I read an
article called “Where are the Asian
faces on our TV screens?” off a New Zealand website called Spinoff. The research
article is about how New Zealand lacks diversity in terms of Asians appearing
on our screens, which then reflects back onto our culture here in New Zealand
and it also addresses two racial ideas we have learnt in class; casual racism
and burden of representation.
I absolutely agree with the
writer’s angle for this article. Asians are missing from our screens as when
the writer was conducting her research the and asking other New Zealanders
which male Asian a=actors they had seen on screen, everyone said the same
response which was “Raybon Khan”, who is the guy from ‘Spray and Walk away’
advertisements. That definitely says something seeming he was the only person,
people who were asked could think of and this shows how absent Asians are on
our screens. The implication of this is ‘Burden of representation’. So the next
actor/ actress who is presented on our screens has a huge responsibility of
fill and will have a lot of pressure to represent Asians in the best light due
to the fact that the Asian race has been relatively absent from our media. This
individual will be perceived by the audience as representing the whole group.
A statement in the article that
really stood out to me was the following; “Prejudice lingers in
the subconscious so we commit the same mistakes over and over again; it takes
constant vigilance to catch our often inadvertent moments of sexism or racism.”
Our attitude as a country needs to change, especially our television industry in
regard to showing more diversity on screen. By showing more diversity on
screen, everyone will feel more a part of our New Zealand culture.
Hi Nicole,
ReplyDeleteI wrote about something similar to this in a past blog post. The whole idea of "prejudice lingering in the subconscious" is quite a scary thought to be honest. Especially when relating to TV and media, as an audience member has the potential to actually subconsciously form ideas in his/her head based on fictional characters in a show. I relate this back to the "Burden of Representation" and how, for example, if there is a limited screen time for an Asian man/woman how they are presented in that show/movie is how they are presented and thought of as a whole. That is just utterly scary...the fact that one person/actor has the potential to represent a whole group of people!
I remember that “Spray and walk away” ad when it initially came out. I couldn’t watch it; it was so terrible and stereotypical that I was so embarrassed by it, the accent and acting was so cringe that I was ashamed by it. I recall people from school just repeatedly cracking jokes and saying that “chase phrase”; each time it heard it, it just reminded me of that embarrassment and that thought of people might be using the Mark of the plural, connecting me with that ad.
ReplyDeleteBack then the “Spray and walk away” guy (Ming-Jen Huang) was the main Asian face on NZ screens and carried that burden of representation (like you said in your blog). Recently other Asians are appearing on NZ screens too, that (again) reinforces the Asian stereotypes:
The actress Lynette Forday who played Grace Kwan on Shortland Street. She reminds audiences of that stereotypical “dream” all Asians having a “high paid” “successful” job such as a doctor. https://youtu.be/DsaPrztCai0?t=126 (link to her performances on Shorty)
The other (quite NZ-specific) stereotype: the saying “Indian’s own dairies, Chinese own takeaways”. The ad for Drug Driving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6QJybQBjyM repeats the problem with the “Spray and walk away” ad. The only thing about this ad is that it has an informative message.
There are more diversity in NZ TV now (in my opinion) but it doesn't mean NZ TV have moved away from stereotypes and Mark of the plurals.