FRAMING THE FEMININE ORIENTALS: ANALYSIS ON THE

PORTRAYAL ASIAN AND ASIAN-AMERICAN WOMEN IDENTITY IN

THE FILM CRAZY RICH ASIANS

TIGON, JOSHLYN JOY R.

A COMA200a requirement submitted to the faculty of

BA Communication Arts, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

University of the Philippines Mindanao

23 September, 2018
 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

I. Rationale/Background of the Study

Media representation of Asian and Asian-American women has been an

ongoing discussion in the academe ever since the first recorded Western media

exposure of an Asian woman, specifically a Chinese woman named Afong Moy

was brought to New York City in 1834 at age sixteen as an exhibit (Wang, 2012).

The media exposure produced stereotypes on Asian and Asian-American women

as ‘Dragon lady’ (a powerful or threatening image such as femme fatale,

prostitute, manipulative invaders of business in America) and ‘China doll’

(submissive image such as wife, mother, model citizens, invisible most of the

time) which added to the present issue of representation of women in media as a

spectacle to be looked at and being defined solely in terms of sexuality that is

catered for men’s interest, in this case, white men (Mulvey, 1975 as cited by

Chaudhuri, 2006; Tung, 2006; Wang, 2012). All these negative portrayal and

stereotypes of Asians or Asian-Americans or any minority groups could be traced

back to the origin of the cinema (Lu, 2017). Film industry, especially Hollywood

cinema played a huge role in the under-representation and misrepresentation of

Asians or Asian-Americans (Tung, 2006). From these misrepresentations of Asian

and Asian-American women in films emerged an established identification of

Asian and Asian-American stereotypes entitled as the Six faces of Oriental by

Robert Lee. He analyzed and presented six major stereotypes of Asians and
Asian-Americans: pollutant, coolie, deviant, the yellow peril, the gook, and the

model minority, as the predominant themes in films with Asian and Asian-

American characters. These misrepresenting portrayals produced by the media has

became the ‘natural’, the normal image of the said minority group and had a

major effect on the social status of every Asian or Asian-American residing in the

West for it even reached to the point where they were excluded from most facets

of society, including the opportunity to appear on screen (Lu, 2017).

This thesis explores how the identity of Asian and Asian-American

women is framed and portrayed through the female characters in the recently

released film Crazy Rich Asians and how it presented the predominant themes of

stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American females in the Western media. Crazy

Rich Asians, a 2018 released movie adaptation of the New York Times best

selling book by Kevin Kwan, that earned $26.5 million in the US box office on its

first week, has gained the spotlight for being the second movie having an all

Asian cast on the big screen, 25 years after the first produced all asian cast

hollywood film, The Joy Luck Club in 1993. The said film has been deemed the

beacon of representation in Western media by movie critics for countering the

stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American women through a satirical approach. In

line with that, this study will specifically investigate how the film used both

rhetoric and visual rhetoric in breaking the stereotypes of Asian and Asian-

American females, and how this contributed to the movement of modern Asian-

American activists against the lack of diversity in media, and misrepresentation of

minority groups in the West most especially of Asians or Asian-Americans

females (Aayeshah & Finn, 2016).

II. Statement of the Problem

For years now, framing of Asian and Asian-American women in the

Western media has been an issue in the academe. Since early cinema, Asian and

Asian-American women were framed based on the stereotypes that are prominent

in the society—pollutant, coolie, deviant, the yellow peril, the gook, and the

model minority (Lee, 1991). Because of how the media frames Asian and Asian-

American women identity, this lead to exclusion and misrepresentation of Asians

and Asian-Americans females in the film industry. Movements for inclusion of

Asians and Asian-American in all the facets of Western society and accurate

representation in the media has been present since mid-nineteenth century

however just like its cultural predecessor which is the mistreatment of black and

native Americans (Tung, 2006), the issue has been dumped on the side and the

progress of all those movements have been minimal. How media portrays Asian

and Asian-American females since their first exposure in the nineteenth century

and continuously using negative stereotypes that has been widely accepted by the

public as the natural or the normal for the characterization in films is an issue that

is being continuously addressed in the academe.

Despite the efforts, there is still an undeniable difficulty in addressing

these racist misrepresentation and problematic framing of Asian or Asian-

American females in the Western media, specifically in the films. The solution

seems to call for some kind of forced integration of American popular culture in

order to claim visibility. These calls for Asian American representation and

inclusion in the media are certainly important, and they highlight not only the

symbolic importance of the cultural industry but also its economic dimensions;

the paucity of jobs for Asian American actors, directors, writers, and producers

points to a form of employment discrimination that would be actionable in other

fields that cannot claim the invisible hand of “the box office” as an excuse (Byun,

n.d.). A recently released film entitled Crazy Rich Asians with an all Asian cast

gained attention from the general public and is said to be the Asian-American

cinema’s breakthrough for perpetuating a wide discussion on the

misrepresentation and stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American women

especially that it was adapted from a satirical romantic-comedy book. It has been

deemed the beacon of representation in Western media for being the second

Hollywood film having an all Asian cast 25 years after the first film entitled The

Joy Luck Club was released on 1993. This study explores how the film Crazy

Rich Asians framed and portrayed Asian and Asian-American women identity in

the female characters. This study would look closely into the following:

1. How was the rhetoric and visual rhetoric of the film used in framing and

portrayal of Asian and Asian-American women identity in the female

characters of the film?

 2. How was the six faces of Oriental as the predominant themes in Western

media films with Asian characters reflected in the framing of Asian and

Asian-American women identity in the portrayal of female characters?

3. How do these six faces of Oriental present in the film fall into the

stereotype subgroups and affected the identity negotiation through verbal

and nonverbal cues?

III. Objectives of the study

This study aims to:

1. Analyze how the film Crazy Rich Asians framed and portrayed

Asian and Asian-American women identity in the female

characters through verbal and nonverbal cues.

2. Investigate how the rhetoric and visual rhetoric of the film used in

framing and portrayal of Asian and Asian-American women

identity in the female characters of the film.

3. Examine how the six faces of Oriental as the predominant themes

in Western media films with Asian characters reflected in the

framing of Asian and Asian-American women identity in the

portrayal of female characters.

 4. Identify how these six faces of Oriental present in the film fall into

the stereotype subgroups and affected the identity negotiation

through verbal and nonverbal cues

IV. Significance of the Study

This research focuses on the framing and portrayal of Asian and Asian-

American women identity in the female characters in the recently released film

entitled Crazy Rich Asians through verbal and nonverbal cues and how the six

faces of Oriental as the predominant themes in the Western films was reflected in

the film. This is to distinguish whether the predominant themes used in early

cinema is still present in today’s cinema especially in the Western media, this

would help future research related to media framing in the modern Asian-

American cinema. This study also investigates how the said framing affected the

identity negotiation between the characters in the film and the audience through

rhetoric and visual rhetoric, also identifying the identity of Asian and Asian-

American women being negotiated. Since this also studies women situation in the

film industry in the aspect of how Asian and Asian-American women are framed

and portrayed in the media, this could also contribute to the body of knowledge in

gender studies, including on feminism film criticism.

There are ample studies that explored the media representation and

framing of Asians and Asian-Americans especially in the Hollywood cinema from

mid to end of nineteenth century since it was in that period Asians or Asian-

American had a first media exposure in the Western media. These studies

reviewed all the films that had an Asian or Asian-American representation have

arrived to a similar conclusion, that there is indeed racist misrepresentation and

stereotypification of Asians and Asian-Americans in the Western media,

especially in Hollywood films. These racist misrepresentation and stereotypes

even affected Asians and Asian-Americans to the extent of exclusion from

various facets of society not only in the film industry. However, with all these

existing studies regarding media representation of Asians and Asian-Americans,

there are only few researches that focused on the representation of Asian or

Asian-American females, through looking on the negotiation of identity. In most

studies, portrayal of Asian or Asian-American females were briefly discussed, and

most focused on the general stereotypification of the said race on Western media

in early cinema, most in the context of martial arts (Yang, n.d.). There are also

limited studies that used Identity negotiation theory in studying media framing in

films.

V. Scope and Limitations

This study will only focus on analyzing the framing and portrayal of Asian

and Asian-American women identity in the rhetoric and visual rhetoric aspect of

the film, how the filmmaker frames and negotiates the identity of Asian and

Asian-American women through verbal (lines and dialogues) and nonverbal

exchange (nonverbal cues, costume, angle angle of every scenes, of female

characters with another Asian character, with a Non-Asian character, with a group

of Asian characters, and with a group of Non-Asian characters. Scenarios in the

film that doesn’t fall to the following categories are not included in the sampling

design. As this study will also analyze how the six faces of Oriental and which of

the six stereotype identification is presented in the film as the predominant theme

in the Western media, the structure and dimensions established by DeWall,

Altermatt, & Thompson (2005) will also be used in the analysis on the

predominant themes and the identity negotiation process in the film in

consideration of the said stereotypes.

 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Stereotypes are very culture specific. In many cultures, certain groups are

seen as possessing specific, often negative, characteristics. Individuals within

those groups are treated as if these negative stereotypes are true, which is seldom

the case (Kidd, 2015). The concept of the stereotype was developed by Lippman

(1922) to explain how people are influenced by and make sense of mediated

messages. He states that we develop stereotypes as mental maps to help us cope

with the complexity of groups and peoples (Kidd, 2015). In this sense, a

stereotype is actually a neutral system of classification. We establish a system of

classification to be able to contextualize the identity of various groups of people

that is considered neutral because it could be either positive or negative stereotype

of a group, despite in most cases it is negative. The modern definition focuses on

the problems inherent in portraying a co-culture using trite, limited characteristics

(Kidd, 2015) especially in the media. Although stereotyping is inevitable, when

media producers mistakenly attribute characteristics of a minority of a group to

the whole race or subculture, stereotyping becomes problematic. It imposes a lens

on how we should look at the entirety of that specific group of people, it also

dictates their social status and role in the society. Stereotypes usually fail to

reflect the richness of the subculture and ignore the realities from which the
images come. This action can result in social injustices for individuals who make

up that subculture (Cooke-Jackson and Hanson, 2008).

Due to these recurring stereotypes presented in the media, the individuals

that are part of a said specific group do not see themselves, their identity, reflected

in the media. They do not see others like them successfully employed, or having

healthy relationships, or fitting into the majority culture. Lack of representation

coupled with stereotyped images can lead to self-stereotyping and trying to fit into

limited roles instead of exploring the options available. The media are central to

the signs of emergent cultures especially of female individualization producing

the alternative social, cultural and symbolic relations women wish to live within

and define the kind of self they wish to become (Kidd, 2015). This proves that

stereotypes plays a huge role in the identity negotiation process of every

individual.

Identity negotiation, based on Ting-Toomley’s Identity Negotiation

Theory, is the process by which an individual negotiates it’s multifaceted identity

within his/her self and with the society. In the same process, various factors

would affect how one negotiate its identity. One factor is the perceiver’s (society)

assumed perception of an individual’s identity. This could dictate how the

individual would negotiate his/her identity within his/her self, this would greatly

affect one’s self-perception. This could be the reason why the media

representation of asian and asian-aerican women in the western media is still a

recurring issue. For as what this study hypothesizes, the identity negotiation of

Asian and Asian-American women within their selves and with the society is

problematic which lead to the misrepresentation of Asian and Asian-American

women in the media. This misrepresentation and problematic framing of Asian

and Asian-American women identity could be traced back to early cinema.

This misrepresentation and stereotyping of Asian and Asian-American

women in the Western media gave birth to the concept of Eastern Mysticism. The

fantasy towards Eastern mysticism dated back to Afong Moy, the first recorded

Chinese woman in America, who came to New York City in 1834 at age sixteen

as an exhibit. Museums in New York and Brooklyn displayed her on an Oriental

lattice-work chair, wearing a silk gown and four-inch-long slippers on her bound

feet. Audiences watched with fascination as she ate with chopsticks, counted in

Chinese, and did computations on an abacus. A few years later, “P. T. Barnum

brought the second Chinese-woman exhibit, and the circus featuring her attracted

20,000 spectators in only six days” (Prasso, 2005). This extreme difference of the

East from the West finds its way into Hollywood films and exerts a powerful and

lasting effect on social reality. The East continued to be described as Otherness

and opposite to the West. Rather than portraying three-dimensional individuals,

these characters often “manifest prejudice and reinforce bigotry” (Bolante, 2006).

Othering, despite being a theme in continental philosophy, critical theory, and

fields of inquiry influenced by those primarily, the role of othering in

interpretation, in understanding the others and ourselves plays a significant role in

media representation and framing in the Western media, Eastern Mysticism being

one of the manifestations of the Othering.

Too often, “mainstream film and television misrepresent the world they

claim to reflect. Their stories revise history, and rationalize inequities” (Bolante,

2006). One way films and television presents these stereotypes and

misrepresentation is how Hollywood utilizes the prop of dressing to portray to the

audience that women in the East are different or “Other” from the West, which

contributes partially to perpetuate the audience’s stereotypes towards the Eastern

women. In most Hollywood films especially in early cinema, female Asian

characters are always made to wear traditional dresses or any clothing that holds

resemblance to their tradition and culture, and could be easily depicted as far from

the West’s fashion. They present Asian or Asian-American characters as not part

of the norm, as someone who doesn’t originally belong to the group. But the

easiest way to generalize Eastern people, as Wang (2012) stated, was to build

fictional characters of an extreme. Movies and the mass media plays a huge role

in forming Western audience’s worldview by shaping Eastern women’s identities,

and define their roles as extremes – on screen and off. These extreme stereotypes

have lasted even until nowadays, long after the formal or informal contacts

between East and West increased dramatically.

From these framing of Asian and Asian-American women identity as

extremes, Robert G. Lee presented major stereotypes of these women as Six faces

of Oriental, in his book Orientals published in 1999. Oriental, along with Eastern
Mysticism, is a concept and term coined to depict East as the Orient, traditionally

comprising anything that belongs to the Eastern world, in relation to Europe. The

West uses the word or concept Oriental to easily depict anything related to the

East, most especially in Asia, may it be food, clothing, even Asian themselves are

subjected to this term. As Darrell Hamamoto (1994), a communication professor,

wrote: “Asians or Asian-Americans, when represented at all, they exist primarily

for the convenience and benefit of the Euro-American lead players. … Rarely are

the lives of Asian-American characters examined on their own merit, and the

problems they face in daily life are not considered to be intrinsic interest” (Tung,

2006) and that’s where the “Oriental” and even Eastern Mysticism stemmed.

Lee then grouped various stereotypes into six as the most that used in

misrepresentation of Asian and Asian-American in Western media—pollutant,

coolie, deviant, the yellow peril, the gook, and the model minority. According to

Lee, Asian and Asian-American are represented in the Western media as present

in the society but an alien, and is threatening in various aspects, one of those is in

the economic aspect (pollutant), as measly laborers (coolie), deviant especially in

the context of sexual deviance or prostitution because the prostitution is believed

to have started in Chinatowns in the West (deviant), others because of being

oriental, villains and are threats to the family, race, and nation, and is bound of

sado-masochism (the yellow peril), gooks, and as hard-working, law-abiding, but

silent citizens (model minority) (Campbell, 2001 & Ng, 2000). These grouping of

Asian and Asian-American stereotypes in Western media into six has contributed
a lot not only in the studies about Asian and Asian-American media

representation that followed, but also in women studies.

As a matter of fact, from these and other studies on women stereotype, a

study of DeWall, Altermatt, and Thompson (2005) developed a structure of

women stereotypes through subgroups. They stated that “people process a schema

of the stereotype of women that is organized in terms of three major sub groups:

homemaker, professional, and sex object (Deaux, Winton, Crowley, & Lewis,

1985; Eckes, 1994a, 1994b; Six & Eckes, 1991).” And to distinguish these

subgroups from one another, they used agency (power and competence) and

virtue (sexual and moral virtue) as dimensions to look at. They measured the level

of agency and the level or virtue in each subgroup. In our previous study

(Altermatt et al., 2003), we found that professional women were perceived to be

high in agency, homemakers neutral, and sex objects low, while homemakers

were perceived to be high in virtue, professional women neutral, and sex objects

low. This then could greatly affect in the negotiation process of every individual

that is stereotyped. If the media continues on utilizing these problematic

stereotypes in framing and portraying Asian and Asian-American women, and if

every stereotype indicates a level of agency and virtue, this would greatly affect

the identity negotiated by the media. This study focuses on the framing and

portrayal of Asian and Asian-American identity in the female characters of the

film Crazy Rich Asians. Analysis on the framing of Asian and Asian-American
identity would focus on how their identities were negotiated among the characters

and between the audience using Identity Negotiation Theory.

CHAPTER III: THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Perception of one’s self is vital in establishing how an individual or a

group wants to be perceived in the society. It is essential to establish a strong

perception of an individual’s personal identity to be able to deal with one’s other

identities such as cultural and racial identity, and negotiate how the individual

wants to be perceived within the group s/he belongs to and by the outside world.

Thus, this study would look at how the Asian and Asian-American female

characters opposed the racist misrepresentation and stereotypes through the

Identity Negotiation Theory.

Identity Negotiation Theory

The term identity in the Identity Negotiation Theory (INT) refers to an

individual’s multifaceted identities of cultural, ethnic, religious, social class,

gender, sexual orientation, professional, family/relational role, and personal

image(s) based on self-reflection and other categorization social construction

processes. Each individual’s composite identity has group membership, relational

role, and individual self-reflexive implications. Individuals mostly acquired their

composite identity through socio-cultural conditioning process, individual lived

experiences, and the repeated intergroup and interpersonal interaction

experiences. The term negotiation in the INT entails affirming the identities we

want others to recognize in us and ascription of identities we mutually assign to

each other through the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages between the

two or more communicators in maintaining, threatening, or uplifting the various

socio-cultural group based or unique personal-based identity images of the other

in situ (Ting-Toomey, 2015; & Janik, 2017), and in this process perceivers and

targets between the communicators come to agreements regarding the identities

that targets are to assume in the interaction (Swann Jr, 2005).

A related study by Benage, 2011 regarding negotiating online identities in

social media used the Identity Negotiation Theory in investigating the personal

and social identity of the university students that use social media, and how these

students negotiate their personal identity with the perceivers or their audience in a

certain social media platform. As Benage, 2011 stated, “Identity is formed and

negotiated through communication and interaction, so everything that is posed on

a social media page or communicated through a social media medium is a part of

identity and is perpetuated through communication.” Similar with the said study,

this thesis investigates the portrayal of Asian and Asian-American female

characters’ personal, racial, and gender identities and how these identities were

negotiated between the characters and the outside audience of the film (the

perceivers) through the use of the film’s rhetoric and visual rhetoric. Personal
identity is how they view themselves, void of outside relationships to groups or

other people. Racial and gender identity of the characters is how they view their

own race and gender, and how they negotiate both identities with their personal

identities.

CHAPTER IV: METHODOLOGY

This study will analyze the portrayal of Asian and Asian-American female

characters in the film Crazy Rich Asians using a feminist approach, concentrating

on how their portrayal negotiated their personal, racial, and gender identity (as a

woman) and how it countered racist misrepresentation and stereotypes. How the

rhetoric and visual rhetoric of the film was used in breaking the said stereotypes

on Asian and Asian-American women will also be investigated, focusing on the

lines and dialogues of these characters. Along with the analysis on dialogues and

lines of the
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