This week on Under the Radar with Callie Crossley:
Four years ago, a movie called Crazy Rich Asians made waves in Hollywood. The award-winning film was a modern love story featuring an entirely Asian and Asian American cast — the first major Hollywood production with an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club in 1993. The movie signaled a major step forward in the film industry. What originally seemed to be a small pop cultural phenomenon has since produced a movement in entertainment media, from blockbuster hits starring Asian superheroes to record-breaking TV series that embrace Asian customs and languages.
The representation is certainly not perfect, but the enthusiastic response from fans has inspired both Asian American and Hollywood communities to demand more diversity in the industry.
We’re spending the full hour talking about Asian representation in film and television, plus, what we’re looking forward to watching in 2022.
Guests:
Elena Creef, professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College. She specializes in Asian American visual history in photography, film and popular culture.
Jenny Korn, fellow and the founding coordinator of the Race and Media Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.