Southeast Asia Representative in Hollywood?

Film is a very important tool to spread the culture as well as propaganda. Every film and filmmaker has their own way to deliver their message. Sometimes people perceive a new culture based entirely on the film they see. They won’t spend hours and hours of research to fact-check what they saw. So how Southeast Asia countries were perceived by the international community?

The western film became a very popular medium of entertainment in the 20th century. However, the history of Asian representation in those films is close to zero. There is a lack of representation of Asian diversities and cultures in Hollywood movies. Before the 2000s, Asian actors were hardly cast in any Hollywood film. Even Though there are some actors that made it to the screen, they were only responsible for small roles or sometimes as an extra just to fill the background. The Asian men were seen as the tech nerd or math nerd or rebellious gangster who made drugs in the forest, while Asian women were portrayed as the sex worker. This creates a misrepresentation that we as Asians could not accept.

However, we can see more and more Asian representation as we look into 21st-century films. We finally saw many Asian actors finally get cast into bigger lead roles in Hollywood. Asian sitcoms such as Fresh Off the Boat and Kim Convenience paved the way for the Asian lead actor to get exposure and audience interest. In recent years, the Crazy Rich Asian movie became the biggest milestone achievement for Asian people. This movie was directed by an Asian director and played by an Asian lead actor (the same lead actor from Fresh off The boat). This movie was able to hit Hollywood with the box office of 238.5 million dollars. Moreover, we started to see more and more movies that revolve around Asian lead actors such as the recent Marvel superhero movie. The movie Shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings hit the box office of 432 million dollars worldwide.

From the international community perspective, especially western people, they assumed that Asian representation in film and media is better than ever in the history of mankind. I kinda agree with that. As a part of Asian people, I appreciate that we have come a long way to reach where we are now. However, there is another problem that only Asian people can relate to. Most western people would not be able to distinguish between East Asian and South Asian and South Asia. When we talk about being Asians, most western people would assume that we are either Chinese or Japanese, or Korean. They forget that Cambodia and other Southeast Asia and South Asia are also Asian as well. Even within the Southeast Asia region alone, western people could not tell the difference between Cambodia and Thailand and Indonesia and Malaysia even though we have different cultures and languages. These are the issues that I would love to explore further as we continue to discuss in the future blog.

So overall, I can say that Asian representation in the media has continuously improved over the past decades. However, Southeast Asia representation is not much progressed. But getting the Asian representation to be recognized on the international stage is the stepping stone for Southeast Asia representation in media as well. We started to see the first Disney animated film Raya and The Last dragon that inspired and revolved around Southeast Asia's culture. The clothes on the Raya lead actor are also inspired by Cambodian traditional clothes. Moreover, we also have the Local Cambodia arts group who helped in the production of this movie as well. This is a good start.