The Slanted Screen

James Lam

Larry Tung

Images of Asians and Asian Americans In Media

January 25, 2013

The Slanted Screen

      In The Slanted Screen, multiple Asian actors speak in a documentary about the development of

Asian images in media. The first and “last” Asian actor for a long time was Sessue Hayakawa. He was the

first Asian and Japanese Hollywood star and played all kinds of races: Indian, American, Chinese, etc.

Other Asian actors that took part of the documentary were Mako, James Shigetsa and Tzi Ma. A

director, Frank Chin, talked about certain problems and issues based on the Asian races’ relation to

American media.


      The main issue presented in the documentary is the misinterpretation of Asian images. The

misinterpretation was not only a single problem but a group of problems that targeted faces and

appearance of Asians, the way they acted, their voices and accents, etc. Frank Chin also mentioned

another separation regarding the Asian images is that they usually not in the main role of movies and

television shows, and there were rarely any Asian love roles.

      I feel that many of the issues that were portrayed in the documentary are absolutely correct.

Although certain aspects of these issues were politically correct (i.e Asian males didn’t really get a girl,

especially when the female was white). This is similar to segregation and the racism that America had

against the African Americans. The limitations of having Asian actors being a role as an “Asian” didn’t cut

for getting the spot on the movie or show was “not enough”. Tzi Ma mentioned that at those times you

would have to apply for a role of any kind: American role, Indian, Spanish, any kind of role possible for

the show. Another example of limitations is the original Green Hornet where Bruce Lee, as much

prowess that he did have, could only get a role as a sidekick to the main character role of the Green

Hornet. Nowadays, you still do not see many “Asian” roles in Hollywood movies or shows, but these

opportunity is growing as can be seen in shows like Heroes and Two Broke Girls.