Portrayal of Asian-Americans in the Canceled Sitcom, All...

Portrayal of Asian-Americans in the Canceled Sitcom, All American Girl Ever since arriving in this country, Asian-Americans have been misunderstood and discriminated against. Lately things have gotten better, but there are still people trying to further improve their situation. Margaret Cho, a Korean-American, is one of them. In the late 1990s she got her own sitcom, All-American Girl. This was a perfect chance to improve the portrayal of Korean-Americans, and Asian-Americans in general. Positive Aspects â€Å"All American Girl† showed many positive portrayals of Asians in a modern day society in California. The show is the first show in history to have a multi generational Asian cast portraying a Korean family in America. The†¦show more content†¦Even though this show was canceled, it was the first show to have a dominantly Asian cast and hopefully will spark more successful shows like it. Negative Aspects As far as TV shows go, Asian Americans- like most other minorities- have been ridiculously under represented and poorly portrayed. All-American Girl was one show that attempted to change that. The show starred mostly Asian Americans and was one of very few that did not cast them as martial artists or service workers. Some argue that the show didnt do enough to better the portrayal of Asians, and still others argue that it may have even hurt. In either case, this was one of the first times that Asian Americans appeared in force on regular TV programming, and the world- or at least the country- was watching. There are a few problems with this show that detract from the positive elements it does have. One of them is that while the show did show factual representations of Asian-American culture, it made a joke out of them. Its unfortunate, but the show was a sitcom. One of the main problems with her show was that the network didnt know what to do with it. Marin (p. 70) quotes ABCs Entertainment president as saying that they needed to go for a Broad family audience . This greatly limited the subjects the show could cover and the manner in which they could cover them. Because of this audience, a cute neighbor girl has been added whose