Abstract
Reviewed by: Andrea M. Weare, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, University of Nebraska at Omaha
In her on point approach to the state of media representation of Asian Americans, Lori Kido Lopez’s book Asian American Media Activism provides readers with both an understanding of media cultural history and contemporary exemplars standing on the activist lines. Via a 3-year ethnography in Los Angeles, California from 2008 to 2011, she takes the reader through her time spent with the activist organization Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) and various interrelated new media cases connected to Asian American media representation. Over the course of five chapters, Kido Lopez digs deeply into how to improve representation of Asian Americans in the media, capturing what makes media activism so challenging and offering new tactics in the era of Web 2.0.
The book’s introduction sets up a theoretical basis for looking at Asian American media representations and how they are perceived by audiences. Citing scholarship from Radhika Parameswaran, Edward Said, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Henry Jenkins, and Gayatri Spivak among others, Kido Lopez theorizes her approach by solidifying how cultural citizenship is connected to media representation. To start, she argues it is necessary to maintain “collective racial designations such as ‘Asian-American’ even in our increasingly globalized landscape” in order to push back against postracial media discourse that “insists upon race as merely an individual quality” (p. 6). In doing so, Kido Lopez aims to move us beyond the “it’s complicated” conclusion of scholars past by re-focusing on what Asian American media activists are protesting and MANAA’s conception of bettering the lives of Asian Americans, both of which she succeeds in doing.
At its heart, the book relies on the core inquiries, as Kido Lopez calls them, of media studies to see how texts are laced with ideology, how media industries are structured and controlled, and how audiences actively shape the meanings of media products. Using examples of Asian Americans involved in the conversation of media representation—corporate advisory council members, cable channel owners, advertising agency owners, YouTubers, Twitter users, bloggers, and more—she considers how each changemaker utilizes a different approach for the same vision of a better future for Asian Americans. But, she notes, while activism fights for immediate requests such as recasting a role, demanding an apology from a producer, or hiring an Asian American consultant or director, cultural citizenship is won playing the long game, and she offers how activists can improve their tactics utilizing both new media and younger Asian American generations.
As the title suggests, Kido Lopez’s case of MANAA is very much the story of the organization’s fight for cultural citizenship. She positions herself as part of those she studies identifying as “an activist alongside them” mirroring many activist scholars in cultural studies, Asian American studies, and media studies who hope their scholarly work will have a positive impact on those they study (p. 28). As a MANAA board member, she was afforded access to the organization’s daily e-mails, strategic planning over instant messaging, and in-group discussions that often take place long after meetings have ended (p. 28). Characteristic of researcher reciprocity, Kido Lopez herself took on the regular work of the organization such as building MANAA’s blog and editing drafts of letters to movie producers.
Kido Lopez notes that her own mixed-race identity as a Japanese and White researcher was for some an indication of her “wholly” Asian Americanness, while for others she remained a question mark, passed as White, or even passed as Latina on the basis of her last name (p. 39). This methodological reflection sets the stage for the book’s deconstruction of what counts as “Asian American”—and “activist” for that matter. Combining fieldwork methods of participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research, she collected materials from various organizations and players working on Asian American media representation—most notably MANAA—to show the varied means used to mobilize and deploy activist tactics.
In Chapter 1, Kido Lopez presents a cultural context for the book’s most basic thesis: What can be done to improve Asian American media representation and, via various critiques of MANAA, what other sites of non-traditional media activism could be tapped to do so. After a cultural history of Asian American media activism in Los Angeles in the 1960s, she introduces her use of “cultural citizenship”—a sense of belonging with a nation based on how we are treated, beyond legal citizenship. To MANAA, this means being treated “just like everyone else,” which she critiques as a limitation to the organization’s impact when their sense of cultural citizenship relies too heavily on assimilationism. Most useful, Kido Lopez offers improvements such as creating standards for how to address offensive online producers while simultaneously controlling the message.
Building upon a systemic rather than individually experienced meaning of cultural citizenship, Kido Lopez turns in Chapter 2 to examine media activism at policy and governmental levels. In interviews with those who work at the Asian American Justice Center and the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, she highlights how change has been achieved at the media industry level: building relationships with television networks and Asian American cable channels, supporting the NBC and Comcast merger, even changing how Nielsen measures minority viewers.
Chapter 3 hones in on who qualifies as an Asian American consumer and who qualifies as an Asian American media activist. Kido Lopez highlights non-activists (i.e., advertising agencies) as important players in the long game of media representation. In analyzing Asian American marketing and communication firms like IW Group, AAAZA, and the Asian American Advertising Federation (3AF), we begin to sense the absolute necessity of not just casting more Asian American actors, but uncovering how agencies can frame the Asian American viewer as an appealing consumer to corporations. Using financial motivations, Kido Lopez showcases how useful “consumer citizenship” can be for the representation fight: We can look to the history of women’s movements, African American consumer movements, and other successful consumer movements from the past century to see that there is a great deal of power in coming together as citizen-consumers to impact change. (p. 137)
Kido Lopez observed that most Asian American YouTubers cautiously avoid controversial causes such as systemic racism like “Asian American poverty, drug use, homophobia, mental illness, or gang violence” (p. 156). Yet, others like Wong Fu Productions and Fung Brothers directly promote Asian Americanness on their channels and gather fans “under the unifying umbrella of Asian America” (p. 167). She concludes the chapter discussing the double brunt female Asian American YouTubers, specifically Michelle Phan, bear in the rampantly hostile environment for women online. Though the chapter’s conclusion could have stood solidly as a section itself, she brings to light the deadlock of feminist intersectionality for YouTubers like Phan and “the tension between establishing citizenship at the individual level versus the collective,” which the book aims to address at large (p. 177). Kido Lopez concludes “we must be open to the possibility that Asian American women must fight for a different kind of citizenship than men” (p. 178).
Chapter 5 pushes for political activists to use more online and social media to improve Asian American representation change, most notably Twitter. The hashtags #NotYourAsianSideKick and #CancelColbert are analyzed to understand digital participation among Asian Americans as a collective. Kido Lopez concludes with a look at collective fan response (including protests facilitated by MANAA) to the TV show and film The Last Airbender as another example of new media activism influencing the traditional environment.
In her conclusion, Kido Lopez brings forth the various methods of media activism cited in the book as helping to both recognize and remedy “the injustices that media industries and practices have long upheld” (p. 217). Ultimately, improving Asian American representation means “seeing Asian Americans as full members of society and thus reducing racially motivated discrimination and violence—consequences that will always be connected to the claiming of cultural citizenship” (p. 221).
Asian American Media Activism’s focus on the case of MANAA and other big players online and off is a significant and timely contribution to television and film studies, critical race and feminist media studies, and digital media studies at large. Taken as a whole or parsed—in the classroom perhaps—for specific activist cases (i.e., #CancelColbert), the book offers an engaging analysis that is accessible, inclusive, and well theorized, particularly in its presentation of how different stakeholders approach media activism in different ways. Asian American Media Activism illuminates our understanding of media representation, racial and gendered formations, and activist responses beyond “representational politics are complicated” conclusions as usual.