Holby City?Orientalist Stereotyping? NEVER!
Jing Lusi, born in Shanghai, moved to England when she was five and was raised in Hampshire. Performing at a young age, alongside Philip Schofield in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, she studied at Peter Symonds College before graduating from University College London in Law. She eventually pursued an acting career and has appeared in the films Breathe, Clash of Empires - Battle For Asia and Jack Falls.
From the mirror
It's like watching Junior Doctors: Your Life in Their Hands tonight as a new F1 arrives on Darwin ward. Holby City Chinese doctor Tara Lo (Jing Lusi), who arrives just in time to get in the way as an RTA puts the hospital on majax status. For those of you not fluent in cool hospital jargon, that’s a pile-up on a dual carriageway resulting in a major accident.
How thrilled Oliver Valentine must be to have a newbie to look down on who’s even more incompetent than he is. And Tara doesn’t disappoint, as she nearly kills the same patient twice. Not bad going for your first day.
Watch Holby City BBC1 8pm Tuesday
Watch on BBCiplayer
Review: Episodes 1-4 of 'Eastern Promise' are below:
Does Holby City put Chinese doctors in a bad light, or is it yet another opportunity to promote the hypersexualised Chinese female stereotype?
I'll spare you some misery by giving you a breakdown of Tara Lo's introduction in Episode 14....
ReplyDelete7.00min: Establishing the ambitious Chinese female careerist stereotype, Junior doctor BBC Tara Lo makes her entrance and offers to 'assist'in a job only to have to clean a hospitalised old white mans dirty leg.
10:24 She gets
her first experience of death, when old man dies before her but at
10:44: Looks pretty stupid standing there
with her gloved hands held open
17:16: She is sitting on bench explaining her headache in a geeky high achieving technical way and admits feeling silly talking to a stranger...who turns out to be a man dressed up as a clown( gosh, how amusing).
22:17: She gets reintroduced to the same clown who collapses
28:19: She is pressing her hands on the chest of a bald white man ( the clown without makeup) in hospital bed, where...wait for it she is moving her hands to his groin area at which point the man grabs hold of his clown horn and hoots it!
HURRAH DRAGON QUEEN STEREOTYPE!
This is where bald white man tells her she needs to smile more and hooray the old white guy/young chinese female stereotype is established!
28:57: Bald whitey is flirting her badly, with patient doctor relationship.
29.00: She declares after witnessing her first death , not another patient will die on her watch. hooray for high achieving Chinese female careerist stereotype!
30:22: She is in the women's toilet talking to another woman in the toilet that her beloved old white baldie may die on her.
32:19 Her bald white lover tells her he is diagnosed with cancer
40:29 The baldie is dressed up as a clown again and she tells him she can save him.
Yes once again we bored viewers have been set up to feel sorry for this white bald man clown knowing he will die, and the chinese girl has fallen for him...which he uses as an opportunity to 'show her his thing( penis?)',
Our exotic Chinese junior doctor cum nurse refuses, trying to hide her sexual arousal, as she licks her lips.
45.00: Chinese female is crying because she cannot do anything to save her bald white lover, and that she is hiding in the toilets because the sexy bald white man she just met ( is attracted to?) is going to die of cancer.
51:54: She is watching the bald white man clown perform infront of a group of children who
52:17 Does a forward roll and hands her a bunch of fake flowers.She smiles.
Mission accomplished! Well Done Holby, you have successfully manipulated our loving british viewers into accepting yet another young over-achieving Susan Ma-like exotic Chinese slut careerist stereotype falling deeply in lust with her perverted old white bald male patient..all in one episode!
I'll tell you why all Oriental women are portrayed this way on the big screen - because the casting directors and ultimately the director's are inevitably MEN of the old-school upperclass sort who still have visions of the glorious British Empire so in their out of touch minds this is exactly what Chinese women are like - the actresses are chosen because the directors fancy the look of them and reflect back to them what they want to see..
ReplyDeleteMedia in Hollywood and the UK is sooooo narrow and limiting,racist and sexist. Women are only good for selling sex in the media from presenters to actresses to singers. Its the effect of the White Male gaze. Would a female Asian director choose/script the same character? absolutely not.
asian men are even more of an enigma to the elite whites - and to be honest they dont care one jot whether the representation is accurate or not. They have their own vision/agenda to project and thats good enough for them.
Is it elitist? Most definitely. I wouldnt blame the actresses so much, but at the same time, they are accepting silly token parts that will limit them in the future. But as there are so few parts for orientals anyway its kind of a Catch 22 situation.
That episode 14 is actually nothing like HBC portrayed it, there is no real orientalism, but perhaps a little tinge of a Lucy Liu character in Ally McBeal.
DeleteIts a dull storyline about a sentimental over-eager junior doctor and her patient. I don't think her character is particularly interesting and Holby City definately is not worth following just because there's a Chinese in it. TBF, her character could be a doctor of any ethnicity, I haven't seen anything so far that makes links to her ethnicity as being of any importance.
Re: Media. You'll be surprised. Have you seen the material produced by Asian females in the US film industry? Its always the same theme:
1) Asian female with a White man in a relationship
2) Mother vs Daughter dynamic. Daughter takes her life for granted etc. Daughter is a secret lesbian bi-sexual etc
3) Asian men all suck esp the paternalistic types who are demonised and usually appear as little as possible in these films which are usually totally gendered orientated.
re Episode 14, its all in the 'programming' if you arent aware of this symbolism then you arent looking out for it. There is a definate canniness in the way the 'programmers' can turn a simple patient-doctor episode into the beginning of an IR blossoming relationship but the symbolism is all there.
DeleteDefinately its there. If you are paying close enough attention and actually looking out for it. No nothing happened between them but IR imagery is infered, insinuated and suggestive. Its very subtle and manipulative.
@Lee No i wouldnt blame the actress too much either. Actually I think she did a decent job in downplaying what could have been worse. But at the end of the day, shes a paid actress at the mercy of as you say old white bloke director and his editing room.
Deletejust caught a glimpse of Tara Lo in Holby City, Oh surprise oh surprise shes now in an Inter racial relationship with a white guy called Ollie. Can this get any more predictable?
DeleteHaha, I was right all along.
DeleteAll together let's sing: 'Fuck the British Media'
She has quite bad crooked teeth
ReplyDelete"asian men are even more of an enigma to the elite whites - and to be honest they dont care one jot whether the representation is accurate or not. They have their own vision/agenda to project and thats good enough for them."
ReplyDeleteDude, watch SHANGHAI CALLING. looks sick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjBRWh5RdE
Whilst Asian Americans are more progressive when it comes to representation, at the end of the day Daniel Henney is a Hapa/Eurasian.
DeleteAt least Asian Americans have youtube to balance any misrepresentation, but BBCS we dont have youtube and as far as british media, BBCS are excluded by the overwhelming presence of hapas to the point we BBCs are rendered invisible in british media
http://bbczeitgeist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/hapas-fobs-and-agenda-to-socially.html
http://bbczeitgeist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/hapas-fobs-and-agenda-to-render-bbcs.html
and yes, Gok Wan is a Hapa too, incase you havent been following this blog, who justifies the use of the word 'chink' and thanks to him, its a phrase thats been legitimised by most whitewashed sellout BBCS
http://bbczeitgeist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/goks-teens-naked-truth.html
Heres the definition of whitewashed BBC, in case you were wondering:
http://bbczeitgeist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/how-to-become-sellout-bbc-in-5-steps.html
reminds me of shanghai knights - some slut licking some white mans face all over.
ReplyDeletemaybe holby will take it one step further. am sure they had many asians auditioning for these parts.
I dont think UK media is as blatant as Hollywood but no doubt they will continue the insinuation that they've already set up. BBCs complain they arent accepted by the mainstream and this is what we ever get? This is the results of when self-serving FOB mentality that translates into the mind of BBCs - it doesnt work in a white-careerist world, at least not in the world of media.
DeleteThe problem is that this ISN'T happening with black and asian females (or males) for that matter. Another words, people of other nonwhite races DO NOT get stereotyped in mainstream TV - yes it happens, but equally if not moreso you will see a black or asian man - or woman - play a perfectly normal role on TV. But Chinese don't, we have to "fit a role" - the white man's role - or else we will be rejected in white society.
ReplyDeleteThe other problem regarding representation is that in China, the OPPOSITE is happening - where Chinese are pigeon holed into derorgatory/negative roles, whites in Eastern nations are "promoted" to roles above that of natives...THEY are the star, when if they took a glance at how orientals were treated in the west, they would surely change their tact.
CCP or China film industry are now half-funding the new Iron Man film and are looking to Andy Lau to appear as a sidekick ( hopefully not stereotyped) That the main villain called the Mandarin is an Oriental-fu manchu Ming the merciless type villain.
DeleteLike flowers of war, and its like these white-worshipping hi culture China-coproductions really make me scratch my head makes you wonder what kind of coke some of the China film funders are snorting.
I don't think her character is a stereotype at all. She speaks with a perfect English accent, her ethnicity hasn't been referred to.
DeleteBut isn't that what many Chinese ask for? A normal Chinese character who is basically culturally white who happens to be of Chinese origin?
IMO, these types of characters only serve the purpose of representing white washed British Chinese who are in an inter racial partnership or have tons of white friends. I don't think thats something we should be striving to support in terms of media represention.
If we had our own independent media, in the interests of BBC discussion debate and issues as opposed to the cake recipe crap and some decent responsible people to run it ( dont look this way ) , we wouldnt have to worry about that crap. As it is BBCs dont care enough to make up the audience, BBCs dont care about each other, BBCs dont care enough. Except when it comes to their own vainglorious selfish lives and how we are perceived by white/multiculturalist society.
ReplyDeleteIncidently, Jing Lusi is not first Chinese to play a doctor in Holby city. Model Carolyn Tan appeared as a Junior doctor in Holby City.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.modelmayhem.com/1429341
Must have been a kae lae fae. Also click on her model photos on her profile, there's a nice photo of her in a wedding dress...surprise surprise with a white man who has his arms around her!
Ha.
ReplyDeleteFemale British Chinese Careerist Junior Doctor whitelicker.
Could be a new media stereotype to add to the Analiza Ching, Susan Ma, Narissa Chan play cantonese whore-fest.
In Jeff Adachis The slanted Screen there was a psychologist interview. She claimed that it is very important for young children to see grown up versions of themselves on television, so that they'll feel importanta as to who they are.
ReplyDeletesadly, east asian boys in england are not allowed that chance.
chris li
I was in the Chinese supermarket and saw this young boy and his dad, probably both mainlanders behind me. At that point I was thinking exactly the same thing as what you just said.
DeleteStrategy and tools are in place, but only when more BBCs willing to come forth and contribute time and effort and most importantly, a serious organiser who can rally for it to happen, it'll be a little while before young British Chinese will get to see the British Chinese role models they deserve
http://bbczeitgeist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/what-bbcs-can-learn-from-boxer.html
Indeed Chris, thats why I watch TVB more than UK TV, even though most of the TVB dramas are cr*p, at least they show Chinese male/Chinese female couples and Chinese male youth being 'Chinese,' this is something we never see on UK TV. When was the last time you saw a Chinese male/Chinese female couple together on UK TV? I'm thinking 10 years ago.
DeleteIt used to be 'accepted by mainstream society' but for me its changed to 'enjoy a strong sense of social identity shared with other ethnic UK Chinese'
ReplyDeleteGood question. Ask Nat Wei.
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