Linsanity:Representation Of Jeremy Lin In Major U.S. Media

In early February 2012, Jeremy Lin, an undrafted player and the first American of Chinese descent to play in the National Basketball Association(NBA), led the New York Knicks to a seven straight victories while establishing an NBA scoring record. The perfermance of Jeremy Lin during this period was dubbed Linsanity by the basketball fans. However, Linsanity signifies a more complex phenomenon than overnight fame. This paper chooses materials from New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily News and numerous newspaper, magazine and broadcasting channels, trying to discover Lin's image in the U.S. mainstream media. By analyzing sources from different period and different contents, this paper concludes that Jeremy Lin's image in major U.S. media presents to the readers a struggle, highly regarded and also racialized Asian American male.Besides introduction and conclusion, this paper consists of four chapters. Chapter one takes a recap of the theory of Asian American stereotype and Asian American athletes, which paves the way for the following discussion of media representation of Jeremy Lin. Chapter two to chapter four is the main body of the thesis, it discusses Lin's image in the media before and after Linsanity. Chapter two focuses reports on Lin's insisting on basketball dream, his religious belief and his tactful plays on the court, it concludes that Lin's image represented in the media a struggle Asian American male. In chapter three, reports about Jeremy Lin making economic sense in Asian market, changing the way Asian Americans see themselves and claimed by the Chinese people as their own are analyzed, which shows a highly regarded Asian American male. Chapter four analyzes racialized coverage about Jeremy Lin, points out he being a perpetual foreigner and a yellow peril, an image of alien outsider is established.From the above analysis, it can reasonably conclude that Lin has an ambivalent image in major U.S. media. On one hand, Lin is a struggle Asian American male that people with Asian descent can identify with, on the other, Lin is under prejudice that makes him an alien outsider. It can be seen that U.S. media has a objective reporting attitude, with Lin's image both positive and negative. It also reflects that Asian Americans living in the mainstream society, being considered as high achievers, still could not get rid of their identity dilemma. To some extent, this paper contributes to the study of media representation of Asian Americans.