22 November 2008
Migrant Asian artists use creativity to dash stereotypes
20 August 2006
By Carmen Gray: Te Waha Nui Online
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Young migrant artists are using their creative initiative to dismantle New Zealand stereotypes of Asians and give voice to their own identities.
A wealth of talent spoke about their projects at the Going Bananas conference on Chinese migrant identities in Auckland on August 12.
Filmmaker Alex Lee says now the Asian community is more established in New Zealand it is natural its identities are starting to come through more in the arts.
“When the house is set up with a good roof, then you can start decorating. Now, Asians are getting into the arts as they want to start decorating.”
Migrant artists still have some reluctance to make their voices heard because of an awareness of New Zealand’s tall poppy syndrome, suggests Lee.
“We don’t want to stick up our heads too high in case we get noticed and shot down.”
But Asian communities are being challenged to speak out on the creative front, as leaving representations to the dominant culture has led to stereotyping.
“Too often the Asian face or accent is used as a shorthand symbol which means ‘alien’. All too often the media insinuates we’re all still living on the fringes of society.”
He says stereotypes will only break down when more Chinese are involved in the creative process.
“We haven’t taken enough of a stake in being creative writers and producers that will allow those roles to change.”
‘Abysmal’ representation
Listener film critic Helene Wong says the representation of Asian characters on the New Zealand screen has up until now been “abysmal”.
She says even worse than the “boring predictability” of these representations has been the “contempt in the subtext”.
“According to programmes like Orange Roughies, sex and drugs are still our preferred lifestyle.”
Hong Kong-born multimedia artist Vikki Cheng is part of the new creative community of migrant Chinese starting to overturn these stereotypical representations.
She presented Badass at the conference, the parodic karaoke video she made with Helen Luo under the moniker of the Rice Girls as part of their degree at the Manukau School of Visual Arts.
In Badass – which stands for “Be a Dope Asian Super-sassy Stereotype” – the two dress up as cute Japanese girls clutching soft toys and other stereotypes. Their humorous approach has the serious subtext of addressing the perceived sexualisation of Asian women by New Zealand culture.
Producer Sylvia Yang is another young migrant creating a voice she hopes members of the Asian community can identity with.
She presented the trailer for Sunshine Beyond the Rain at the conference, a weekly drama about and for international Chinese students which premiered last week on popular internet site Skykiwi.
Normal student lives
Yang says it focuses on normal student lives and has nothing to do with drugs or crime, because that is not how the majority of Asian students here live – contrary to representations in the New Zealand media.
The programme was made by Sails of Dream Entertainment – a media company made up of former international students who have now become permanent residents in New Zealand.
Skykiwi are marketing the Chinese-language programme primarily to China, but there are plans to subtitle it in English soon to widen its accessibility within New Zealand.
“It’s about bridging the gap between the Chinese community and the mainstream, and it’s also about bridging the gap between New Zealand and China,” says Yang.
Links:
- Going Bananas Forum
- Manukau School of Visual Arts
