Typecasting of Ethnic Minorities in Film

Each ethnicity has been represented by the media in a different way. African Americans and Latino/as are more often portrayed as criminals, “gang-bangers,” and prostitutes, Asian Americans are presented as being bookworms, geeks, or horny schoolgirls, and Native Americans are portrayed as alcoholics. A common theme among these representations is that all people of color are manifested as the “other.” They are the “inferior” people within the dichotomous structure of race within the United States and many parts of the world. A perplexing aspect of this placement of Caucasian people within the “superior” role is that, among the world’s population, they are, in fact, in the minority. Nevertheless, people of color have been represented as the minority and “inferior” people within society.

Due to their cumulative placement on the so-called inferior end of the dichotomy of race in society, it is not an unheard-of or absurd conclusion that an individual person of color would be used to represent all other people of color within their ethnic group. For example, certain actors have been representative of all people of the same ethnicity within film. There have also been instances when actors of color have portrayed a person from within an entirely separate ethnic minority.

One example of this type of representation has been within the show M*A*S*H. The idea for this extremely popular show grew from the movie of the same name directed by Robert Altman in 1970 and the novel by Richard Hooker. The show was set in South Korea during the Korean War and reached millions of viewers over its eleven seasons (eight years longer than the Korean War actually lasted). Many of the extras on this show played Koreans on both sides of the war. However, it is a commonly known fact that the actors chosen to play these roles were often not of Korean descent. People whose families originated in many different Asian countries filled these roles during the course of M*A*S*H. Actors of Chinese, Japanese, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian descent were often substitutes for Korean actors. While this may have occurred due to a lack of Korean actors in the areas where the show was filmed it, at times, seems as if the show’s directors and producers felt that the American public viewed all people of Asian descent as the same. This contradicts the idea of so-called individuality in American culture because it ignores the fact that the hundreds of actors used in the show were from many separate countries and presents the idea that each Asian person is equivalent to every other person of Asian descent in their cultural beliefs, appearance, and customs.

Many actors beyond the extras in M*A*S*H who are of Asian decent have been typecast within roles which ignore their cultural heritages. The famous Chinese actress Lucy Liu has played characters of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent. Rosalind Chao, who appeared on M*A*S*H as an extra, is a first- generation Chinese American actress who has played Chinese and Korean characters. Michelle Krusiec (pictured at right), a Taiwanese American actress who had her first leading role in the 2004 film Saving Face, has also played roles in which she portrayed Chinese and Japanese women. The most recent and one of the most famous incidents of this type of cross-cultural portrayal by an actress was in the film Memoirs of a Geisha. In the film Ziyi Zhang, an accomplished Chinese actress and martial artist, portrayed the main character, Sayuri, a Japanese geisha.

This theme is also common among the Latin American acting community. Salma Hayek (pictured at right), one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood, is of Lebanese and Mexican descent and has played characters from Mexico as well as various countries in Latin and South America. Antonio Banderas was born in Spain and has played Spanish, Mexican, and Argentinean characters. Paz Vega (far right), also born in Spain, was made famous in America through her portrayal of a Mexican immigrant in the 2004 film Spangish, directed by James L. Brooks.

Other cross-cultural portrayals by actors have been by actors such as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has starred as African American and American Samoan characters as well as the Egyptian male lead in The Scorpion King, and Oded Fehr (pictured at right) has starred as Egyptian, Hispanic, and other characters of Middle Eastern descent.

These portrayals of people of color within film have created a somewhat disturbing trend in Hollywood. With so many actors being typecast according to their minority status, it is no wonder that so many Americans have been influenced by the media to further generalize all people of color as the “other” not only in film, but also in everyday life.