Hey Hollywood, Where's Your Representation?

Golden afternoon sunlight filtered in through the glass sliding doors. I was curled up on the rug in front of the TV with my cousins, anxiously waiting for my grandma to start the movie. This was all the way back in 2008, when VCRs and cassette tapes were still around. My grandma popped a brand-new chunky tape into the VCR and pressed play. The movie that started playing was Mulan and I was absolutely hooked from the first notes of the opening song to the ending credits.

I had grown up watching Disney films like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast. After watching and re-watching these movies so many times, I realized something: none of the princesses looked like me. When I looked in the mirror, I could see that my black hair and brown eyes were so different from the blonde hair and blue eyes that the princesses had. So when I watched Mulan for the first time, I was surprised and ecstatic - here was a character who actually looked like me! But I was also confused and conflicted. Why was there only one Disney character who looked like me? I asked my parents over and over again why Disney didn’t make any other movies starring a character from South Korea or other Asian countries. They never had an answer.

Flash forward to October 2009. It was almost Halloween, possibly one of the most important holidays to kindergarteners. All of my friends were going to come to class dressed up, and I didn’t want to miss out on the fun. I begged my parents to let me buy a Disney princess costume for weeks, and they finally relented. My dad scrolled through different websites online until he pointed out a Mulan costume. “How about this one?” he asked me. “I don’t know,” I said reluctantly. In my mind, the loose and flowy dress of Mulan was just so unlike the ballgowns and tiaras that the other Disney princesses wore. In a sea of fluffy blue and pink dresses, I didn’t want to be the only one who showed up in an Asian dress. I thought if that happened, it would be so embarrassing and I would never be able to show my face at school again. “I want to be Cinderella,” I told my dad with finality, and the blue dress and white gloves arrived a week later in the mail. And when my parents stopped by Target the day before Halloween for last-minute decoration shopping, I even bought a blonde wig so I could cover up my dark hair and look more like an “acceptable” Disney princess, which I thought meant golden hair, light eyes, and fair skin.

Although I didn’t know it then, Disney films influenced me to believe in eurocentrism. Eurocentrism is the world-view that European cultures are the norm or are superior to other cultures. However, it’s not just Disney films that promote this detrimental ideology. Countless other TV shows and movies that I have watched either severely lack representation of Asians or Asian Americans and their cultures or provide a very stereotyped view of them. Encountering eurocentrism over and over again in the media narrowed my perspective of the world and suffocated my true, authentic identity and self. I felt like embracing my own Asian culture would be considered “un-American” because I associated American with being predominantly white and English-speaking from what I had seen and heard from the media. As a result, I would feel embarrassed speaking the Korean language with my family in public and I would never in a million years dream of sharing my favorite Kpop songs or Kdramas with my friends in elementary school (this was before Kpop and Kdramas became a huge, global thing). I despised my black hair and brown eyes - I wished instead for blonde hair and blue eyes which I thought would help me fit in better. And I felt this sense of loss within me when I rejected my culture and language. I struggled to find the words to communicate my thoughts and feelings in Korean to my family and friends, and it seemed like I had lost the ability to truly connect with them because of it. When I visited South Korea a few years ago, I had felt the overwhelming sense that I had lost touch with my roots; I didn’t know the history behind the country my parents and grandparents came from or truly understand its culture and customs. I felt like I was missing a huge part of myself and I felt lost without it.

But why is eurocentrism in the media a problem? More kids than ever are exposed to the media from a young age. And children are easily influenced by what they hear and see, so much so that it affects their way of thinking and seeing the world. I was once affected in this way. If kids are exposed to racist ideologies again and again, they will eventually come to see the world through the lens of racism. Additionally, kids of color, like myself, may believe that their culture is inferior to other cultures and when they are developing their identity they may feel a sense of loss because they are missing a significant part of themselves.

How did I overcome this? I simply shifted my perspective so that I could recognize eurocentrism when it showed up in movies and TV shows. Because I used this lens when I viewed the media, I didn’t fall prey to the racist ideologies that may be promoted through it anymore. I came to love my own culture and regard it as equal to all other cultures and I realized that the American culture was cultivated through the blending of so many other cultures. Being American is an emblem of diversity and being uniquely yourself.