prRace & Film
A History of Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander Characters in Disney Films
From “Lady and the Tramp” to “Shang-Chi”, and whether or not we should trust Disney with responsibly representing APIDA characters in film. A critical look:
With Disney’s recently released trailer for the live-action Mulan remake and the announcement of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the conversation surrounding the persistent issue of Asian American mainstream representation seems to have finally reached a sense of triumph and finality. Cries of “it’s finally happening!” resonate deeply within a community in which not much good has happened regarding their presence in big-budget films. It makes sense that this fervor of APIDA representation goes hand-in-hand with Disney productions. After all, The Walt Disney Studios is essentially synonymous with American mainstream film due to its casual near-monopoly over family entertainment.
Mulan and Shang-Chi bring a cause to celebrate, but also reason to look back on Disney’s patterns of representation as the company continues to appeal to more diverse audiences.
Here is a timeline of the times Disney depicted APIDA characters in animation or live-action along with my thoughts on each example. At the end of this timeline, I connect the many dots into recurring patterns and present my open-ended conclusions regarding Disney and the future of minority representation in the mainstream film industry.
Notes: I will only be covering APIDA characters from Disney major motion pictures with a wide theatrical release, meaning this list will exclude television shows, direct-to-video sequels, web series, and short films (sorry Bao). Furthermore, if I didn’t include a specific APIDA character, it’s either because I didn’t watch the film or I forgot about them because the list of movies Disney produced and distributed is so damn long. Finally, unless specified all mentions of “Disney” refer to Walt Disney Studios for convenience's sake. In reality, the following films were produced by different companies including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm, all of which operate under Walt Disney Studios which in turn operates under The Walt Disney Company.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Silver Age (1950–1968)
The Silver Age of Disney animation followed the wartime era, a relatively short filmmaking period that included propaganda films with some of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ worst portrayals of Asians on-screen. Many of Disney’s most timeless films emerged from the Silver Age, as well as their most racist moments. Case in point:
Si and Am, the Siamese Cats — Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Disney’s racist animal phase comes first.
The Siamese cats Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp check off everything on the list: slanted eyes, stereotypical accent, gong sound upon the characters’ arrival, etc.
It’s bad. Disney recognizes this too, for they’re scrapping the Siamese cats and their song entirely from the live-action Lady and the Tramp remake set to be released later this year.
Mowgli — The Jungle Book (1967)
The Jungle Book is based on the stories of the same name by English author Rudyard Kipling, who was also notorious for being a racist jingoist. The animated film does a good job of scrubbing Kipling’s imperialist tendencies with the family-friendly branding Disney would become known for.
The film centers around Mowgli, a child raised in the Indian jungle by wolves. There’s honestly not much to talk about here other than how King Louie skirts dangerously close to racial stereotyping of Black Americans. Mowgli is an Indian boy who, for the most part, acts how a kid is expected to act: jovial, carefree, and unhygienic.
Shanti is technically the second Indian character here but her role is so minor beyond seducing Mowgli that it’s not worth discussing. “Shanti” isn’t even specified as her name until the direct-to-video sequel released almost 40 years later.
The Bronze Age (1970–1988)
Also known as the Dark Age, the Bronze Age was Disney’s dustpan of trial and error filmmaking following the death of its founder Walt Disney. Some of the films from this period have managed to climb just high enough to reach the venerable status of “underrated” (particularly, The Black Cauldron), but fewer people treasure them in the same regard as the Silver Age or Renaissance films. Perhaps that’s why some of the racist moments here are often overlooked as well.
Shun Gon — The Aristocats (1970)
This was the second time Disney wrote racism against Asians into their films using cats.
Shun Gon is one of the alley cat band members from The Aristocats. He has a funny accent voiced by a white actor, sings about fortune cookies, and plays the piano with chopsticks.
The Disney Renaissance (1989–1999)
Most American millennials associate Disney and childhood with the animated films of this era. I’m going to be discussing the following two examples in more detail since they not only feature Asian characters but are also based in Asian settings. As a result, you cannot discuss the characters without also covering the context of the settings these films are trying to recreate. The first of these two films is….
Aladdin (1992)
I was originally not going to include Aladdin here because this film is set in the Middle East and is based on a folktale of (loosely) Middle Eastern origin. Middle Eastern should not be confused with South Asian. By this logic, Aladdin is not set in a South Asian setting and subsequently does not feature APIDA characters. The filmmakers didn’t seem to care all that much though.
Aladdin represents a common conflation between different geographical cultures in South and West Asia. The story takes place in Agrabah, an anagram of Baghdad and a fictional city that real Americans are okay with bombing. It’s a fantastical imagining of a Middle Eastern landscape with a smorgasbord of stereotypes including nonsensical “Arabic” text and lazy depictions of characters.
Despite being set in the Middle East, the film’s setting pulls much cultural and architectural inspiration from India (ex. the Sultan’s palace in the film, which houses a tiger named Rajah, is undoubtedly based on the Taj Mahal in India). As a result, the film and its characters don’t fully constitute either the Middle East or South Asia; it is an aesthetic and characteristic squashing of these two regions and their respective cultures. And so I decided to include Aladdin in this APIDA timeline since the filmmakers were clearly informed by Indian culture.
The documentary film Reel Bad Arabs (based on the book of the same name by Jack Shaheen) does an amazing job of unveiling the insidious ways Hollywood vilifies Arabs and Aladdin is up there in the list. The documentary takes particular issue with the opening musical lines of the song “Arabian Nights” from the original cinematic release: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face / It’s barbaric, but hey it’s home”. It is one aspect of the film that recycles tired, degrading stereotypes of Arabs.
The scimitar-wielding, lascivious Arab brute is a recurring image in Aladdin and a characterization not too removed from the demeaning portrayal of Arabs as unemotive, bomb-wielding terrorists. These are issues within the film that were addressed by Arab Americans at the time of its release, not solely as part of a critical retrospective today.
The racial coding furthers itself with the “bad” Arabs speaking in thick, foreign accents while Aladdin and Jasmine speak in standard American English. Aladdin the character was also modeled after Tom Cruise and Jasmine after Jennifer Connelly. A lot of Anglo-American leanings here to put it lightly.
One can argue that these character decisions were partly necessary because Disney films are tailored for child-friendly mass appeal. Furthermore, it’s hard to criticize this film and drive the points home when the first sequence that usually comes to mind when talking about Aladdin is this:
Aladdin is complicated by its critical and commercial acclaim despite its generally regressive portrayal of Arabs. It’s the only Disney film featuring “Middle Eastern” heroes, and Jasmine to this day is the only “Middle Eastern” Disney princess. That is the unpleasant side of flawed minority representation in film: it’s all we have so it’s the only thing we can claim as our own despite its issues.
I’ll discuss the main characters under the context of the Middle Eastern-South Asian conflation more with the 2019 live-action remake. That remake reignited this conversation and once again raises the question, what’s more important:
1) fighting a multinational film corporation driven by mass appeal and profit to responsibly represent a culture or stay away from portraying these stories all together, or
2) supporting efforts from said corporation for the joy of seeing yourself on screen and in the hopes of increased efforts for representation in the future?
At the time of writing this, the Aladdin remake is the third highest-grossing film of 2019, so audiences seem to be leaning towards the latter priority.
Mulan (1998)
The original Mulan is the film that 99% of the general Disneyland-going populace thinks of when someone utters the words “Disney” and “Asian” in the same sentence.
Audiences tend to look back on Mulan as a much better film than it actually was, along with some other films produced during the Disney Renaissance (Pocohantas is among my most-disliked Disney films). These animated features based on stories from non-white cultures always leave something to be desired. As with Aladdin, the racial overtones in Mulan are hard to ignore.
Mulan is based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, a warrior who disguised herself as a man to take her father’s place in the army. This being a Disney animation, the story now includes musical numbers, a love interest, and a talking animal companion.
Depending on who you ask, Mushu is either the best or worst part of the movie. Reading in a larger context, Mushu is little more than a predictable move by post-Aladdin Disney in which nearly every animated film needed to have a comic relief sidekick voiced by a comedic actor. None of these attempts, Mushu included, have come close to replicating Robin Williams' amazing voice work as the Genie.
The inclusion of Mushu also always strikes a chord of tonal dissonance to me and detracts from the setting. Mulan is reflective of Disney’s larger desire during the Renaissance to tell more complex narratives, sometimes with dark themes or images. These were not the first Disney films to deal with death, violence, and spirituality, but they were among the first in its line to tackle topics such as race relations and gender norms. Part of this effort meant pulling from more diverse sources for stories other than European folktales. I consider Mulan to be among the more mature films of this period.
I always find the inclusion of Mushu detrimental to the film when placed adjacent to the heavy-handed scenes like this:
The Disney family-friendly branding will always win over historical and cultural authenticity in animation.
But enough about Mushu and creative liberties. Like Aladdin, Mulan has also experienced its fair share of criticisms for resorting to reductive stereotypes when portraying the culture it is trying to represent. The film also implements a strange amount of Japanese motifs that border on Orientalism and imply Asian “sameness”. It also uses more subtle racial coding to portray the characters. The dark-skinned, yellow-eyed Huns stand in direct contrast to the pale-skinned Mulan. Interestingly, Mulan also has lighter skin and rounder eyes than any of the other characters in the film.
I should also mention that this film wasn’t received all that warmly in China. Audiences abroad complained that Disney’s characterization of Mulan was too different from the hero of the Chinese legend. Those criticisms and a poorly scheduled release date led to a box office flop in China. I am not pointing this out to indicate that we should take the word of international audiences as gospel, especially since the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans are drastically different from each other. But China is one of the most lucrative overseas audiences and Disney ironically failed to earn a profit there with a story based on Chinese folklore.
If it sounds like I’m panning this film, I am not. I like “Reflections”. “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is a classic song. The mountain scene sans Mushu is great. And I appreciate that Asian voice actors were used for Mulan and Li Shang, among many other characters.
Mulan’s legacy to me is similar to Aladdin’s, meaning it’s also complicated. Problematic aspects aside, it is the only Disney film that East Asian American audiences can claim as their own, and Mulan is the only East Asian Disney princess. A certain push and pull split these films between joy and deep cultural discomfort. It can be hard to criticize Mulan too harshly and disavow it because, well, it’s all we got. The same question I asked with Aladdin applies here, but most of my East Asian friends I’ve talked to love this film anyway so it is what it is I guess (*insert shrug emoji*).
Disney branches out (1999–2010)
Disney Renaissance fatigue settled in by the turn of the millennium, and audiences grew weary of animated musicals with grand narratives based on preexisting historical tales. As a result, Disney began taking more creative risks with areas they previously unexplored like PG-13 live-action films.
For animation, this was another awkward middle phase in which many Disney Studios films were generally ignored and then considered underrated some years later (anyone here remember Treasure Planet?) The result is an interesting mix of complex narratives and portrayals of Asian characters.
Lilo & Nani — Lilo & Stitch (2004)
This is where the term “Asian” starts becoming insufficient.
Lilo & Stitch partly focuses on the relationship between Lilo and Nani, two sisters of indigenous Hawaiian descent, as they fight against the government’s threats to separate them following their parents’ death. The indigenous Hawaiians are the Aboriginal Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants. It is irresponsible to classify them under the catch-all term “Asian” due to historically harmful conflations between East Asian and indigenous Hawaiian culture. Placing Hawaiians under “Asian” is a form of erasure of their culture, identity, and struggles under US imperialism. It is more appropriate to use the term “Pacific Islander” here (the ‘PI” in “APIDA”).
Back to Disney…
I consider Lilo & Stitch to be surprisingly among the more radical films within the Disney animated filmography. Lilo and Nani are under constant threat of the government tearing apart what remains of their family. Nani works at a white tourist trap. Nani sings to Lilo a cultural song originating from the indigenous Hawaiians’ struggle when the two are about to be separated.
Nothing in this film goes too deep but these sequences are all reflective of a rapidly changing Hawaii, which has been at the receiving end of US imperialism and commercialism at the expense of the indigenous population for the last century. These issues persist today with the indigenous Hawaiians’ protests against the construction of a large telescope on culturally significant land in Manua Kau. It may not have been the movie’s intention, but the familial theme of Lilo & Stitch applied to indigenous protagonists set in a commercialized Hawaii feels revolutionary.
Part of it might have been intentional at one point but, unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to dilute it. A deleted scene from the movie illustrates the racism exhibited by the white tourists towards Lilo and by extension the indigenous population. I wish the filmmakers went through with this one.
Still, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that this is a story told by white screenwriters and directors. The writing and animation team did their research in Kaua’i before production, but I wonder if this actually constitutes a sufficient form of APIDA representation. The Hawaiian voice actors helped rewrite some of the dialogue to implement correct colloquialisms and slang, but at that point why not include Pacific Islanders in the writing process or pre-production?
Of all the Disney’s attempts to portray non-Western cultures so far, this one seems like the most appreciative and responsibly done. But they are still based on outsider perspectives to craft a story for mass appeal. Another question and food for thought: should the ultimate goal for representation in film be to have more APIDA writers and directors in charge of telling their own stories?
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking too hard here. This ultimately is a story about an alien dog-looking thing running amok anyways.
Sao Feng and the Chinese pirates — Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
Clearly, you’ve never been to Singapore. — Jack Sparrow
Looking back, the fact that there was even a third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, let alone a fifth now, is nothing short of a miracle. The first in the series produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Curse of the Black Pearl, was a critical and commercial success despite being a pirates film based on a Disneyland ride, two things that were unanimously considered corporate “absolutely-nots” up to that point. It’s still one of my favorite movies of all time. The sequels are a bit rough around the edges though to put it lightly.
The third film, At World’s End, somehow has both too much and not enough going on. A ton of special effects and new characters with a nonsensical sequence of events resembling a plot haphazardly linking them together. You’d be hard-pressed to remember most of what happened by the end, which is how I almost forgot that some of the new characters here include Sao Feng and his pirate crew.
I admittedly do not know much about Chinese pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy to fairly judge this scene as an accurate depiction of them or not. But regardless, the film uses common shorthands that make their foreignness and standoffishness obvious: yellow peril-era hairstyles, blank facial expressions next replaced only by menacing glares, and exotic-looking outfits.
I can’t make a definitive judgment on how period-correct the aesthetics are here, but the efforts to effectively otherize the Chinese characters should not go unnoticed. Watching Sao Feng force himself onto Elizabeth Swan will also always be uncomfortable to watch.
Pixar rules animation (1995–2011)
For over a decade, Disney’s animated films were caught in a tug-of-war between the in-house Walt Disney Animation Studios and the independent Pixar studios (which was eventually bought by Disney in 2006). Pixar almost always won this contest critically and commercially speaking.
Pixar generally sticks to their guns with stories centered around white people or racially ambiguous humanoids with a single exception. One interesting example here of an Asian character that poses further questions on the future of APIDA film representation.
Russell — Up (2009)
Up ranks in the top echelon of Pixar films. People (me) still cannot watch the opening montage today without tearing up.
My friend described Russell as “one of the first completely unproblematic depictions of an Asian character by Disney.” I guess that’s true; it’s hard to do anything offensive with a character with facial features that are mostly racially ambiguous and whose race isn’t definitively revealed until the end of the film.
That’s a cause for celebration for a lot of Asian American audiences. Russell isn’t portrayed with any demeaning stereotypes about Asians like the films of previous eras. He also isn’t defined by otherness or seen as a foreign presence. He’s a cute, upstanding all-American kid who just happens to be Asian in this story.
Russell is voiced by Japanese American voice actor Jordan Nagai. This is the animation equivalent of colorblind casting. Is that the ultimate goal for APIDA representation in film? For Asian characters to occupy space just as naturally as white characters would?
I’m not sure about Russell’s impact in the grand scheme of things, but there’s one significant contribution he made to the culture. He gave Asian Boy Scouts around the world the easiest last-minute Halloween costume ever. Thanks, Russell. I owe you for 2014 and 2015.
Disney acquisitions: Marvel & Lucasfilm (2009–present)
Around the turn of the decade, Disney’s next big move seemed to be completely conquering the entertainment world. They acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009 following the unexpectedly massive success of the first Iron Man film (probably The Walt Disney Company’s best decision ever). Then, Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and subsequently announced a brand new Star Wars trilogy that would take place after the original three movies.
Disney owns FAR more than just these two subsidiaries, but Marvel and Lucasfilm are now responsible for producing a major fraction of the highest-grossing movies of all time. They also both have dedicated areas in Disneyland now, meaning they’ve become fully integrated with the Disney brand. I have a plethora of live-action characters to cover here:
Various side characters — Marvel Cinematic Universe
Dr. Helen Cho — Avengers: Age of Ultron (2013)
A relatively minor role aside from helping create Ultron. Dr. Cho is close enough with the Avengers to hang with them. In terms of agency, she doesn’t have much since she spends most of her screentime brainwashed by Ultron. And then, Ultron shoots her.
Wong — Doctor Strange (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Wong holds the distinction of being the only Asian on the poster for Avengers: Infinity War. So technically, he’s also the only official Asian Avenger as of right now (more on Shang-Chi later).
Wong was originally not included in the draft for Doctor Strange until some changes were made from his comic book characterization to avoid the more “dated” stereotypes. He was more a manservant in the comics while in this film he displays more agency, as much as a sidekick can anyways. He is still partly defined by his foreignness, as seen when Strange delivers a flurry of Western pop culture references against deaf ears. Wong is a decent though mostly uninteresting character throughout his appearances.
I might as well talk about the Tilda Swinton/Ancient One controversy while I’m discussing Doctor Strange. Co-writer C. Robert Cargill compared the Ancient One to the Kobayashi Maru, an incredibly nerdy way of saying that casting for this role is an unwinnable situation. The Ancient One in the comics is a racist Asian stereotype, but casting a non-Asian actor would cause accusations of whitewashing.
Sure enough, those accusations came with the news of Swinton as the character, and director Scott Derickson interestingly described the decision as “the lesser of two evils, but still an evil”. Furthermore, acknowledging that the Ancient One is Tibetan would open up a huge can of worms with the Tibetan sovereignty debate at the risk of the Chinese government not allowing the film to be distributed in China. The Ancient One was a dilemma with no ideal solution, but this is what happens when you adapt material that hasn’t aged well at all.
Ned Leeds - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Ned Leeds was originally an unlikeable white dude in the comics. The Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man movies made the smart move of turning Ned into a likable sidekick of Pacific Islander descent.
Jacob Batalon plays Ned in the two Marvel/Sony Spider-Man films with some cameos in the Avengers films. His casting parallels Russell from Up in that it seemed from a basis of colorblindness. Ned isn’t defined by his race or Pacific Islander heritage. He is first and foremost Peter Parker’s best friend and seat in the chair when Spider-Man is off saving the city. I don’t have much to discuss beyond that and the question I raised with Russell and Up.
Various alien side characters — Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Drax — Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (2017), Avengers: Infinty War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Mantis — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Minn-erva — Captain Marvel (2019)
I’m lumping the three of these characters together because they are played by APIDA actors, but in-universe they’re from humanoid extraterrestrial species so technically they are not APIDA. Half-Filipino wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista plays Drax in an unexpectedly star-making role. Half-Korean actor Pom Klementieff plays the slightly head-in-the-clouds character Mantis, though Marvel might be underutilizing her acting abilities here. Gemma Chan of Crazy Rich Asians fame plays Minn-erva in Captain Marvel.
Casting people of color as aliens has a catch-22 in that it can easily turn from colorblind casting to using their “exotic-ness” to emphasize the aliens’ otherness. Thankfully, these three characters reflect more of the former than the latter.
Rose Tico — Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Oh, Rose. We didn’t deserve you.
Like the Asian-but-not-Asian alien side characters of the Marvel universe, technically race doesn’t apply to Rose but for a different reason. Earth doesn’t exist in the galaxy far far away. Therefore, our perceptions of race and ethnicity wouldn’t apply to the human characters here when things like Jabba the Hutt exist. This does not mean that the Star Wars extraterrestrials have been free from racial coding in their creation and depiction. And despite being a technically race-less universe, most of the humans in the Star Wars universe have been portrayed by white actors anyway. Weird…
Kelly Marie Tran is a Vietnamese-American actor and the first woman of color, let alone an Asian American actor, to play a leading character in a Star Wars film. Discussions on her character Rose Tico mostly fall under one of two evaluations that are reflective of the deeply polarizing reaction to The Last Jedi in general: 1) a fun, well-written character who exhibits “vulnerability, wit, strength, and compassion” 2) the worst Star Wars character since Jar Jar Binks. Oh boy.
Rose’s motivations for being a part of the Resistance are made clear from the get-go. She loses her sister at the beginning of the film fighting the First Order in an amazing scene. She then explains later that she was once a child slave exploited for war profiteering, which introduced a political layer to Star Wars previously unexplored. Some people didn’t like that too much, but I thought it was cool.
Criticisms of Rose generally center around her having an unlikeable personality and/or a weak character arc. Without getting too involved in the messy critics versus audiences brawl surrounding The Last Jedi, I do agree that Rose and Finn’s side plot wasn’t executed very well.
But I primarily wanted to mention Rose in this context not for her character arc but because of the disgusting backlash and racist vitriol against Kelly Marie Tran. This is the obstacle that many trailblazing POC artists have to deal with in an industry that largely underrepresents them. Rose illustrates much of the progress in APIDA film representation over the last decade, and its continued struggles for the foreseeable future.
The Disney “Neo-Renaissance” (2010–2018)
Tangled and Frozen finally set Disney Animation Studios apart from Pixar and re-established it as a critical and commercial powerhouse in animated films. This recent, CGI-focused era contains a few noteworthy characters to discuss. But first, a digression into techno-orientalism:
Hiro Hamada, Tadashi Hamada & Go Go Tomoga — Big Hero 6 (2014)
Big Hero 6 was the first film produced by an in-house Disney studio that featured Marvel Comics characters, firmly solidifying the associations between the parent company and its subsidiary.
The film is set in the futuristic city of “San Fransokyo”, a portmanteau of San Francisco and Tokyo. As the recombinant name suggests, the film’s cityscape features a great number of East Asian aesthetics blanketed onto a Western city. It is a Japanified version of San Francisco that was conceived and designed specifically for this film.
The use of an East Asian city to depict a futuristic setting is a common trope in science fiction that really ramped up during the ’80s. This was around the time when companies like Sony from Toyko began to push to the forefront of the global electronics industry. It is no coincidence that Tokyo or to a lesser extent Seoul, Shanghai, or Hong Kong is typically used as a setting or template for the futuristic metropolis. The Asian cityscape became a visual shorthand for hyper-technological development at the expense of humanity.
Cyberpunk especially loves using it as the backdrop to its dystopian plot elements. Blade Runner is the first example that comes to mind here, for it arguably started the trend of correlating the “unstable future” with “Japan” in film. Such films in this subgenre are either set in Asian cities or portray the future of the West as a conflation with the East. The setting subsequently serves as a visual realization of the West’s growing anxiety with Japan/East Asia surpassing and controlling Western-dominated domains of technology and science.
This is an aspect of techno-orientalism in film. Koichi Iwabuchi, a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, explains it in his essay “‘Soft’ Nationalism and Narcissism: Japanese Popular Culture Goes Global.”
Against the rise of Japanese economic and techno-cultural power, a condescending discourse emerged in the West — what Morley and Robins (1995) call “techno-Orientalism”…According to their argument, Japan has become an emergent Other of the late twentieth century against which the West can project its own superiority. Unlike the premodern Other, however, Japan has achieved a high degree of modernization and technological sophistication. Japan has come to exist within the Western political and cultural unconscious as a figure of danger, and it has done so because it has destabilized the neat correlation between West/East and modern/premodern.’ (Morley and Robins 1995, 160). The West cannot maintain its presumption of technological and material superiority against this hi-tech Orient, as ‘Japan can no longer be handled simply as an imitator or mimic of Western modernity” (Morley and Robins 1995, 173). — Iwabuchi, 2002, pg. 449–450
It can be summarized as the fear of Asians becoming our future tech overlords, a concern through which the West can maintain its perceived moral superiority by depicting a de-humanized version of Japan soaked in technology. In science fiction, techno-orientalism translates to dystopian depictions of technological development within the cities and settings. Asian cultures are treated as a kind of raw exotic material to augment fantastical imaginings of the future. At the same time, Asian citizens are often imagined as unfeeling aliens, cyborgs, or replicants.
These stereotypes serve to both express and assuage Western anxieties about Asia’s growing cultural influence and economic dominance. Even some Japanese films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell draw influence from the aesthetics of techno-orientalism, though they treat the setting with various degrees of nuance and self-awareness.
Big Hero 6 gets its looks from techno-orientalism, but it is different from all the aforementioned films because it adopts a mostly positive outlook on the West-East technological collision. San Fransokyo takes the ultra-modern city template of San Francisco and merges it with traditional Japanese imagery (Shinto architecture, Japanese scripts, traditional architecture lanterns, etc) along with Shibuyaesque neon signage. Wide shots of the cityscape with a tone of wonder and excitement in innovation indicate that the techno-orientalist imagery is a good development in this case. Robotics is cool! The “nerds” are the heroes!
The plot does contain the usual cyberpunk theme of “technology that falls into the wrong hands is dangerous,” but it’s all confined within the simplistic dichotomy of heroes versus villains: Hiro Hamada and the Big Hero 6 team versus Callaghan. Good technology versus bad technology. It’s like a Disney-fied version of techno-orientalism.
Hiro Hamada is a half-Japanese robotics prodigy who is too cool for school until he’s not. His older brother Tadashi Hamada gets killed off at the beginning of the film as a slight twist to the “dead parents” Disney trope.
Hiro and Tadashi thrive in their technologically advanced, cultural hybrid city as robotics experts. The technology they produce, namely the hero suits and Baymax, is meant to help people. It can be twisted for nefarious purposes but their inventions and programming are not directly contributing to dystopian chaos. Dangerous uses of technology are instead tied to individual flaws such as revenge (Hiro and Callaghan) or arrogance (Alistair Kree). It’s techno-orientalism minus the deeper societal and racial implications and postmodern anxieties.
Go Go Tomoga is a side hero in the team whose character at times reminds me of the Major from Ghost in the Shell: relatively emotionless, prefers actions over words, and has little characterization or backstory. It works for the Major since the conflict of her identity as a cyborg is a thematic element in Ghost in the Shell, but with Go Go and the other side heroes, it leaves a little to be desired. Go Go’s character design is also the most cyborg-y of the hero team to me. Disney was shooting for the “radical female cyborg” role here that reverses traditional gender roles, an archetype best exemplified by the Major.
Compare that to Honey Lemon’s hero design which uses a purse as a weapon while Go Go shreds on wheels. Honey Lemon is a more traditional configuration of feminity in a postmodern setting, and Go Go subverts it. Without much of a backstory, neither of them transcend too far from being flat characters that are only here to support Hiro.
With all that said, Big Hero 6 is probably my favorite film of the recent Disney animations. Hiro is a well-developed, APIDA protagonist free of stereotypes. Tadashi is a good role model and provides character motivation, and Go Go is the coolest hero even though she’s kind of just there. I appreciate that these characters’ ethnicities were unchanged from the source material, but the film strays so far from the original comic anyways that it’s not really worth discussing beyond that.
I’m more interested in how the Asian characters fit within their East-Western city created just for this film. Techno-orientalism has certainly informed the aesthetics of this film but they’re meant to inspire awe, not anxiety. San Fransokyo is a mostly playful imagining of the future city even if does reinforce some negative aspects of orientalism. It is a welcome change from the usual “Asian = bad” subtext that usually accompanies science fiction films. I wouldn’t really call this active progressivism in APIDA representation, however. To me, it reads more like Disney-brand innocence rather than a deliberately progressive agenda, nothing that goes beyond kiddie pool deep.
Regardless, one should not ignore where this cinematic and literary aesthetic comes from and how it is reflective of larger anxieties against Asians. An examined look at this film trend is important since a lot of the rhetoric permeates into real-world news coverage of Asia as well.
Is the postmodern era actually going to be the Pacific era? I, for one, welcome our new Asian overlords.
Moana (2016)
Moana was the fifth time or so Disney produced a film about an indigenous population (Pocohantas, The Emperor’s New Groove, Brother Bear, Lilo & Stitch). It was Disney Studio’s first to center around an entirely Polynesian cast of characters, but not from any specific real-world population. The film pulls from several South Pacific cultures to form its single, unnamed society.
Moana represents a slightly new change of pace for Disney Studios while maintaining most of their usual tendencies. Like Lilo & Stitch, the filmmakers conducted direct research with the population depicted and used consultants to ensure respectful portrayals of the culture.
Seasoned Disney animation directors John Musker and Ron Clements recruited Pacific Islander experts to form the Oceanic Story Trust. This group of narrative advisors was actually able to make some concrete changes to the film. For example, the Trust responded negatively to the initial character design for Maui, a bald demigod before being redesigned to have more hair to the Trust’s liking. They insisted on a multitude of changes in their feedback from small aesthetics to song lyrics. Clearly, Disney gave deliberate attention to cultural details here that were mostly absent in previous animated films centered around people of color.
The protagonist Moana is a Polynesian princess with curly hair that exhibits more agency than the standard Disney hero or princess. Compared to someone like Pocahantas, she isn’t so strictly bound to fate and displays more ambitions and swashbuckling courage. Moana is also clearly defined by her independence whether in her sailing ambitions or lack of a love interest.
Moana and its protagonist have generally been recognized as providing good examples of responsible representation. However, one should always recognize that Disney strives for universality with these films to achieve mass appeal, even if they are based on indigenous cultures. As I pointed out earlier, Disney co-opted and cherry-picked from the numerous, varied identities of the Pacific Islanders to create its colorful Polynesian fantasy. Naturally, this led to some stereotyping and cliches, such as portraying the Kokomora tribe as essentially coconut Minions and depicting Maui as an obese stereotype of Polynesians.
It’s been well publicized that Disney used the Oceanic Story Trust to pursue authenticity, but some critics have noted a lack of transparency behind this creative process. One can only wonder if achieving this so-called “stamp of authenticity” was just as much a marketing tool as it was a creative process.
Some of the questions I previously raised with Disney animated films apply to Moana as well. With Aladdin and Mulan I asked if it is okay to consume these forms of problematic representation under the argument that they encourage more diversity in film in the long run. Defenders of Moana accuse critics of nit-picking (ex. the comments on this article judging Moana’s cultural authenticity) and not realizing that these films are ultimately beneficial despite imperfect cultural depictions.
As with Lilo & Stitch, I also ask here if Moana and other films like it actually constitute a sufficient form of APIDA representation. Disney did their homework and the film is all the better because of it, but some argue that real authenticity is nowhere to be found. The filmmakers used the Trust during production but didn't actually have any Pacific Islanders in the writers’ room. It’s worth noting here that New Zealand director Taiki Waititi wrote the early draft for Moana, but screenwriter Jared Bush took over and most of it was not used.
Guam-based Pacific Islander scholar Vicente Diaz is one of the most vocal critics of the film. In his critique “Don’t Swallow (or be Swallowed by) Disney’s ‘Culturally Authenticated Moana”, he writes:
We know, then, that colonial predators like Disney will do what it must to take what it wants. While some Islanders have resigned themselves to capitulating, or mitigating some of the potential damage, and others find opportunity, handsome consultant fees and commissions, fame, fortune and glory, a growing number of us strive to see past the veil of enchantment and not participate in self-destruction. Far from seeing Disney as a gold standard for powerful storytelling, we are beginning to see the insidiousness of swallowing too much colonial toxicity, of ingesting too irradiated marine food, of uncritical buying into Disney’s happy fantasies. Why in the world would we now wish Disneyfied culture to swallow the rest of the world? — Diaz, 2016
That “powerful storytelling” Disney has perfected is what ultimately downplays the cultural significance of this film. Moana is little more than a Disney princess movie that follows the tried-and-true formula: protagonist loses family member, goes on a quest/journey/voyage, sings their version of the “I Want” song, beats ridiculous odds to save the day, and realizes who they truly are. This is first and foremost just another family-friendly, feel-good flick but with Polynesian culture used as ornamentations. Some, like Diaz, even accuse it of promoting a colonial nostalgic vision of noble primitivism. I strongly recommend reading his full essay on Moana and its ties to Disney’s larger hypocrisies when depicting minorities and colonized people.
Moana is not the product of Pacific Islanders’ efforts to tell their story but from white writers using (some would say “exploiting”) more diverse sources to expand the Disney narrative. A lot of audiences are totally fine with that on the reasoning that it still promotes diversity and encourages research into the cultures depicted and their plights.
In the words of Isha Aran, “do we embrace Moana, knowing that to some extent, it renders Pasifika culture a novelty, conveniently leaving out any implications of colonialism? Do we lambaste it even though it’s a rare opportunity to be brown and be celebrated, and this is probably the best treatment of Pasifika people by white storytellers so far?”
Where do you stand on this debate?
Remakes (2016–present)
The public consensus on the Disney live-action remakes seems to flip-flop with every new trailer. On any given day, Twitter is filled with complaints about Disney resorting to producing soulless cash grabs of classic stories. But, when a new trailer drops all that seems to be forgotten and the fervor generally associated with Disney films builds up again. That is, up until the film is released and it turns out to be not much more than a soulless cash grab.
Interestingly, these live-action remakes are not attempting to replicate the animated originals scene for scene. The side-agenda here includes aiming to rectify the aspects of the older films that haven’t aged particularly well (see: Lady and the Tramp Siamese cats). As a result, the remakes have added subplots or revised character inclusions depending on the film. It’s a noble effort on paper, but more often than not it reads as poorly integrated progressivism that sticks out to audiences and critics badly because of inevitable comparisons to the animated originals.
The conversation with the remakes started focusing not on the films’ stories but their peripheries, namely the casting choices for its Asian and South Asian characters. And Disney casting for minorities always holds the potential to open a huge can of worms.
Mowgli — The Jungle Book (2016)
There is not a whole lot to discuss here that wasn’t already covered with the original The Jungle Book. Mowgli is played by Indian-American actor Neel Sethi, who did a good job of acting next to empty space filled later with CGI environments and animals.
Aladdin (2019)
Unlike The Jungle Book remake, a lot can be discussed here.
Characters as beloved as Aladdin and Jasmine needed to be cast perfectly or else face the wrath of fans. More than 2,000 actors read for these two roles and the firestorm grew hotter and hotter with each rumor. Some corners of Twitter pointed out the problems with the casting rumors and related them to the complications of conflating different cultures. Casting calls by Disney clearly stated that Aladdin and Jasmine are “Middle Eastern” characters, but many people suggested for South Asian actors to play Aladdin including Riz Ahmed and Dev Patel (and, hilariously, even Zayn Malik at one point).
The controversy grew further when reports emerged of Disney and director Guy Ritchie experiencing trouble finding someone of “Middle Eastern or Indian descent” in their 20s who could sing to play Aladdin. Some people went up-in-arms and pointed out the existence of Bollywood, and once again we have a conflation between Middle Eastern and South Asian from both sides: the filmmakers and the audiences.
Disney decided to go the newcomer route for casting the two protagonists, and Canadian actor Mena Massoud was eventually announced to play Aladdin. The news of Massoud’s casting was mostly well-received with some cultural pride thrown about. He was born in Cairo, Egypt and can sing well. He’s also a firm defender of the original Aladdin:
[Aridi] Did you ever have any thoughts about the backlash it received for the original “Arabian Nights” lyrics and its portrayal of the characters?
[Massoud] No. Growing up in my family, we just celebrated that film because it was one of the few that had any representation for us. It’s very pretentious to start nit-picking things when there’s not a lot of representation out there anyway. You have to start somewhere. — Aridi, 2019, The New York Times
Bad representation is better than no representation I guess?
Jasmine is reimagined as an ambitious character who aspires to succeed her father as the sultan of Agrabah. British actor Naomi Scott was cast to play Jasmine 2.0, an announcement that was not so well received. Controversy arose over Scott, who is of mixed English and Gujarat Indian descent, and her “fair and lovely” casting reflective of colorism. Some also criticized the continued conflation of Middle Eastern and South Asian although this issue was brought up less frequently.
With live-action casting, the criticism that film tends to treat brown people as interchangeable applies here more than with the 1992 animated film. Many were angry, but some said it was fine since the animated film was so conflated anyway.
Disney was even accused of trying to turn this (loosely) Middle Eastern story into a Bollywood film-copy but worse. After watching Will Smith’s musical number, I would have to mostly agree with that one.
This along with the other points of discussion is why Aladdin (1982) and Aladdin (2019) are worth discussing in the context of APIDA characters in Disney. An analysis of these films helps recognize the potential dangers of mindlessly mixing two distinct cultures into the pretense of one.
The future (2020 — )
Mulan (2020)
The upcoming Mulan film is Disney’s most drastic departure from the animated source material of all the remakes so far. It’s still a cash grab in the way that all corporate movies are, but maybe not so soulless this time?
For one, Mushu is gone. Shang-Li was dropped too, as well as all the songs including the fan favorites. The result is a grittier film that is being marketed as closer to the the Chinese legend. Wikipedia calls Mulan (1998) an “animated musical action adventure film” while Mulan (2020) is a “war period drama film.” Alright.
Reactions to these story decisions have been all over the place among diehard Disney fans.
The potential casting choices leading up to the official announcement of the actors were also intensely scrutinized. Hollywood has a bad history of white-washing Asian stories, and it didn’t seem too farfetched to some people that Mulan, the most East Asian-centric of all the Disney films, would fall victim as well. The deepest audience fear seemed to be the white-washing of the character Mulan, a fear so great that there was even widely circulated online petition advocating against it.
But then, the actor to play Mulan was announced, and she was (un)surprisingly Asian. Chinese-American actor Liu Yifui is set to play the titular character. A win for diversity, I guess?
The casting anxieties behind Mulan represent to me a stronger sense of antipathy against whitewashing and push for diverse casting. Coming on the heels of big-budget films with controversial white leads in Asian settings like Ghost in the Shell (2017) and The Great Wall, the push to get Mulan right felt especially strong. It feels like excessively celebratory hoopla at times. There’s a lot of ludicrousness in the notion that Mulan would not be Asian when narratively and thematically the film wouldn’t make sense if she wasn’t. I can chalk most of this up to fighting for a non-issue.
The Mulan remake is not only a clear attempt to respect the original legend, but also to appease Chinese audiences who complained about the animated original. Disney definitely does not want another overseas flop with this new film. As I mentioned earlier with Doctor Strange and the animated Mulan, China is one of the largest international box office draws, and multinational film corporations like Disney need to keep that in mind to even be able to distribute their films there, let alone attract audiences. Disney seems to be doing mostly well here this time around.
I like some things about the movie though based on what we’ve seen so far. I like the full cast. There are some really gorgeous shots in the trailer as well. Yifui looks like Mulan perfectly translated to live-action.
I’m going to try to watch this one with an open mind. As someone who doesn’t hold the original Mulan as sacred compared to the Disney diehards, the changes in this remake grab my curiosities. How much will Disney change at the risk of alienating fans of the original animation? Is this a clear sign of progress for APIDA representation in film?
I’m mostly curious to see if Mulan in the remake can also cut her hair in a single stroke as she did in the animated movie.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Remember when Black Panther came out and seemingly every Asian American who saw that film said something along the lines of, “When will there be an Asian Black Panther?” First of all, sit down. Secondly, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is supposedly the answer.
Shang-Chi was announced as part of Marvel’s Phase 4 movie lineup at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. To me, this upcoming film is the product of three things: 1) Guardians of the Galaxy’s wide success 2) Black Panther’s critical success and enormous commercial success 3) a general uprise of successful films starring Asian and Asian American actors, most notably Crazy Rich Asians.
Guardians of the Galaxy proved that the most obscure, C-list superheroes in the Marvel canon can still be used to produce wildly successful and beloved movies. Even Iron Man was a relatively unfamiliar character to most before the release of the first film. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the average filmgoing audience who has even heard of the character Shang-Chi before the first rumors of Marvel producing this movie.
Black Panther proved that superhero films catered to minority representation with an emphasis on cultural heritage can also succeed beyond niche audiences. Diversity with authentic storytelling sells, and Black Panther became much more than just a comic book movie to black Americans. It currently sits as the 11th highest-grossing movie of all time.
Lastly, films like Crazy Rich Asians proved that movies purely starring Asians in lead roles can be wide-reaching critical and commercial successes. It’s antithetical to the common Hollywood truism that films need a bankable (usually white) star for a film to be profitable.
Marvel is confident that an Asian, C-list hero can recapture the lighting in a bottle that was Black Panther in the midst of a wave of successful Asian-led films. With those three things in mind, it was probably easy for the bigwigs at Disney and Marvel to give the green light for this project.
Canadian actor Simu Liu of Kim’s Convenience-fame was cast to play the titular character. Speak things into existence I suppose.
Awkwafina is also attached in an unspecified starring role. I can’t say I’m particularly excited; my opinion on her goes up and down every day. Meanwhile, Tony Leung is playing the Mandarin (the real one this time) in his first Hollywood film. Exciting!
Shang-Chi will undoubtedly harken back to the martial arts films produced by the late Bruce Lee whether it intends to or not. Nearly every martial arts film produced after 1980 was at least partly influenced by Bruce Lee’s industry-changing films. Lee mostly disproved the prevailing stereotype of Asian men as sexually frustrated foreigners. But his films also introduced a new stereotype: the martial arts master. We have seen this play out time and time again since then, and Asian actors have been actively resisting this typecasting. Yet, Marvel chose a hero literally called the “Master of Kung-Fu”. Artist Paul Gulacy even drew direct influence from Bruce Lee and the 70's kung-fu craze when drawing the original Shang-Chi comic.
My second observation is again fixated with the complicated power of China’s increasingly lucrative market. It’s nothing new for Marvel, for the MCU has performed particularly well in China and their pandering is extremely obvious. I do not think it is a coincidence that Disney’s largest movies involving East Asians center around China or Chinese characters. Disney & Marvel are clearly betting on China as a large, receptive audience that will make up the majority of Shang-Chi’s international box office draw.
Some projections are already predicting a Chinese box office smash hit, but Marvel missed a step here. Turns out that in the comics, Shang-Chi is the son of Fu Manchu, the incredibly racist, yellow peril incarnate that Marvel stopped referencing only because they lost the rights to the character name. Some of the Chinese public find Shang-Chi the character and Shang-Chi the film insulting as a result. As with Doctor Strange, this is what happens when you adapt material that hasn’t aged well at all.
To be fair regarding both of my nitpicks, there were not a lot of options Marvel could pull out from the small grab bag of Asian comic book characters:
- Jubliee, Sunfire, and Psylocke are all B-list heroes defined only by their proximity to the X-Men
- Namor overlaps too much with DC’s Aquaman
- Silk is a Korean-American superhero, but her movie will never happen as long as Tom Holland is Spider-Man in the MCU (update: oh)
There are some other characters too who are not as well known or established as Shang-Chi, and Marvel isn’t going to create an entirely new intellectual property just for this movie. Shang-Chi it is then.
This is the challenge that the filmmakers will hopefully recognize and face head-on: taking a character rooted in stereotypical Orientalism and depict him with cultural pride while recognizing international appeal. Let’s see how it goes.
*Honorable Mention* Gilgamesh — The Eternals (2021)
Don Lee, also known as the guy that bare-knuckled Korean zombies on the train headed to Busan, was cast in Marvel’s upcoming ensemble flick The Eternals. He’s a Korean American actor set to play a character named Gilgamesh.
I do not know much about this film or the Eternals characters beyond that.
Connecting the dots + Conclusions
You cannot talk about mainstream media representation without talking about film, and you cannot talk about film representation without partly discussing Disney, especially since they now seem to own nearly every person in the film industry and their mother. This multinational corporation effectively became the gatekeeper of family entertainment and the leader of the feel-good animated film industry. To understand Disney’s new goal of representing APIDA people also involves acknowledging their ugly past.
It’s also important to recognize and deconstruct the Disney “brand” with its animated films and business decisions in general. Like every Fortune400 corporation in capitalism, Disney is in it for the money. As a result, all their animated films are written and produced for mass appeal even if that means drastically straying from the original source materials.
Disney is in the business of the “cinema of assurance” according to Tufts University professor Susan J. Napier. In her essay comparing Disney’s animated works to those of Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki, Napier states:
…Disney products and projects, which distort history and culture, function as mass cultural legitimations of an essentially US worldview, one that is upbeat and centered on individual action and initiative, and — while it acknowledges Otherness — often ends up erasing difference through its joyously inclusive finales — Napier, 2001, pg. 469
That is why Tarzan ends with Jane joining Tarzan, The Little Mermaid with the union of mermaid and human, and Aladdin with a group-hug to name a few examples. Disney films do bring up important social issues such as racial tension, technological hegemony, and environmental damage. However, those issues are almost always undermined with a comforting fantasy in which all problems are solved and harmony restored under the aegis of US ideology and values. That’s why all their animated films have such whimsical, feel-good storylines and sequences that are only occasionally divided by fleeting moments of tragedy. A clear, unrealistic divide between “good people” and “bad people” drives these film’s conflict. Or when Disney does try to portray some ambiguity it results in Pocahantas with its misinformed “Savages” song that equates the colonized to the colonizers. This is the “cinema of assurance”: great for families, but not grounded in any sort of actual reality.
The “cinema of assurance” is not inherently bad, but it does mean that Disney is not here to produce a faithful retelling of the legend of Hua Mulan or to recognize that the Middle East and South Asia are two distinct geographical regions with different cultures. They are in this business primarily for mass appeal and profit.
However, Disney and its subsidiaries also understand that diversity and authenticity sells. It is in their best interest to produce more films centered around people of color and to do so under the impression of responsible representation. That’s why consultants were used for Lilo & Stitch and Moana, but no Pacific Islanders were actually in the writers’ room or director’s chair for these movies.
The Walt Disney Company is also exceptional at vertical integration with its four main business segments, which is why Lilo & Stitch was spun off into a TV series, princess dolls are mass-produced, the voice actor for Moana promoted Disney’s Hawaiian resort, Galaxy’s Edge and Marvel Land were built in Disneyland, and so on. Nothing is ever done purely for representation in this company, or in a capitalist entertainment industry in general.
Throughout this essay are a few recurring themes and issues with Disney’s APIDA characters including the construction of otherness, problematic legacies, the conflation of different cultures, and the Chinese box office.
Otherness is easily constructed using stereotypes as seen with Lady and the Tramp and The Aristocats. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End also uses common signs of foreignness to depict the Chinese pirates as bad pirates who are especially bad. Furthermore, films like Mulan and Aladdin resort to colorism and proximity to Western traits as visual shorthands for good versus evil (the more Western traits exhibited = a good person). These last two examples are flawed films that try to showcase diversity in a mostly undiverse filmography, but their legacies within the communities they represent remain intact because of how limited they are in frequency.
Aladdin is the best example of Disney conflating different cultures with potentially detrimental outcomes. The harmful message communicated with its careless mixing of Middle Eastern and South Asian is that “brown people are interchangeable”, and that’s dangerous in a society where people can’t tell Sikhs apart from Muslims.
There are more examples of cultural conflation that prove that Disney is not in the business of truly authentic storytelling. Mulan’s aesthetic is a conflation of different ancient Chinese dynasties and some Japanese motifs, and Moana’s cast of characters and setting conflate several South Pacific cultures to form a single, unnamed Polynesian society. Conflation is the key that gives these films their fantastical tones and looks, so don’t expect an accurate depiction of any singular APIDA culture under Disney.
Disney also indubitably panders to some degree to Chinese policies and audiences with its biggest films. I mentioned this throughout the essay at the risk of falling for techno-orientalist fears that Asia will become our future economic rulers, but China is already dominating the international box office and is expected to completely surpass the US in revenue by 2020. This means that upcoming services from Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, and others likely will have to increasingly rely on international markets to continue challenging streaming’s dominance over entertainment (or launch their own streaming services). Some of Disney’s APIDA-centered films seem like deliberate efforts to appeal to the Chinese market. Others, like Doctor Strange, avoid political connotations that would risk the film being banned in China. Again, it’s all for profit.
I also raised three key questions in this essay that tackles how APIDA film representation could develop within Disney and beyond. That’s not to imply that these are mutually exclusive developments, but conversations usually tend to stick to one question at a time. The questions are:
What’s more important: 1) fighting a multinational film corporation driven by mass appeal and profit to responsibly represent a culture or stay away from portraying these stories all together, or 2) supporting efforts from said corporation for the joy of seeing yourself on screen and in the hopes of increased efforts for representation in the future?
Here’s a never-ending debate. Those on the first side (like Vicente Diaz) would argue that the other side is too complacent with consuming the Disney machine, while those in the second (like Mena Massoud) criticize the first for being too nitpicky and ungrateful. This dialogue occurs time and time again but it most notably gained prominence with Aladdin, Mulan, and Moana.
Most people I’ve talked to would rather have some mainstream APIDA representation, albeit inaccurate and problematic, over none at all. It can seem like a bit of a defeatist attitude, but Mulan is still a beloved movie among East Asian Americans. I still can’t get completely into it.
Should the ultimate goal for representation in film be to have more APIDA writers and directors in charge of telling their own stories?
I raised this question with Lilo & Stitch and Moana because the cultures they focused on were both more thoroughly researched compared to Aladdin and Mulan. It’s neat that these two films center around APIDA characters, but wouldn’t you ideally wish for APIDA writers, producers, and directors to tell these stories?
To some people it might not matter, that is if the (white) filmmakers did sufficient research then everything’s good. Others argue that it ultimately constitutes little more than cultural poaching fueled by neoliberal desires to sell and consume minority and colonized cultures. Regardless of which side dominates the conversation, Disney should hire some non-white execs if they are committed to diverse storytelling, just saying…
Is [colorblind casting] the ultimate goal for APIDA representation in film? For Asian characters to occupy space just as naturally as white characters would?
I’m not sure. The debate on this on this one goes way beyond me.
I raised this question with Russell from Up, but it also applies to any APIDA character that was not defined by their race or ethnicity (Ned Leeds, Rose Tico, etc.) A lot of people find it unfair that an APIDA character often has to be tied to some grand, overarching tale or theme connected to their culture or people (Mulan, Shang-Chi, etc.) To them, I guess the goal is to be able to simply exist as characters or actors instead of being seen first as APIDA characters or actors.
The main objective here is to normalize APIDA actors and narratives to achieve an “economy of narrative plenitude” (I wrote a separate essay going into more detail about that). Those are completely understandable goals, but sometimes there is a certain white-striving or white-adjacent rhetoric present that I’m not sure I buy into.
It’s ironic that Disney now aims to “fight” against the APIDA stereotypes it helped reinforce and promulgate in media throughout the 20th century. Celebrating Disney’s strive for diverse storytelling should also include acknowledging their racist past, but close analyses of the company’s practices shouldn’t stop there. Disney has a long trend of racist and sexist depictions of minorities and colonized peoples, and their response to these valid accusations does not seem to be apologizing. Rather, their natural response seems to be continuing to push its storytelling under the image of “cultural authenticity” while subtlely expanding its commercial empire.
I’m also not sure I can ever shake the displeasure of Disney pushing stories about people of color as a company run entirely by white people. The bosses can easily try and shut down or change a project if it’s not up to their ideals (as Michael Eisner almost did with the first Pirates film). You can hire all the APIDA directors, screenwriters, or composers you want, but Disney’s in-house films are all under the oversight of the company’s white bosses. (Marvel and Lucasfilm are also led by white people, Kevin Feige and Kathleen Kennedy respectively)
But Disney is here to stay, and its studios and subsidiaries are dominating the US box office with products that are quickly seen as landmark accomplishments for minority representation. If you are reading this then you are probably at an age when you’re more expected to ethically consume media. Striving to stay away from these kinds of discussions out of fear of “ruining your childhood” is an easy way to continue mindlessly consuming what corporations are producing. But if responsible representation is important to you, you should always ask yourself and others in the community more questions about Disney and the future of APIDA in film.
So, should we trust Disney with responsibly representing APIDA characters in film?
Sources:
Aridi, Sara. “Disney’s Aladdin: Mena Massoud on His Big Break and the Film’s Big Issues — The New York Times.” The New York Times, 26 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/movies/aladdin-mena-massoud.html.
Diaz, Vicente. “Don’t Swallow (or be Swallowed by) Disney’s ‘Culturally Authenticated Moana.’” Indian Country Today Media Network.com 13 Nov. 2016. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
Iwabuchi, Koichi. “‘Soft’ Nationalism and Narcissism: Japanese Popular Culture Goes Global.” Asian Studies Review, vol. 26, no. 4, Dec. 2002, pp. 447–69, doi:10.1080/10357820208713357.
Napier, Susan. “Confronting Master Narratives: History As Vision in Miyazaki Hayao’s Cinema of De-Assurance.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 9, Sept. 2001, doi:10.1215/10679847–9–2–467.
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Directed by Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhaly, performance by Jack Shaheen. Media Education Foundation, 2006
