When it Sizzles1998 was a year of firsts. I attended my first concert that year (Hanson; I was in the midst of my teenybopper fandom) and lived through my first decade of life (though I doubt I really processed what that meant at the time). But, more importantly, it was the first year that I identified with a movie character. She was my first on-screen role model and her name was Mulan.
Like any other little girl, I had quite the active imagination while growing up. My friends and I engaged in make believe games frequently, but we often found ourselves pretending to be princesses – particularly of the Disney kind. Yet, until 1998, I had trouble finding a princess to portray when playing with my friends. My favorite Disney movie was (and is) Beauty and the Beast, but it seemed silly for me to play brown-haired Belle when I so clearly did not look like her. Therefore, in an effort to stay true to the films, I was often cast as Pocahontas or Jasmine – even though I clearly wasn’t Native American or Middle Eastern. They had the jet black hair and darker complexion that I did, though, and in our adolescent minds, it made sense to put me in those roles.
And then Mulan happened. Suddenly, there was a Chinese Disney princess who I could emulate. To top it all off, the film she starred in even provided a glimpse into a historic Chinese tale to which I hadn’t been exposed before. Yet, while all of this sounds like the trivial worries of an elementary school student, much of the same concerns of finding an Asian American role model in the pop-culture landscape of the United States still applies – and it’s been almost a full decade since 1998.
As much as I’d like to go against the popular concerns that tokenism and stereotypes surround almost every Asian American character or actor in the mainstream media, I’m finding it increasingly hard to do so. Yes, there have been great strides made in recent years with television channels targeted towards Asian American audiences and independent films made from Asian American perspectives, but little has been done to change the representations of Asian Americans in media targeted to the general public. As much as I laughed and enjoyed Danny Leiner’s “Harold and Kumar go to
It’s not to say that I haven’t been able to find Asian American role models at all, though. After reading his memoir The Rice Room, I got in touch with Ben Fong-Torres, the former editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone who inspired me to pursue the field of journalism in the first place. There have also been a few Asian American authors to whom I’ve looked to for literary guidance; Maxine Hong-Kingston’s writing has been especially empowering.
However, the truth of the matter is that in some ways, I’m still that little girl looking for a princess who I can pretend to be. I’m still searching for a strong Asian American woman whose life trajectory follows what I hope mine will be. True that my role model doesn’t necessarily have to be Asian American or a woman, but it’d sure be nice if she existed.
3 comments:
I think you will be an "Asian American Role Model" of your own. Break the sterotypes, not just for the sake of doing so, but to truly be yourself, whatever and whomever that may be.
Thanks for the encouraging thoughs.
My view is that if you're emulating Maxine Hong Kingston, you're headed in the wrong direction. Here is a woman who used her "Woman Warrior" to perpetuate all sorts of orientalist images, who has used her power to emasculate Asian men, and who has used her role as one of the most prominent Asian American cultural "leaders" to basically praise the status quo (do a google search on her quote where she received an award from Bill Clinton). Instead of telling our traditional stories, Kingston has distorted them. During the 70's, Frank Chin called her out on this. She responded by getting her white liberal friends to slander Chin and destroy his reputation.
There are a lot of knowledgeable Asian Americans out there, but it is sad that the media chooses to pump up demagogues like Maxine Hong Kingston who have misled all of us. I think the answer for us is to truly go back to our roots and to learn about where we truly come from.
Mulan wasn't a princess. At Disney, she was considered a leading lady.
Disney did a terrible job in telling the story. This is a Chinese girl, risking her life and limb to save her father, but the setting is in Japan. I find that insulting to Chinese people.
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