Changing shades of the 'yellow peril': Asian American actors in the 1990's: An ethnographic case study

This dissertation aims to shed light on how Asian American actors deal with constraints within film, television, and theatre. Narratives from veteran and aspiring Asian American actors provide insights into how this minority is coping with shifts in opportunities and attitudes in casting for films, television and theatre.;Media ecologists are interested in environments humans have created through symbolic representations of experience. They also strive to examine events and conditions as interrelated phenomena. Film, theatre, and television are systems within the supra system of mass communication. Correspondingly Asian American actors as a community form a subsystem within the much larger systems. Researching the Asian American actors and their experiences from a media ecology perspective provides a means from which to study how a mass communication subsystem attempts to survive within the larger systems environments.;Asian faces and more significantly whites playing Asians in major roles have been a part of Hollywood films for close to a century. But ironically the most well known of Asian characters featured in Hollywood films such as Charlie Chan and Fu Man Chu have traditionally been played by white actors, costumed to look Asian. While that may seem racially insensitive in today's drive towards a more equalized multicultural society, the practice was pervasive throughout the industry for well over 50 years.;This research examines the perspectives of a group of Asian American actors in the context of being a minority in an industry where physical appearance, in particular racial features, play a key role to success.;Images from Hollywood films as well as television are a dominant part of American culture, often mirroring and even shaping our perceptions of society. With the push towards multiculturalism the myth of a white dominated Anglo America is undergoing redefinition from a multitude of ethnic voices. Looking at how a particular racial group fares as a smallpart of a much broader mass media system provides a frame through which media ecologists can explore how shifts in film, theatre, and television have been touched by the multicultural debate.