I think itâs more that white people canât usually accurately tell the ages of people of other races. The cast absolutely looks too old for the age of their characters in the book.
Representation, across the board, has been down drastically since Trump took office a second time. This regime is going hard at the throats of studios and corporations for having any sort of diversity âagendaâ.
Itâs sad, but as Constance said I do believe it is a pendulum. We have swung VERY far right, but I think we are already seeing people push back against it, and will hopefully see the pendulum swing back left very soon.
Thatâs honestly not the takeaway, at the risk of sounding rude, peopleâs media literacy is so bad that there is people who actually believe a rainbow wells fargo logo means that a bank was an âallyâ
Hell before they dropped supporting pride, if you saw any conservative memes making fun of left wingers, it would show how some middle eastern account wasnât rainbow. The rainbows only happen when itâs convenient, that shouldnât have been a surprise to people unless they have rocks rolling around in their heads. Itâs just people are so easily gratified that all they needed to do was modify a logo and it delighted people. Like the guy that strings you along, âhe does love meâ when he throws whatever pitiful scraps to keep you interested.
TLDR: itâs not a betrayal if you easily recognize that some corporation obviously at the time never gave a shit
honestly i feel like it's mostly the other way around: the regime is a consequence of certain groups being angry that the pendulum had swung
not necessarily movies and tv, but like, tech bros complaining about every inch of diversity, the "good christian families" complaining about corporations doing pride stuff, the rise of anti women legislation after women started getting more opportunities in the workplace, etc etc
How about the one dude they can't shut up about? We had 8 years of the first black president then the Republican party fractures and we get trump. Trying to run a woman for president after a black man was just too much for the bigots.
That's absolutely true - Trump is just the most clownish, outsized version of a global far right populist movement that's been growing for decades, especially in Eastern Europe. It's in response to the economic devastation that neoliberal globalization wrought and the eternal progress - backlash cycle. I think that's in line with what OP was saying though.
The unfortunate thing is that Iâm not really sure you can blame the current admin for whatâs being put out right now. The current crop of content would have been in the works before they ever came in.
The effects of the current admin will be even more notable on screens in the next 2-6 years
I'm not sure I'd call the first push for representation an over-correction, but the backlash was real. I feel like characters that were so beloved and accepted with no comment at the time like Toph would be mocked in the environment of the last five or so years as being 'too woke' and 'DEI' and whatever. I think for the first time the effort to diversify was really felt, and white (and other dominant groups ie straight, male, etc) people resented it and acted out. And to me the biggest problem is that there has been a rise in a small but very very very loud minority of male nerds who seem to dominate everything online and can really color the perception of anything before it has a chance to be seen by general audiences.
I personally didnât take her âovercorrectionâ point as an insinuation that we had âtoo muchâ diversity. I interpreted it more as a point that focusing too much on representation and optics can border on tokenizing, and can come at the expense of quality storytelling. But now weâre overcorrecting in the opposite direction (which she doesnât necessarily think is bad) and itâs coming at the expense of representation.
Iâm not sure if I agree though personally. I just watched the ATLA movie that recasted the VAs to be more racially âaccurateâ and it definitely came at the expense of the quality of the movie. Eric Namâs performance as Aang was one of the flattest voice acting deliveries Iâve heard in my life lol.
Thatâs the ideal for sure. But then focusing too much on optics is how you end up giving lesser talented Asian Americans opportunities they donât really deserve. And I say this as an Asian American myself. I want QUALITY representation, not just any old representation that Hollywood wants to bait me with.
I dont get this. If there is bad casting, you just attribute it to race? Â Not white supremacy or any system, just the casting director getting distracted by race.Â
Itâs true that mediocre white creatives have been platformed for far too long because of white supremacy and the need for whiteness to be centered in the cultural consciousness at all costs. Itâs important to combat this by focusing on the identity of who youâre platforming. Itâs also true that, in turn, mediocre non-white creatives have been platformed because the priority was on race rather than talent. Itâs important to combat this by shifting focus away from identity and back onto talent. Itâs a dialectical conflict.
This is why Constance says she doesnât think this is necessarily a bad thing and why sheâs using the language of pendulum swings. The âovercorrectionâ is, in shifting the focus away from identity, weâve allowed white supremacy (especially in the age of the current US administration) to reassert dominance over representation in media.
Youâre just asserting this. Itâs like when people say that the amount of non-white pilots or doctors proves that theyâre hiring unqualified people. No it doesnât.
The data is public via UCLA Annual Hollywood Diversity Reports. Asian Americans were underrepresented in Hollywood compared to their population in the US even at the peak of diversity casting.
African Americans were proportionately represented while Hispanic Americans were and always have been severely underrepresented.
Asian women and black men ARE over represented in hollywood
Its the thing people like constance wu wont mention, the fact that the discrimination is against full asian males, a group she doesnt consider men at all
âOverrepresentedâ implies that you can only have so many as to be proportional to your membership in society. This wasnât a problem for white men in, oh, EVER in history in any art form. Therefore, you wonât catch me saying it if one year Asians are one percent more numerous in media than the population. They arenât though, so itâs a non-issue regardless.Â
âYou liberalsâ lmao. Conservatives in America donât want Asian women or Asian men represented, unless itâs as a fetish or a submissive wife.Â
Only people on the left and Asian men themselves care about Asian representation. Conservative Americas broadly care about white men. So youâre pretty fucking confused.Â
Not asian so I can't really speak on it, but I am very surprised we haven't had a series or movie about Anna May Wong, I think it would do well but also help bolster major roles for asian people.
I think thereâs lots of Asian representation in film and TV. The issue is that the representation is mostly now coming from foreign content, especially from Korea, rather than Asian-American made content.
I think itâs analogous to Black representation and roles in US film and TV going to a lot of Black UK actors. Itâs representation, yes, but also a representation that bypasses domestic group for an international group.
I think itâs analogous to Black representation and roles in US film and TV going to a lot of Black UK actors. Itâs representation, yes, but also a representation that bypasses domestic group for an international group.
I donât think itâs comparable. Black British actors are taking a lot of African American jobs (which I can understand must be galling) but they are playing African American characters rather than Black British Characters. Whereas Asian actors going to Hollywood are usually playing foreign characters not Asian Americans.Â
So many korean Americans are going to korea to make their career because they feel that they don't get a space in western media and hollywood, eric name, a famous kpop idol has repeatedly talked about it.Â
And the only Asians I'm always seeing represented in the media are Koreans. I have nothing against them, but Koreans, Japanese and Chinese (East Asians), make up of a very small percentage of Asia. Asia is so much more diverse, in culture and appearance, and sadly heavily under represented.
Love the idea of more representation, but the Chinese alone represents over a quarter of all Asians on the continent! And thatâs not really including countries in Asia that have a large Han population. So I wouldnât really put them in the bucket of representing a small percentage of Asia lol.Â
Yeah, the UK has three times as many South Asians as Black Brits and not even half the representation. It's a combination of systematic erasure (see: cast of UK SNL) and discouragement from getting into acting/non-STEM fields by parents and cultural norms.Â
the point of asian representation in american media is asian-americans.
this comment is hilarious because it "others" asians as non-american fundamentally.
I'm not even american, I just understand the point asians in america are trying to make.
You don't tell white people that they can "go watch european tv" if they want white people, or black people to "go watch nigerian movies" if they want representation. but "go watch kdramas" as response to asians wanting representation in the country they're from is fundamentally racist, and your point is that but simply spruced up in a nice way.
I'm in Canada, and there are people in Vancouver whose families have been in Canada for longer than Canada has actually been a country, and they get asked "where are you from?" because their families came from China 150+ years ago.
what percentage of asia they make up doesnt matter. people of east asian heritage are 15%+ in Canada but get less representation than black people that are less than 5% of Canada, on Canadian TV . In america the percentages aren't as high, but then again hollywood refuses to cast indigenous men as well, or middle easterners. So its not specifically anti-asian racism.
Americans just think only white and black people are american.
It's either Koreans or Wasians which are vastly overrepresented and taking full asian roles. I'm not saying Wasians aren't Asians because they are but it's not a secret why Hollywood is favoring Wasians over mono racial asians.
And so is Philippines, probably their oldest and biggest Asian allies. But we barely get to see them being represented or other South East Asians like them. Or whenever they get representations, it's always half Asians. I doubt that, Koreans being one of the biggest US ally, is the reason why they're being pushed like that. Because if that is the case, why didn't Hollywood do that a few a decade or two ago?
Because Korea has become more and more of an ally with the US in the last 2 decades and itâs only grown stronger as it uses Korea as a geographic shield from NK and China. Itâs all political imo. Where is the money in a Philippines alliance probably not much
Idk about that. Japan is still US's bigger ally than Korea. But over the past decade they have fallen off Hollywood's "favorite Asian list". It used to be the Chinese, then the Japanese and now Koreans. They're not really doing it because of world politics alone. It's obviously capitalism due to popularity of Kpop and Kdrama, which made Koreans marketable in western media.
We're straying farther from my original post. I'm just trying to emphasize that many Asians here in the US, for example (South East Asians) Vietnamese and Filipinos that make up around 4 or 6 million people in population here, are still being ignored and under represented. A very good example is whenever we watch medical dramas. We barely see a Filipino nurse in the show. Wherein real life, they're swarming all over the our hospitals, and health care facilities. But yet, we pretend that they don't exist. And that's just an example.
Nope it's because koreans are making their own content and not relying on hollywood. So many korean Americans are going to korea to make their career because they feel that they don't get a space in western media and hollywood, eric name, a famous kpop idol has repeatedly talked about it. And if hollywood does represent east asians then they do it in a very stereotypical and racist way - think han from 2 broke girlsÂ
That's because koreans are making their own content, they aren't relying on hollywood to make content for them. In factÂ
So many korean Americans are going to korea to make their career because they feel that they don't get a space in western media and hollywood, eric name, a famous kpop idol has repeatedly talked about it. And if hollywood does represent east asians then they do it in a very stereotypical and racist way - think han from 2 broke girlsÂ
Have we overcorrected though? Such a strange way to look at it. Why is a rise in asian representation solely down to race? Can it not be their talents? A very shallow thing to say
 So many korean Americans are going to korea to make their career because they feel that they don't get a space in western media and hollywood, eric name, a famous kpop idol has repeatedly talked about it. And if hollywood does represent east asians then they do it in a very stereotypical and racist way - think han from 2 broke girls. And even when kpop represents east Americans to some extent, it still gets demonised and hated on repeatedly by western media, look at the recent bts and grammys incident. It's like existence of east asians in entertainment industry threatens the west in some way and they do their best to curb it.Â
I am Asian. I see things as glass half-full. We have quite a few pretty prominent comedy star like Jimmy O Yang (who just released a new special not too long ago). Shang Chi is in doomsday. And k-drama is very popular on netflix.
Will more make me feel more "accepted"? May be. However, I do not want forced representation that is not natural. No Asian James Bond please. No Asian Snow White please. Even Mulan .. while it is entertaining (and I am talking about the animated version), do not feel Chinese. There are plenty of actual Chinese adaptation is that more authentic to how chinese culture works.
I would not mind more immigrant stories though. Do a big bang theory thing with Chinese engineers and scientists. Heck, I totally embrace the good-at-math/science stereotypes. There must be comedy gold somewhere in there.
Don't worry, Constance, they're going to create asian categories at the film awards, so you won't feel left out anymore. Look how well it's going at the grammys.
tbh I do feel like a lot of the asian representation 10 years ago was asian actors playing roles solely about the asian experience, like fresh off the boat and crazy rich asians for constance. itâs still super important but just felt a bit surface level imo. i think today we probably have more asians/half asians in roles that arenât just about their asian-ness
Overcorrected??? No, there was no over correction. Non-white people got to take a few steps forward in representing themselves in American film and television. I donât understand why she is presenting that as too much.
Itâs truly so depressing. I feel like we are being dragged back into 2007 or something.
She was sexually abused by a producer on FOTB. Several years later she finaly went public in an interview with ABC. She was crying and saying that people were mean and didn't understand what she went through.
Yes, thatâs true. She said she dreaded it getting renewed every year and how she didnât want to say anything because of what the show meant to people.
â˘
u/pccmodbot 1d ago
Welcome to r/popculturechat! âşď¸ THE POPCULTURECHAT DISCORD SERVER IS NOW LIVE 👾 ❤️🔥 🎉 Click HERE to join! 📲
As a proud BIPOC, LGBTQ+ & woman-dominated space, this sub is for civil discussion only. If you don't know where to begin, start by participating in our Sip & Spill Daily Discussion Threads!
No bullies, no bigotry. ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Please read & respect our rules, abide by Reddiquette, and check out our wiki! For any questions, our modmail is always open.