Dexter Atienza  
St Marys Senior High School
High Distinction PIP
Extract from ‘A socio-cultural analysis of the portrayal of Asian women in Western films.’

Taken from ‘Chapter 3: What values of the Eastern culture are portrayed
by the Western media?’

The commercial act of portraying or demonstrating the socialization, social norms, enculturation, cultural diversity and class and status of the Eastern culture in the Western media is immediately beyond socio-cultural literacy. As the mass media of Western societies utilize aspects of the Eastern culture, the mass communication shares ideas and values with the Western audience, portraying an assumed culture that is beyond their current socio-cultural experience.

Considering the portrayal of the Eastern culture is foreign to the majority of Western audiences, the assumptions made through the Asian characters in the media will be consumed by Western societies10, and applied to contemporary social constructs. The application of prejudiced characteristics of Asians inevitably creates an ethnic stereotype that perpetuates discriminatory perceptions that are fundamentally based on the incorrect portrayal and misrepresentation of Asians in the Western media.

The formation of a national identity and views of other races is essentially formed by the values incorporated in media representations.2 Through production, the cluster of values used to epitomize Asian characters tends to obscure rather than illuminate the realistic cultural identities of Asians.14 As this interplay of mass communication is operational at a global scale, the identity and values that embody Asian females in films, acts as a factor of subconscious motivation and persuasion2, affecting the contemporary applications of social conventions in our world.