Meghan Markle is back on her Spotify podcast “Archetypes”On Tuesday, in an episode called “The Demystification of the Dragon Lady”This was the solution “toxic stereotyping”Films with Asian women featuring Asian women “Austin Powers,” “Kill Bill” “Full Metal Jacket.”
Markle recalled her childhood in Los Angeles. She grew up near and was very grateful for the Asian influence. (She also recalls as a child going to a Korean Spa, a painful memory she now treasures. In fact, Markle wasn’t familiar with Asian stereotypes, “ones we see in so many movies and throughout pop culture.”
“Movies like ‘Austin Powers’ and ‘Kill Bill’ — they presented these caricatures of women of Asian descent as oftentimes oversexualized or aggressive,”Markle spoke on the podcast, which you can listen to below. “It’s not those two examples, there’s so many more. And I’m not the only one who has taken notice.”
Margaret Cho appeared on the podcast and lamented the characters that serve her as an accomplice. “evil, exotic force,”Markle points to the fact that this term is more well-known than it should be: “the dragon lady.”Cho said that the stereotype was adjacent to the “femme fatale,”Asian women being “beautiful and deadly – because we can’t just be beautiful.” “It’s also evil queen adjacent,”Cho. “Unfortunately, that trope has stuck to film and to Asian women.”
“The dragon lady, the east Asian temptress is seeped into a lot of our entertainment, but this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll,”Markle spoke.
Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologe, wrote a book called “The Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen”. “Real Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism”(How American wars in Asia have affected the portrayal Asian women in Hollywood) The author also discussed the sexualized portrayal Asian characters in films like “Miss Saigon” and, specifically, Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
“I myself have been propositioned in an airport in Atlanta of all places by a stranger who said ‘Me so horny,’ he just yelled that at me. And I was there for an academic conference,” Wang Yuen said. “I knew why because I looked around and saw that I was the only Asian woman in that area. I don’t even know if he’d seen ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ which is where that line comes from.”
“The line didn’t stay there, it jumped off the screen and made a huge imprint on pop culture,”Markle stated. She referred to the large sample of the clip in 2 Live Crew’s song, and to the reference to the line “have persisted in mainstream media”Thanks to appearances “South Park” “40-Year-Old Virgin.”
Wang Yuen is asked “If?” “Hollywood matters,”She can point to the incident. “Lines from a fictional movie, that maybe no one has even seen now, is part of culture and part of the way that Asian women are harassed and belittled,” Wang Yuen said. “Those tropes still exist.” She also points to the harassment and violence that was being directed towards Asians, especially since the start of the pandemic (stoked by Trump’s xenophobic tirades).
You will enjoy the entire episode, which features great commentary by all guests.
