Roll away the Models......
A perusal of commentaries by many Asian-American men in the media, be it blogs, news articles or even some academic literature, will reveal a remarkable fact; many of us believe that the media doesn't provide us with any respectable role models! This is remarkable for two reasons; firstly, I think it's arguable that the media can provide role models, and secondly it's not their job to provide role models. Here's why.....
1) The Media is a poor medium for providing role models.
When most people speak of media role models, they usually mean the movies or television, i.e. movie representations that shows a white hero being heroic and getting lots of play in the process. According to some, this type of representation is supposed to lead to a sense of confidence and warm fuzzy feelings of masculinity in the (male) viewer. Conversely, Asian men are never portrayed as heroes or lovers and so the prevailing wisdom is that this lack of "role models" contributes to feelings of diffidence and emasculation.
The problem is that most media representations aren't real; they're made-up stories that present simplistic depictions of motivations, circumstances and emotions. As such, these types of media characterizations are simply sophisticated caricatures, a form of visual sloganeering if you will. By its very nature, sloganeering is a vulgar, in-bred second cousin to the arts, and as history teaches us, societies that buy into the myths promoted by media sloganeering will produce – at worst - easily-led, unthinking masses that can be manipulated into believing that things like genocide can be justified.
With this in mind, it seems strange that Asian men would even want the media to be the vehicle that provides Asian role models. Certainly, to argue for positive representations is justified, but to desire that the media create Asian role models is both bizarre and dangerous. It’s bizarre because it would seem far more commonsensical to promote a healthy skeptical agnosticism toward what we see in the media, whether those images be positive or negative. It’s dangerous because it creates the false belief that we actually need the provision of media role models.
In short, it’s illogical to argue that the media is motivated to misrepresent Asian men, and at the same time give responsibility to this same institution to provide us with role models.
2) It isn’t the job of the media to provide role models.
Why? Well, because it’s our job, as Asian men, to assume the personal responsibility to be role models for Asian boys. It’s our job to nurture their burgeoning minds to avoid negativity and defeatism, and to exhibit the qualities of masculinity that they might want to emulate. It’s our job to nurture the sense of confidence and self-belief that they will need in order to thrive in a society that demeans them.
When I hear or read Asian guys saying that they never had media role models to look up to, what they really seem to be saying is that they had no role models at all - which seems like a far more serious problem. If they did have a figure in their formative years that they could look up to and emulate, then the lack of a media role model would be a non-issue. So, a more profound problem seems to be that some Asian men feel as though there are no Asian role models who are directly involved in the shaping of their lives and attitudes.Whether or not this is true is up to the reader to decide.
To summarize, it seems evident that the perceived need or desire for media provided role models is less urgent than the need for Asian men to assume the responsibility of becoming role models. Looking to the institution of the media to give us role models is tantamount to accepting the authority of the media over our own lives.