Asian American Stereotypes

There’s a myth about Asian Americans, that generalizes us into one group. People create false images of us through stereotypes. These stereotypes have been manifested in books, movies, and literature, but they have repercussions for Asian Americans in society. We are often treated as foreigners, people leading us to believe that we don’t belong in American society, and that we have no purpose being here.

Stereotypes are natural things that people will talk about. There are both positive and negative effects of Asian stereotyping in society, some of which not everyone may be fully aware of. When someone says to an Asian-American person, “I bet you’re really good at math” or “It must be nice to be so small and petite”, they may think that they’re

Asian-American actors are often depicted as the martial artists or foreigners that speak little to no English. Some Asian actors, though, have made their names famous by using their martial arts skills in television. Actors like Jackie Chan and Jet Li often take on these types of movie roles. Martial arts originated in Asia and because of this, it created stereotypes that all Asians are trained and or are experts in martial arts. Almost every Asian character in movies speak with flawed English, and it is a way to convey the fact that they have very visible flaws. This is also true for female actors. They are often put into roles that typecast them as the “dragon ladies”, which is “a stereotype of East Asian and occasionally South Asian women as strong, deceitful, domineering, or mysterious”. They are the characters that can’t be trusted, very sneaky, exotic and are oversexualized. Movies like Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels exemplify this type of stereotyping. She played a sort of female Asian warrior in both of these films. In Charlie’s Angels she was basically white washed so that she would seem more American rather than Asian, and in Kill Bill she represented the dragon lady stereotype. The whitewashing of her character shows how Asian culture is still rejected in western culture today. These are stereotypes that directors and producers have come up with because it’s how they see Asian Americans and how they should be depicted in movies and TV