Getting It Right: Media stereotypes don’t always reflect the East Asian experience

By: Arón Olegnowicz

In the West, the very thought of people of East Asian descent often provokes one of two images: a bright and prosperous example of the American Dream, or the subdued and impoverished picture of the  invasive immigrant. 

Inside the world of Asian stereotypes, there is no middle class.

Netflix’s new release, Bling Empire, paints the portrait of East Asian lives splattered across a flashy bourgeoise canvas - a story unreflective of the lives of our own international students on campus.

Kyle Li, a first-year biochemistry major originally from Guangzhou, China has lived in the United States since 2019. Often, Li does not find himself relating to the affluent Asian lifestyle depicted in American media.

“The problem is that the Asian population is being underrepresented, but people like entertainment, so the representation first arrives in entertainment form,” Li said. “After that, more serious stuff can come, but first we have to put the image in the big picture.”

But, Hollywood has long been criticized for its role in glorifying stereotypes and fetishizing marginalized folk - specifically those of Asian descent. 

After moving to North Carolina with his mother into their American step-family two summers ago, Li took a job as a cashier at Bojangles - a popular southern fast food restaurant. There, he not only earned the money he needed for his household, but also applied the English skills he learned in China to real situations, for the first time.

“The first generation of Asian immigrants had to go through lots of forced labor to make it by,” Li said. “If you’re not rich when you move here, you still have to struggle for your life after you get here - it’s not like after you immigrate you become rich.”

Anita Wang, a first-year biochemistry major from Taiyuan, feels that while TV media can be liberating for some Asians, “it seems like the oppression is still there.”

“Asian are still Asian,” Wang said. “The patriarchy never disappears, no matter rich or poor [and] many of us pursue to remove this unhealthy system from Asian culture.”

The Asian Pacific Institute cites that 21-55% of Asian women in the U.S. report experiencing intimate physical and/or sexual violence during their lifetime.

The media's fixation of Asian people as “exotic” has cast a cloud of commodification over Asians in people of other races: that Asians are either submissive and obedient, or cunning and mysterious.

The latest Netflix show to do this simply doesn’t provide an accurate representation of the East Asian experience - and Wang has a message for those tempted to believe otherwise.

“It’s not a documentary or formal presentation,” she said. “You can’t take it seriously,”

Despite the unrealistic racial narratives many may have grown up with, the Asian experience isn’t a monolithic one. If we continue to lag in listening to the people, the communities we leave behind could be all the more in danger of being erased by the very stereotypes that disregard them. 

“For me, Bling Empire is not a show about rich Asians. It’s a show about rich people,” Wang said. “I don’t associate myself with them, and they won’t be the ones to change the status of Asians.”