How do the complex dynamics among racial groups and the tensions from societal systems contribute to discrimination and marginalization of Asian Americans in film?
As a society, we can trace back instances of racism towards Asian Americans from as early as the gold rush. Westernized society surmounting unfavorable and damaging stereotypes towards Asian Americans, and how these stereotypes harm them in terms of discrimination and marginalization. I am going to be focusing this research around a popular film titled “Gook”, a film that highlights the struggles of predominately African American and Asian American neighborhood. This work gives their audience insight to the class struggle that African Americans and Asian Americans face, and how these struggles and hierarchies of race that arose from western colonialism affect interactions between these two groups. I will address how factors such as socioeconomic status, disasters, and the representation of Asian Americans in film all stem from the expectation of what it means to be “American” that creates such oppression and these real-world ideations ultimately shape the way society views Asian Americans in film.
In shining a light on this issue of how Asian Americans and African Americans are almost “pitted” against each other due to our rigid class system that is only favorable to those that are male and white, I believe its important to look back at how history has defined Asian Americans, and the stereotypes that arose as a response to crises in society, and how this might contribute to Asian Americans plight as “forever foreigners”. The history of associating Asia-ness with disease is a pattern that our society quickly saw reemerge with the start of the pandemic. Our society was quick to see how anti-Asian sentiment spread as a result of COVID-19. The virus was named “the China Virus” and over 90 percent of Asian Americans in the United States felt that they were discriminated against because of their race according to study by the Shakespeare Association.[1] In previous pandemics like the Yellow Fever outbreak, Asian Americans were blamed and accused of eating “vermin” which associated them with being unhygienic and at fault for the disease, even though in Asian culture face masks were in regular use before the COVID-19 pandemic as used if a person felt unwell as courtesy to others in Asian society. This hesitation and hostility can be explained through the racial triangulation theory which will be explained further in this argument. “It follows that when this second, insider-outsider dimension is salient, as it is when foreign pathogens strike, Asian Americans and Latinos will be vulnerable to scapegoating from both whites and African Americans”
This discrimination, and marginalization of Asian Americans’ is not solely rooted in disease, it’s only the most recent evolution of it. through the film “Gook”, you can see how this contempt and discrimination injects itself into crises like the murder of Rodney King in the 90’s. of Asian Americans stems from other institutional problems. One of these issues ta — talk about how Asian Americans were only given “feminine jobs” leading them to be in lower income areas, as well as viewed as less dominant. Racial Triangulation theory can be used to help explain this inter racial conflict between groups. This theory posits that inequality operates along two hierarchies, one demarcating socioeconomic status and one marking distance from a prototypical American”[2] . An example of this seen in the film “Gook”, is when Daniel was helping a customer, who was African American, and after he told her the price she proceeded to say “you people always tryin’ to rip us off” and called Daniel a “damn chink”. Tensions in the film were also present with Kamilla’s brother and Eli, to the point where Kamilla sadly lost her life from the conflict Eli and Kamilla’s older brother took part in. Hate between these groups stems from a much larger institutional problem in America, a white America. Hostility and distancing from the pandemic and other primes such as the Rodney King murder, really show how racial violence and trauma can seep into interracial interactions between groups such as Asian Americans and African Americans. The film highlights this triangulation of social issues perfectly, by not only highlighting the injustice of Rodney King’s murder, but also how this violence is turned into scapegoating other communities, at no fault of the communities that are marginalized because of these systems. Systems that pit others against each other in the hopes in achieving a level of “whiteness”, a system wrapped in oppression from inherently institutional racist ideals. “Gook” champions at showing how strains between “othered” groups are fostered and reflect the mainstream ideals, such as white supremacy, and how this can cause marginalized groups to turn inward and possess hostility to other groups. The film “Gook” also provides important historical context for this inter-minority animosity between Asian Americans and African Americans in the late 90’s in California, which was facing a large economic disparities and heightened job competition and conflict between Asian and African Americans.[3] Coupled with changing demographics and a higher influx of immigrations, especially Latino and Asian Americans in California, this led to African Americans feeling that their communities were being exploited, because most Asian Americans were excluded from “mainstream professional, administrative, and managerial occupations which were usually dominated by Anglo- Americans”[4], Like we see in “Gook” Asian Americans were often limited to opening businesses in inner-cities, which undermined African Americans communities.
When looking at how these tensions translate into film, it’s important to look at the kind of roles Asian Americans have been given in Hollywood and how the roles themselves sometimes contribute or reinforce stereotypes. Media itself plays a massive role in how society views masculinity, and tends to embody hegemonic masculinity. Films especially have been a key factor in how mainstream media and Hollywood outlets marginalize Asian American men through roles that are often stereotypical, have role limitations, or have a lack of representation all together. When taking a look at the history of masculinity of Asian Americans in film, Asian men have been feminized and stereotyped in the mainstream media. For example, 20th century films focused roles for Asian men that were limited to martial arts experts, elderly sages, sideshow nerds, and dangerous foreigners. Broken down further, the racialized meaning that “Gook” possesses, holds a “sense of time, war, of history of violence” …..”a slur that articulates histories of imperial aggression and violence.. which performs a complicated function of legitimizing relations of conquest and domination”.[5] With this quote it’s important to realize how modern film and media influence how we view each other in the world. Through the feminization and “Orientalist” framing of Asian Americans in film, this only perpetuates stereotypes of Asian Americans and complies levels of marginalization onto them through the triangulation theory.
A way that “Gook” transverses the idea of femininity in film in association with Asian Americans, is through toughness through soft masculinity. This counterargument to stereotypical views of Asian American’s can be seen in each Daniel and Eli. Looking at Daniel, he appears to exemplify the trauma and damage that Asian Americans are exposed to “through the ways that hegemonic masculinity is performed and the maturity that is demonstrated through the acceptance of soft masculinity”[6] Eli, who handles his day to day life with this soft masculinity and almost fatherly role to Kamilla actively transverses the typical Hollywood role of Asian Americans as the passive ‘foreigners.’ Here especially in this movie, Eli is an established member of the community, who is managing a family store passed down to him and his brother, he is committed to keeping his family’s shoe store open till the end. One detail to note on this topic as well on a broader level, is that the author of “Gook” made sure to create characters that were not either bad nor good. The author created characters possessed a layered personality of good and bad, instead of the oversimplified stereotypes used on Asian and African Americans. For example, the older Korean man who owns the convivence store may first come off as prejudiced towards Black customers, but he is also shown possessing good qualities throughout the movie.[7] This detail adds a dynamic to each character and allows them to be deeply examined as a human being, not as their race.
Overall, the film “Gook” focused on a perspective into a topic not explored in most modern media, and did so in a way that transverses old stereotypes of Asian and African Americans, while highlighting a traumatic event in American society, the brutal murder of Rodney King and the tensions and outrage that arose from it, and allowed the audience to really analyze the racial tensions and their causes from underneath every character. The inner hierarchies of race in America have created tensions between marginalized groups at no fault of the groups themselves. The image of whiteness and the closeness to whiteness ultimately drives these tensions, as seen in this film analyzed in this medium. As a society, it’s important for everyone to have equal space and consideration, and through media representation of these problems thanks to “Gook”, maybe our society can finally peel back the layers to this marinization and oppression.
Daniels, Chelsea, Paul DiMaggio, G. Cristina Mora, and Hana Shepherd. “Has Pandemic Threat Stoked Xenophobia? How Covid‐19 Influences California Voters’ Attitudes toward Diversity and Immigration*.” Sociological Forum 36, no. 4 (2021): 889–915. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12750.
Hur, David. 2020. “Diasporic Ethnopoetics through “Han-Gook”: An Inquiry into Korean American Technicians of the Enigmatic.” Order №28095001, University of California, Santa Barbara. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/diasporic-ethnopoetics-through-han-gook-inquiry/docview/2457928902/se-2?accountid=14244.
Joubin, Alexa. “The Roots of Anti-Asian Racism in the U.S.: The Pandemic …” Global Security Review 2020, 2020. https://shakespeareassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2020Winter_Joubin-1.pdf.
Park, Junghyuk Davis. “Reframing Masculinity through Independent Cinema: Portrayals of Asian American Masculinity in Spa Night, the Tiger Hunter, and Gook.” Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences 18, no. 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5070/l618154797.
Robinson, Chauncey K. “‘Gook’: The Not-so-Black-and-White Race Dynamics of La Riots.” People’s World, August 17, 2017. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/gook-the-not-so-black-and-white-race-dynamics-of-la-riots/.
Yamazato, Akiko, “Interminority Relations in the Early 1990s in California: Conflicts among
African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans” (2003). Dissertations, Theses, and
Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1539626388. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-xg7z-ed68
[1] Alexa Alice Joubin, “The Roots of Anti-Asian Racism in the U.S: The Pandemic and ‘Yellow Peril”, Global Security Review 2020 Winter Issue Vol, 15 (2020)
[2] Chelsea Daniels, Paul DiMaggio, Cristina Mora, Hana Shepherd, “Has Pandemic Threat Stoked Xenophobia? How COVID-19 Influenes California Voters’Attitudes towards Diversity and Immigration”, National Library of Medicine,(2021)
[3] Akiko Yamazato, “Interminority Relations in the Early 1990s in California: Conflicts among African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans”, College of William and Mary — Arts and Sciences (2003), pg 3
[4] Akiko Yamazato, “Interminority Relations in the Early 1990s in California: Conflicts among African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans”, College of William and Mary — Arts and Sciences (2003), pg 10
[5] David Hur,”Diasporic Ethnopoetics Through ‘Han Gook’: An Inquiry into Korean American Technicians of the Enigmatic” ProQuest Dissertation (2020)
[6] Junghyuk David Park, “Reframing Masculinity through Independent Cinema: Portrayals of Asian American Masculinity in Spa Night, The Tiger Hunter, and Gook” ALEPH (2021)
[7] Chauncey Robinson, “Gook” The not-so-black-and-white race dynamics of LA riots”, People’s World (2017)
