Debate triggered over Asian stereotypes at the movies

Asian male characters have traditionally been portrayed on the silver screen as geeky, sidelined or emasculated, and are denied the chance to have romantic relationships.

Brian Yang, an actor and co-founder of Giant Leap Media, said the auditions he had and the parts he played were for roles such as a Chinese delivery boy.

"I did a bunch of (US comedian and television personality) Jay Leno sketch comedy pieces where I was always the butt of jokes as an Asian person," he said in the video made by the 1990 Institute.

He said Hollywood has traditionally had a narrow focus when it comes to Asian roles. "It doesn't pull back and show you the wider picture of how vibrant and how different our community is," he added.

A new study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, or USC, which assessed Asian lead roles and speaking parts in 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019, found that Asians were "erased, silenced and stereotyped" in popular movies.

Among these films, only 44, or nearly 3.4 percent, had an Asian/Pacific islander lead or co-lead. This proportion did not change to any significant degree in each year covered by the study, falling short of the 7.1 percent of the US population that identifies as Asian/Pacific islanders.

Among the 200 top-grossing films in 2018 and 2019, nearly half did not have Asian characters, or only gave them five or fewer lines of dialogue, the study found.

It said most portrayals of the Asian community fall into the categories of "silenced, stereotyped, tokenized, isolated, sidekicks or villains". Stereotypes still evident in top films include the persistent emasculation of Asian/Pacific islander males－58 percent of whom were depicted as having no romantic relationships.