Anna May Wong Research Paper

Imagine a distant post-apocalyptic future in which a group of researchers discovers a stack of DVDs of 20th and 21st century Hollywood movies of Asian American actresses. After watching those movies, what might the researchers conclude about the characteristics of Asian American women in the movies? Certainly, they will view Asian American women as sexual and erotic objects of the society that white men can score with ease. Why do I assume they will think that way? The answer is a simple, yet controversial one: mostly, the media, as the history proves, portrays Asian American women either as erotic sex slaves of white men or as insidious personalities who lure their prey into a trap with their sex appeal. If we look into the history,

“Slaying the Dragon” by Deborah Gee is a comprehensive look at media stereotypes of Asian and Asian American women since the silent era. From the racist use of white actors to portray Asians in early Hollywood films, through the success of Anna May Wong’s sinister dragon lady, to Suzie Wong and the ‘50s geisha girls, to the Asian-American anchorwoman of today. The movie also shows how stereotypes of exoticism and docility have affected the perception of Asian-American women.

culturally inaccurate. At the time, Asians were still very much underrepresented in film and many

Biological name given to her at birth is Rae Dawn Chong born on February 28,1961 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

My assigned partner, Michelle Nguyen, was born in California and is part Vietnamese. She is a major foodie but prefers not to eat meat, and does not have a favorite food. Michelle described herself as clumsy, bipolar, lazy, awkward, and an introvert. She has a love-hate relationship with makeup, which I can relate to. Michelle played piano since she was four but quit when she turned twelve. Michelle played volleyball for her high school all four years and has been playing since fifth grade. She loves animals and her favorites are puppies and bunnies. When she was young she had a small dog that had passed away but she does not have any pets at the moment.

Asian people are under-represented in America. There isn’t very many of them in sports. Only 1.9% of people in the National Football League(NFL) are Asian. Only 2.1% of people in Major League Baseball( MLB) are Asian. Worst of all Asians only make up .2% of the National Basketball Association(NBA). Asians are even underrepresented in pop culture. White actors often play the roles of Asians in movies. In the movie Ghost in a Shell The main character Motoko Kusanagi was played by Scarlett Johansson. In the movie Star Trek Into Darkness, the main character Khan Noonien Singh was played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Asians aren’t just underrepresented in Hollywood, they are also underrepresented on television. The television series Fresh Off the Boat is the first prime-time sitcom, in 20 years since All-American girl by Margaret Cho, to feature an Asian American cast. In the United States, we have more than 50 million Asians but they are criminally underrepresented in sports and pop culture. Many Asian kids grow up and don’t have many famous people of their same race to look up to. These kids go through their whole life with nobody to look up to.

Ann Lee was born on February 29, 1736. There is not much account on her childhood, therefore, it is hard to depict if her childhood had any influence on her later, more known life. She exhibited religion and living in Manchester, England accounted for the moral decay of it. She sought spiritual refuge and ended up finding the Shaking Quakers, a religious society. This group would express their sins, dance, sing, violently shake, and shout. The Shakers were disruptive to peace, and Ann herself was jailed. During imprisonment, she had a lot of visions and spiritual contributions and “by a special manifestation of divine light the present testimony of salvation and eternal life was fully revealed to her," she became the leader or “mother” of the

Anna May Wong was a Chinese American born actress. She was the first to be considered as Chinese American Hollywood movie star, additionally, she also was the first Chinese American actress to gain an international recognition. Throughout her successful movie career in Hollywood and international recognition, she had discriminated in her early career. She had launched her career in acting at age of 14, she had appeared in the film, The Red Lantern as an extra. At age of 17, she landed her first leading role in the film in The Toll of the Sea.

directors have stated that they cannot well-finance their film if the name of their leading actor is not mainstream name (Kim). White Americans during this time too, probably believed that if Asians were casted in the film, it would not be as good as they did view Asians as inferior in every way including in the performing arts. Even when Asians actors were casted to play Asian roles, Asian Americans would go out of their way not to watch. David Henry Hwang, who would later go on to write his own version of Flower Drum Song, said as a young man growing up in the sixties, watching how Asian characters were featured made him feel “icky”. All the Asian characters that he saw were either portrayed in an unrealistic or comical way or as a character that was dependent on the leading white character (Hwang). It made it hard for Asian Americans to look to media for role models when they were hardly ever represented and represented in inhumane ways.

There were many acting idols in the 1920's that left their mark. If it weren't for those actors and actresses there wouldn't be great movie stars today. There's this one actress that made a mark at young age in the acting industry and he name is Anna May Wong. Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star. Wong was not supposed to make it in the acting field. Anna's father didn’t want her to act he wanted he to focus on her school work because he didn’t want her to get her hopes up because many women her race do not get acting careers. Anna didn't let this get her down, in fact she let this encourage her. Anna begged directors to give her roles. Her dad friend helped her get one of her first acting roles. Sooner after

However, their acting careers are quite different; therefore, I will explore how in Hollywood film industry there is still a strong color bias. First of all, I will give an introduction about how skin color has being given privileges within Afro-American community, and then I will analyze how this affects on Hollywood film

Despite the fact that Asian Americans have been in Hollywood for decades, there are very few positive representations of them in film. More often than not, they’ve been depicted as stereotypical caricatures, and more specifically, as foreigners who can’t speak grammatically correct English. Moreover, the negative representations of Asian Americans in film has perpetuated certain misconceptions about their culture. Chan is Missing (1982) calls for more genuine representations of Asian American identities through its cast of complex characters and defiance of Asian stereotypes. The film also urges its viewers to critically think about their own notions of identity through the use of several recurring themes and filmmaking techniques.

Anna May Wong was born on January 3, 1905 in Los Angeles, California. She was the first Chinese American movie star. She started her actress career at the age of eleven. She began to skip Chinese

As a result of the white heteropatriarchy prevailing over the United States, each minority American undergoes a unique struggle to establish an individual racial identity. Minorities define themselves in relation to their races based on differentiating qualities such as ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. Two documentary films that star minority figures and describe how race shaped these figures’ stories are American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee and O.J.: Made In America, directed by Ezra Edelman. These films differ in their content and structure because the former shares a positive story about a Chinese-American woman’s rise to success as an activist, whereas the latter explains the harrowing background and circumstances that corrupted a successful African-American male athlete. Grace Lee Boggs presents a confounding example of racial identity in that she aligns herself closely with black issues rather than Chinese-American or female causes. The articles “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882-1924” by Erika Lee and “When Whiteness Feminizes...: Some Consequences of a Supplementary Logic” by Rey Chow offer historical context surrounding Boggs’s identity by clarifying that Boggs emerged after the height of anti-Asian immigration policies and of white feminist theory. Unlike Grace Lee Boggs’ subconscious distancing from identifying as a Chinese-American woman, O.J. Simpson intentionally

Asian American actors and actresses are portrayed in Hollywood movies as always being the silent and yielding foreign victims to social injustice and prejudice. Whether or not these depictions are true, they are nonetheless stereotypes that Hollywood producers have come up with. According to the US Census in the year 2000, Asian Americans make up 4.2% of the entire American population, and knowing that most Asian Americans live on the west and east coast of the United States, many Americans living in central parts of this country have not really been exposed to any Asian Americans. Because of this fact, it is highly probable that most Americans get their exposure to the Asian American lifestyle only through television and movies. Even if