Money, Media & The Asian American Image
TRUTH: There are too few positive Asian images in the media. CONSEQUENCE: Our 5-year-old daughter tells me that I look like a bad guy because she knows the good guys are caucasian. Who among us hasn't been passed up for the chance to be the things we wanted to be because our image didn't fit that role -- whether it's a job, a part, a date, an election?
TRUTH: Most peoples' ideas of just who does or doesn't fit a role comes from what they see in the media. CONSEQUENCE: Asians are seen as standouts at being quiet sidekicks, making sushi, studying, tinkering with circuitboards, cleaning teeth and doing laundry. We are seen as constitutionally incapable of excelling at basketball, lawyering, sending audiences rolling in the aisles with uncontrolled laughter, seducing virtuous but incredibly sexy women, fighting with cool resourcefulness against astronomical odds -- well-oiled pecs and biceps glistening with sexy sweat -- to save the world from being blown up by cackling evil genuises. Hell, all too often, we are the cackling evil genuises.
You get the picture. We all do. And it pisses us off.
At the risk of sounding nerdy, technical and boring, let's first take a look at the mechanism underlying the problem. A few pages on we'll consider our prospects for seeing the situation improve and ways we can make a positive difference.
Contrary to what politically-fixated types may believe, what the American media chooses to offer to the public is not controlled by the federal, state, county or city government. When it comes to information and entertainment in the United States, there is no higher authority, no god figure, to which supplicants can pray for relief -- and all sane Americans would agree that that's the way it should be. The game of politics, when played by tough, smart, dedicated politicians with ample political capital, can reap important dividends in narrowly circumscribed situations -- for example, in prompting Uncle Sam to pay reparations for violating the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans during World War II -- but can, and should, have no effect on the free media marketplace. The freedom of that marketplace is expressly protected by the First Amendment and zealously guarded by the press and most legal minds. Not even an American president dares invoke his political powers against media privilege. Those who have tried -- President Nixon comes to mind -- have paid dearly for the attempt. Political channels are out as avenues for changing media portrayals, or non-portrayals, of Asians.
An effectively-organized mass protest may help educate media honchos about what kinds of things are likely to piss off Asians, but offers no real benefit to the Asian community. To the contrary, it usually ends up helping the culprit by providing tens of millions of dollars of valuable free publicity -- not to mention a certain cache that translates into box office with a sizeable segment of the population. I suspect Basic Instinct didn't suffer from staged protests by San Francisco gay groups. I know -- I was one of those millions who went to see it out of sheer prurient curiosity generated entirely by media coverage of the protests.
Miss Saigon -- A Madame Butterfly knockoff for the 90s, from what I've heard -- undoubtedly took in added millions because of media attention generated by that misguided protest over casting a white actor to play a Eurasian pimp. I mean, who the hell cares who plays a role like that in a play like that! As an Asian American I was mortified that we would be seen as actually coveting roles in another one of those Hey-GI tales, to even be up in arms to get them. The protesters would have served our community far better by giving the thing exactly the reception it deserved--ho-hum indifference. Any other response only helps generate media heat, and in the entertainment business, media heat equals box office.
Which brings us to the first of only two things that makes a difference to those who run the American media--money. This is not a value judgement. In a capitalist society money is the fuel that drives the engine of any enterprise and the media is no exception. It provides essential sustenance. If it stopped flowing into our accounts, for example, our own publishing venture would stop dead in its tracks. Without ad revenues, your TV sets wouldn't even show test patterns. Even your local PBS station, which so warmly radiates its peculiar no-frills brand of education, culture and public service programming, would grow dark without the steady stream of money it cajoles and begs from sponsors and subscribers. Yes, even Big Bird and Kermit have their fuzzy hands out for keeping your kids away from those pesky toy commercials on those other stations. Just as you do what it takes to ensure your family has food on the table, the Sesame Street gang--and every other media family--does what it takes to keep the money flowing, mostly from ad sales and subscription fees.
This elementary proposition serves as the basis for the most important mechanism we can use to upgrade our media image.
As of 2002 11 million Asians live in this country, the population of Hong Kong and Singapore combined. Our collective income surpasses that of Hong Kong's 6.5 million citizens, Taiwan's 24 million, Thailand's 57 million or Indonesia's 200 million. If Asian Americans formed our own state, it would have the fifth biggest economy. If we created our own nation, our GNP would rank 15th in the world.
That's impressive enough. What makes us an even more important segment of American consumers is our above-average incomes, educational levels and spending habits. According to updated estimates of latest available U.S. Census figures, the median Asian household income is about $49,000 a year, considerably higher than the $44,000 national median. Asian households outearn even white households by 16%.
Asians are 14% of California's population but 38% of the enrollment at the state's top ten universities. Asians outnumber Whites at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine, the four biggest campuses of the elite University of California system. Even at private universities like Stanford and USC, Asians make up a disproporationate 26% and 37%, respectively. The figures are almost as impressive at elite East Coast colleges like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and MIT where Asians average 14-30% of the student bodies.
Our high educational levels translate into the high rate of economic success that Asian Americans have enjoyed. Despite complaints about the glass ceiling at upper levels of corporate management, Census figures show that young Asians are entering professional and managerial positions at twice the national rate--46% versus 24%.
Those numbers become even more impressive in light of the fact that 58% of all Asians came here after 1969 when the U.S. was opened up to significant Asian immigration for the first time in half a century. This suggests that Asian income levels will take a big jump in the coming decade as substantial numbers of young American-educated Asians finally settle into their careers. Based on the numbers graduating from California universities, as of 2008 Asians make up 34% of the state's under-40 professional, managerial and entrepreneurial population.
These raw numbers only begin to suggest the importance of Asian consumers for companies that sell homes, airline tickets, luxury cars, personal computers, high-end consumer electronics, educational products, designer-brand fashion, premium liquor and tobacco.
Developers of new upper-middle-class housing in Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley often find that half or more of their homes are purchased by Asians.
A 1997 survey of sales managers of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Acura dealerships in both northern and southern California revealed that 15-85% of sales were to Asians, with an average of 40%. An eyeball survey of California streets and parking lots will verify that Asians are indeed behind the wheels of a disproportionate number of prestige cars, domestic and imported.
From a score of transPacific trips in the past seven years, I know that over half of all business and first-class passengers on most airlines are Asian. In coach the percentages are even higher.
A survey of counterpeople of premium cosmetics brands like Estee Lauder, Chanel, Lancome and Christian Dior in top-flight California department stores shows that 20-65% of all sales are to Asian women. These figures hold up as well for the toney purveyors of brand-name fashion and accessories that line Rodeo Drive.
The truth is that we Asians have enough buying power to ensure the success or failure of virtually any premium brand selling in the U.S. simply by systematically giving or withholding our business.
This translates into the potential to exercise formidable influence over what kinds of Asian images we see in the American media. But only if we use it.
Let's take a look at the media food chain.
The entire American mass media is ad-driven. TV and radio broadcasters get 100% of their revenues from selling commercial time. The price charged for a spot depends on the share of the total audience, or rating points, the show achieves as measured by the homes wired to the ratings services. A loss of even one point can mean millions of dollars in lost advertising revenues. In the past decade networks have suffered a heavy loss of viewership to cable and video. That has meant a big decline in revenues, forcing them to cut costs in order to stay in business. A two or three ratings-point decline relative to competing networks would probably result in a show's cancellation and a frantic search for a replacement. No network can afford to lose additional ad revenues. That is exactly what they would do if their existing advertisers go letters of complaint from Asian viewers disgruntled by unfair depictions or unrealistic omissions of Asian characters.
Most newspapers and mass-circulation consumer magazines like Time, People and BusinessWeek, with circulations dozens of times the size of this magazine, spend far more money on printing and mailing magazines than they take in from newsstands and subscriptions. They keep prices as low as possible in order to maintain a large circulation base that can be translated into higher rates for advertising space. What's more, they maintain their huge subscription bases by pumping tens of millions a year into expensive direct-mail campaigns, the single biggest budget item for mass-circulation magazines. In the past several years, however, most have suffered a 20-35% drop in ad revenues. As a result, they have been unable to spend as much to maintain subscription bases. Time, for example, announced three sharp cuts in its circulation base during the past three years. Currently very few mass-circulation publications are operating with healthy profits. Even a 20% loss of ad pages would plunge most deeply into the red. A bigger loss would likely force them out of business, as with several mass-circulation, ad-driven magazines in the past two years.
More than anything, the mass media fear the loss of advertisers. This is especially true where they are competing for ad dollars against one or more similar competitors. For TV shows competitors would be any show that reaches a similar audience. In the case of Time, competitors are Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. For The New York Times, competitors are the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Given the formidable consumer power at our disposal, we can impact what we and our children see and read in the media in two ways: (1) by influencing advertisers to support media that provide positive coverage of Asians; and (2) by influencing advertisers away from media that treat Asians unfairly or overlook us entirely. A show that immediately comes to mind is Fox's Beverly Hills 90210, which, implausibly enough, is devoid of recurring Asian characters. This is not good for our young children who are among the show's fans. Another is ABC's Doogie Hauser, M.D.which, absurdly, shows a UCLA medical center without a recurring Asian character.
Advertisers want to sell you their products. Toyota and Sony, for example, spend hundreds of millions a year to persuade Americans to buy their products. If their advertising directors thought that some part of the ad budgets were being spent counter-productively, they would redirect the money. If they received letters from consumers complaining that they were supporting a show that was offensive, or that they weren't supporting any Asian American media, they would be pressured to respond or face losing valuable customers. Each letter, in an ad director's mind, represents many many similar-minded consumers. Few human beings are as sensitive to complaints.
There is one mass medium that doesn't depend directly on advertising revenues -- the movies. Of course, we can punish makers of movies that treat Asian unfairly by casting our votes the capitalist way, with our wallets. That may not seem like a terrible consequence given our relatively limited numbers in most parts of the U.S. Still, we shouldn't underestimate the impact that 14% of California's population and 11% of New York City's can have on the success of big-budget movies.
Far more importantly, we Asian Americans represent a barometer of the reception a movie offensive to Asians can receive in the Asian market which, by the year 2010, will account for 55% of all world box office revenues. Hollywood hopes to dominate this market but won't unless it plays its cards right. A well-publicized Asian American snub of an offensive movie could poison its image in Asia. Inevitably, Asian distributors will insist on checking a film for Asian acceptability before committing to a distribution deal, effectively making Hollywood respond to a Pacific Rim standard rather than a white-American standard. Numbered are the days of white heroes single-handedly blowing away Asian hordes with the help of an adoring Asian female.
For maximal effectiveness in influencing the American media, we need a clear simple agenda that all concerned Asian Americans can observe until our objectives are met. There isn't the space here for me to get into specifics, but I would like to outline the broad objectives that I believe most Asians would wholeheartedly support. Coming Mediawatch pages will report on particularly commendable or reprehensible doings of media and advertisers as judged by the following objectives:
To increase the amount of media specifically geared toward Asians by rewarding with our business those companies that support Asian American media;
To discourage unfair depiction of Asians or unrealistic omissions of Asians by denying our business to companies that persist in supporting offending media; and
To encourage development of a multicultural perspective within the mass media by boycotting any mass medium that, taken as an average, devotes less than 25% of its coverage to non-white subjects or characters.
These objectives, I think, would encourage a more thoughtful portrayal and reportage of Asians without imposing unrealistic restrictions on ourselves or on the companies we do business with. Paragraph 1 contains no onerous aspects since it only encourages us to reward companies that care enough about its Asian clientele to support our media. Paragraph 2 encourages us to inform advertisers when they are supporting offensive media. Paragraph 3 would not apply to specialty media, e.g., a magazine focusing on European travel or a show about golf, but would encourage the mass media to face the fact that ours is a nation in which only 75% of the population is white.
There are encouraging signs of change, but we are far from the point where we can take it for granted. Only by applying our consumer muscle can we make our presence felt by those who spend billions of dollars to support the images that bombard us and our children day in and day out -- the advertisers. Our children's future self-image depends on what we do now.
