I Guess Yellowface Was a Thing...

American movies really don't give Asians enough attention. According to a study from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, only 4.4% of speaking characters in 100 movies were Asian. An article, also from Annenberg, states that there has always been a lack of Asians in American film because of the harsh stereotypes that the few Asian characters depicted. The Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa played in many films, but was often cast as a negative portrayal of Asians, such as an authoritarian Japanese general. Some Asians in film were played by a white actor in yellowface, like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. He played the protagonist's bucktoothed Japanese neighbor and, well, it's not pretty.



But this poor portrayal of Asians is not just a thing of the past. It has affected the movies of today as well. In the 2008 movie 21, in which a team of MIT students figure out how to steal millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos, the cast is nearly all white actors. But in the real story that the movie was based on, was mostly Asian students. The producer claimed that they could not find enough Asians that fit the parts. They couldn't find four capable Asian actors in all of Hollywood? That's pretty sad. Did they just not look hard enough, or did all of the Asian kids growing up watching movies with these harsh stereotypes feel completely repelled from the idea of being an actor? If the latter is the case, then I think there is really nothing that can be done to get out of this hole. It may very well be too late for Asians to feel welcome as talented actors who play some role other than a harmful stereotype.

Hispanic Actors Common Stereotypes

Most of my blog content so far has been about African Americans and their struggles in the movie business. But as a matter of fact, many other ethnic groups are struggling just as much if not more. Actually, it's really everyone except white actors that have it especially hard. So, for the next couple of blog posts I will be discussing other minority groups and how the movie and TV industries represents them. First up, it's Latinos.

This article talks about the many stereotypes that show up all too often in Hispanic roles, and how they are harmful to viewers' ideas of the Latino people. The first common portrayal of Hispanics is maids. The late actress Lupe Ontiveros once said she had played a maid nearly 150 times, but rarely ever had any interesting role. She said she had wanted to play "a judge,...a lesbian woman, a councilman, someone with some chutzpah."

The next stereotype was that of Latin lovers. You know, the man with a rose in his mouth who just can't get his hands off of a woman, but is just so irresistibly charming. Yeah, no, you are not going to find a man that dramatically romantic no matter where he comes from. This kind of portrayal is just plain misleading.

Next up, there is the female equivalent of the previous stereotype: the Latina sexpot. The loud, crazy, spicy woman like Eva Longoria in Desperate Housewives or Sofia Vergara in Modern Family. Tanisha Ramirez of the Huffington Post writes that watching these characters that focus on sexual attractiveness "traps our culture within our bodies, ignoring the values, ethics, and traditions that contribute to our sense of culture and community."



Fourth on the list is thugs: the drug-dealing, grill-wearing, pistol-whipping cholos we all know and love. We see a lot of these in movies, and a lot of the time it's the only role a Hispanic aspiring actor can get. But get this: not all Latinos are criminals. This stereotype is especially harmful because it makes viewers think that Hispanics are dangerous people, when most of them are just normal, law-abiding citizens.



The last stereotype on this list is immigrants. American Movies and TV shows often show characters of Mexican descent as only first or second generation Americans, when in fact there have been Mexicans living in the United States for hundreds of years. These characters are then written with a heavy accent and a poorly structured dialect, and people get so used to this that if they see a Hispanic character who speaks perfect English, they call it bad acting.

Beyond the Lights: Movie Race Problems Beyond the United States' Borders

The problem of discrimination against certain ethnicities in the movie and TV industries is not just a problem in the U.S. In this article, the author discusses a movie she had seen called Beyond the Lights, in which a famous singer can't take the stardom anymore and tries to kill herself, but a police officer stops her from jumping off of her balcony. The two of them instantly feel an attraction for each other and over the course of the movie, they try to diverge from the paths that others had already planned out for them.


Looks like a compelling story, right? The only problem is that both of the lead stars are black. Because of this, UK cinemas refused to release this film on the big screen because not as many people are compelled to see a "black" movie. What? Just because there are black people in this movie does not mean that it is specifically about African Americans. It is about people, period. Labeling it like this makes it sound like it is only for black audiences, when in fact it is intended for all people who enjoy drama and romance, which I'm sure would hold a much wider demographic. As Corrina Antrobus puts it in the article, "'Black' is a skin color, not a movie genre."
So instead of showing in theaters in the UK, Beyond the Lights went straight to DVD, leaving director Gina Prince-Bythewood a fraction of the earnings and recognition she deserves for this film.

Too Many Minorities, says Nellie Andreeva

I have found yet another person who does not like seeing non-white characters on screen. In her article, Nellie Andreeva claims that TV shows today have too many actors of color and are putting white actors out of work. She says that Hollywood casting directors have "ethnic quotas" to fill, and that they don't care about an actor's talent, only their skin color. First off, while there are several shows from this year that have the lead role played by a person of color, they are only a handful compared to how many other shows—even recent ones—have a white main character. Even with new shows like Empire, Black-ish, and Fresh Off the Boat, each of which have a considerable amount of ethnic characters, Caucasian actors still have a huge majority in TV shows and movies.

Cast of Empire

Cast of Black-ish

Cast of Fresh Off the Boat

Secondly, Andreeva is trying to scare her readers with the loaded term "ethnic quota," when in reality, there's nothing bad about it at all. Casting directors who actually give a damn about showing accurate representation different ethnicities will look at the percentages of the populations of each race in the area in which their show takes place, and they will try to reflect those numbers through the actors they cast.

And thirdly, why is Nellie Andreeva even complaining about this? Why should she care that there are more non-white lead actors on the small screen? It's not like she's implying that actors of color are less talented as white actors. Oh wait, she totally is. She states that "because of the sudden flood of roles for ethnic actors after years of suppressed opportunities for them, the talent pool of experienced minority performers—especially in the younger range—is pretty limited." This is a very subtle but extremely racist assumption that young non-white actors are just not as capable as their white counterparts at their job. Really? Tell that to Tyler James Williams, Aubrey Plaza, and Brenda Song.

Star Wars: The Racism Awakens

Apparently, there just aren't enough white people in movies nowadays. Or at least that's what people are saying after watching the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Many people went to social media to share their feelings towards the upcoming movie using the hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII. Twitter user @genophilia started the movement against the sci-fi film with this tweet:

#BoycottStarWarsVII because it is anti-white propaganda promoting #whitegenocide.

— End Cultural Marxism (@genophilia) October 19, 2015

 The hashtag quickly became a top trending topic. Several people stood with @genophilia's statement, arguing that the new Star Wars movie has some kind of hateful message toward white people (and not all white people—only men) because the lead roles are played by an African American man and a Caucasian woman. Thankfully, the large majority of the tweets using this hashtag were from decent human beings, discrediting these bigoted claims. I'm fairly positive that the person behind @genophilia's tweet is just an internet troll trying to get a reaction out of people, but by God did it work. The fact that what he said actually got people to back him up and agree that a movie is causing a "white genocide" is just baffling to me. I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I don't know why this should cause any kind of uproar from the white community. I think that the only reason all of these people are complaining about a black man in Star Wars is because he is the main character. No one cared that Mace Windu from the prequels was black, but he was more of a minor character. But even still, why should anyone care about anyone's race in a Star Wars movie? It doesn't even take place on Earth. The humans in that far, far away galaxy do not have prejudices against skin color—they have countless other sentient species to worry about. I mean, it's not like white actors still take up a great majority of the film's cast; John Boyega's character, Flynn, is the only black person on the movie poster.

Newsflash, racists: black people exist. Just because you are used to seeing white men be the heroes in movies does not mean they are the only ones capable of saving the day. The role of Flynn did not have to be cast as a black person, but he doesn't have to be white either. The character's race was not written into the script. And why should it? One's race is completely arbitrary in a story like this.