Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 1

Running head: ASIAN STEREOTYPES IN TV SERIES LOST

Asian Stereotypes Lost or Found in the Television Series Lost?

 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 2

Abstract

Past researches have suggested that portrayal of Asians and Asian Americans in mass medium

like television has conformed to various stereotypes about Asians that exist in the western

society. As the western audiences are becoming more accepting to diverse cultures, and as the

number of Asian audiences is increasing world over, the portrayal of Asian characters and their

culture is changing. But are these attempts of western media successful to gain access to the

cultural nuances or are they just deconstructing some stereotypes to construct some more in the

cloak of cultural reinvention? To analyze this question, the researchers here analyzed a popular

television series called Lost which boasts of several ethnic background characters, and focused

on the Asian (Korean) couple and studied how they were portrayed? Did the series confirm the

stereotypes defined by the legacy literature or did it bring in fresh perspective to the identity of

Asian culture? The researchers have followed a cultural studies approach, which examines the

cultural influences, texts, and meaningful relationships of a society with intent to critically

evaluate their consequences. The researches have applied text analysis to probe about this

particular phenomenon. For the analysis of this study, the stereotypical images of Asian and

Asian Americans are categorized into these six categories: yellow peril, dragon lady, charlie

chan and lotus blossom, model minority and gook. The study here suggests that the portrayal of

Asians in television series Lost actively tried to deconstruct the negative stereotypes presented by

legacy literature but conforms to the positive yet mysterious images of Asians. There are some

new identities which are formed defying the older stereotypes, however the Asian identity still

remains shaky, vague and still far from reality.

 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 3

Asian Stereotypes lost or found in the television series Lost?

According to Hall (1990), culture is communication. Communication of any nature bears

traces of culturally distinctive undercurrents. These undercurrents can convey volumes of

information and can contradict and discredit the definition of the situation officially projected by

the participants (Guffman, 1959). We construct the meanings out of human actions as sequence

of symbols which are culturally produced and enhanced. So the main focus of cultural studies is

the study of the signifying practices of the culture and its relationship with human beings and

society. Every socio historical group has its own cultural and even sub cultural world and its

unique way of experiencing its social environment (Triandis, 1972). Differences between

cultures are matters of beliefs, understanding and interpretation of their own reality in everyday

life (Gurwitsch, 1974). But if culture pleads for such multiple layers of understanding, how can

we interpret different cultures or differences in culture? Anderson (1939) pointed out that

interpretation is an emerging process. To understand and study culture one has to understand the

larger ideologies of the day to day life of the community and that culture.

Cultural identity, which studies how different cultural elements represent a specific

culture, is one of the aspects of culture studies. According to Barker (1999), cultural identity

does not have a fixed, stable meaning but is socially structured. Hall’s (1990) anti-essentialist

position mentioned that there is no one essence to cultural identity; rather it is continuously

constructs itself by examining similarity and differences. In other words, cultural identity is built

upon the comparison between itself and other cultural identities. Hence, the meanings of the

identities of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and so forth are unstable, but discursively

constructed to represent multiple and proliferating meanings.

 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 4

Mass media plays an important part in reflecting other cultures. Medium like television

provides a window for their audiences to interpret meanings about different cultures and society.

Audiences do not usually have the luxury of directly experiencing different cultures. Mass media

becomes the most accessible method to understand how the other cultures exist and help

audiences to form cultural identity which stands out from other cultures. Though the significance

of media in such process cannot be denied these mass mediums often give rise to stereotypes.

Due to the nature and limitations of mass media, which favors popular appeal over critical

analysis, the projection of other cultures in any shape and form gets limited by the popular

stereotypes. How the image of a specific ethnic group is constructed through television texts is

an interesting topic in current cultural and media studies.

There are various researches about the stereotypes of African Americans & Hispanics in

US. In contrast little has been studied about Asians’ portrayal through the medium of television.

Research focusing on Asian’s portrayal in television medium is dated and not contemporary.

This research focuses on a popular television series Lost, and studies the portrayal of Asians

(Korean couple) throughout its first season. The purpose of this paper is to provide review on the

literature available on the Asian stereotypes, use textual analysis to find out if the same

stereotypes are prevalent in the television series Lost and to identify if radically different cultural

cues are used to provide information to form the distinct cultural identity.

Literature Review

Historically, the image of an ethnic group was usually simplified and reduced to a limited

set of attributes in media representations stereotypes. According to Hall (1997), stereotypes are a

set of representational practices that have key mechanisms by which one group’s generalized and

widely accepted beliefs about the personal attributes of members of another group are
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 5

constructed. Stereotypes also can be thought of as a particular subset of social reality beliefs,

which are understandings about particular social groups that we have learned from our social

world (McLeod & Cheffee, 1972). However, such representations and meanings are not

universally common. Marx reminds us that the dominant understandings of a society tend to be

the understandings of the dominant social groups of that society (Kamenka, 1983). Those who

are in a dominant social position have the power to define the dominant understandings and thus

have tremendous ability to make their definitions appear natural and unarguable. Stereotypes,

according to Dyer (1997), reduce persons to a set of exaggerated, usually negative, character

traits. Hence, stereotypes suggest a special group as ‘others’ different from ‘us’ and thereby

marginalize the group in the society. Scholars of the cultural school also approach the

importance of stereotypes in the mass media from the perspective that they signify racial

understandings and social relations in the society at large, as well as signify the power relations

within a society (Fiske, 1996; Inniss & Feagin, 1995; Lule, 1995). Crucial to this is the idea that

there is no absolute reality in the empirical sense. Instead, our idea of what is ‘real’ is

constructed from the social world around us, a social world that includes different social groups,

with different power relations between them, and the media.

Edward W. Said in his book, Orientalism commented, “the essence of Orientalism is the

ineradicable distinction between western superiority and Oriental inferiority” (1979, p. 42).

Western media has a long history of cultivating stereotypes of Asian and Asian Americans for

the visual consumption of their audiences. Lee’s study (1999) included six stereotypical image

types of Asian and Asian Americans, they are the pollutant, the coolie, the deviant, the yellow

peril, the model minority, and the gook (Figure 1). In his book, Fu (1982) described how Asians

are described as being the yellow peril in last 100 years of American fiction. Another category is
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 6

Charlie chan who is a fictional detective character created by author Earl Derr Biggers but

represented the good Asian. Tajima (1989, p. 309) described that the typical representations of

Asian and Asian American women have embodied stereotypes like, “the Lotus Blossom (e.g.

China Doll, Geisha Girl, and the shy Polynesian beauty), and the Dragon Lady (e.g. prostitutes

and devious madams).”

However, these images are not static; instead, these change or transform with the

changing political economy of Asians and Asian Americans. From the mid 19th to early 20th

centuries, the images of Yellow Peril and Dragon Lady, one for males and the other for females

prevailed. As Xing (1998) and Marchetti (1993) noted, in those periods, in white Americans’

perception of Asians, there was perhaps nothing more ingrained than the yellow peril stereotype.

In Hollywood, Asian men were depicted as menacing, predatory, and lusting after white women.

Films such as Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919) and The Cheat (DeMille & Lasky, 1915) helped

perpetuate the Yellow Peril stereotype of Asian males. The Dragon Lady characterization of

Asian females is also deeply ingrained in the American cultural imagination. In Hollywood films

such as Thief of Baghdad (Fairbanks & Walsh, 1924), Asian women were depicted as diabolical,

sneaky, and mean, with the added characteristics of being sexually alluring and sophisticated and

determined to seduce white men.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, the images were changed into different concepts. In

contrast to the cruel Japanese male, the image of Asian Americans in America was reformulated

into the benign Charlie chan: mysterious, deferential to whites, and quite and unassertive

together with the images of Asian wisdom. As somewhat passive images, Asian American

women were identified in that time as being submissive, meek, and ready to serve a man’s every

need. Xing (1998) noted that this stereotype has its roots in the Puccini opera Madam Butterfly.
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 7

The model minority, in 1960s to 1970s, is the image of the super-successful Asian

American who assimilates into the Anglo mainstream through individual effort and persistence,

not by insisting on structural change to the dominant political economy such as communism,

racial integration, or acceptance of homosexuality (Lee, 1999). At that time, Asian American

assimilation could be held up to African Americans and Latinos as a model for nonmilitant and

nonpolitical upward mobility. Since the 1970s, the model minority image has coexisted with a

representation of the Asian American as the gook, perfectly efficient but non-genuine human. So,

the gook refers to the idea of the Asian American as the permanent invisible enemy, the

inauthentic American whose loyalty lies outside the United States. From the 1970s, the Asian

Americans’ success is regarded as camouflage for subversion.

However, according to Creeber (2006) in his book Television Studies, the manipulated

stereotypical imagery of Orientalism (Said, 1995), produced and distributed through variety of

texts and practices, emphasized western superiority with elements of racism and imperialism. So,

the stereotypes should be criticized as not accounting for the fact that human beings are complex

and multidimensional with unique attributes. Instead the manufactured image tends to

dehumanize people, placing all members of a group into one simple category, leading to false

assumptions or blind generalizations about people, and causes misunderstandings, hostility,

abusive behaviors, conflicts, discrimination, and prejudice (Benshoff & Griffin, 2007). Whether

positive or negative, all stereotypes are all unfair and misleading and should not be generalized.

Globalization leads us towards increasing multidimensional economic, social, cultural

and political connections. Thus, the range of sources and resources are increasing, for people to

construct Asian identity. In other words, stereotypes and resistant elements about Asian people

may become mixed together in the current television text to produce a new, more complicated
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 8

cultural identity for Asian people through a process of fusion. Hence, studying a contemporary

television program’s content to understand how its text provides an image of Asian culture can

provide a challenge in today’s cultural studies. For the analysis of this study, the stereotypical

images of Asian and Asian Americans are categorized into these six categories: Yellow Peril and

Dragon Lady, Charlie chan and Lotus Blossom, Model minority, and Gook.

Lost is a television-series aired on ABC since 2004. When the first season of Lost was

aired on ABC, it easily won the top position and in all age groups. Its pilot episode attracted

around 18.6 million1 in US. Later, Lost has been telecasted through Canada, the United

Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and attracted lots of fans around the world. The

storyline of Lost is about a group of survivors from a plane crash who seek to understand the

myth of the island and try to find their true selves at the same time. One of the attractive aspects

of Lost is its narrative structure: several myths (about the island) are interwoven with the stories

of main characters to sustain audiences’ continuing interest. Each episode focuses on one main

character’s flashback of his/her story before ending up in the island as well as the characters’

adventures on the island. Also rapid inter-cutting of several storylines in each episode is another

strategy to help it remain interesting. One Korean couple – Sun and Jin are the only main Asian

characters on the island. By close reading of text of Lost to investigate how the show represents

the Korean couple through verbal and nonverbal symbols employed in their interactions with

other characters, between themselves and in their flashbacks. The study focused to understand

how the Asian cultural identity is constructed by the texts of Lost through out its first season. The

study reported here is an effort to textually analyze the contemporary popular television series

Lost. The researchers built this study around the broad research question to find out how and

what kinds of Asian culture identities are constructed in Lost in its first season and does it
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 9

confirm with the legacy stereotypes categories of yellow peril, dragon lady, Charlie chan and

lotus blossom, model minority and gook or the identity of the Asians are reinvented giving rise

to new stereotypical characterization of Asians?

Method

Textual Analysis

Television study is a relatively new academic discipline dealing with television. In the

American system, as Charlotte Brunsdon noted in her article, television has been signified as

primary object of study in this field, rather than part of ‘International media economies’ or ‘site

of drama in performance’. Television study has become a subset of popular cultures studies,

which adopts a lot of research methods from the long-standing discipline of film studies. For

example, John Ellis (1982) used a model derived from film studies to study television as text.

Textual analysis has been a powerful research tool in the field of film and television studies. It is

grounded in the discipline of culture studies, and comprises identifying a particular theme

particular text and analysis of that text’s production, intention (Hall, 1975; Slagle, 2006). Two

main forms of textual analysis of popular culture are interpretative analyses and content analysis,

in which content analysis carries on in a quantitative tradition, (WSU, 2002), and interpretive

analysis involves semiotics, rhetorical analysis, ideological analysis, psychoanalytic, discourse

analysis, and many other approaches, (Chandler,1997; WSU, 2002). In this study, the research

question is to examine how and what kinds of Asian culture identities are constructed in

television series Lost. In answering this research question, researchers employed which mainly

focused on semiotics and discourse analysis to study how the television show represents Asian

culture, and the study centered on the meaning of the text. The researchers treat the television

show as a system of signs, which included not only conversational words, but also images,
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 10

gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all of these. Metz (1974)

stated that the semiotics of cinema includes both semiotics of connotation or as a semiotics of

denotation. He noted that the semiotics of connotation in on an aesthetic and art level, whose

signification is cinematographic style, genre, symbol, as well as poetic atmosphere; its signifier

is the whole denotated semiological material, whether signified or signifying. While the

semiotics of denotation is about how denotation itself is being constructed and organized.

In this study, we focused more on encoding process and examined the meaning of

television text as discovered by the researchers themselves. The research process is in the

approach of semiotics of denotation mentioned above. The whole first season of Lost were

divided to four parts and assigned to four researchers. Each researcher reviewed the episodes and

examined the signs and symbols in the television show. Then each of them came up with their

own interpretations of meanings of signs and compared the result with their knowledge about

Asian culture. Notes from each researcher were shared and compared to look for patterns.

Findings

The depiction of the Korean couple was created by the couple’s dialogs and interactions

or from the conversation of other survivors who are mostly from the western tradition. The old

stereotypes mostly appeared in the earlier episodes, and some new image elements were

developed through the story plots so to appear in the later episodes. The study first reports the

Asian representations that falls under the six stereotypes discussed in the literature review. Some

stereotypes, which emerged from episodes but did not fall under any of the six listed stereotypes,

were described separately in a section. The research also discussed how new elements of Asian

identity were developed and how the old stereotypes and new elements were constructed to build

a new, more complicated Asian identity in Lost. If the representations from some scenes or
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 11

dialogs could be classified as belonging to two or more stereotypes simultaneously, they were

reported under the most important and obvious category followed by a discussion of other

possible aspects. Researchers of this study found out that the series in the initial episodes tried to

establish the stereotypes of the Asian culture and by the end of the series, the couple is shown to

change to assimilate to the new environment and demands. So the series presented drastic

transformations in the characterization of the couple. The new characterization or the assimilated

acquired behavior of the couple is shown as an influence of the culture of others. The series

genuinely tried to break some stereotypes, but gave rise to many new.

Yellow Peril

Yellow Peril images of Asians are dangerous and menacing. The stereotype of yellow

peril was deconstructed through out the series. There was an ample and visible effort by the

creators to show that even though the westerners think the Asians to be a peril, it is not always

correct or true. In the initial episodes of the first season there was an aura of mysteriousness and

untrustworthiness about Jin. He was always the person who was projected as a suspect for any

wrong doing in the island. But every time he was hold as responsible for something, there were

further scenes to justify his actions. When Jin found out that Michael wore Sun’s father’s watch,

he just attacked Michael. But it was further explained, he did that as the watch belonged to his

father -in-law and he was just protecting the watch out of his respect. In another scene when Jin

was projected as the one who stole water, but he was proved to be not guilty later on. The

researchers of this study did not find any evidence in which the couple or the Jin was portrayed

as yellow peril. They were actually projected as very honest and sincere.
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 12

Lotus Blossom

In the first a few episodes, the wife, Sun, in the series was depicted as quiet, meek,

submissive to her husband Jin. She listened to her husband, never showed any opposition . The

first impressive scene happened at the beginning of episode 2 when Michael was looking for his

son and asked Sun. Jin immediately told her to button her top. Even though there were no

translations for dialogs between Sun and Jin, it was obvious that Jin asked Sun to button up her

clothes in front of Michael. The very fact that her undone button was not even noticeable, and

she was fully covered otherwise, showed that it was unnecessary to tell her to button her shirt.

This showed an image of Asian woman as very submissive and portrayed the picture of a very

conservative Asian man. In episode 6, after Jin beat Michael for his wearing Sun’s father’s

watch, Sun tried to persuade Jin to let her explain the situation to other survivors, but Jin replied

“How will you explain? Your place is by my side. And we will not explain ourselves to a thief”.

By Jin’s insisting that wife’s position be always at husband’s side, the text showed the Asian

women obey men and support their husband unconditionally and it is taken for granted in their

culture. In one of the flashbacks with Jin and Sun at the airport, Sun carried the drink and food to

the table, while Jin was waiting. Jin complained about why she took such a long time to get the

food. Sun apologized meekly. She brought the food, cut the sandwich for Jin, and even put

napkin on Jin’s lap. She served as a waitress. When she spilled a drink onto Jin, she looked very

nervous. This was a vivid picture of how Asian woman serves a man. The comments from a

western couple who sat at a table behind Jin and Sun just offered a strong contrast of women’s

position in two cultures, with the woman saying to her husband “If you ever catch me doing

anything like that for you, shoot me”. The woman also referred Sun as a Geisha, which is a

traditional Japanese female entertainer trained to please men’s needs through skill and
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 13

personality. All these instances are created very suggestively to fuel the already existing

stereotypes of Asian females as submissive and meek. But at the end of the season, in one of the

flashback episode it was showed that Sun had an affair to someone else, and she was actually

planning to leave her husband. She was not very meek and submissive as projected earlier. That

was very contrasting to the stereotypical representation of Asian women, giving way to a new

identity. This gives the audience an impression that Asian women are not as weak as they might

project outwardly.

Charlie Chan

This stereotype is historically constructed to represent Asian men as mysterious, quiet

and unassertive. In this series, both Sun and Jin were represented confirms to the stereotype of

Charlie chan. In the first episode, Sun showed Walt how to use a plant to brush his teeth. In

episode 8, when Shannon felt shortness of breath due to her illness asthma, Sun found a plant in

the island to relieve Shannon’s suffering, and she knew how to apply such herbal medicine to

human body to ease asthma’s pain. These scenes gave audience an impression that Asian women

know much about herbal medicine, even though Sun was from a rich family and had lived in a

highly urban environment. In episode 12, this stereotype was reinforced by a scene where Sun

prepared some plants in the cave to cure headache. Moreover, in episode 13, Sun even cultivated

a garden in island for vegetables and other plants. From western people’s perspective, herbal

medicine and farming are representations of part of Asian culture. Thus, mastering such

knowledge created an image of being close to the earth and in touch with magical, mysterious

skills. Asian culture was also displayed as mysterious through Jack’s tattoo. Several camera

shots in this season caught on Jack’s tattoo, which included four Chinese characters, meaning

“the eagles fly up on the sky”. And these four characters were also part of a poem written by
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 14

Chairman Mao in 1925. Chinese literature and characters are treated as a different meaning

system to create a mysterious feeling for the audiences. In most episodes, both Jin and Sun were

quiet, and even when they were talking, their voice volume was low and the speed was slow.

Even when Jin prepared to leave the island, Sun approached Jin and wanted to break the ice

between them. Jin saw Sun walking to him, but he kept silent, until Sun asked: “Are you going?

Please Jin, talk to me”. While Jin only told Sun that he determined to leave and continued to

work without talking with Sun, there was subtle emotion going on in between the couple with no

conversation. These scenes present a picture of Asians as quiet and tending to conceal their

emotions, which could also be considered as part of conservative culture and be very different

from West’s more open culture. When Sun talked with Shannon, she asked if Shannon believed

their situations were punishment from fate because of what they did before, but Shannon replied

“there’s no such thing as fate”. It showed that Asian culture believes in fate or samara which is

originated from Buddhist and this is strange in western culture.

Gook

This stereotype describes Asians as the invisible enemy, inauthentic Americans whose

loyalties lies outside of the United States. In this television text, it could be transformed as the

Korean couple being selfish, isolated from other survivors and having their own goals. At the

beginning of the season, Jin and Sun did not talk to anybody but be quiet, kept distance from

other survivors, showed distrust toward others and ignored others’ problems. Jin told his wife,

“You must not leave my sight. You must follow me wherever I go. Do you understand? Don't

worry about the others. We need to stay together.” Jin’s talk emphasized staying together, which

suggests that he believed only his wife to be trustworthy. The Asian community should be

staying together to garner strength. But at the same time, we could see that Jack and Kate were
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 15

helping other survivors, even though they were strangers to them. Also this scene portrays how

Jin tried to control Sun and delivered the message about male dominated society in Asia. It also

shows that husbands are dutifully bounded to take care of the fairer sex. It is responsibility to

care for the wife.

Model Minority

Under this category, Asians blend into mainstream culture through individual effort and

persistence and they are projected as more passive. Jin’s help on building raft made him

gradually acceptable to other survivors and won the trust of Michael to get a seat on the raft.

Though model minority represents Asians in relatively positive way, the dialog about Jin by

Michael and Sawyer in episode 19 and 20 showed their impressions of Jin as a hard-working

person but without much strategic intelligence. When Jack asked Michael about picking Jin to

work on the raft, Michael replied “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know how to say: faster and idiot”. In

next episode, Michael asked Jin to take a break to eat some fish and Jin waved him off, Sawyer

commented “The man's got what I call an overzealous work ethic”. These scenes depict him and

Asians as very ethical and workaholic. Sun also showed her caring, calm and helpful

characteristics. She took care of Walt when Michael was out hunting; she insisted that Jack take

some rest after looking after Boone for a long time in a tender but calm and decisive tone. She

persuaded Claire to rest, kept secret for Kate, and comforted Shannon for losing her brother. The

character here shown, is very intelligent and caring also calm and cool. By the end of the season,

the couple definitely emerged as the model minority.

Some Other Stereotypical Representations

Asian culture was depicted as a very conservative culture in many aspects. The first

theme is about the exposure of women’s body. One scene in episode 7 showed that Jin asked Sun
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 16

to cover her body because she wore a camisole top. Another scene in episode 17 illustrated that

Jin rushed to cover Sun with a towel when he saw Sun swimming with bikini. These two scenes

formed a sharp contrast to the western women’s clothes culture. Shannon wore a bikini in earlier

episodes and felt comfortable and confident. Also Kate used a towel to bathe her body while just

wearing a bra. The second theme is that Asian gestures and body language were different.

Compare the interactions between Ana and Jack in their first meeting at airport, and between Sun

and Michael when Michael was leaving off island. In the episode 23, at the airport in the

flashback, Ana drank and talked with Jack. She had intimate eye contact with Jack, licked her

finger, and even asked Jack directly if he was married. In the same episode, when Jin and

Michael were leaving the island, Sun went to say goodbye. Michael shook hands with Sun and

then hugged her, and their actions were tentative. Moreover, Michael and Jin had become very

good friends, and in sailing the raft Michael talked about Sun with Jin, saying: “She did you

well. I hope you know how lucky you are man.” Jin smiled but suggested to go back to work. He

did not show much emotion depicting that traditional Asian men do not express their feeling

openly, and they tend to hide their love and express emotion in a subtle way. They don’t talk

loudly about their feelings; however, they are conveyed by conservative gestures such as

smiling, handshaking, etc. In addition, several episodes portrayed Asian people as “foreigners”,

“alien” as compared with western cultures through other survivors’ or western people’s eyes.

When Hurley referred Sun and Jin in his talk in several episodes, he kept calling them “Chinese”.

This was an attempt to show how ignorant the western population is about eastern countries.

They think, Asian people, no matter from whatever country, share the same identity. The creators

wanted to bring in this perspective to the western population, but they missed in doing the same

for other in-depth analysis. The concept of mafia doesn’t exist in Korea. It may exist in Japan. It
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 17

also may exist in the Asian American people in the U.S, but not in Korea. Sun is portrayed as the

daughter of a rich mafia don. The director of Lost did not consider heterogeneity among Asian

people and society.

The Transformation

Throughout the season we see there has been a gradual transformation in the portrayal of

the Korean couple. In initial episodes the couple was depicted as the stereotype but slowly they

emerged as the more helpful and cooperative people. New identities were revealed (Figure 2)

and new messages conflicting with the existing stereotypes were sent out through the episodes.

Not only did their image change, but also the characters and their relationship with each other

evolved. The Korean couple was portrayed more socialized, open-minded and caring for others

in later episodes. Jin began to socialize with others when he approached Michael to offer the help

to build raft. Sun helped Shannon to release her pain from asthma and later nursed Boone for his

wound. When Boone was buried, the camera was first shooting on Hurley, then on the holding

hands of Michael and his son, Jin, Claire, Sun and Kate. The Korean couple was presented as the

same way as the other people, as they have blended into the whole community. At the end of the

season, before Jin left the island to go for help, Jin and Sun hugged and had their first kiss in

public in the first season, a westernized way to say goodbye. And the relationship between Jin

and Sun became more equal.

New Identities

The Asian Women: Confident, Intelligent and Independent

The image of Sun was no longer the conservative, dependent and quiet one, but a new

role, physically and emotionally independent from her husband. This change process gradually

developed through the episodes. Though Sun obeyed Jin’s words several times in earlier
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 18

episodes, she gradually showed independence and opposition to him. At first, Sun buttoned up

her cardigan in front of Michael when Jin yelled at her. Later when Jin again asked her to cover

her body up when she was wearing a tank top, Sun defended her choice because of the hot

weather on the island. Also take the researchers did a visual comparison of the postures of Sun in

episode 1 and episode 16. At the beginning, Sun wore a buttoned up cardigan which covered her

body and sat with hands and legs folded. The expression was always grim and tense. In the latter

episode, she dressed in a bikini standing in the ocean with hands open with a relaxed expression

on her face. Sun’s characteristics transformed from unsure, shy and confined to free, confident

and self reliant, which is quite different from the old stereotype of meek submissive Asian

women.

Asian Man: Loving, Caring & Sensitive

Compared to earlier episodes where Jin was depicted as cruel, dangerous character, in

later episodes progressively changed Jin’s image to easygoing and cooperative man. Jin tried to

put out fire on raft; he built a raft together with Michael; he was fishing for others’ food, he ran

in the jungle to look for Jack to help Claire, he built friendships with several persons. Especially

he became friend with Michael after they had a tough fight earlier, and in the last episode, Jin

took the watch for which he fought with Michel and gave it back to Michael. Furthermore, Jin

was portrayed as domineering and rude but he was also portrayed as a caring husband, who

loved his wife very much. He was worried and very sensitive about Sun.

Discussion

The Asian cultural identity in Lost is constructed discursively through signifying

practices of dialogs and actions as a sequence of symbols. Asian identity was simplified and

reduced to a set of negative, unitary attributes in American movies and televisions, such as the
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 19

menacing, notorious figure ‘Fu Manchu’. However, globalization brought dynamic movements

of ethnic groups, media images, technology and financial transactions, which made

contemporary western media to endue foreign culture. The findings through textual analysis of

the current television show Lost support such claim. Both stereotypical and new, contradicting

elements were found in this show. The creators actively tried to deconstruct various stereotypes

about Asian culture. Through analysis of episodes, several scenes of the couple were projected

with refreshing changes from their stereotypical images, breaking the traditional mold. The wife,

Sun, became independent, confident and even tough sometimes; the husband, Jin, showed caring,

collaborative and sensitive towards his wife and his friends.

However, the identification of the new Asian identity in Lost is still lost due to its

difference from Western mainstream culture. Some characteristics of Asian culture remain

unchanged, unchallenged through the whole season one. First, Asian culture is still a

conservative culture identified by the process of the socialization. The couple isolated

themselves at the beginning, started to communicate with others little by little and finally made

friends with others. They took much longer time to be acquainted with other people, which

formed a contrast to how Jack, the protagonist helped survivors at the very first episode. Second,

the myth about how Sun knew so much about herbal medicine, plants and cultivation still

remains unexplainable. Not every oriental person has knowledge about oriental herbs and

medicines, especially if someone comes from urban background. Third, Jin was a waiter turned

gangster, how did he know about building rafts and fishing? Again not everyone from Asian

origin knows how to fish and boat. They were shown to be ideal people for work environment,

but very conservative about their feelings. Significantly, through the entire season, Jin and Sun

seldom participated in decision-making process. It is partly due to the language barrier, but they
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 20

were also excluded from the island’s core group. Even if they were among the main characters in

the show; they played less active and less important roles, at least not as important as Jack, Kate,

Locke, or Sawyer. In the complete first season with 23 episodes, Jin and Sun disappeared in five

episodes during the show. By differentiating the Asian culture from western culture, the Asians

are still marginalized as ‘others’ compared to ‘us’. The Asian identity, at least the Korean couple

in the island, is still a shaky, vague and remains as minority in the society.

Certainly, there are limitations to this study. The study was researcher’s perspective, but

did not cover audiences’ perspective. Silverstone (1999) once said that if someone really wants

to know about media effect on public, they really have to ask them. Thus, further research can be

conducted by interviewing individuals with regard to their intake of this television show. On the

other hand, Lost is only one of the many television shows that may influence and represent the

Asian identity today. Hence, another avenue for future research could compare different

television programs that involve Asian characters to see how they construct Asian identity

similarly and differently to form a relatively complete picture of Asian’s representation in

western media.
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 21

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 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 24

Footnotes
1
Information was retrieved from Variety September, 2004 issue from the article by

Kissell, Rick , "ABC, Eye have quite some night"

 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 25

Figure Caption

Figure 1. Asian American Stereotypes in the Mass Media

Figure 2. Old and New Identities

 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 26

Period Characteristics

menacing
predatory
Yellow Peril
lusting after white women
1850s
~1920s diabolic & sneaky
Dragon Lady sexually alluring
seducing white men

Charlie Chan mysterious

deferential to whites
quite & unassertive

Lotus Blossom submissive

meek
serve a man 뭩 every need

Model 1960s assimilation into the mainstream

Minority ~1970s
hardworking & persistent

Gook 1970s ~ invisible enemy

inauthentic American
 Asian Stereotypes in TV Series Lost 27

Initial Mid season Season end

Episodes Episodes Episodes

Stereotype Portrayal Transformation New Identities

Subservient wife New Asian Female Identity:

More involved Confident, Intelligent and
Domineering husband
Started helping others Independent
Uncooperative
Used herbal medicines New Asian Male Identity:
Untrusting
Vicious Revelation of the 멼 Loving, Caring & Sensitive
ndependent New Asian Identity:
of the woman Cooperative & Helpful