There is a scene in the 2023 film “Past Lives” in which Nora Moon, the protagonist, calls Hae Sung Jung, her childhood friend, “really masculine, in this way I think is so Korean.”
When I first heard that dialogue, I remember jolting to attention. It felt like the movie was going out of its way to label an Asian man as manly. I had never heard that kind of talk on the big screen before.
And, if I’m being honest, it made me, a Korean American man, feel good.
I knew there was more I wanted to unpack, and doing so falls into my jurisdiction as a reporter on The New York Times’s Culture desk. So I was delighted when The Times’s Projects and Collaborations team asked me if I’d be interested in writing about the representation of Asian American men — and specifically their romantic roles — onscreen.
Asian and Asian American men have been emasculated and marginalized for decades on American screens, and I wanted to chronicle the modest, but meaningful, shift happening right now. The article, which was published online today alongside visuals from Ricardo Nagaoka, explores how roles available to Asian and Asian American actors have evolved, especially over the last few years.
I spoke to almost two dozen Asian Americans: Mostly actors, writers and directors, but also scholars, historians and everyday people. I needed to understand how laws and immigration policy — and especially pop culture — had shaped America’s view of Asian men. And I was interested in how the years of unflattering Hollywood portrayals made Asian and Asian American men feel.
Surveys from the 2000s and 2010s had concluded that Asian men, along with Black women, were at the bottom of the racial romantic hierarchy when it came to dating in real life. And the frustration felt by Asian American men in that realm has at times manifested itself in misplaced toxicity, anger and resentment — particularly toward Asian women.
As a result, the romantic prospects of Asian men has become a sort of taboo topic that I have discussed only privately, with close Asian American friends. But I hoped that people would share their own experiences and perspectives for an article.
When they did, our conversations felt both freeing and affirming. It turned out that even some of Hollywood’s biggest — and most conventionally attractive — Asian American stars had had similar conversations with their own friends, and had, at times, felt less than.
“There’s a part of me that’s terrified to talk about this,” said the actor Justin H. Min, who starred as a romantic lead in “The Greatest Hits” this spring. He summed up a sentiment that I heard a lot: “It brings up such deep-seated emotions in all of us that come from a history of pain and a history of feeling like we’re not wanted.”
When I called William Hung of “American Idol” fame, he said the quiet part out loud: “I portray Asian stereotypes,” to some people, he said. “I have buck teeth. I’m a bit chubby. The way I look, I’m like a nerd.”
It is hard to pinpoint what role, if any, the characters we see onscreen play in how we as Asian American men are perceived, how we perceive others or how we feel about ourselves. But some actors, writers and directors argue that it all does affect the audience, as well as our culture.
Take Alexander Hodge, known to some as the “Asian Bae” from “Insecure.” He said children sometimes called him “Jackie Chan” when he was growing up, in part because there were no other cultural touchstones they could point to. As an adult, being perceived as a desirable man on a widely seen TV show was initially “quite difficult to comprehend,” he said.
Nonetheless, he made it clear that he was still “incredibly grateful” that the moniker came into being, because “it builds that cultural lexicon that ‘Asian Bae’ now exists.”
I had the opportunity to hear from Times readers on the subject, too. Almost 200 Asian American men responded to a Times questionnaire asking how they felt about Hollywood’s depiction of them, and about their romantic lives.
Not all of the respondents believed that media representation affected them. Some said they grew up in majority Asian communities that they thought insulated them from prejudice. A few argued that much can be overcome through confidence.
But Eric Tanyavutti, 42, of Chicago, was among the many respondents who said they felt overlooked by mainstream American media.
“For a long time I wanted to be white because that was the ideal — that meant that I could get all the girls and that I would be popular,” he told me in an interview. “As an Asian American man, I just did not exist, except in kung fu movies.”
Another response, and follow-up interview, also stayed with me.
Julian Djangkuak, 21, of Fairfax, Va., said he first saw a glimmer of himself onscreen when he saw Henry Golding in a trailer for the 2018 rom-com “Crazy Rich Asians.” Djangkuak, who is Indonesian, and Golding, who is Malaysian, share a skin tone, a nose and other facial features. And, as Djangkuak could plainly see, Golding was handsome — sexy, even.
Djangkuak — who said he had at times used shoe insoles to make himself taller, and that he had once researched how to use clips to pinch and narrow his nose — told me that as he began to see more and more people in pop culture who reminded him of himself, he had also begun to realize that he could not change fundamental attributes about who he was.
“You can’t be perfect,” he said. “But I have to put myself out there.”
I have given myself similar pep talks over the years. What Hung said about himself, and about Asian stereotypes, I have also sometimes felt. And now, after reporting this piece, it is a comfort to know that even some of Hollywood’s most successful Asian American men — the ones who seem to have it all figured out — think about these things, and feel them, too.
Read More: Why an Asian American Reporter Wanted to Write About Romance
