual taping of the eyes back to change their shape. Implicit yellowface works in three ways: the suggestion that there is an authentic Asian look, the assumption of similarity of Asians and Asian Americans across the board, and Asian or Asian Americans are asked to play roles that do not align with their

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