thinking beyond representation

most Asian American media discourse is boring

Okay, look. I’d be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t love seeing a dark-skinned South Asian woman on screen and be the center of attention, à la Season 2 of Bridgerton. I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t constantly repost Simone Ashley and Charitra Chandran on my Instagram story, constantly. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan may or may not have inspired me to get a nose piercing, but that’s neither here nor there.

I am writing this at a time when South Asian actresses Avantika and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan are facing vitriolic, hate-filled comment sections for their fancasts as Rapunzel. Yes, fancasts. As in, there’s no Tangled live-action remake in development. It’s just a bunch of Twitter users creating threads of who they’d love to see on screen. And yet, that has threatened all the white people on the internet. How dare women in the South Asian diaspora dream of being in the very movies they grew up watching? Oh, no, your favorite fictional princess will have black hair instead of blonde. A tragedy of epic proportions. We may never recover.

I could also point to the racist abuse of Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who has recently been cast in the West End adaptation of Romeo and Juliet opposite Tom Holland. Erstwhile online commentators have pointed out that there have been Black actors in period dramas before, and that the much-lauded 1997 Cinderella movie adaptation starred Brandy in the titular role and Paolo Montalban as Prince Charming. The movie won an Emmy. In the cases of these examples, I’m not sure if there was this level of racist vitriol. However, it’s a complete fallacy to pretend as if having people of color starring in historically white stories is something new.

I felt a bit silly writing a piece that complains about representation discourse when even bare-minimum practices like colorblind casting lead to racist pandemonium. I recognize that the mere presence of nonwhite faces begets hatred (if they are present at all). But that is what allows representation to become more than it is. We are supporting an economy that views giving Asian American artists jobs as writers, actors, and directors as a radical act. That is essentially what representation celebrates: hiring.

The idea of representation is purely aesthetic. It is nice to see people who look like you on screen, sure. But it’s nice for five minutes. At the end of the day, it just allows the most privileged of the diaspora—rich, dominant caste, light-skinned—to compound their privilege. What kind of story was being told in Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever? The story of a well-off Tamil Brahmin family? A story that reinforces Islamophobia and normalizes arranged marriage? I do think that Never Have I Ever brings up important conversations, and it isn’t supposed to be perfect. I am well aware that the imperfection is the whole point. But, my issue is that the show was so idolized for being a “first,” for being so trailblazing, that it allowed the richness and complexity to go under-discussed. It could only be representation or problematic—not both.

Conversely, I find that the concept of representation and the discourse surrounding it depoliticizes media and art. Don’t get me wrong—art is political, and there’s a lot to analyze and understand from a cultural studies perspective. We can’t discuss the wealth inequality displayed in Crazy Rich Asians (an idea that was discussed in the book) because the movie is representation for Asian Americans, so we’re supposed to be proud of it—and that pride precludes analysis. Instead of being an interesting cultural text, it becomes idolized. Crazy Rich Asians is not radical because it dares to relegate white people, for once, to the margins.

The reality is, it is so easy for representation to become weaponized against the very goals it has sought to advance. At my university, a Hindu nationalist-affiliated student group won a diversity and inclusion award for ostensibly ‘representing a minority group.’ Meanwhile, Netflix casts Simone Ashley in Bridgerton, so that we all overlook how they treat their workers of color as disposable, and the ways women of color are mistreated in their production rooms (I’m looking at you, Hasan Minhaj). We never go beyond wanting to be included in white institutions. We never go beyond wanting to get views and likes and venture capital funding. Our focus on representation does nothing to change the material reality of Asian Americans or bring marginalized folks to the center. Who is going to get hired by Hollywood other than the people who already have the most social capital? We end up prioritizing the most privileged of our community. We settle for representation and gain nothing more.

I am frustrated with the amount of space our representation discourse takes up. We remix and revisit it for endless social media trends. It’s the topic of discussion every time someone Asian American wins awards, whether in their own awards speech or in media coverage that follows the ceremony. I’m tired of #RepresentationMatters. I want more from my media and my community! I want us to get into the complicated political contexts behind our empty acts of “resistance.” The silence from Hollywood heavyweights like Dev Patel on the genocide in Palestine is deafening, but silent on representation they are not. What is the point of celebrating Asian American representation if it does not even give the issues that are worth fighting for a platform?

Still, I will be watching Season 3 of Bridgerton for more Kate Sharma content. My first essay here was called “on being a messy brown girl,” and I do relate to Devi from Never Have I Ever, the poster child for that demographic. I do hate the fact that white people are so threatened by a brown face on screen in a role they have decided is white. We deserve more than this, though. Our representation discourse simply allows white capitalist institutions to claim that they’re not racist because look, they casted a brown person! And in the same breath, many white people will turn around and complain about that very casting. Either way, white supremacy wins.