Stop Shaming Mindy Chen in Emily in Paris
By: Midori Writes
Tags: Chinese, Culture, TV Series, Racism, Entertainment

What are Asian Women really like?

The article I read is reductionist in the sense that she’s trying to tell others the one type of Asian women she knew (and probably she is), and that’s a very dangerous way of representation. For this reason, I really hope she never makes it as a mainstream voice representing Asians, it’s just not right.

What Asian Women are like is a stupid question. It’s like assuming all American white women are basic bitches who drink pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks. Think Kate Mckinnon, Tina Fey, Anna Kendrick, are they basic? I don’t think so, despite being so very American.

There are always at least two levels that make up a person: culture and personalities, it’s the classic psychological nature vs nurture debate. Everyone is made up of their own temperaments, family backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, experience, so many things. It should be a no-brainer that we can’t summarise them.

Open our eyes to reductionism

Sadly, from the beginning of human civilisation, we have a tendency to reduce complicated matters and fact patterns into easily digestible material for our comprehension.

Depends on the level of intelligence, some people (of which some of them became religious and political leaders) have been simplifying it so much that they overlooked key elements that shouldn’t have been omitted and distorted the core meaning.

This includes everything from race and gender, to religion and philosophy.

What Emily in Paris did was to create a female Asian character with her own spin of life experiences. I agree that in no circumstances will Asian children ever call their parent an asshole (even the most rebellious ones), I think Mindy Chen does represent a very specific niche of rich Chinese, and her character was created with enough depth and individuality.

What’s more problematic, is that article I read is rejecting the possibility of alternatives in her narrowly known Asian culture, and attempt to spread redefine Asian women with her extremely limited narrative. This I find very uncomfortable a monotonous definition is almost always the root of all problems related to inequalities and minorities.

So no, please do not reject other’s stereotypes about Asian women, then go ahead and make your own definitions of us. Because no, that’s just trapping us in another stereotype.

How not to label like a reductionist

It’s difficult to change people because labelling and categorising people are so deeply rooted in human civilisation.

We’d have hoped that people become smarter over time, but I argue that unless we challenge the validity of labelling as a whole, we won’t get any more sophisticated in the discussion of any form of equality.

I praise the increased use of a diverse cast in film and TV production, and we should be more forgiving when telling someone off for cultural appropriation and/or racial misrepresentation. Because, what do you expect? If you ask me to write for a German character, I will certainly misrepresent it.

We can’t hire specifically a Chinese scriptwriter for the original scriptwriter when we have to write for a Chinese person. That’s just not practical.

We should all expect to be misrepresented because as a writer, we can only do our best in creating a character that’s alien to ourselves. But, there’s a big but…

A good example to reference to

Another coming-of-age Netflix drama Never Have I Ever seems to have done a pretty decent job in creating characters with complex cultural backgrounds.

If you haven’t seen it (you have to! It’s awesome❤️), Never Have I Ever is about three non-white girls in an American high school.

Their trailer will speak better about the show than me:

The cultural reference is on point perhaps because of the following reasons:

1. Like the main character, the show’s creator Mindy Kaling is also Indian-American

For the sake of great art, the diversity of the production crew is as important as what’s put on screen. There are details about Indian culture only Indians know and it’s not easy to imitate.

Given it’s an American-Indian character, it was really sensible that both Mindy Kaling and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (plays Devi, the main character) are both American Indian (well Maitreyi is Canadian Indian). It’s much more realistic.

2. Communicate with the actors and actresses

When they learned that Darren Barnet (the one took off his shirt in the trailer above🤤) is half Japanese, they added the surname Yoshida for his character Paxton Hall-Yoshida.

I appreciate the difficulties in character-forming and script-changing on set, but communication is important. If you don't have a ‘minority’ person to refer to when creating a character, your actors and actresses are your best bet.

3. Don’t be afraid to address the cultural tensions

There was a scene about Ganesh Puja in Never Have I Ever, where Devi needed to dress up in an Indian sari. Devi, as an American-Indian teenager, disliked the whole tradition and confronted her racial background. This was very well presented I think.

When I was younger, I also preferred to stay away from those dragon dances in China Town during Chinese New Year. It’s too clichéd and too real. These are cultural elements and conflicts that really worth addressing and are very relatable, which is also the reason we have diversity in the cast.

In Emily in Paris, Mindy and her minted Chinese friends had a night out and it went out of hand. Whilst the author I previously mentioned didn’t think that Chinese people can party like that, I can assure everyone that we fucking can.

We can’t please everyone because even among “Chinese people”, there are clearly very different perceptions about our own race. Asia is big and diverse, just like every other continent. The baseline in popular media representation shouldn’t be afraid to address these tensions, even between so-called white people and other races, as long as we have done our research to the best ability we can and we handle this with an intention to understand rather than racism.

It’s only through opening up the channels for discussions, can we rethink and become conscious about the pattern of reductionist labelling, and have hopes for improvements.