Shifts to Subtle Forms of Appropriation: The Silence of Asian Americans Onscreen

Slanderous portrayals of ethnic minorities have dominated the American film industry since the early days of Hollywood cinema starting with the emergence of practices such as Yellowface to stereotypes representations of Asians as the Yellow Peril, Dragon Lady or Model Minority. With the proliferation of unrealistic portrayals of minority groups in Hollywood films such as The Last Airbender (2010) and Ghost in the Shell (2017), the use of whitewashing has contributed to the persistent erasure of Asian Americans onscreen where white actors would play the role of non-white characters. The aim of this thesis is to showcase that cultural appropriation of Eastern culture has gotten less and less explicit over the past decade.