Here is the one of the most
famous stereotypes about African Americans. It is said that African Americans
love to eat watermelon and fried chicken. This was past down from ages ago back
in the slavery days. The reason why is because chicken was the cheapest animal
to buy and watermelon was the easiest to grow. African Americans also loved
watermelon because back when the slavery was still going on they would be
working in the fields and they would get dehydrated very easily, and watermelon
was said to be refreshing and doesn't dehydrate the mouth.
In real life, I have asked many of my African American friends and they do like fried chicken but they don’t
understand why it is said, “African Americans love fried chicken”. You see White
people; Asian people, Chinese people, and any other race eating fried chicken.
Why is it only African Americans?
The American TV program, South Park is the most famous animation as its
nasty contents in America but also around the world. In this animation,
adorable looking characters use the slangs, kill other characters, and make fun
of serious issues such as the celebrity gossips, political issues, the sexual
issue, the religious issues, and the racist issues. This kind of animation is
pretty rare because the random people can watch through TV. Even though the
side of the producers or company of this TV program cannot choose the people
who they provide to, they keep using such a sensitive issues. Actually, its
humor is very popular and there is a demand in the society. However, it is sure
that it harasses people in fact.
Here is the full length version of this episode---http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e06-city-sushi
Actually, I am also the one who
likes this TV show but not always. Here is a episode of South Park that
harasses me. In this episode, Chinese guy try to murder Japanese guy. It was
fine to just watch, but once it starts picturing those characters, I could not
enjoy watching this from my heart. The Chinese guy pictured with “the Asian
eyes”. Both Japanese and Chinese guy speaks with hard accents. Those Asians on
this are pictured with too much emphasis and stereotypes. Also it treats even
politic and historical issues on this. If I were ordinal American, I would
think it is hilarious and might think it can be true. However, for Asian, it is
obvious that we will not feel good. It can be just harassment for us.
On the other hand, I still love this
TV show, and maybe it is because they make a serious issue hilarious, and I
know that the South Park is such a stupid TV show. However, as I referred that
it is on the air and the random people can watch. There might be people who
take it serious and start to think those stereotypes are true. The development
of the media changes our life a lot in both good and bad way. We are living
with this media and we will in the future. We cannot be controlled by this
media society.
Nowadays, the movie industry is one of
the biggest and the most influential media tool around the world. Since it has a huge power to affect the
audiences, it can work negatively sometimes. Sometimes it brings people the
wrong image or idea. For example, the movie, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift uses
Korean who never looks Japanese and cannot even Japanese well.
For me as
Japanese, it was so disappointed and felt it just says that American does not
care where we, Asians are from, and for them, Asian is just Asian.
The producers should recognize themselves
as they have an influential and a enough power to change people’s thought. Here is one more hilarious clip of the movie,
“Day After Tomorrow”.
This part of the scene shows that Tokyo
gets battered by the largest hail storm on record. The hail storm leaves the
city helpless on its wrath with smashing on to people, cars, and buildings.
First time when I watched this scene, I was totally knocked out because it is
not Japan at all! I was glad to hear “the collect Japanese” on this. However,
the location was totally wrong, even though it tells a name of the real place
in subtitle. I know the movie tries to show this terrible disaster happens
around the world even such an oriental place. But Japan is not like this.
Hollywood, please make sure those things before showing your ignorance.
Here
is a famous video clip called “UCLA Student racist rant on Asians in the Library for phoning.”
The original video uploaded by UCLA student, Alexandra Wallace. As the title of
the clip tells, this video apparently includes the racism toward the Asian people.
In this video, she commented that Asian students in the university library
irritated her
during finals week. The problem here is that all she mentions about Asian is
totally stereotype.
First of all, she mentioned that Asian
parents are always visiting their kids on the weekends and doing everything for
them, which may be true for some but not every kid is lucky like that. Another
thing she mentioned about is about the manners, it is wrong to talk on your
phone in the library but she does an imitation of an Asian talking. Her
imitation is said to be Mandarin, which offended the Chinese.
In the end, I think that this was racist toward all Asians and
she should have thought of the things she was going to say before she uploaded
it on YouTube.
