I found Han’s discussion of ImaginAsian TV quite interesting, as I had never heard of the channel before. (Though I am familiar with its newer iteration as Mnet America!) With the little information I now have, I can safely say ImaginAsian TV sounded like a hot mess. Much like Han discusses, the channel’s attempt to appeal to an imagined pan-Asian audience was their largest pitfall, when in reality, heterogeneous and “unique aspects of immigrant culture, history, and experience shape and define the formation of different Asian American identities in the United States” (278). As an Asian American myself, as much as there exists a certain affinity between those in the Asian American population, there will always be subtle divides marked by language and culture. We may all celebrate the identity of being “Asian American,” and yet we enjoy different foods and cultural customs, all while speaking in different tongues. And this perhaps creates one of the largest conundrums for many of us—the feeling of isolation among a population that is supposedly close to home.
I would also like to take a moment to discuss the problematics of featuring almost exclusively East Asian media, despite marketing as a pan-Asian brand. The long domination of East Asian cultural products not only in the West, but in other parts of Asia, has contributed to tensions within the Asian diaspora. Colorism, classism, and toxic nationalism is abound in Asia, manifested through beauty standards, social hierarchies, and cultural dominance, among other things. The Southeast Asian erasure (as well as Central, Northern, and so on) that is further perpetuated by the media feeds into this, leading to a sense of imposed and internalized inferiority. This erasure, in tandem with a simultaneous universalized image of “Asian,” normalizes the Asian face and experience as exclusively East Asian. When in reality, even those within the same ethnicity have wildly different experiences based on skin tone and class alone. In my view, ImaginAsian TV fell because of its commitment to appeal to as many people as possible—including those who were non-Asian. In attempting to reach the largest population, it adopted the most dominant forms of Asian media, which were of course East Asian.
Han’s article was published in 2018. Within the past several years, Asian representation has accelerated even more quickly, and yet we still see the same issues arise. More recent, mainstream representations such as Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-chi have also failed to do achieve proper representation. They both feature a cast of predominantly East Asian descent, despite the fact that CRA takes place in a multiethnic Southeast Asia. Anecdotally, in my 20 years living in the United States, I have yet to see myself represented on screen in Western mainstream media.
Lastly, I do want to touch on something that Esposito mentions. In giving context for her discussion of Ugly Betty, Esposito quotes Beltrán in saying that “media representations of the Latina body thus form a symbolic battleground upon which the ambivalent place of Latinos and Latinas in U.S. society is acted out” (526). In considering the representation of racial and ethnic bodies in the media, I posit that social media fills in gaps that the mainstream media creates. It is not difficult to find social media accounts and figures who champion their cultural backgrounds in one way or another, and the landscape is far more diverse than in traditional media. The ways in which these users relay and display their bodies and experiences are also shaping discourse on race and ethnicity in the US. Even more interestingly, many stars who began on social media are now entering mainstream celebrity spaces, suggesting that we will slowly see a broadening in diversity in the industry. I would be curious to see how much more representation expands—not only in terms or race and ethnicity, but in religion and other forms of self.
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