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Re: Harry Potter and the Asian American Image in Media (Score: 1)
by Nagai on Tuesday, August 09 @ 04:11:21 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | I was being a little sarcastic with the Lucy Liu comment, but it looks like J.K. Rowling may have been using Ms. Liu as a basis for the Cho Chang character (the current Charlie's Angels era motif). However, in Hollywood Asian women are almost never paired with Asian males - Caucasian or African descent are the most common. I'm suprised youwould bring this up - this site has a movie review section filled with dipictions of Asian females either falling in love with Caucasian guys and Asian males being either emascualted or evil. Nevertheless, Ms. Rowling doesn't really have to deal with the issue of Asian males as she decided to leave any out of the story in any siginificant role.
Cho's character is a bit of a problem in terms of whether she is considered a positive or negative love interest for Harry. From my take on the depiction, I estimate that Ms. Rowling made Cho superficially interesting to Harry, but in the end was not what he thougth she was and brought nothing but heartache and trouble. The final nail in the casket being her standing by her traitorous friend that betrayed Harry, herself, and all of the other students in the DADA club to Ms. Umbridge and moving on so quickly with little apprehension to another boyfriend after leaving Harry - a duplicitous "yellow cab" of sorts.
Nevertheles, I personally haven't seen any depiction of a universally perfect Asian girl, as the definition of such of thing is wildly different in terms of what that means to a particular person (ex. two extremes - studious, athletic, independant and not afraid to state her own opinions Vs. exotic, doll-like, eagar to please and clingy). As it is said, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and in this particular case, I don't see Cho Chang to be a positive character (a "good guy") whether or not she's Asian. However, seeing that she's the only one in the entire series it gives the token Asian audience some toe-hold to cling to in a decidedly homogenous fictional society at Hogwarts.
As an aside, I was hoping that there was some school of Eastern arts in the series - perhaps some sort of techological wizardry from East Asia (ex. Sony or Samsung being a cartel of corporate wizards and witches), but I was disappointed when that particular part of the world was unrepresented. Perhaps there is a seperation of powers in the world of witchcraft and wizardry similar to the Eurasia, EastAsia and Oceania of George Orwell's 1984? |
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