The Changing Asian Female Image In American Films And Television

For a long time,Asian women images on screen are limited to negative and passive roles,such as vicious witches,seductive whores,and meek housewives.These stereotypical images,to a great extent,serve the imagination of a "capitalist white patriarchal" system,constantly and silently exerting their invisible pressure on public opinion.Deeper misunderstandings,bias,and even hatreds,which result in barriers to cultural communication and integration,are provoked.To improve such a passive situation,many Asian actresses,filmmakers,and workers in relevant fields are making various efforts to reestablish Asian women’s images on screen.Lucy Liu as a world-famous Asian American actress who has created many classic roles in films and television is also industriously experimenting more possibilities to reclaim woman’s subjectivity in films and television.Based on Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory,this thesis analyzes two series of Lucy Liu’s representative works at different times to demonstrate the process she has made in improving women’s position long marginalized by film industry and structuring a new feminist aesthetic to prioritize woman’s subjectivity.This thesis will firstly use Charlie ’s Angels(2000)(2003)as an example,unraveling its traditional Hollywood formula under the male gaze which adopts fetishistic costume,dispels castration anxiety by objectifying woman,and constructs an imperceptible male-oriented narrative pattern.Second,it analyzes Liu’s recent television series Why Women Kill(2019)and explains how the patriarchal structure in storytelling is subverted by breaking the narrative closure.Shifting across time and space is regarded as an effective pattern to shake linearity of traditional narration.The reinterpretation of the Oedipus Myth and the establishment of the sisterhood highlight woman’s subjectivity and agency,which challenges historical hegemony of man/active and woman/passive.Lastly,from the aspect of mis-en-scene,this thesis will focus on how the television series prevents female characters from being the object of scopophilia.A new kind of feminist aesthetic is established by interfering in the traditional voyeuristic viewing environment,breaking the fourth wall,and ingeniously using the property of mirror.Lucy Liu’s works have provided many significant perspectives for promoting Asian woman image in western film and television context.Her attempts and efforts have set a good example for advancing a more equal and inclusive cultural environment for minority groups.