The Hind End of Space

boomslovingthealien:

The sex kitten aliens (The Caitians) in Star Trek: Into Darkness that indulge so many patriarchal fantasies are… Asian. I don’t know why I didn’t catch it the first time I watched this, but I’m pretty annoyed now.

Let me tell you a story that explains why this outrages me.

I had the honor of attending the Asian American panel at Dragon*Con where Garett Wang (Ensign Kim from Star Trek: Voyager), Peter Shinkoda (Dai from Falling Skies), and Justin Lin (Director of oh so many Fast and the Furious movies). It was a fascinating panel about the struggles Asian American actors face, even if it was peppered with racial slurs from a lady in the audience who felt she had the right to say them because she had married and Asian man.

But there were something wrong with that panel, and it was because it was only about Asian American actors. Actors. Never once did the subject of actresses come up, nor were there were any other actresses on the panel.

Firstly, I will never say that Asian American actors don’t have a tough time getting representation, but in comparison to the representation that Asian actresses gets, they have it significantly easier.

After all, compared to Sulu, who becomes a bad ass Captain that everyone initially underestimates, the representation of Asian women is low; their only appearance being that of the Caitains.

Asian men are never relegated to sexualized male power fantasies, or pornographically-driven subplots where their existence depends on the white male pleasing them.

And this is exactly why this scene bothers me. Those two sex kitten aliens could have literally been anyone, but they chose Asian twins.

The Asian Twin Fantasy isn’t a new fantasy, and it is always a degrading one in media (one need look no further than Austin Powers for that). It’s not only misogynistic, it’s imperialistic. Why it’s in Star Trek in this day an age only goes to show how little Asian American women representation has really gone, and why more attention needs to be paid to it. It also illustrates how deeply ingrained patriarchal conceptions of Asian women really are.

And to make things worse, you know what that species is SUPPOSED to look like?

Like, come ON. If you think “alien cat person” and the first actors that come to your mind are Asian women, youuuuu need to take a step back and realize what you just did…

(Source: boomcomplains)