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The idea is great but the question is too wide and get more academic sources. - Claudia

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While Marvels' "Eternals" received mixed reception after its opening this month, critics and scholars agree that the film succeeds in one critical, yet under-discussed aspect of Asian representation in Hollywood.

The movie starred several actors of Asian descent, including Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani and Don Lee as Eternals, a race of ancient immortal aliens, untethered to any specific ethnicity. Experts note that the film in part bucks a glaring, historical trend in which Asians have been largely erased from or barely cast in fantasy roles.

The absence of representation could, in part, reflect how Asians have typically been assigned identity-based, ethnically-coded roles. But more inclusion in fantasy roles could signal some early steps in progress. And though Chan's character, for example, may not come with any cultural markers that make a statement about the Asian diaspora, race-conscious casting is still critical to shaping perceptions, critics said.

"Even if there's not a message preaching diversity or inclusion or anything, just seeing your face up there, and seeing that you are part of a team working together for a greater good, and also having powers, the ability to say you agree and don't agree in an equal way - that's significant," Nancy Wang Yuen, professor of sociology at Biola University, told NBC Asian America.

Because these made-up worlds in many popular fantasy films don't feature existing, lived experiences or cultures tied to characters, major roles could have easily gone to Asian and other diverse actors, she said.

Yet films like the "Lord Of The Rings trilogy," didn't feature a single speaking character of Asian descent. Asian representation was also a rare find in other fantasy television shows like "Game Of Thrones." In its eight seasons, the series only included Jessica Henwick, who's of Chinese descent and was featured in eight episodes, in a speaking role. And it wasn't until 2017 that Kelly Marie Tran made history as the first Asian American woman to have a significant role in the "Star Wars" franchise, which debuted in 1977.

Oftentimes, appearances of Asian people are limited to nameless threatening hordes, or flattened depictions of savage fighters.

"It's basically a confession that the white imagination can't have any room for people of color," Yuen said.

Experts say underrepresentation issues have to do with how the predominantly white authors, who inspire many shows and movies, conceptualize the fantastical. Yuen explained that many authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the "Lord Of The Rings" series, and George R. R. Martin, the man behind "Game of Thrones," rooted their lore far back in history, mostly in European traditions, to produce a pseudo ancient or medieval world.

"They don't think fantasy, they think historical European," Yuen said. "They're totally fine with dragons, and all sorts of different species of beings, but somehow they all have to be European."

Stories are also often framed from a European-centric point of view that frequently perpetuates white supremacist beliefs, explained Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, author of "The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games."

Scholars say that concepts of race likely began to emerge from the medieval period, spanning the 5th century to the late 15th century, during which perceptions of different cultures were shaped by whether they were considered threats and their abilities to conquer. And these ideas are mirrored in fantasy literature.

Though Asian cultures at the time were dominant and far more advanced compared to those in Europe, Thomas explained that much of the story of progress throughout Asia, including technology like gunpowder or other weaponry and Mongol domination of the 13th centuries, is essentially rewritten in fantasy realms. Analogues to European triumph and heroism, scholars say, are often centrally placed.

From Rowling to Martin to epic fantasy author Terry Brooks, writers drew inspiration from Western mythology and perceptions of the world, so cultures of color get portrayed as terrifying beings, Thomas said.

"Europe was conquered by Asia and white supremacist historic teaching doesn't want to talk about that. But there's always this sort of threat of conquest from the east that actually happened several times," she said. They are really delving into some of the fears and the boogeymen of the European past."

In "Game of Thrones," for example, Thomas said, the continent of Essos serves as an analogue to Asia. The land of Yi-Ti, a nation in Essos, is given little detail, yet marked by exotic, stereotypical elements. For example, the land is surrounded by the "Jade Sea" and is referred to as the "Further East."

The "scary Brown people," Thomas said, are referred to as "Dothraki" in the series, and hail from the northeast region of the continent. They appear to be an amalgamation of Genghis Khan and other stereotypes about the Mongol empire, she said. The lands stand in contrast to Westeros, where the series is focused and most developed, which is heavily reminiscent of Europe.

"Asians in [the fantastic], they speak in exaggerated accents. The language and customs, even the very location of 'the East,' in most of fantasy is either unknowable, or it's mysterious or scary," she said. "It's a recurring problem in the western fantastic."

So while white characters often get a diversity of new stories, abilities and imaginative plotlines, fantasy material essentially recreates the same age-old stereotypes of Asians we see in media rooted in the real world, experts say.

Ana-Christina Ramón, director of research and civic engagement of the division of social sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that another systemic issue is that the source material by white writers is often adapted by white producers in Hollywood, who continue the trend of overlooking many of these inclusion concerns. In recent years, this model has also been replicated by newer platforms like streaming services.

"When Netflix came out, they only hired really well-known filmmakers, and then they usually asked them to direct the first episode of a TV series," Ramon said. "So it's all about prestige. And usually, when you fall back on prestige, you're falling back on hiring only white men, because they have then been approved by Hollywood in some way."

Aside from Kingo's dance scene, a nod to Bollywood, there are no links between the Eternals and specific traditions or countries in the film. But the film's takeaway might be based more on general inclusion and unity, Yuen says. For example, the Eternals, a group played by predominantly actors of color, reunite with one another after years of living among humans for a common purpose: to protect the world from their enemies, another race of age-old beings called the Deviants.

"Maybe in a utopic way, their relationship with one another is aspirational - that we all respect one another's talents and powers," Yuen said of the Eternals. "You start to see that there are divergent goals and how that's realized. But at the end of the day, even with divergent goals, you all come together."

These roles also give actors a wider range of opportunities, beyond work that leans on their heritage.

"Talking to actors of color, I think sometimes - And I think this is true for people who love their craft - they don't necessarily always want to play an ethnically coded character in terms of the backstory, the immigrant or the struggle with racism," Yuen said. "They want to be able to play ... a character that doesn't necessarily have to be predicated just on your identity, I think is refreshing for a lot of actors of color."

Audiences have exhibited a thirst for such representation, as well, Ramón said. A 2020 study, that Ramón co-authored, found that casts made up of 41 percent to 50 percent actors from minority groups experienced the highest median global box office earnings. Those that had fewer than 11 percent minorities in their cast performed the worst. The research also showed that people of color are enthusiastic consumers of content as well, accounting for the majority of domestic ticket sales in 6 of the top 10 films released in theaters in 2020.

Despite the mixed reviews that "Eternals" received, the movie still stunned at the box office, achieving the fourth-highest opening in the pandemic, launching with $71 million in sales.

"The movie didn't suffer from those mixed reviews," Ramón said. "I felt like because it did have that sense of 'Wow, there's so many different people and there's people who are disabled, there's an LGBTQ storyline,' ... it shows that people are hungry for it."

The Marvel movie doesn't signal equity, however. Yuen said that casting directors need to make intentional decisions to include more actors of color to ensure progress doesn't end with the film. People of color are often left out of the traditional pipelines in Hollywood, so race-blind casting can often be exclusive, particularly if directors look to top agencies for talent, where people of color face barriers to entry, she explained.

She recommended directors take a race-conscious and ability-conscious approach to ensure movies avoid perpetuating the existing, limiting depictions of Asians amid the fight for representation.

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'Eternals' casting of Asians is refreshing amid history of fantasy erasure, critics say

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While Marvels' "Eternals" received mixed reception after its opening this month, critics and scholars agree that the film succeeds in one critical, yet under-discussed aspect of Asian representation in Hollywood. The movie starred several actors of Asian descent, including Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani and Don Lee as Eternals, a race of ancient immortal aliens, untethered to any specific ethnicity.

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What Eternals did for Asian people as well as all minorities 

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What Eternals did for Asian people as well as all minorities 

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While I loved it, I remember asking my parents why there was no one who looked like me. I spoke English, too, like in the film - but everyone on screen was white.

Even the films and TV shows I religiously watched every Saturday night, like The Incredible Hulk, Knight Rider and The A-Team, had mainly white casts, too - with the odd Black character, but almost never any Asians.

Asian characters were in shows like Mind Your Language, but they were nothing like I was - and always shown in dim light. And, even after moving to London aged 12, popular TV shows like The Bill, Neighbours or Eastenders, back then, had few background characters of colour - let alone playing main leads.

Because of this, I saw my future in a linear way - never seeing the option of doing what I really loved, which was working in TV, cinema and music. Had I seen myself on screen, or even in the credits (that I would scour, looking for ethnic names), I would have jumped into pursuing my passions much earlier, and fought for it.

I was eagerly waiting for the day that I'd be able to find stories and actors who looked more like me.

So it's safe to say that I jumped with joy when Chinese born, UK/US-raised Oscar winner Chloé Zhao was hired to direct Eternals - making her Marvel's first woman director of colour.

Truthfully, I wasn't seeking out Marvel and DC comics until I married my British Nigerian husband, who is an avid graphic novel collector. He took me to see Marvel's Iron Man in 2008, and I loved the storylines so much, the lack of diversity didn't really hit me then.

But I felt frustrated when Deadpool came out, and saw the South Asian character playing a cab driver. This trope was seen so much already, and I knew there was so much more to people from Asia, with the talent to boot.

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So, when I discovered Zhao would be taking the lead for new film, Eternals, the feeling was akin to when Kamala Harris, who is Tamil like me and half Black, took the position as USA's first female Vice President.

Eternals is about 10 God-like beings with superpowers that have been sent by their creators, The Celestials, to protect the world from monsters called Deviants.

Usually, most superhero films have a similar end goal: Good vs evil, and saving the world, but this time, it's with a strong, welcome burst of diversity.

The characters mirror the world we live in, in a way no other Marvel offering has given us. We get an LGBTQ+ married couple, with Phastos played by Black actor Brian Tyree Henry and Emirati born Lebanese actor Haaz Sleiman.

The mixed race marriage between Sersi, played by British East Asian Gemma Chan and Ikaris played by Scottish actor Richard Madden, was so relatable to me, like my own mixed marriage.

Normalising these kinds of relationships is something that means a lot to me, as many couples have to fight family and society, to be accepted for simply falling in love and building a future.

One of the most exciting characters for me, though, was super fast Makkari, played by hard of hearing actress Lauren Ridloff - a case in point, that having a disability need not stop someone being a superhero.

In 2014, James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy franchise brought us some bursts of ethnic mixes, but Eternals gives a somewhat equal footing and screen time to these characters of colour.

Greek mythology, which is also predominant in Eternals, has a lot of parallels with ancient myths that I was weaned on, as Hinduism is my ancestral religion. The character of Thena (essayed to perfection by Angelina Jolie) is like Hindu Goddess Durga who uses her feminine energy, her 'shakthi' to conjure up weapons from the Gods to fight evil.

Watching this come to life in a way I've never seen the Goddesses depicted in cinema was a huge deal for me, as I've always craved to see empowered women on screen, and Hindu Goddesses for me have been just this - women who battled for justice and did it with style, just like the women in Eternals.

Wielding the first South Asian superhero in a Hollywood film, too, Eternals gives us Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani playing Kingo.

My heart swelled with pride seeing Nanjiani dressed up in Pakistani traditional wear at Eternals world premiere, and eating biryani at Darjeeling Express when he was in London for the UK premiere. He's boldly championing his roots, and I'm here for it.

It's not the first time a superhero franchise has moved to a more diverse cast, though. Black Panther (2018) was a rousing success, showing that audiences were keen on such stories and that they wielded box office clout.

I went to see Black Panther five times in the cinema, and seeing a technologically-advanced slice of Africa, and not the poverty porn that's usually pushed upon viewers, was a welcome change.

The making of Eternals is a big stride for representation, and like when my British Nigerian niece wanted to become a scientist after seeing Shuri in Black Panther, this idea that a child can see themselves in mainstream culture really holds - it impacts their future choices, and also builds up their self esteem, to see that they too can do big things.

With Eternals, Marvel plugged a lot of gaps from the past as they have taken the chance of changing characters from comic books to fit a more wide model of how the world looks. Building on this can only be a good thing, and showcasing marginalised, underrepresented people is essential going forward, as we are just beginning to scratch the surface of diversity in the mainstream.

My wish is to see conscious casting, and also care taken when writing characters, by investing in diverse writers rooms, and casting fantastic multicoloured talent.

The doors are now open, and it's up to the producers of film and TV to take this to the next level, showing that a superhero can look like you or, finally, like me.
Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. Share your views in the comments below.
MORE : Where does Eternals fit into the MCU timeline?

MORE : Eternals star Kumail Nanjiani spent four months taking dance lessons for one scene

MORE : Angelina Jolie hits out at 'ignorant' Eternals ban over gay scene

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Eternals is a win for all minorities who never got to see ourselves as heroes

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The making of Eternals is a big stride for representation and this idea that a child can see themselves in mainstream culture really holds.

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Representation in Hollywood has become a hotter topic in the past few years as studios begin to carve out more spaces for stories that better depict our diverse world. And within that, we've been seeing more movies focused on Asian characters, including big hits like Crazy Rich Asians, Parasite and Raya and the Last Dragon. Eternals actress Gemma Chan has been in the middle of this sea of change, but as she shares, there's still a long way to go.

While recently speaking to Vogue UK, Gemma Chan was approached about some Hollywood statistics between 2007 and 2019. According to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 44 out of 1,300 of the top grossing movies in the past decade or so have included an Asian-American or Pacific Islander lead. Oh, and Dwayne Johnson accounts for 14 of those films. To put that into perspective, only 3% of these massive films starred an Asian or Pacific Islander, and of that, Johnson made up a third.

It's a bit of a staggering statistic, even though no one would claim to be surprised by it. In the cover interview, Gemma Chan responded to the numbers with these words:

It's only a fairly recent thing that Asian females have been able to be the protagonists of stories. I mean, great for [Johnson]. I love him. Individual successes are one thing. But structurally, when you look at who can actually get projects green-lit in the UK, who are in those positions of power, those gatekeeping positions - there aren't that many Asians. There aren't many people of color in those positions.

As the Eternals star says, it all starts from the top, and the truth of the matter is that most Hollywood executives who are deciding on these big-budget films are white men. She was talking about her home in the United Kingdom, but it's not too far off from the United States as well. It's a structural problem, but as some of her movies have suggested, as huge audiences have turned up, executives are starting to catch on more often, at least.

As Gemma Chan discussed as well, Hollywood is still catching up to telling more Asian female stories. We already have a few Asian male stars we could name off, be it Jackie Chan, Ken Jeong, Randall Park, John Cho or Henry Golding. But Asian women? It's starting to stack up a bit more with the rise of Awkwafina, Michelle Yeoh finding more roles as of late, Sandra Oh or Constance Wu, but for a long time, Lucy Liu stood pretty much alone as far as mainstream, big-budget movie stars go.

Dwayne Johnson's success is huge. The former WWE star recently scored another hit with Disney's Jungle Cruise, and he'll be seen next year leading Black Adam. But as Gemma Chan points out, he's an individual success story among a long way to go for more representation and much-needed equity within the industry.

Coming up, Marvel will have its first Asian-led comic book film with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Gemma Chan will also star as Sersi in Eternals this November, after previously playing the supporting role of Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel. It's great to see more Asian representation coming to the big screen with upcoming MCU releases. It'll be exciting to see what Gemma Chan does next and how Hollywood continues to push forward with more diverse storytelling.

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Eternals' Gemma Chan Shares Feelings About Asian Representation In Movies And Dwayne Johnson Topping The List

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Representation in Hollywood has become a hotter topic in the past few years as studios begin to carve out more spaces for stories that better depict our diverse world. And within that, we've been seeing more movies focused on Asian characters, including big hits like Crazy Rich Asians, Parasite and Raya and the Last Dragon.

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Film and TV have cemented their fare share of East Asian stereotypes over the years, thanks to decades of yellow face, racist scripts and a lack of roles for nuanced Asian characters. Stereotypical Asian tropes written and played by Caucasians have persisted from the dawn of movie-making, starting with D.W. Griffith's 1910 short "The Chink at Golden Gulch," to Mickey Rooney's unforgettable "Japanese" Mr. Yunioshi character in 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's." In recent years, viewers still encountered portrayals like the horrible 2014 "How I Met Your Mother" episode where three white principals dress in silk robes and Fu Manchu mustaches to dispense sage kung fu advice in fake Chinese accents.

The U.S. industry has tried to recover lost ground in recent years with works like "The Farewell" and "Always Be My Maybe." It can feel like changes are afoot in a year when the Academy has nominated an Asian American best actor in Steven Yeun for the first time ever and put Chinese filmmaker Chloe Zhao in the spotlight as the first woman of color ever given a nod for best director. But for many, such recognition is still too little too late.

Here's a look at some different ways East Asian American characters have appeared in our pre- and post-"Crazy Rich Asians" world.

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Asian Representation in Movies: Best and Worst Examples Through the Years

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Film and TV have cemented their fare share of East Asian stereotypes over the years, thanks to decades of yellow face, racist scripts and a lack of roles for nuanced Asian characters. Stereotypical Asian tropes written and played by Caucasians have persisted from the dawn of movie-making, starting with D.W.

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Asian and Pacific Islanders accounted for less than 6 percent of speaking roles and less than 4 percent of leads and co-leads in Hollywood films, according to a comprehensive new study from USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

The study, titled The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders across 1,300 Popular Films, comes at a time of rising violence and racism against Asian Americans and the report's key findings show that Hollywood is failing to meaningfully represent API while at the same time continues to peddle harmful stereotypes of the community.

The report's authors, Dr. Nancy Wang Yuen, Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Dr. Katherine Pieper, Marc Choueiti, Kevin Yao and Dana Dinh, looked at API representation in 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007- 2019. API constituted any character who was Asian, Pacific Islander, and/or Native Hawaiian alone or in combination with other races/ethnicities, using the U.S. Census designations.

The study looked at a total of 51,159 speaking characters from a 13-year period and found that only 3,034, or 5.9 percent, were API characters. Moreover, there has been little to no meaningful increase in API representation over the period. In 2019, API characters with speaking parts accounted for 8.4 percent of total roles in Hollywood films, this was down from 9.6 percent in 2018, and only marginally up from 7.5 percent in 2008. Overall, the report found that the percentage of API characters across 13 years of the top-grossing movies (5.9 percent) falls slightly below the percentage of API people in the U.S. population (7.1 percent).

When it came to API actors toplining Hollywood films, the numbers were even more telling. Out of the 1,300 films analyzed, only 44, or 3.4 percent, featured an API lead or co-lead, in contrast to 336 films led/co-led by white male actors. Dwayne Johnson, Keanu Reeves and Jon Cho were the API actors who had the most lead roles in the period, with Constance Wu and Hailee Steinfeld the actresses scoring the most lead/co-lead roles with two each.

White male actors were more likely to lead or co-lead a Hollywood film than an API actor by a ratio of 15.3:1 and that jumps to 84:1 when comparing white male actors and API women. The report's authors say that "actors named Ben, Chris, Daniel, James, Jason, John, Josh, Michael, Robert, Sean, or Tom were more likely to be hired as the top actor in a film than any API female actor with any name auditioning in all of Hollywood."

The report also found that 507, or 39 percent, of the 1,300 films had no API characters at all, with that number jumping to 94.2 percent when looking at Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander characters only.

Behind the camera, the situation was no better. A total of 1,447 directors were credited across the 1,300 top-grossing movies from 2007 to 2019, of these only 3.5 percent were API. Of the 50 films with API directors in the 13-year period, 25 filmmakers were responsible for that number of which only 3 were women. The 25 API directors included boldface names like M. Night Shyamalan, Taika Waititi, Ang Lee, Jon M. Chu, Bong Joon Ho, James Wan and Justin Lin as well up-and-coming filmmakers such as Aneesh Chaganty and Destin Daniel Cretton.

No API woman was credited as the sole director of a live-action top-grossing feature film between 2007 and 2019, with Loveleen Tanden credited as co-director of Slumdog Millionaire, Jennifer Yuh Nelson credited twice for directing the animated feature Kung Fu Panda 2 and co-directing Kung Fu Panda 3. Chloe Zhao's all-conquering Nomadland was released in 2020.

Only 2.5 percent of the 3,952 credited film producers in the period were API, with 85.7 percent of these API producers being men and only 14.3 percent were women. When it came to casting directors, 3.3 percent were API, with 84.9 percent of the casters API women and 15.1 percent API men.

Interestingly, the study found that films with an API director attached featured more API leads/co-leads then those films without an API director attached. A similar but less pronounced pattern emerged with producers and the presence of an API casting director was not associated with the prevalence of API leads and co-leads.

At the studio executive level, API made up only 6.4 percent at major studios (Amazon Studios, Lionsgate, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Company including 20th Century, and Warner Bros.). None of the API executives were at the chair or CEO level.

Of the companies analyzed, the study found that "Netflix featured the highest number of API leads/co leads, films with proportional representation, API directors, API producers, and API casters across the 9 companies evaluated. Netflix also distributed 126 fictional U.S. films on its platform across 2018 and 2019, allowing for greater breadth and depth of hiring on screen and behind the camera. In fact, 4 out of 5 indicators on Netflix films were above proportional representation using U.S. Census."

The report also found that Hollywood continued to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and tropes of the API community. API characters were more likely to be expendable in films, to feature as the sidekick or villain or as token characters stripped of romantic and family relationships or friendships.

The analysis found that there were films that framed API characters as the "perpetual foreigner" by giving them exaggerated non-English or foreign accents. API women characters were also subject to hypersexualization, with characters often depicted naked, partially clothed or in sexy clothing, feeding into societal sexualization of Asian women. There was also evidence of API men being emasculated on screen, with very few roles in the studied period featuring the male API characters having romantic relationships and instances of the API characters being sexually belittled for comic effect using stereotypes.

To increase API representation in Hollywood films and tackle the problems highlighted by their report, the authors put forward eight recommendations, including: the casting of more API talent; moving towards more authentic portrayals of the API characters; hiring more API storytellers; work with more API suppliers and vendors; supporting nonprofits, film schools and API talent pipeline; ensuring wider distribution of films by API creatives; elevating the voices of API critics, journalists and publicists; and for A-listers to eschew performative allyship with action which is more meaningful and substantive.

The full report and its recommendations can be read here.

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Asians and Pacific Islanders Account for Less Than 6 Percent of Speaking Roles in Hollywood Films, Study Finds

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Asian and Pacific Islanders accounted for less than 6 percent of speaking roles and less than 4 percent of leads and co-leads, per USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that looked at popular films from 2007 to 2019.

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Born and growing up in East Asia, the closest thing to a superhero that we had at that time was Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Both martial arts and humans with achievable strengths. I wouldn't consider these actors and the roles they played in as superheros or superhero movies. As well as the fact that most of the movies at the time was locally made in Hong Kong and not in Hollywood. (talk about eternals...)

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Reading the comments is rarely a good idea. But when opening a breaking news tweet on March 16 about a rash of horrific murders across Atlanta, including six Asian woman working in three separate spas, the overwhelming sameness of the replies was unavoidable, infuriating, and instructive. "Not quite the happy ending they were expecting," crowed one. "No happy ending then?" asked another. "Definitely not a happy ending," declared another, throwing in a gif of a stick figure drumming a "heyo!" rimshot to make sure anyone reading it would understand that they wanted a laugh. Endless tweets of the same snark, each trying and failing to be the first because too many others had beaten them to it. Over and over and over again, people responded to the news of Asian woman dying with a joke about their pain.

This response is horrendous, but it shouldn't be surprising. Reducing Asians to flat, heavily accented caricatures is a favorite pastime in this country, and has been for decades. Mocking Asian men as weak and effeminate is so common that it's become white noise for too many who hear it; Asian women have long been reduced to dehumanizing stereotypes, whether meek and speechless or aggressively sexual robots whose only purpose seems to be servicing white American men.

Onscreen, these patterns persist with unrelenting frequency. One of the most enduring depictions of an Asian woman in American cinema is still the Vietnamese prostitute in Stanley Kubrick's " Full Metal Jacket," who saunters up to a couple of American soldiers and declares that "me so horny," "me sucky sucky," "me love you long time." She's only there to give these white Americans "everything [they] want" - and if she doesn't, countless other films and shows are all too willing to demonstrate the violence she might endure. (Take a " Family Guy " episode I was unlucky enough to pass by on cable recently, in which a dozen Asian women spill frantically out of Quagmire's trunk and garage, running away in their underwear; Quagmire only calms down once he reminds himself that "they're tagged.") Every single genre - whether comedy, drama, or police procedural - leans on the shock value of dead or endangered sex workers, many of them anonymous Asian women who are rarely afforded more nuance or humanity than that basic description.

Comedy in particular leans into letting "Asian" be a punchline in and of itself, and if you don't like it, then you're the problem for not getting the joke. I've never gotten more visceral online hate than in 2019, when I wrote about the comedian " Saturday Night Live " hired before his history of racist "comedy" - particularly and viciously against Asians - got him fired days later. His initial defense was a classic for comedians who get any pushback: that he was sorry "if" he offended anyone, but he was just doing his job by pushing boundaries. I disagreed, calling his attempts bad and boring for repeating exhausted stereotypes in search of knee-jerk laughs. In response, his fans called me a joyless cunt. Still, that was nothing compared to the sheer wall of furious harassment my Asian-American peers got for calling the same racism out - or in other words, for refusing to accept that they should be the butt of the joke. The ensuing racist vitriol made it all too clear that such "comedy" about Asian accents, food and mannerisms aren't rooted in people wanting to laugh, but wanting to assert dominance over cultures they find ridiculous. The subjects of their jokes fighting back isn't a part of the punchline, and is therefore an unacceptable buzzkill.

Whether or not the people cracking wise about Asians realize it, they're helping to dehumanize an entire population for no reason other than their own instant gratification. And frankly, granting the benefit of the doubt of "whether they realize it or not" is probably far too generous considering the ample evidence of how many do, in fact, realize exactly what they're doing.

The most glaring recent example came from the very top. Just about every time Donald Trump spoke about COVID-19 as president of the United States, he deliberately avoided using the word "coronavirus" when he could instead say "Chinese." At rallies, he'd practically wink at the omnipresent camera as he called the virus the "kung flu." Hate crimes against Asian-Americans immediately spiked, but to the people in charge with the biggest platforms in the world, it didn't matter. Using hostile punchlines turned Asians into convenient scapegoats - an entirely worthwhile distraction from their own failures.

Turning the virus into a joke at Asians' expense is especially effective because it makes it easy to shrug off criticism by explaining that it's just Trump's sense of humor. Last November, Dave Chappelle expressed admiration for the wordplay of "kung flu" in his opening "SNL" monologue, calling Trump a "racist, hilarious son of a bitch" who had beaten him to a perfectly good punchline. "I'm supposed to say that, not you," Chappelle said directly to Trump. He went on to insist that "it's wrong when you say it," therefore staking his claim as the comedian who can say the racist thing as long as it's got the cadence of a joke. He did not, it seems, pause to consider that it might just be wrong no matter who says it. The end result is the same, giving racism an out just because they found a way to make it catchy.

So, no: It isn't especially shocking to glance beneath a news story about murdered Asian women and see a slew of responses snickering about whether or not their lives had a happy ending. It's appalling, but an undeniably typical display of the kind of casual disdain that leads to such senseless violence every day. Just because a punchline is expected doesn't mean that it isn't vile, and it shouldn't just be on Asian-Americans to say as much, whether to friends, coworkers, or Hollywood as a whole.

And no: refusing to indulge racist jokes isn't suppressing free speech, but pointing out hate for what it is. As much as laughter can be a tonic, terrible moments like these have proved just how effectively it can also be wielded against the vulnerable, when laughing at someone results in laughing away their suffering, history, and humanity. Nothing, especially not some cheap attempt at a cheaper joke, is worth that.

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How Hollywood Is Complicit in the Violence Against Asians in America

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Reading the comments is rarely a good idea. But when opening a breaking news tweet on March 16 about a rash of horrific murders across Atlanta, including six Asian woman working in three separate spas, the overwhelming sameness of the replies was unavoidable, infuriating, and instructive.

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William Yu, the creator of #StarringJohnCho - a hashtag for a series of Instagram images that superimposed the Korean-American actor John Cho's face onto those of leading men in various Hollywood blockbuster posters - and #SeeAsAmStar, imagines an all-Asian cast in John Hughes's 1985 film "The Breakfast Club." Clockwise from left, the actors Sunita Mani, Hayley Kiyoko, Karan Brar, Arden Cho and Ki Hong Lee. Yu is an advocate for greater Asian-American representation in Hollywood. Credit... Image by William Yu. Background source photograph: Everett Collection. Face source photographs, clockwise from top: Michael Germana/Everett Collection; Araya Diaz/Getty Images for IFC; Mike Pont/WireImage/Getty Images; Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images; Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

THEIR FACES ARE familiar for the feelings of horror and shame they produce in me. Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in 1961's " Breakfast at Tiffany's," stumbling around his Manhattan apartment in a blue bathrobe, his face contorted - lips barely closing over grotesquely pronounced buckteeth, slicked-back hair dyed jet black. Ashton Kutcher as a Bollywood producer, Raj, in a 2012 commercial, his skin darkened, a brown mustache affixed to his face, speaking in a cheap singsong voice, swaying his body, which is clad in a bright blue silk sherwani, back and forth to imitate the Indian head waggle. Tilda Swinton, otherworldly in her beauty, as always, but monkishly bald as the Ancient One, a character originally intended to be Tibetan, in 2016's " Doctor Strange." More subtle, but still just as shocking: Emma Stone - blonde and green-eyed - as Allison Ng, leaning against a kitchen island in a scene from 2015's " Aloha " and saying, "My dad was half Chinese, half Hawaiian," as breezily as if she were saying goodbye to someone on the telephone.

I, too, am half Chinese, though I have always been told (by other Chinese-Americans, by white people who were under the impression I was one of them) that I'm not the right kind of Chinese. I'm over six feet tall and my eyelids have creases, and I have come to anticipate the pause in a conversation with strangers as I watch them - like someone calculating the size of someone else's apartment - square the fact of my ethnicity with my appearance. I have never quite seen myself on-screen. Maybe in Keanu Reeves or Olivia Munn, but even so, the side of myself that is understood as Asian - that is seen - is as washed away as theirs, and that is because we live in a world that doesn't make time for ambiguity, that continues to reward whiteness with privilege.

Having been raised on a mediocre diet of American television and mainstream Hollywood movies, I can count on one hand the actors of Asian descent who made an impression on me growing up. Their performances have stayed with me, like a novel you may never read again but pack with you every time you move.

There are two I'll mention here.

The first was George Takei, a Japanese-American, as the steadfast and levelheaded " Star Trek " officer Hikaru Sulu. He spoke - I remember finding this remarkable, and, in a way, I still do, given the show was created in 1966 - without an accent. In a subsequent feature-length film, Sulu eventually becomes captain of his own ship. He showed sound judgment and character in times of danger. He led.

Then there was Sandra Oh, a Korean-Canadian, as the enraged Stephanie in 2004's " Sideways," who has a love affair with a feckless man named Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church. She breaks his nose after learning he is engaged to another woman; I had never seen a Korean woman on-screen lose her temper within the proximity of a Saab convertible and against the backdrop of a California vineyard. Her anger was justified. Her emotions were real, not cartoonish.

Both performances let me understand that I didn't have to ask to assume the same privileges as those around me - but nor should I pretend to be someone I wasn't. They also spoke to a part of me, the Chinese half of me, that never felt it could behave as carelessly as the other half of me did.

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The actors Ryan Higa, Lana Condor and Karan Soni imagined as the cast of John Hughes's 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Credit... Image by William Yu. Background source photograph: © Paramount/courtesy of Everett Collection. Face source photographs, from left: © Godigital/courtesy of Everett Collection; Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock; Wenn Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

THERE HAVE BEEN attempts by Hollywood to insert real people of color - in this case, Asian-Americans - into the cultural landscape of film and television. Most recently, Daniel Wu was cast as Lu Ren in this year's " Tomb Raider," starring Alicia Vikander. He was as good-looking as he was complicated, but where typically there might have been some chemistry between two young and beautiful people embarking on a grand adventure, Wu was relegated by the end to the benign, if handsome, friend. The television reboot " Hawaii Five-0" has added more nuanced Asian characters who were missing from the original version, played by actors such as Grace Park, Daniel Dae Kim or Masi Oka, and newer creations, including " Silicon Valley," have cast Jimmy O. Yang and Kumail Nanjiani in stereotypical but still more rewardingly complex supporting roles (Yang plays a ruthless if talentless app developer; Nanjiani, as a software engineer, steals the scene in nearly every episode). But these are still small changes, and this so-called progress rings hollow. You remain unlikely to see Asian-Americans in lead roles in big studios films without the hint of tokenism, even after the box office success of this year's " Crazy Rich Asians," the first studio film with an all-Asian cast since " The Joy Luck Club " in 1993.

Representation of Asians within American performing arts has always been alarmingly small. A recent study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism showed Asian-Americans representing only 1 percent of all leading roles in Hollywood (the 2017 United States Census Bureau reported that there are 18 million Americans of Asian descent, or roughly 6 percent of the population). Only one actor of Asian heritage has ever won an Academy Award for best actor: Ben Kingsley, whose father was Indian, in 1983 for playing Gandhi (Kingsley has been nominated in three other instances). Twelve actors of Asian descent have ever received nominations from the academy - all largely for supporting roles, with the exception of Merle Oberon, who was half British and half Sri Lankan, in 1936. The others include the Japanese-American actor Pat Morita; the Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor; the Japanese actors Mako Iwamatsu, Ken Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchi and Sessue Hayakawa; the Chinese-American actresses and sisters Jennifer and Meg Tilly; the Filipino-American actress Hailee Steinfeld; and the British-Indian actor Dev Patel. This year, Sandra Oh made history as the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated for an Emmy for the lead in a dramatic series, as Eve Polastri in " Killing Eve." And earlier this year, the Indian-American actor Aziz Ansari was awarded best actor for a TV comedy by the Golden Globes, the first actor of Asian descent to do so. When " Saturday Night Live" announced that the actor Awkwafina would host the show this past October, it was noted that the last woman of Asian descent to host was Lucy Liu in 2000, 18 years ago. The New York Times recently reported that in the search for the male lead in "Crazy Rich Asians," one of the movie's producers was told by several prominent American theater schools that they hadn't had a male Asian graduate in years. A study by multiple universities reported that, over a one-year period, of the 242 scripted shows on broadcast, cable and streaming TV, just one-third had a series regular who was Asian-American or Pacific Islander. These are shows, mind you, set in cities such as San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, which all have significant Asian-American and Pacific Islander populations (33 percent, 12 percent and 24 percent, respectively). And another report by the U.S.C. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative stated that of the top 100 films of last year, 37 didn't include a single Asian character with a speaking role.

Yet elsewhere in the arts, Asian-Americans have flourished: as poets, writers, directors, photographers, fashion designers, architects, interior decorators and visual artists. The creative offerings of Asian-Americans - from Vera Wang's fantasy wedding dresses to the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri to the haunting cinematography of Hiro Murai, the director of Donald Glover's television show " Atlanta " - aren't just accepted but celebrated. Only in the representational arts do Asians remain unseen - mostly in film and television, but in music, too, and, to a lesser degree, on the runway.

In other words: It is only when we are hidden that we are allowed to succeed. Which leads to a more troubling but inevitable conclusion: that there is something about the very physiognomy of the Asian face that American audiences still cannot or will not accept.

EXOTIC, OPPORTUNISTIC prostitutes. Sexless, emasculated eunuchs. Submissive young girls. Savage, untamed creatures. Coolies. Filth. The earliest stereotypes about Asian-Americans were formed after the first wave of immigration in the mid-1800s, when Chinese immigrants were brought in by the thousands to help build the railroads that would eventually crisscross the western half of the nation. They were cheaper than American and European laborers, and they were made to work longer hours. But they were also hired because they were willing (though did they really have a choice?) to do the more dangerous work - clearing the path along perilous mountain ridges with dynamite, blowing up granite rock to create tunnels, often getting trapped inside mountains or swept away in avalanches - that others refused to do.

Their arrival was called the Yellow Peril. Asian immigrants were seen as invasive and threatening to an entire American way of life, and over the next century, a series of laws were passed that excluded first the Chinese, but then also those from other Asian countries. By 1924, all Asian immigrants (with the exception of those from the Philippines, a country that had been annexed by the United States) were refused citizenship, naturalization, land ownership and, in some states, prevented from marrying those of another race.

Hollywood capitalized on these fears accordingly in their creations of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan. The former, a calculating villain who appeared in a series of films beginning in the 1920s (the name, invented by its British creator, is a crude jingoist rhyme, neither Mandarin nor Cantonese), is a mask of a Chinese man, always portrayed with crudely slanted eyes, eyebrows like caterpillars and a thin dangling beard. The latter was a benevolent but subservient detective in a bowler hat who was popularized by a series of white actors in dozens of films beginning in the 1920s and into the 1980s. And even if Asian men weren't portrayed as the yellow-faced villain or the neutered helpmate, they were still always the other. As with almost any reviled minority group in America, the fear traces back to sex - the men were either sexless or sex-crazed. The women were conniving dragon ladies or docile concubines.

It was only in 1965, when immigration laws changed again, and the United States eliminated national-origin quotas and introduced a preference system based on family relationships as well as skills, that a new wave of Asian immigrants arrived. With them came a new stereotype, one that persists today: the model minority - competitive, goal-oriented and hard-working (but, notably, lacking in creativity, charm, sex appeal and humor). A recent lawsuit against Harvard University revealed how it systematically discriminates against Asian-American applicants, alleging that though Asian-American students consistently performed higher than other applicants when it came to test scores, grades and extracurriculars, they were consistently given lower scores for "positive personality," likability, courage, kindness and being "widely respected," according to the 160,000 student records included in the lawsuit's filing. (Harvard has denied the charges.)

Inscrutable. High-achieving. Soulless.

Why is it that the challenges of becoming part of a new country, of overcoming an immense language barrier or working twice as hard and twice as long are so rarely prized? I think often of the leap, for example, my mother made immigrating to this country from Taiwan, and how much she lost in translation. It's the little things you forget to explain or can't, at least right away, put into words. For years, my mother would tell me she was afraid of snakes, and I never understood why until we visited the house where she grew up in Keelung, a port city in northern Taiwan where the weather can shift in an instant, blue sky darkening to black. There, alongside a small garden, was a creek, and as we passed it, my mother remarked that that was where the bodies of dead snakes accumulated after each typhoon. The Chinese-American writer Weike Wang's short story " Omakase," published this year in The New Yorker, captures this cultural muteness as well. In it, a young Chinese-American woman goes on a date with her white boyfriend to a sushi restaurant in Harlem. His relative ease in the restaurant and in his interactions with the Japanese chef show, on the one hand, a charismatic personality. But on the other, it reveals a white man's assumption of being understood, in being welcome. It causes, at one point, the protagonist to reflect on an earlier moment when she introduced her boyfriend to her parents:

Her mother was a housewife. Back in China, they'd had different jobs. Her father had been a computer-science professor and her mother had been a salesclerk, but their success in those former roles had hinged on being loquacious and witty in their native language, none of which translated into English.

It's an obvious but understated point - the lack of charisma and expression that the protagonist's father possesses in English is not because he is a humorless and charmless man, but that the nuances of such expression are not, at that moment, available to him. It calls to mind the coded language used to describe Asians and Asian-Americans: "hard-working" instead of brilliant, "diligent" but not dazzling, "focused" but not naturally gifted.

But even if we can prove to you that we are as good as you, the underlying message we get from the culture is that there is something else that separates us, some quality that's impossible to quantify - originality, spark, winsome impulsivity, intuition. We are tireless workers, but all that diligence amounts to in the eyes of others is a kind of empty ambition. We don't seduce, we don't inspire, we don't go by our gut. These are skills the American workplace fetishizes, and it has been decided that we don't possess them. Recent studies have found that Asian-Americans are the least likely of all races to be promoted into managerial positions.

The bamboo ceiling.

And so it all comes back to how we are allowed to see ourselves on the screen: worker bees but not the inventor. Comical helpmeets but never the alpha. Filial sons and daughters who have abandoned emotional fulfillment in order to satisfy our parents. These stereotypes are, not incidentally, the absolute inverse of the types and tropes celebrated in American cinema: the rebel, the bad boy, the iconoclast, the prankster. The people we worship in our popular culture - from James Dean to Steve Jobs, Marilyn Monroe to Princess Diana - don't play by the rules. It's a Western myth that those we love distinguish themselves by their differences, that their faults are their virtues. Asians are seen differently: pathetic perfectionists who never got the meaning of life, who're unable to live with abandon and therefore with romance. And that is why we will never be compelling enough to be the hero in your eyes.

The actors Lucy Liu and Ross Butler imagined as Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock in 1967's "The Graduate." Credit... Image by William Yu. Background source photograph: Embassy/Laurence Turman/Kobal/Shutterstock. Face source photographs, from top: Cindy Ord/Getty Images; Jamie McCarthy/WireImage/Getty Images

IN WATCHING MOVIES, we project. It's a basic impulse. We identify with who we see. We feel what the characters feel, perhaps because once in our life, we experienced something close to what the actor is living on the screen, even if our version was less dramatic, less violent. Very rarely do the stakes in our lives rise so high, nor do the contours of a movie mimic the passage of time that defines our existence - but the intensity of feeling can't be diminished when we relate to someone else's experience, when we see what we know being reenacted, and understand it to be true.

After the release this past summer of "Crazy Rich Asians," a romantic comedy about a young woman who discovers her boyfriend's enormous wealth (and one of only three major Hollywood films ever to have a majority Asian cast), I've fantasized about recasting various classic American films with faces that look like mine. What if " Ferris Bueller" took place in Pasadena and not Chicago, if its projection of youthful freedom and dilettantish attention span - youth is now, and now is free - were something you could see played out among a well-to-do Chinese family? Or if " The Graduate" was about Mrs. Kwan, not Mrs. Robinson, a complex woman with whom we could understand the isolation of an empty marriage? Or if " The Breakfast Club " was about a young Japanese-American woman in the suburbs of San Francisco just discovering the power of her sexuality? These coming-of-age films - however limited or dated they may seem today - did one specific thing for me when I first watched them: They allowed me to witness the complexity of an individual's interiority. I saw characters who desired something or someone in life they didn't have, I saw them stumble and learn from their mistakes and I saw them grow from them. It's a redemptive, satisfying feeling.

All stereotypes reduce. Asian-American actors have largely been either fulfillments or denials of clichés. If we are never granted the right to a personality, if we are only perceived as heartless automatons just one point away from a perfect SAT score - then we are certainly never going to be granted the opportunity to live full lives on the screen. Robots, after all, are born fully formed.

Perhaps, other Asian-Americans have argued, we aren't vocal enough. We don't get worked up, we don't cause a fuss. Our parents don't encourage us to take risks, to rebel. We are too polite, too cautious.

But I don't buy it. I think that you refuse to see us. To look at us for who we are. As with so many other minorities in America, you are comfortable enjoying the work we make. But representation is about demanding more: more leading Asian-American actors, more films in which we are allowed the everyday banalities of our existence. The anxieties, the boredom, the simple gestures of affection. It's about showing that you are like us. Not the other way around. Not adjacent. Not other.

IN ALL ART, the specific is the universal. Today, society can see itself in films that star black people, gay people, older women and transgender people, because even though those stories are about experiences specific to them, they are also stories about being human. There is no perfect outcome in the battle of representation, at least not today, but their presence on screens is a bestowment of dignity, because it demands that society look at them - not past or through them.

In the critic Wesley Yang's 2011 essay " Paper Tigers," about the stereotypes surrounding Asian-American overachievers, he consistently returns to the face, his own or that of his subjects: "Sometimes I'll glimpse my reflection in a window and feel astonished by what I see. Jet-black hair. Slanted eyes. A pancake-flat surface of yellow-and-green-toned skin. An expression that is nearly reptilian in its impassivity." He speaks with a young man named Jefferson Mao, who aspires to be a writer but recalls his experience at Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School as being part "of a mob of 'nameless, faceless Asian kids who were like a part of the décor of the place.' " Yang continues: "Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: an invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor but that it in fact patronizes and exploits."

When I was 10 years old, I stole a blond wig from the theater camp I attended that summer. I wore it alone in my room. I paraded in front of my mirror with it perched on my head like the feathers of a cockatoo. When it was on, I let myself fantasize about being a white girl. It was then that the more Chinese side of me became visible. The beige and yellow undertones of my skin clashed with the golden yellow of the wig. The almond shape of my brown eyes didn't sit as well as the pretty blue eyes I imagined having beneath the flaxen bangs. I was trying to erase a side of myself. But in doing so, I only saw myself more clearly.

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Why Do Asian-Americans Remain Largely Unseen in Film and Television? (Published 2018)

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THEIR FACES ARE familiar for the feelings of horror and shame they produce in me. Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in 1961's " Breakfast at Tiffany's," stumbling around his Manhattan apartment in a blue bathrobe, his face contorted - lips barely closing over grotesquely pronounced buckteeth, slicked-back hair dyed jet black.

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Asian representation in western films has mostly been full of tropes and stereotypes for example females being the white man's accessory or the character being a Martial Artist.

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Marvel's latest superhero outing is a breakthrough for Asian representation, but the character's comic book past has a complicated history

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"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," starring Simu Liu, is Marvel's first solo film led by an Asian hero. Featuring a mostly East Asian cast, the movie has already ignited conversation about whether it could equal the cultural significance of "Black Panther."

But Shang-Chi's history in the comics is complicated and problematic. The superhero has been plagued by tropes that society still imposes on Asian Americans both in real life and in fiction - yellow peril, kung fu master, etc. These are stereotypes that the movie will have to reclaim from White voices and rewrite in the fight for Asian representation on screen.

Fu Manchu and the Asian 'threat'

In the new film, Shang-Chi is the son of Xu Wenwu, a.k.a. the villainous Mandarin. But in the original comics, Shang-Chi's father is the infamous - and problematic - Fu Manchu, a genius magician bent on world domination.

Simu Liu stars as the titular hero in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings." (Marvel Studios)

Fu Manchu was created by writer Sax Rohmer and debuted in "The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1913), the first of 13 novels with the character before it was licensed by Marvel. Rohmer's very first description of the character outright calls him "the yellow peril incarnate in one man."

Yellow peril and other anti-Asian propaganda stemmed from a long-held fear of East Asia as a threat to Western civilization. Seeing them as simultaneously culturally inferior and dangerously cunning, the press and politicians portrayed Asian immigrants as a menace to the nation. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating into the U.S. to "steal jobs" from White Americans.

Fu Manchu, with his sinister nature and goal of conquering the world, ticked all the propaganda boxes.

"Yellow Terror," an editorial cartoon from 1899. (Wikimedia)

The film "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu" (1929) starred Swedish American Warner Oland in yellowface as Dr. Fu Manchu. (Paramount Pictures)

LEFT: "Yellow Terror," an editorial cartoon from 1899. (Wikimedia) RIGHT: The film "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu" (1929) starred Swedish American Warner Oland in yellowface as Dr. Fu Manchu. (Paramount Pictures)

The film's creators contended with this problematic history by excising Fu Manchu entirely. Instead, they transposed Fu Manchu's history with Shang-Chi onto another character, the Mandarin, creating a new composite character for the movie, and humanized him by making him a devoted family man instead of a sinister caricature.

Some critics have pointed out that the name "Mandarin" isn't less offensive though, and that film still deals with a variety of other stereotypes. For example, there's the boilerplate assumption that Asian-centric movies must include martial arts and themes of filial piety - tropes that Shang-Chi seems to fill.

Representation on-screen is still lacking and plagued by tropes

Part of what makes Shang-Chi's casting notable is that Asians overall still get little face time in Hollywood movies. The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative 's annual study looking at "Inequality in 1,300 Popular Films" found that, of the top 100 films of 2019, only 7.2 percent of all speaking characters were Asian. In fact, Asian speaking or named characters were entirely missing from more than a third of all 2019 movies.

Majority of both speaking characters and directors are still White

Data based on the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative's research of 1,300 movies from 2007 to 2019.

Even when Asian characters do make it on screen, they are often plagued by stereotypes. These can range from the relatively innocuous " Asian girl with a dyed hair streak" to the much more dangerous sexualization of Asian women.

Conversation surrounding the latter reignited after eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in the Atlanta-area spa shootings. The suspected gunman, Robert Aaron Long, said he saw the people who worked in the spas as "temptations" he needed to "eliminate," signaling that he set out with the intention of attacking Asian women whom he perceived to be selling sex.

People participate in a protest in New York City in April against anti-Asian violence.

The protest had nearly 3.000 participants, including activists, residents and local politicians. (Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

LEFT: People participate in a protest in New York City in April against anti-Asian violence. RIGHT: The protest had nearly 3.000 participants, including activists, residents and local politicians. (Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

On Monday, the FBI reported that the number of hate crimes in the United States rose in 2020 to the highest level in 12 years, propelled by increasing assaults targeting Asian and Black people. Attacks on Asians in particular rose 73 percent from 2019. Some civil rights advocates cited former president Donald Trump's xenophobic language, which harked back to old yellow peril propaganda, as one cause. Trump, for example, stoked anti-Asian hatred during the covid-19 pandemic using phrases like "Chinese virus."

Recent breakthroughs as Asians begin to claim new space

Though still far from reaching parity, Asians and Asian Americans have begun making notable steps in Hollywood. From "Parasite" and its explosive success, to "Minari" and "The Farewell" landing major acting awards for their casts, more attention is being paid to both increased diversity and fully fleshed-out characters.

Bong Joon Ho, left, and Han Jin Won accept the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for "Parasite." (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Nora Lum, also known as Awkwafina, became the first Asian American woman to win a Golden Globe in any lead actress film category after winning for "The Farewell." (Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Disney)

LEFT: Bong Joon Ho, left, and Han Jin Won accept the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for "Parasite." (Kevin Winter/Getty Images) RIGHT: Nora Lum, also known as Awkwafina, became the first Asian American woman to win a Golden Globe in any lead actress film category after winning for "The Farewell." (Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Disney)

The creators of the new Shang-Chi film also admitted to being aware and cautious of the potential pitfalls surrounding their movie. Screenwriter David Callaham talked to Inverse about the filmmakers' list of Fu Manchu stereotypes they "wanted to explode," and director Destin Daniel Cretton spoke to The Washington Post about fighting against the "kung-fu Asian" trope.

"The primary hope for 'Shang-Chi' was to find an actor who would help to break the stereotype of a kung-fu Asian dude," Cretton said. "We have seen that archetype of that character over time. And particularly in Western cinema, it's often the butt of a joke. We wanted to create a character that was surprisingly relatable to anybody."

In the face of continued anti-Asian violence and rhetoric, fighting these tropes in one of the biggest movies of the year might just make Shang-Chi the latest hero for the ages.

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Shang-Chi and the fight against yellow peril

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Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," starring Simu Liu, is Marvel's first solo film led by an Asian hero. Featuring a mostly East Asian cast, the movie has already ignited conversation about whether it could equal the cultural significance of "Black Panther."

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Asian Americans Are Poorly Represented in Hollywood, Study Shows

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Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are frequently stereotyped in major films and are poorly represented in the industry, according to a recent study.More than 90% of respondents in the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment survey said representation is inadequate both on-screen and behind the scenes. And for films that feature Asian-American and Pacific-Islander characters in the main cast, 35% of their characters embody at least one common trope or stereotype, such as “Martial Artist”