The Trouble With Katie Leung...
Although British Born Chinese actress Katie Leung appeared in Leo Ku's 'Love Coming Home' Cantopop video for the Far East market, she is better known for her nettlesome role as Cho Chang for a western audience in Harry Potter. Cho Chang is British Born Chinese and the girlfriend of both Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) and Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe). Cho Chang's jooksing White Fever fetish is so strong, she goes through the Harry Potter saga without ever dating a Chinese male nor having any Chinese friends. J.K. Rowling must be thanked for setting such a negative precedent for BBC's to follow...normalising relations between Chinese girls and White guys, normalising the invisibility and irrelevance of the Chinese male, normalising the severance of the Chinese female from her own ethnic Chinese community into joining the White community and hammering the nail into the coffin of the fragile BBC community, and why not - our BBC community doesn't have a future anyway, why not ethnically cleansed it?
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'Chinese female falling for the White Knight' is portrayed repeatedly on the western screen to the point of ad nauseum, we have an entire generation of BBC females growing up on Harry Potter wishing they could be in Cho Chang's shoes, they want have their own real life Daniel Radcliffe as their (White) lover. It gets worse...
Katie Leung now makes her UK stage debut as Er-Hong in an theatrical adaptation of Jung Chang's infamous 'Mao-Sino-male bashing' 'Wild Swans' at the Young Vic Theatre. Although the stage production of Wild Swans comprises a list of actors that predictably include non-ethnic Chinese BEA and Eurasians playing ethnic Chinese roles, this specific argument discussed previously on blog articles concerning 'correct representation' and accountability perhaps misses the point.
If the portrayal of 'Chinese' for a predominantly pro-western audience takes the form of institutional 'China bashing' or even worse 'Chinese female desire for White males,' then why should one care whether these Chinese roles are played by actors that are BBC, FOB, Eurasian or even a Caucasian female embellished in Yellowface makeup. It makes no difference to the outcome, they're not written with a Chinese audience in mind. Arguably, its bad enough when there are westerners promoting the anti-Chinese agenda, but when you have Chinese artists and writers also promoting the same agenda coupled with Chinese performers and actors eagerly queuing up to perform these roles, then frankly - that's unforgivable.
When East Asian female actresses complain about the scarcity of leading of roles within the western media for East Asian women, this form of alleged discrimination denying East Asian women the chance to play the leading love interest of leading White male actors is actually a positive thing, for the sake of ethnic Chinese diaspora, long may 'scarcity' continue.
As Katie Leung is just another Chinese actor looking for roles to play and has no qualms regarding the roles she plays even if it means promoting "Two White knights and Sino-bashing," then isn't the whole concept of promoting Chinese visibility within the context of the western UK media a waste of time?
By BBCZeitgeist
