[ part 1 \ part 2 ]
Before I entered college, I did not watch much television. It was passively discouraged by my parents, so I never got adopted the hobby. But, since leaving home, I became somewhat obsessed with TV: I quickly got into favorites like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, How I Met Your Mother, and Happy Endings and dove into long-gone shows like Friends and Lost, to name only a few from my list. Why did I suddenly love television so much? Was this new activity ruining my brain?
Luckily, thanks to my studies in Culture & Media, I realized that I love watching television not just for the entertainment but also because TV is one of the richest forms of media that communicates and makes very visible the ideologies of modern society on an everyday level. I wrote one of my very first essays in my major on Happy Endings, in which I discussed not just its unique portrayal of racial and sexual minorities but also its potential position of tokenism. This was the first time I really saw the power in writing about television—an activity conventionally associated with entertainment and lethargy—and parsing out the positive and negative issues being portrayed on a societally-widespread medium.
My critical eye and mind has never come more into play than this past year, in which we saw a certain revival of racial minorities on mainstream television. Recent prominent shows that focus on non-white characters include Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, Cristela, Jane the Virgin, and Empire. On a fundamental level, it is fantastic that minorities are getting more of the spotlight and TV is bringing more awareness about foreign cultures to Western audiences.
But when you think about these new shows as a whole, are they really advancing any impressions or judgments? Several questions have come up after watching some of these programs. For me personally, I had an interesting experience watching Fresh Off the Boat, the first Asian-American network sitcom since Margaret Cho's All-American Girl. As a Chinese born in the U.S., I have found a seamless balance between my immigrant family's culture and my American environment, and I most often never think of myself as from a minority. But seeing a family similar to mine on Fresh Off the Boat suddenly did remind me of my status as a person of color and the lack of portrayal of my race on TV. The thing is, this didn't happen when I saw other singular Asian characters on other shows, but only when seeing a group of them in a family setting. Is it a good or bad thing that I finally truly relate to someone on TV but am also reminded of my foreign, "non-normal" identity?
I discovered that virtually all of the other shows mentioned above also feature their main characters strictly in the domestic sphere of families. Why are there no shows with casts of one color in other contexts, like work or school or friendship? Furthermore, after watching some of these shows, it is clear that a heavy focus across the board is the characters' respective races. Is it possible that this emphasis is hurting general representations of minorities and further pushing stereotypes? Another question that comes up is the common placement of minorities in the genre of comedy: why is Empire the only drama on that list?
I am excited to be writing about these questions for my thesis in Culture & Media; I feel strongly about this topic not just because of the medium of television but also for the ideas of minority inclusion versus exclusion and the normalization of otherness in mainstream culture. Hopefully I'll have some answers to these questions by the end of the year!