Stereotypes & Tropes
Steven Yeun and John Cho's filmographies are so distinct, in comparison to their peers and colleagues, because they are so versatile. You could make a claim that some of their earliest roles may have been stereotypical, or at least were based on stereotyped humor. But the sheer range their roles in the the rest of their careers make these blips in otherwise fascinating character choices that often battle stereotypes, explicitly or implicitly.
Throughout this project, I have often cited the effects of the Model Minority, Perpetual Foreigner, and other stereotypes that plague Asian American depictions. In this Sidebar, I wish to outline the meanings, historical emergences, and importance of these enduring stereotypes to this project. These are the images that construct the popular imagination of Asian American actors, and thus, are the expectations that Yeun and Cho face while picking any role and performing these roles. Where the popular imagination of white roles and actors spans across nearly all genres, character types, and personalities, Asian American actors (and other actors of color or visible marginality) have only one or two particular character types embedded onto their body. Yeun and Cho's casting opportunities are limited due to this phenomenon, where their Korean ethnicity and phenotypic features automatically assume certain roles, largely derogatory. Without inventive casting agents and determination on the actors' parts, they may have been relegated to roles as Kung Fu Masters, nerds, or immigrants that take on xenophobic imaginings for the whole of their career.
I find this appendix necessary for the project to define and expand on the terms that are only briefly mentioned in other places and also to characterize that each stereotype - regardless of time of origin or level of harm - arises due to a specific political reason, most often engaging with American narratives of migration and racial difference. These stereotypes are subtle, despite their violence, and are a part of the American subconscious. In discussing each stereotype, I list a 'traditional' version - the one that establishes all other expectations and tropes of the Asian American - and one specific way in which that stereotype has become somewhat co-opted by Asian Americans, although not always in restorative ways.
The Model Minority & YAPpie
The Model Minority and the YAPpie (Young Asian Professional) are two strands in the same cloth. Perhaps the most banal, yet efficiently violent, stereotype used to characterize Asian Americans, these two character types construct Asian Americans in relation to notions of productivity & contributions to American labor. At the same time, they prove to be a convenient weapon for white supremacy. In short, the Model Minority depicts Asian Americans as hard-working, polite, and rising above discrimination and harassment to achieve monetary success. The YAPpie is much in the same vein, yet created by Asian Americans to describe fellow Asian Americans. Therefore, the YAPpie is much more concerned with the internal thoughts and goals of an Asian American, whereas the Model Minority is much more generalizing. The YAPpie is only business and career-focused, with little-to-no interest in much else. The YAPpie is self-centered and shallow.
The concept of the Model Minority took flight in the mid-1960s. In 1965, the Moynihan Report targeted Black 'family values' as the reason for Black racial poverty and related social problems. Also in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed into law, which restored the right to immigrate to the United States for many Asian countries. Laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) & the Immigration Act of 1924 largely banned, or imposed strict quotas, on immigration. The simultaneous debut of the Moynihan Report and the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act set fertile to create binaries between Black and Asian populations in America and to associate harmful characteristics to both of these communities, all in the name of defending whiteness as something to uphold as morally good.
Many scholars accredit William Peterson for popularizing the Model Minority concept in explicit terms. His 1966 NYT article "Success Story, Japanese-American Style; Success Story, Japanese-American Style" cited the Japanese American's hardworking ethos, along with success in assimilation, for their financial upward mobility and relative lack of systemic barriers. While this in itself is essentialist and harmful to Asian Americans, Peterson uses this Model Minority stereotype to characterize Black Americans as lazy and lacking a 'fatherland' home culture. The Moynihan Report uses extremely similar rhetoric and anthropological discourses to shift blame away from systemic issues in the United States and onto Black American's lack of ambition and moral values. Peterson continues, noting that Black Americans have had the most time in America to find success and can only blame themselves now for the lack of it. Obviously, this rhetoric is racist and white supremacist and comes at the expense of Asian Americans and Black Americans.
Peterson's template - acknowledging racism as an individual issue, noting how Asian Americans use their ingrained abilities and cultural ethics to disregard oppression and achieve success through accumulation of wealth, and then positing Asian Americans as the good minority and Black Americans as the bad minority - has remained unchanged since its inception in 1966. The Model Minority has become a set of expectations for the lived reality for Asian Americans across the nation. Due to these expectations that distance Asian Americans from creative work and align them only with efficient labor, Yeun and Cho (like other Asian Americans)m, were discouraged from acting in favor of medical or law work.
Yeun's character, Glenn Rhee, in The Walking Dead was a type of model minority: good-hearted, polite, and proud of his people. While these traits were not necessarily used to the detriment of other groups nor for the erasure of his own problems, Yeun found this creatively restricting anyways, saying he could only ever be "one thing" with Glenn. For Cho, his breakout character of Harold works largely because of the Model Minority. Everything Harold does is funny or amusing because he is expected to be the Model Minority: instead of a hard-worker, he's a lazy stoner. More explicitly, Cho wrote for the L.A. Times in 2020, decrying Asian American harassment in the face of COVID-19 paranoia. Specifically, he writes:
Like fame, the “model minority” myth can provide the illusion of “raceless-ness.” Putting select Asians on a pedestal silences those who question systemic injustice. Our supposed success is used as proof that the system works — and if it doesn’t work for you, it must be your fault.
Never mind that 12% of us are living below the poverty line. The model minority myth helps maintain a status quo that works against people of all colors.
But perhaps the most insidious effect of this myth is that it silences us. It seduces Asian Americans and recruits us to act on its behalf. It converts our parents, who in turn, encourage us to accept it. It makes you feel protected, that you’re passing as one of the good ones.
Yeun and Cho are not ignorant to the harmful consequences of the Model Minority myth or of other stereotypes. Even for characters that do not engage with politics at all, these images and expectations are always present in the American social consciousness, as long as the character (and the actor) is Asian. The YAPpie then presents another challenge - the internalized white gaze within Asian Americans. Popularized in 2018 through the WongFu Youtube Series, the YAPpie is at once symptomatic of a Millennial/Gen-Z apathy, but also deeply entrenched in the ideas that the only way to be a success for an Asian American is to become the Model Minority.
The Perpetual Foreigner & FOBs
Another pair of stereotypes, the Perpetual Foreigner and the FOB (fresh off the boat) depict Asians in America as always immigrants, culturally excluded from America, and not belonging unless proving themselves as worthy of value (by adhering to traits of the Model Minority). The Perpetual Foreigner stereotype depicts Asians in America as constant immigrants: emphasizing issues with assimilation, language, and physical difference. Most often, this stereotype is weaponized through the asking of: “No, but where are you really from?”
The political efficacy of this stereotype lies in its ability to affirm America as a white-state. Frank H. Wu, in his book Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, appears to have coined the term 'perpetual foreigner'. With so much immigration happening in the mid-century and later decades, Asian Americans are a relatively new constituency in America and thus are subject to questions of loyalty, legal citizenship, and familiarity with American culture. These issues are not tackled head on Burning or Columbus, yet without the history of the Perpetual Foreigner stereotype, much of the tensions for these characters would not exist. For example, Jin Lee's questioning of his heritage, family values, and cultural displacement are authentic and unique to his own individuality, but are absolutely exacerbated by questions regarding his foreign-ness. The first time Casey meets Jin, she still asks him whether or not he can speak English and seems surprised by his fluency. This interaction shows just how ingrained the idea that Asians in America do not really belong or are foreign immigrants is, if Casey (characterized as nice, welcoming, and friendly) still feels the need to ask him this question and Jin Lee seems unfazed by it anyways.
The FOB is the new manifestation of this stereotype. Most often used by Asian Americans to describe older generations or perhaps themselves, the FOB has just arrived in the United States. They are characterized with non-normative cultural customs, conservatism, a heavy accent, and a simultaneous desire to keep their culture alive in America and a desire to assimilate. In a media example, the FOB are most often depicted as parents or grandparents that retain their accent, have difficulty relating to American-born people, and only interact with other Asians.
For non-Asian Americans, the FOB is a symbol of immigration and foreign-ness. However, for Asian Americans, it can be a way to protect one's Asian identity and prevent Americanization or a whitewashing of oneself. Writer Louise Hung notes that, while in the past being a FOB was a bad thing, now it is "a reaction against all things “white on the inside.”"
These markers of identity associated with culture and Asian normativity - accents, cultural habits, histories of migration - factor into Yeun and Cho's characters and real-life star personas. They cannot lean too far into being Asian, for they will automatically be seen as a foreign star, not an American one. But should they not mention their Asian identity or habits enough, they may face criticism from the Asian American community itself.
Asian American & Boba Liberals
These two 'stereotypes' - if they can be called that - acknowledge Asian Americans as explicitly political subjects. Unlike the Model Minority or Perpetual Foreigner stereotypes, Asian American and Boba Liberal remove Asian Americans from being described only through the lens of white supremacy.
Now most often used as a neutral term to describe an American citizen/habitant of America from Asian-descent, the term Asian American has specific and radical political meanings. In 1968 at UC-Berkeley, two student activists - Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka - named their activist group the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA). Yen Le Espiritu claims this is the first public use of the term Asian American. In an interview between Espiritu and Ichioka, the political implications of this term was clear from the beginning: “There were so many Asians out there in the political demonstrations but we had no effectiveness. Everyone was lost in the larger rally. We figured that if we rallied behind our own banner, behind an Asian American banner, we would have an effect on the larger public. We could extend the influence beyond ourselves, to other Asian Americans.” (Espiritu 34). Now, Asian American has been neutralized to describe having an objective, ancestral relation to Asia. But, it must be emphasized that Asian American is constructed as a label, not natural nor necessarily intuitive, and a rallying cry to act as a political bloc and recognize our communities ability to advocate for change.
Taken as a noun from the term 'boba liberalism' - a shallow understanding of politics and a focus on short-term, representation-based goals in policy and media - the boba liberal does not have much going on under the surface; just like boba tea, they’re sugary, sweet, and easily digestible. Twitter user diaspora_is_red (now deleted account) coined the term 'boba liberalism' and originally described it as "a type of mainstream liberal Asian-American politics... sweet, not very offensive, but also not that good for you ... it's just empty calories." These shallow goals ignore systemic barriers to reform/activism and take any representative success as meaningful gains for all Asian Americans- when in reality, this is often not the case.
In film and television discussions, the boba liberal is not concerned with the quality of the representation, rather its monetary success and the mere existence of it. Melissa Phruksachart speaks on these issues regarding the films Searching (dir. Aneesh Chaganty, 2018) and Crazy Rich Asians (dir. Jon M. Chu, 2018), which heavily emphasized Asian faces in its marketing but failed to deliver on quality storytelling nor critical commentaries on the lives that Asian / Asian Americans experience.
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