A Stereotypical Problem

Meg is a twenty-five-year-old Asian-American actress, who chose acting in part because she felt that Asian- Americans were underrepresented, and stereotyped, in theater. Several years ago, Meg landed a leading role in a play, and took the role despite the fact that it depended on a superficial stereotype of Asian women. She agreed to do the play in part because she knew that the director was well-known and well-connected in the theater world. She felt that if she gained influence through working with this director, she would then be in a better position to undermine racial stereotypes. Meg felt condemned by the Asian-American community for her decision to take the role, but she viewed it as a compromise that would allow her to take a more principled stand in the future.

Meg is a twenty-five-year-old Asian-American actress. She was initially attracted to theater as a way of finding her “voice.” Asian-Americans, she thought, had long been scarce in theater, and this scarcity fueled her ambition. She recalled that in childhood, “I didn’t see very many Asian-American people on television, and I didn’t really have any figures to identify with, voices that I could identify with. I felt very underrepresented from a very early age.” Through her work in theater, she said, she wanted to demonstrate that Asian-American women could be versatile, and thus disprove the myths of the geisha girl and the dragon lady. “To see that Asian-Americans aren’t represented properly by the dominant media or by commercial media really drives my work.” Yet Meg had little financial support. Sometimes she compromised her values to take a role that would provide some income or a part that would help to advance her career: “I know sometimes I may have to bend those rules a little and justify things, because I need to pay my rent.” 

Several years ago, Meg took a leading role in a prestigious play. The role was a superficial stereotype of Asian women, but she agreed to do it because the director was well known and well connected in the theater world. 

“[The play] was poorly written, and the dialect, too, was incorrect. It was written in a broken Japanese-English kind of dialect. I didn’t know what it was; it wasn’t Japanese. And the story was like the classic—it was like Madame Butterfly, it was like this self-sacrificing Asian woman. But I got offered the role; I auditioned for the role and I got it, and I dealt with the ignorances of the director and the writer. It was just this very fantasized view of what they thought an Asian woman or an Asian relationship was like.”

Meg felt condemned by her community for taking a role that portrayed Asian-American women in such a stereotypical way. At the same time, in order to succeed and survive as an actress, she felt she had to accept some of these roles. And ultimately, she believed that the ends justifies the means. In this case, taking substandard roles that might bring better opportunities would allow her to gain power in the theater community. Ultimately, she hopes to be able to choose work that is more in line with her value system. 

Meg contends that as she gains influence, she will be in a better position to undermine racial stereotypes. For her, the expectation of taking a principled stand in the future warrants compromises in the present: 

“So I could get panned by people in my community, in the Asian-American community, for selling out. But I think in the end, my goals—what I want to achieve in the end—betters, I think, my racial situation in this country … That’s my aim. Like, I do plan to break past a lot of the stereotypes. And a lot of—particularly the stereotypes that oppress us in theater. But I also recognize what power is, and I recognize I’m sort of fighting from the inside up, you know what I mean? I know there are different ways to go about it. There are some people who think you need to tear down the old institutions before you can ever effect change. I’m not convinced of that.”

For the time being, at least, Meg’s sacrifice of personal integrity and aesthetic standards seemed to be producing the outcome she had hoped for: the director admired her work, and the part led to other roles. She got the opportunity to perform with a highly respected organization, and she continued to use the director as a reference. In fact, she was accepted into a prestigious acting program in part because of this director’s excellent recommendation. Discussing her strategy for portraying a role she found wanting, she says: “I tried to bring as much dignity to that role as I possibly could. But I didn’t try to save her play because I wanted it to be bad.” She participated purely for the sake of “getting a good reference,” though she accomplished this goal at some cost to her personal integrity and possibly to her moral standing in her community. She does not know whether the choice will pay off in the long term or whether she will have to make further ethical sacrifices. 

Other actors frame the issue of typecasting in other ways. Another young Asian-American actor says that while she tries to maintain her own sense of integrity, there can be no hard and fast rules for actors. Sometimes one has to operate on a number of levels simultaneously: 

“You really don’t know how you’re going to feel about something or how you’re going to react to something … There have been other kinds of roles where I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s totally stereotyped. That’s so humiliating.’ But at the end of the day, that might not have totally been the case, because there was a kind of complexity and nuance to it that I think I might have overreacted to, or whatever … I guess my point is that I have found that often those rules that I cling to have failed me, ultimately, because it’s very difficult then and sometimes impossible to plan for those kinds of things. And I think that the best preparation for those situations is to just really know yourself as much as possible and to live in the truth of yourself and not lie to yourself. So that when you’re in a situation, you know if something is a lie—like, you feel it in your body, you just know when you’re lying to yourself or when you’re negotiating with yourself so you can get what you think you want.”

Meg’s view seems to be that the choices she makes in the present to fuel her ambition—sometimes at the expense of her integrity—will bring a greater reward. She believes that she will be able to gratify her sense of responsibility to herself (her integrity and ambition), as well as her sense of responsibility to her community. She is calculating that her short-term gains (furthering her career) will position her to wield greater public influence. 

To whom or what does Meg feel responsible in her work? How much influence should these responsibilities have in her decision-making process? What do you think of her choice, and how would you advise her, going forward?