“May I suggest you explore Chinatown?”
The Asian American Identity As Seen Through the Culture Industry
“Where are you really from?” “Your people make such fascinating food!” “How long did it take you to learn to speak English without an accent?” The second-generation immigrant’s psyche is continually plagued by clashing internal and external conceptualizations of identity, navigating existence in a country that aims to define identity by its most reductive characteristics. Born and raised in America, I have been made wholly aware of my status as a second-generation Korean American––and more broadly, as an Asian American. The aforementioned opening series of questions are not only drawn from my own lived experience, but they also represent the impact of Western exoticism on the development of my individual identity, which thus cannot be separated from my ethnicity. The relentless insistence on assimilation to Western values yet the simultaneous alienation from mainstream American culture defines the incongruity that exists in between external expectations and internal Asian identity. In other words, it has only become more apparent that the conditions of the Asian American experience are inextricably intertwined with the dubious, fetishized perception of Asians through a Western looking glass.
The exclusion of Asians from mainstream culture does not necessarily begin with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, though that is a particularly pertinent example of active exclusion in America; the fascination with, yet also the manipulation of Eastern, “Oriental,” narratives dates back to earlier interactions between the West and East of antiquity, or the Occident and the Orient. As Edward Saïd argues in his 1978 book Orientalism, Western writers, artists, and scholars have created an image of the East and its cultures as inherently inferior, which the West has used as the rationale for imperialist pursuits in the Middle East. Indeed, Saïd notes that “the Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experience” (Saïd 1784). Though his main area of focus is the Middle East, I believe that this is, arguably, an equally relevant representation of the global Eastern experience, broadly speaking. Saïd importantly makes distinctions between the various stratifications and nuances of power:
power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of tastes, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do) (Saïd 1792-93).
As Saïd ultimately argues, these forms of power comprise the overall hegemony that the West establishes over the East, informing knowledge that is not founded in authentic facts and experiences; but rather, through the construction of an antithetical dialectic that fundamentally defines the East as the “Other,” inferior version of the West.
Yet, despite the inferiority with which the West has historically viewed the East, recent trends in popular culture and media may suggest a reversal of this cultural hegemony, on the surface level; at its roots, however, this trend merely reflects a more insidious kind of hegemony over the perception of Asians in America: through capitalism.
German theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno reveal the shortcomings of art and media in the context of a capitalist society, as a whole. In their 1947 exposé The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Horkheimer and Adorno explore the ramifications of their observation that products of popular culture have been standardized to fit the standardized desires that today’s audiences are conditioned to crave. Importantly, they lament that “culture today is infecting everything with sameness” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1033). Viewing culture as its own industry, Horkheimer and Adorno assert that the culture industry is reliant upon the cooperation of its people, as it, itself, contains nothing of substance besides mere aesthetics and the façade of style. In other words, audiences of products within the culture industry do not necessarily engage with true style; rather, they remain complacent to the social hierarchies and inequalities that underlie culture under capitalism. Moreover, as the authors aptly note, “the concept of genuine style becomes transparent in the culture industry as the aesthetic equivalent of power” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1037). This notion of aesthetic and style as a form of power is reminiscent of the kinds of power that Saïd discusses in his piece, as a part of the “power cultural.”
Considering this, I approach the sudden outburst of Asian-centric blockbuster films, the rise of the Korean pop industry, and a fascination with Asian food on social media platforms with great skepticism. Under the façade of inclusivity, these are merely avenues by which the Western media is able, once again, to exploit Asian narratives for their “exotic” nature for economic and cultural gain. Returning to Saïd’s piece, then, he poses various questions of interest concerning the ongoing effect of Orientalism: “what is the meaning of originality, of continuity, of individuality, in this context? How does Orientalism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another” (Said 1795)? The extent to which we see the effects of Orientalism in today’s media––in the culture industry––is, arguably, most evident in the Asian-focused blockbuster films of America.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Released in 2018, John Chu’s film Crazy Rich Asians portrays themes like class conflict, racism, and exoticism through the lens of Chinese-American Rachel Chu, an economics professor, who falls in love with Nick Young, the prodigal son of one of Singapore’s wealthiest families. The film itself establishes ties to capitalism most directly due to the stark differences in values that are portrayed amongst the Singaporean elite, while also acknowledging the collective Singaporean struggle against racism and imperialism.
The opening scene of the movie takes place in 1995, when the Young family arrives at the Calthorpe hotel in London. Despite their objective wealth, the racist hotel concierge treats the family with contempt and refuses to believe that they could possibly have a reservation at such a high-end establishment; he contends, “you must have made a mistake, I’m sure you and your lovely family can find other accommodation––may I suggest you explore Chinatown” (Crazy Rich Asians 00:01:54-00:02:04)? It is only when Mr. Calthorpe himself confirms the Youngs’ reservation and the Youngs buy out the entire hotel, proving their wealth, that they are taken seriously. While Western, specifically White, audiences could surely sympathize with the Youngs’ struggle, there is an inherent voyeurism with which they are able to view this scene, given their psychological distance from having to endure such a moment of microaggression. Watching the movie as a fellow Asian, I certainly felt a sense of empathy towards the Young family in this moment; though, as someone who is not nearly as wealthy as the Youngs, I argue that this scene actually further undermines the experience of racism by Asians by suggesting that it can be overridden by money. After all, the target audience is not necessarily for other Asians, but rather, for people consuming American/Western media.
Crazy Rich Asians is also a particularly notable example of culture in the context of capitalism due to its opulent portrayal of the Singaporean elite. Beyond the story that it aims to convey, the film itself is, perhaps, a prime embodiment of the culture industry. As Horkheimer and Adorno argue, “the unified standard of value exists in the level of conspicuous production, the amount of investment put on show” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1034). Praised for the lavish fashion, food, and lifestyles that are portrayed on screen––going so far as to being nominated for a Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Costume Design for a Contemporary Film––Crazy Rich Asians thrives off of the amount of monetary investment that went into its production. The value that is derived from the movie lies not only in its Cinderella-esque plotline and its box office success, but also, ultimately, in the aesthetics of the movie as a whole, made possible by industry investments and a stringent adherence to the romantic comedy genre.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
In Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2021 film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a part of the Marvel Studios franchise, we see similarly problematic tendencies. A story about Shang-Chi, a martial arts prodigy who is trained by his father and the Ten Rings organization to seek vengeance on their rival Iron Gang for the brutal murder of his mother, the film takes on a rather fantastical storyline to portray what is ultimately the story about the brutality of love and sacrifice. Drawing from traditional Chinese mythology and legend, the film utilizes these cultural references and narratives of ancient villages as the backdrop for an action-packed, Marvel stylized storyline, including the incorporation of mystical dragons and bows and arrows. What is it with Western media and its obsession with adding dragons to any remotely Asian story? While many media outlets have praised the film for its historic debut as the first Asian Marvel hero, citing that this is a monumental step for Asian representation in mainstream media, I, still, remain skeptical about the validity of this assessment.
If, according to Saïd, the Orientalist mindset “is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world,” then Shang-Chi seems like a mere repackaging of these same Orientalist intentions under the façade of a highly aestheticized and standardized production (Saïd 1793). The question I find myself asking, in light of this, is whether the younger version of me would find true inspiration in the way Shang-Chi, an Asian hero, is portrayed in this movie; in other words, would the movie mean anything more to me than a montage of high-budget fight scenes––which are, admittedly, well-done––and the comedic prowess of some of the highest-grossing Asian American actors and actresses in today’s Hollywood?
The Marvel franchise, specifically, is a prototypical example of the ways in which the culture industry successfully disseminates media to its audiences. Throughout its many years of operation, Marvel Studios has since perfected its own style and algorithm in regard to the ways in which their movies are structured, based on feedback from their audiences via box office performance. Furthermore, the form of the film allows for its directors to feed viewers one crafted perspective, relieving the viewers from their duty to imagine events as they see it. Indeed, Horkheimer and Adorno similarly lament that “film denies its audience any dimension in which they might roam freely in imagination––contained by the film’s framework but unsupervised by its precise actualities––without losing the thread; thus it trains those exposed to it to identify film directly with reality” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1036). In some ways, the adoption of the Marvel algorithm in a production meant to convey an Asian narrative seems inclusive, because it takes the narratives at face value rather than fixating on particularities. However, the reductiveness of the algorithm lets viewers “sing the praises of technical,” and in this case, cultural, “progress while inviting their users to throw [the films] away after short use like tin cans” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1033). Ultimately, this Asian narrative is exploited for its novelty and intrigue; yet, once again, it loses its cultural value due to its standardized mode of production, which enhances its economic value in the eyes of Marvel Studios executives.
One of the primary stipulations of the culture industry is that the standardization of culture becomes the aesthetic equivalent of power. Under this assumption, then, it is apparent that the perception of Asians in America has been highly contingent upon the reduction of our stories and cultures into stylized vignettes, which are mostly produced by Western-centric monopolies that overrun the American media and entertainment industries. Despite the fact that both Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi were directed by Asian American directors, it is critical to acknowledge that they were clearly produced by and for Western eyes. Ironically, however, while the culture industry has allowed me to see someone who looks and acts like me on screen, it also remains the very source of alienation and appropriation that has plagued the development of my own sense of identity as it relates to a broader American culture. Though it is unclear what the alternatives are in regard to the present state of American media, what is clear is the recognition that the Asian American identity is far more complex than what is portrayed on screen. Today, I am both Asian and American, and for what it is worth, I’m really from Boston, Massachusetts, and English is, indeed, my first language.
