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Method of analyzingThis research paper plans to analyze the stereotypical characters of Asian American men and women in popular movies as well as their appearance in daily television broadcast. Depictions of Asian Americans in the movies have not changed much over the years. The appearance of the evil-scheming Fu Manchu in movies like The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu from the early 1900s portrayed the Asian man as cold and ruthless, "all brain but no heart" (Cao). We are still able to find this negative Asian male character in some action-packed movies such as Fury of the Dragon (1976) and The Year of the Dragon (1985).Despite the fact that Asian Americans have lived and flourished in the United States over the past century, Asian Americans are commonly portrayed as newly arrived immigrants who speak fortune cookie (broken) English and cannot assimilate with other members of the American society. Other negative depictions include greedy Asian bandits out to destroy white civilization and defy its man-made laws, and Asian women who are weak, passive and allow themselves to be sexually and emotionally abused by men. Eager to test out these myths of Asian American media depictions, we rented some current popular American movies with Asian American male and female actors. We also observed several hours of television each day for Asian American appearances and to see how they appear on these broadcasts. To make our analysis easier to digest, we have divided our observations according to the stereotypical Asian American male and female categories.
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