Fresh Stereotypes
“Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir,” is an autobiography of Eddie Huang which details his experience growing up as an Asian-American in a white neighborhood. Eddie describes the struggle of assimilation and how he repeatedly grappled with self-identity. The work is an elegy written about rejection, racial discrimination and inequality. The ABC Television Network has recently taken the opportunity to turn his memoir into a television show—one that attempts to exploit as many Asian stereotypes in as little time possible.
Two Asian Americans, Constance Wu and Randall Park, don fake and cheesy Chinese accents as they act out their parts. Wu’s character embodies an Asian tiger mom. She is stingy with her money and sets up an academic home-schooling station to challenge her son, Emery Huang. Emery Huang is ostracized for bringing noodles to school. A stereotypical Christian principal runs his school. A troupe of white women on roller skates and childish helmets fulfill most people’s definition of “basic.”
I laughed. A lot. At first, every joke was witty and unique in its own way. The characterizations presented on the screen were relatable. But something was inherently wrong with the concept of the sitcom. Finding humor in a show like this is oddly disturbing. An overwhelming amount of the jokes are purely based off of race; some would consider them completely unoriginal. In terms of accuracy, “Fresh Off the Boat” barely covers Eddie Huang’s original memoir. “The network tried to turn my memoir into a cornstarch sitcom and me into a mascot for America,” Eddie Huang wrote in an essay. “I hated that.”
A show like “Fresh Off the Boat” isn’t dealing with a new concept. If anything, the race factor is overused; shows like “Everybody Hates Chris,” “The Cosby Show” and “George Lopez” have come and gone. In retrospect, it should have shocked me that I didn’t feel any sense of exploitation in those shows. I realize it was because I could never connect with the figures on the screen.
“Fresh Off the Boat” is only the second sitcom to feature Asian Americans. “All-American Girl” was the first; it premiered in 1994 and was immediately terminated after one season. The show was made to be a comedy. In fact, it was based off of comedian Margaret Cho’s stand-up routines. But, similar to Eddie Huang’s situation, ABC only ripped off her most basic ideas—the TV network manipulated her stand-ups and falsely portrayed her culture to raise its viewership.
Racism, so to speak, is in the eye of beholder. It isn’t up to me to decide whether or not sitcoms are offensive to others. But as of the first two episodes, “Fresh Off the Boat” has only found its power through race jokes. We must see this turned into an Asian-American family comedy, not an Asian-American comedy. The characters must develop to where they are more than just simplified personalities.
The title of the sitcom remains unsettling to me. “Fresh Off the Boat” was originally a racial slur, one that described Asian immigrants who failed to integrate into American society. One can argue that in present day, the harshness of the phrase has lessened considerably. But is it appropriate now to call someone a “F.O.B?” No. It’s slander. It’s not a phrase that can be thrown around. It still incorporates foreignism and ostracism, is still quite loaded and is still absolutely derogatory.
Only a week or two ago, ABC tweeted a promotional image which quickly became a point of controversy. The center of the image flouted the phrase “We’re all a little #FreshOfftheBoat,” with five caricatures of different races surrounding it. An Asian figure wore a bamboo hat, a Latino wore a sombrero, a Sikh wore a turban. Overwhelming amounts of people from these groups were reduced into a handful of images. The graphic was almost immediately taken down, hinting towards ABC’s true intentions.
Reviewers praise “Fresh Off the Boat” for its Asian spotlight. It is absolutely true that Asian Americans have been largely invisible in mass media. But the sitcom will do little to change that. Similar to “Black-ish,” there are only a handful of stars. If visibility is what we need, Asians are better suited acting in legitimate television shows or movies.
Others commend the sitcom for providing fresh perspective on Asian-American lives, claiming it will enhance discussion on race and even rebut stereotypes. It will most certainly not. ABC, intent on producing high ratings, has pasteurized the characters in the memoir to appeal to a white audience. The true Asian experience will not be presented in a comedy show. Eddie Huang discusses the situation in his essay: “The only way they could even mention some of the stories in the book was by building a Trojan horse and feeding the pathogenic stereotypes that still define us to a lot of American cyclope. Randall was neutered, Constance was exoticized, and Young Eddie was urbanized so that the viewers got their mise-en-place. People watching these channels have never seen us, and the network’s approach to pacifying them is to say we’re all the same.”
Sitcoms similar to “Fresh Off the Boat” have, and always will continue to enforce negative stereotypes. By taking Eddie Huang’s memoir and abstracting all relatable forms of rejection and discrimination, ABC is encouraging racial divide. We laugh at Emery Huang’s attempts to become more Americanized because it portrays non-stereotypical behavior. We laugh at Wu’s depiction of a tiger mom. We laugh at the accents, accents that sound painful and forced to Asian-American viewers. “Fresh Off the Boat” represents neither Eddie Huang’s experience nor any other immigrants. With such a loose connection to the memoir, the sitcom is solely borrowing the name. In essence, and as aforementioned, it is just a collection of jokes founded on racial stereotypes.
Sadly, that’s what comedy is these days. ♥