Core Response #5 week 7

What constitutes an Asian American collective identity? Or does a cohesive community of Asian Americans ever a thing?

Two points mentioned in Benjamin Han’s piece interest me very much. First is the impossibility of conceptualizing and consolidating an Asian American collective identity because of the “heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity” (281) structuring the lived experiences of different Asian communities. Evidently, Asian immigrants come to the U.S. for different reasons and under different historical and political circumstances – what’s more, they speak different languages. I tried to picture an Asian American audience but failed simply because they are way too different. And indeed, as Han points out, “the term Asian American is a politically inflected term rooted in the identity politics of the 1960s and 1970s, coined with the aim of unifying diverse Asian groups for social mobilization purposes” (278). This term is employed for social and political organizing. When applied to the situation of consuming television programs, it fails to make sense because of “the complex composition of the Asian American population regarding generation differences, cultural identities, and histories” (281). To me, this is concerned with television being seen as a quotidian and domestic medium, leading to its great dependency upon an imagined collective audience group who helps to maintain its capital flow by contributing to steady ratings, drawing in advertisement revenues and so on.

The second is the notion of transnational Asia. Many Asian large enterprises have been investigating in the entertainment industry in North America. Many Asian Americans return to their ethnic homeland to join the showbiz there. Some start their career in North America by winning an award held here but sponsored by some entertainment giant in Asia, and then they return to Asia for further development opportunities. It is hard to talk about Asians or Asian Americans in terms of the practice of entertainment without considering the transnational flow of both capitals and human capital. The story of Miky Lee, the mogul behind the success of Parasite, serves as a great example (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/meet-important-mogul-south-korean-entertainment-1275756). Lee was born in the wealthy Lee family that founded Samsung group. She was born in Michigan but grew up in South Korea. After getting a master’s degree from Harvard, she started her career by working at Samsung America. To make a long story short, she, currently living in California, is at the helm of the CJ entertainment, which invests in a variety of cultural programs including Korean cinema, K-pop and more while adopting a global strategy. Although Americanized, Lee dedicates herself to supporting the Korean film industry and bringing it to the global stage. The national boundaries seem very blurred, both her personal identity and her industry practices.

Both the uncertainty of identity and the transnational flow make it impossible to come up with an “all-inclusive notion of Asian American identity” (280) especially for the purpose of envisioning a collective audience in front of television screens. There is always a need to give more voices and visibility to Asians on screen, but I doubt that there a need for an exclusive Asian American television channel. I also have a few reservations on Han’s critique – it is easier to talk about ImaginAsian TV’s failure after its demise ...

And personally, I think it is less important to have an exclusively Asian American television channel than to offer Asian actors and actresses more roles – not the stereotypical type – to play. That is what first drew me to watch Killing Eve. The storyline is not so much about Asian American experience – seeing Sandra Oh on screen as a lead actress and of equal position along with Jodie Comer is great.