Monique Nguyen

The sitcom Fresh off the Boat recounts the events of Eddie Huangs life as his family
assimilates themselves into Orlando, Florida. The characters interactions portray the issues
regarding overgeneralizations applied to the masses.
More often than not, whichever trait may have described one group was applied to the
entire Asian and Asian American community as a whole. In Racism, Sexism, and the Media the
text claims, In fact, many Americans never bothered to take note of any differences between
Chinese and Japanese people and later came to prejudiciously lump them together as simply the
Yellow Peril, (Wilson, et al., 2013, p. 60) Since these two distinct groups were wrongly
grouped together, Americans could not differentiate between the two. This spurs stereotypes and
misconceptions that dont necessarily apply to the whole. This kind of overgeneralization can be
seen in Fresh off the Boat. In the episode Boys II Men, the schools principal has an Asian wife
so he applies whatever experiences he has to Eddie and his mother, Jessica. He says, while
Im sure Eddie excels in all subjects, and likely a stringed instrumentmy wife plays viola. In
that instant, he is already creating connections between his wife and Eddie, assuming that Eddie
must play an instrument of some sort simply because his wife has.
Throughout the episode, the principal never explicitly says what or where his wifes
cultural origin is from. He only uses the sweeping term Asian which in itself creates an
ambiguous cultural identity for his wife. Therefore, when he relates his limited knowledge of
Asianness to Eddie and his mom, the audience can only assume she might possibly be Chinese
as well, which at the same time she very much possibly could not be. Jessica cleverly combats
this by exploiting what he thinks he knows about Asian culture. She asks if he knows the tale of
Zong Dingbo to which he answers yes but only after a moment of hesitation, indicating that he
clearly does not. Although the tale itself is real, it does not have anything to do with the situation
at hand. She uses it as a tool to trick him into believing that he is part of the Asian community
due to his knowledge of it.
The principal projects the face of his wife onto others, creating a mask for others to wear
that meet his expectations. The Media Yellowface Logics states, [Yellowface] assumes the
amusement of a non-Asian audience through false depictions, the equivalence of all Asian and
Asian American groups, and irrelevance of resistance and protests of these groups of such
representations, (Ono, 2009, p. 59). He trivializes their cultural differences not for amusement,
but for personal satisfaction that he is part of the group himself, when really, he does not
understand that there are many different sects to it. Although the principal may not have conjured
his impressions from Yellowface seen in mainstream media, he does equivalent his impressions
and experiences with his wife to other Asians he comes across. This ultimately forces yellowface
expectations onto others.

The interactions between the principal and Jessica portray the idea that the wide spectrum
of Asians and Asian Americans are often wrongly grouped together. Fresh off the Boat explains
that the projection of one image does not reflect the society as a whole, even if that one image is
your wife.

References
Ono, Kent and Vincent Pham. Media Yellowface Logistics, in Asian Americans and the Media. Polity
Press 2009

Wilson, Gutierrz, and Lena Chao. Racism, Sexism, and the Media. (Page 60). SAGE
Publications, Inc: 2013