Token presence: study finds how American TV screens out Asian characters

TV’s Asian-American characters are so frequently slighted that even programmes set in the biggest, most diverse cities leave them out of the picture, a new study found.

For “Tokens on the Small Screen,” professors and scholars at six California universities looked at 242 broadcast, cable and digital platform shows that aired during the 2015-16 season and tallied the numbers, screen time and portrayals of characters of Asian or Pacific Islander descent among 2,000 TV characters.

The report released Tuesday, a follow-up to broadcast TV studies done in 2005 and 2006, found increasing opportunities for Asian-American actors but concluded they are still under-represented and “their characters remain marginalised and tokenised on screen.”

There was a sense of optimism with the emergence of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Dr. Ken and Netflix’s Master of None, all starring and focused on Asian-Americans, said Nancy Wang Yuen, a Biola University associate professor and one of the study’s authors.

“It felt like, ‘Oh, we’re finally making it,’” Yuen said in an interview. “But even (Dr Ken star) Ken Jeong said, “Of this many shows, we only have three?’”

The cancellations of Jeong’s sitcom and the Netflix historical drama “Marco Polo,” which featured a hefty number of Asian characters, showed how tenuous the hold on representation is, the study said.

A third (34.5 per cent) of all Asian or Asian-American characters were found to be on just 11 shows – with the 14 characters on “Marco Polo” alone making up 10 per cent of the total – which sets up a “risk of greater decimation when networks decide to cancel even one show,” according to the report.