Canada's Impact
I think the reason why a lot of these problems aren’t seen as ‘more of a problem’ is because in Canada, everything is thought to be “so inclusive” especially since we have a reputation as a cultural mosaic.
But the fact that Hollywood influences so much of what we see, and the fact that everything the US does, Canada follows in a way, is a big problem when looking to see Asian representation in the media.
Take, for example, this past 2018 Toronto Film Festival. I was looking through a list of the ‘30 most popular films’ to be seen at TIFF, and what I found...well, it wasn’t surprising.
Out of the 30 films listed, only 2 contained people of colour as the lead. Viola Davis in Widows, and Amandla Stenberg in Hate U Give. Both ladies are of African American descent, and while this is great, this once again proves how Canadian audiences aren’t seeing Asian American stars on the big screen either. Not to mention that the music that we listen to in Canada is pretty much the same as the music that is listened to in the states.
Because Canada and the US are so entwined with it comes to things like media, there isn’t really much difference between the two countries when it comes to things like this.
However, I did remember seeing something rather unsettling on Twitter a few weeks ago that comes to mind as I type this.
I remember scrolling through Twitter and seeing this person who had collected different tweets that all contained the same message. East Asians are not people of colour.
Their rationale? That ‘most’ East Asians have whiter skin than some white people.
This is the problem with a lot of people’s only perception of East Asians being K-pop. Because the beauty standards in Korea are so skewed (and I could do a whole separate section of this...I actually am for my history ISU heh) you have a lot of idols who are very fair skinned. If it’s because they’re using whitening beauty products, they’re just born that way, or photoshop/filters are heavily applied to their pictures, I can’t say for sure, but you have many who have very pale complexions (because if they don’t they get made fun of for having darker skin...once again, going off topic, but VIXX’s N and EXO’s Kai to name a few)
When they people say ‘East Asians’, that’s targeting a very specific part of the world - aka, what most people believe to be Asia; China, Japan, and Korea.
Generalizing the ALL those people isn’t very fair. China alone has 1.386 BILLION people as of 2017. Japan has 126.8 million, and Korea 51.47 million citizens. If you add those all together, you get roughly 1,564,270,000 people (or one billion, five hundred and sixty four million, two hundred and seventy thousand people). By making a statement like the person on Twitter did, this is assuming that every single one of those people have skin fairer than people of European descent. Exactly how is this fair?
Not to mention the past that both countries have had when it comes to East Asians. I’m sure we all learned in grade 10 history about World War 2 and the distrust between the US and Japan, in specific. We learnt all about the internment camps, about the horrors that happened to people just because they were Japanese.
People’s possessions all seized from them, taken away to camps to monitor them and treated like lesser human beings. All because of their race. And what’s more, the bias they faced from the public, who now feared them in case they might be spies from Japan.
I did some research into laws regarding East Asians in Canada, and found out they originally couldn’t vote in federal and provincial elections. This was explicitly towards Chinese Canadians in the beginning (1885), but later was extended to ALL Asian Canadians, for some reason in 1898. Then, in 1920, the Dominion Elections Act said if a province discriminated against a group by reason of race, that group would also be excluded from the federal franchise. This meant British Columbia residents of Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian background lost their right to vote in national elections.
Combined this with the fact that Asian Canadians are virtually invisible in mainstream media, and do you know what message this sends? That we don’t belong. We aren’t important, so why should we try to become anything more when the media is already telling us that we can’t and aren’t? It’s no surprise that there hasn’t been a single Asian elected into office for Prime Minister or Mayor.
The effect might not seem like much, but when you’re an Asian and the most representation you get in the media is that strange Buddhist monk? It’s not the most encouraging, nor exclusive. This especially is towards younger boys and girls, who are a lot more susceptible to being manipulated by the media.
Growing up in a Korean household, half of the media I take in is all Korean. The TV is usually turned on to the (one and only) channel that’s all in Korean, since my grandfather isn’t that good in English. My mom is usually watching her K-dramas upstairs while she prepares for the next day in school. And my room is COVERED in posters of K-pop boys. I watch dramas with my mom, my Twitter feed is mostly about K-pop and so is my Youtube. But what about others, who don’t have this luxury of being so rooted in their culture, especially since they’re halfway across the globe from ANY representation of them in the media?
I, for one, am proud to be Korean. And I have to say a lot of this pride comes from seeing all these stars and how amazing they are, be it through K-pop, K-dramas, or even figure skating (Cha Junhwan from Korea and Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan are my two favourite skaters!) But there are a lot of people out there, Asians in specific, who feel like they don’t belong because there isn’t many positive representations in media.
But the fact that Hollywood influences so much of what we see, and the fact that everything the US does, Canada follows in a way, is a big problem when looking to see Asian representation in the media.
Take, for example, this past 2018 Toronto Film Festival. I was looking through a list of the ‘30 most popular films’ to be seen at TIFF, and what I found...well, it wasn’t surprising.
Out of the 30 films listed, only 2 contained people of colour as the lead. Viola Davis in Widows, and Amandla Stenberg in Hate U Give. Both ladies are of African American descent, and while this is great, this once again proves how Canadian audiences aren’t seeing Asian American stars on the big screen either. Not to mention that the music that we listen to in Canada is pretty much the same as the music that is listened to in the states.
Because Canada and the US are so entwined with it comes to things like media, there isn’t really much difference between the two countries when it comes to things like this.
However, I did remember seeing something rather unsettling on Twitter a few weeks ago that comes to mind as I type this.
I remember scrolling through Twitter and seeing this person who had collected different tweets that all contained the same message. East Asians are not people of colour.
Their rationale? That ‘most’ East Asians have whiter skin than some white people.
This is the problem with a lot of people’s only perception of East Asians being K-pop. Because the beauty standards in Korea are so skewed (and I could do a whole separate section of this...I actually am for my history ISU heh) you have a lot of idols who are very fair skinned. If it’s because they’re using whitening beauty products, they’re just born that way, or photoshop/filters are heavily applied to their pictures, I can’t say for sure, but you have many who have very pale complexions (because if they don’t they get made fun of for having darker skin...once again, going off topic, but VIXX’s N and EXO’s Kai to name a few)
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| When asked to draw a picture of Kai, the members colored in his picture because he's 'dark' |
VIXX's N is often made fun of for his darker skin tone in comparison to others
Generalizing the ALL those people isn’t very fair. China alone has 1.386 BILLION people as of 2017. Japan has 126.8 million, and Korea 51.47 million citizens. If you add those all together, you get roughly 1,564,270,000 people (or one billion, five hundred and sixty four million, two hundred and seventy thousand people). By making a statement like the person on Twitter did, this is assuming that every single one of those people have skin fairer than people of European descent. Exactly how is this fair?
Not to mention the past that both countries have had when it comes to East Asians. I’m sure we all learned in grade 10 history about World War 2 and the distrust between the US and Japan, in specific. We learnt all about the internment camps, about the horrors that happened to people just because they were Japanese.
People’s possessions all seized from them, taken away to camps to monitor them and treated like lesser human beings. All because of their race. And what’s more, the bias they faced from the public, who now feared them in case they might be spies from Japan.
I did some research into laws regarding East Asians in Canada, and found out they originally couldn’t vote in federal and provincial elections. This was explicitly towards Chinese Canadians in the beginning (1885), but later was extended to ALL Asian Canadians, for some reason in 1898. Then, in 1920, the Dominion Elections Act said if a province discriminated against a group by reason of race, that group would also be excluded from the federal franchise. This meant British Columbia residents of Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian background lost their right to vote in national elections.
Combined this with the fact that Asian Canadians are virtually invisible in mainstream media, and do you know what message this sends? That we don’t belong. We aren’t important, so why should we try to become anything more when the media is already telling us that we can’t and aren’t? It’s no surprise that there hasn’t been a single Asian elected into office for Prime Minister or Mayor.
The effect might not seem like much, but when you’re an Asian and the most representation you get in the media is that strange Buddhist monk? It’s not the most encouraging, nor exclusive. This especially is towards younger boys and girls, who are a lot more susceptible to being manipulated by the media.
Growing up in a Korean household, half of the media I take in is all Korean. The TV is usually turned on to the (one and only) channel that’s all in Korean, since my grandfather isn’t that good in English. My mom is usually watching her K-dramas upstairs while she prepares for the next day in school. And my room is COVERED in posters of K-pop boys. I watch dramas with my mom, my Twitter feed is mostly about K-pop and so is my Youtube. But what about others, who don’t have this luxury of being so rooted in their culture, especially since they’re halfway across the globe from ANY representation of them in the media?
I, for one, am proud to be Korean. And I have to say a lot of this pride comes from seeing all these stars and how amazing they are, be it through K-pop, K-dramas, or even figure skating (Cha Junhwan from Korea and Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan are my two favourite skaters!) But there are a lot of people out there, Asians in specific, who feel like they don’t belong because there isn’t many positive representations in media.
Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan (Left) and Cha Junhwan of Korea (Right)
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