Growing up, Mulan was one of my favourite Disney princesses.
She wasn’t a mythical creature, like Ariel, and she didn’t break a magic spell, like Belle, but she showed me that I could be anything I wanted, whether that be the saviour of China or just comfortable in my own skin. Most importantly, she showed me that you could be an Asian girl and still kick ass.
As a kid, there were two main types of television that I watched. The first was Saturday Disney, full of cartoons with catchy tunes like Kim Possible. The second was TVBJ, a Hong Kong television channel where I picked up the majority of the Cantonese I know today. Hong Kong television was something I grew up with, its storylines mirroring my own family’s experiences and bringing us together. Most importantly, I saw myself in the characters’ tanned skin, almond eyes and dark hair – common traits in the world of TVBJ that I couldn’t seem to find on Home and Away.
It wasn’t until I got a little older that I even heard about shows like Friends or saw the abundance of High School Musical merchandise on my friends’ pencil cases and backpacks. By high school, I knew that those were the types of things that my friends watched. But it dawned on me, as I started watching them too, that none of these shows and movies had any characters that looked like me. I still remember the first time I watched Breakfast At Tiffany’s, when I saw Mickey Rooney playing Mr Yunioshi with his taped eyelids, exaggerated accent and distinctly non-Asian heritage, and just thought, “Is that meant to represent me? Is that what they think of me?”
Going through high school, I saw my friends look at themselves in the mirror and poke at the shape of their eyes, the flatness of their noses, and cover their bodies with fake tan as if that would somehow, hopefully, make them seem more white. More normal. I felt myself hesitating to tell people each time I did well in exams or that I played the piano, waiting for the inevitable “ah,” because of course she did. That feeling of anxiety when you meet people, the epithetic, “Where are you from?” And when you say Sydney, an urgent, “But where are you from?”
This subtle racism is not only seen in real life but in the film industry too, from the types of actors who get roles to the types of characters in films. I’m not to saying that there aren’t any Asians in the entertainment industry; after all, the Asian sidekick has been around for decades. From Mr Yunioshi, who wasn’t even Asian in the first place, to the stuttering Tina Cohen-Chang of Glee; the token Asian comes in many forms. There’s the overachieving nerd, which was a whole table category in the cafeteria of Mean Girls. Then there’s Pitch Perfect’s Lilly Onakuramara, a perfect example of the Asian comic relief who is literally silenced and acts as a nice filler in between Becca’s angst with just about everyone in the film. There’s the classic martial arts marvel, the sexualised love interest, and the emotionless, hair-streaked rebel.
Seeing these different representations of Asians is a good start. Sometimes, I think, “Hey, better than nothing, right?” But better doesn’t mean good and there’s still so much to be done for on-screen Asians to be seen as people. As brothers and sisters, friends, students, and humans whose complexity is explored beyond stereotypes and the presumptions of white directors and producers. The first time I watched Benjamin Law’s The Family Law, I saw a kid who played the clarinet, like I had, whose mum acted like mine. I saw his older siblings navigating the strange, liminal space between cultures just like my older siblings were. It made me realise that I wasn’t weird when I had rice for lunch instead of PBJ sandwiches. I wasn’t the girl who didn’t fit in at school or the odd one out. How could I be, when the character of Benjamin Law was reliving my primary school experiences? For the first time, I saw something on the figurative big screen that showcased my own story as normal. For the first time, my experiences felt valid.
The film industry is slowly getting the memo. Star Wars: The Last Jedi introduced Rose Tico, a lovable character played by the even more lovable Kelly Marie Tran. Rose wasn’t a main character, but she also wasn’t a nerd, or a kung fu master, or any of the other stereotypes we see so often in film. She was just Rose, a woman trying to help fight for the cause she had dedicated herself to, and a good friend. Despite my optimism at finally, finally seeing an Asian character in mainstream franchises, Kelly Marie Tran was recently forced to delete her social media accounts after being targeted in an online tirade of racial abuse. One step forward, two steps back seems to be a recurring theme in gaining broader representation in the film industry. But having more people of colour on the big screen is so important.
It’s important for the actors and actresses of colour, who have so much talent to bring into the world. It’s important for you and me, for us to look at the screen and see someone who’s experienced what we have, accurate representations of reality, and to know that we’re okay, that we’re normal. It’s so important for people of colour to look at the screen and, for once, feel like they’re the main character instead of the sidekick, always waiting by the main plot on the side-lines. Maybe one day, other Asian kids growing up in Western countries will be able to walk into a cinema, watch a movie, and walk out with a role model who looks just like them.
© Melanie Wong, 2018
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