Taking a Look at Asian Women Stereotypes

Western portrayals of Asian women in media have often been stereotypical, one-dimensional characters such as the submissive and docile Lotus Blossom, the strong and domineering, but deceitful Dragon Lady, or the Asian hooker who is used as nothing more than a mere prop for the male gaze (Kuo, Rachel). However, the Western audience has also been exposed to other portrayals of Asian women through another form of entertainment called anime. Anime, or Japanese animation, has many genres that are named according to the target audience it is made for. For shounen, meaning male adolescents, is largely about action-packed adventures and accomplishing a goal or defeating an enemy (Eisenbeis, Richard). The shounen genre, however, despite its target audience that is

This paper is a critique of the adaptation of David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, a semi-autobiographical play, adapted and directed by Jeff Liu. This play was produced by the YOMYOMF Network and was performed through the video-sharing website Youtube. The plotline follows the misadventures of an Asian American playwright named David Henry Hwang, the protagonist of the play who is played by Ryan Yu. Throughout the play, Yu's character leads a protest against yellow face casting which only ends up in failure and embarrassment. Furthermore, he ends up mistakenly cast a white actor, Marcus G. Dahlman who is played by Christian Gorham, in an Asian role in his own play named Face Value. Whilst Yu's excelled in his portrayal of his role by effectively

The social perspectives had directly effected on the social status of Korean Military Brides in a negative way. In South Korea, there were a lot of camptowns where were a special place that consisted of bars, some entertainment shops and store, and camptown women, who were served as a legal prostitute for those military men. So that was why many people saw these Korean Military Brides as a victim of militarized prostitution or thought that they had some experiences involving with the camptown. As many military brides’ complaint, they said that “the behavior and backgrounds of a few “bad women” tainted the image of [them] in general” (247). In addition to Koreans’ perspectives, the Korean wives of Korean men in the United States denied to let

At last, Asian American are victims of cultural stereotypes. For example, it is told “that they practice martial arts”, “eat cats and dogs,” and “try to look European”.

Self-serving bias in historians from Japan and Korea as they have different opinion and stance on the treatment of comfort women during World War II. During World War II, Japanese kidnapped young maidens from Korea and kept them in brothels for the Japanese soldiers. Now, Japanese historians are claiming that the comfort women willingly offered themselves to the Japanese soldiers while the Koreans are denied this fact. This occurred because the Japanese historians refused to believe that the Japanese government would allow such atrocity to happened as their interpretation and opinion are distorted by self-serving bias. When there is a bias that clouded and distorted the historian’s mind, the interpretations are vague and imprecise thus historians from two nations disagree because neither of their facts corresponds to each other. However, there are cases where historians from the same nation that disagree with one another due to their beliefs or upbringing that are not distorted by external factors such as self-serving bias. There are Japanese historians that believe that these comfort women were indeed mistreated and kidnapped rather than volunteering to work in the brothels and these historians’ interpretation contradict the views of the historians mentioned. When there these

In Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves, Liu Mianhuan, a former comfort woman, recalls, “Several military men raped me that day. … From that day on, the Japanese troops raped me every day. Each day at least five to six men would come…” (7-8).

1. A) Korean military brides faced a lot of problems marrying the U.S. service man both in the United States and in Korea. Many Korean citizens had bad impressions on U.S. service man because they killed a lot of innocent Korean people without getting any punishments. So when many young Korean women were going to marry U.S. service man, there were a lot of public criticisms in Korea. Before going to the United States, military brides need to learn how to prepare American food and other American customs. Many of the young military brides were former camp-town prostitutes with little or no education. Compared to their husband, they had higher education and usually older. After moving back to the United States with their husband, they “experienced cultural shock”, racism, and also language barriers (Lee, Lee, p.460). Besides these problems, Korean wives also

Many historians have addressed the issue of military prostitution during Japan’s imperial rule and the United States role in it during their reign. For roughly 50 years’ comfort women were the silent victims of war. During the 1990’s and 2000’s many Korean comfort women came into the lime light by opening up about their experiences in the comfort system. The Feminist Studies journal published Na Young Lee’s scholarly work, “The Construction of Military Prostitution in South Korea during the U.S. Military Rule, 1945-1948”, in which the author argues the view held by Korean feminist NGO’s in light to the Untied States responsibility for the eradication of the prostitution system is exaggerated. In addition, Lee adds that it not only

When the show was announced to move to Broadway, the yellowface was strongly protested by the Asian-American community. The show’s critic initiated the protest, saying that the production had created “an unwelcome view of Asians.” However, Pryce was so greatly praised by the West End audience, who seemed not to be bothered at all about his yellowface, that the producer was not willing to give in, claiming Pryce is the star of the show, as one of the British stage’s most admired actors. The yellowface performance was not even considered to be abandoned until the Actors’ Equity refused to approve Pryce’s Visa “as they cannot condone the casting of a Caucasian actor in the role of [an] Eurasian” that was going to destroy the fabric of the country. This angered the producer who even threatened with a cancelation on the Broadway production. It took a turn when Equity backed down and rescinded its decision and Pryce brought his “The American Dream” to New York and won a Tony Award for his brilliant performance — the yellowface was later removed. The audience was mesmerized by the glorious music and stagecraft as nobody had seen a helicopter landing on Broadway. The audience also discovered that, Jonathan Pryce was not the only one dictating the spotlight: Lea Salonga, who came form Philippine, was the rising star. Salonga, with her magnificent

Back in 1940s, during the second world war many women were often recruited by trickery and forced to serve the Japanese military in the field in Asia and the Pacific. Those women were called “comfort women” and they were drawn from throughout the Japanese empire, though many were Korean. It was the darkest time period in Korean history that no one wants to recall it from the memory or able to describe the suffering they had. Comfort women make a huge statement in Korean history and Korean culture, luckily they have lots of films could help us to develop that time period. In the film My Own Breathing it showed us significate view on the reason of Korean society suppress the memories, the honest voice from comfort women and Korean national

According to Oxford dictionary, stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Stereotypes found in our society are based on gender, race, social class etc. It is not necessary for stereotypes to be right all the time; after all they are just generalizations made by our ancestors and as the time changes people change. The power of stereotypes can be felt when a person lives in minority. Being an Asian living in a white country, I have heard a lot of comments based on my race. From other races, social media and TV shows, I encountered 3 stereotypes this week.

Girls in colonized countries are not human. They were trampled as a tool for comforting soldiers, and no one cared, both then and now. Korean comfort women were seized, sent to army units, and forced to serve as sex slaves. Their agony is still on-going because the Japanese government would not take responsibility for the cruel treatment, and victims’ story is gradually disappearing. In this essay, I will describe the historical background of comfort women, discuss the current problem regarding Korean comfort women, and conclude several suggestions to solve the problem.

3. Min, Pyong Gap. “Korean “comfort women” The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class.” Gender and Society 17 (2003): 938-957.

After the War, the reality of the comfort women system remained unnoticed by the South Korean public opinion for

The majority of Korean women seem to have come from lower-class worker and farmer families. Korean and other Asian women were assigned to lower-ranking soldiers, while Japanese and European women were reserved for higher-ranking officers (Watanabe). This obviously portrays the condescending attitude the Japanese had toward Koreans.