Following a four-week break to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast, “Archetypes,” returned with a new episode on Tuesday, discussing the stereotypes Asian women are persistently dealt with in Hollywood. The Duchess of Sussex was joined by journalist Lisa Ling and comedian Margaret Cho for an intimate discussion of cultural representation in showbiz while also exploring the “Dragon Lady,” a term often used to describe Asian women that are domineering, sexually alluring, and deceitful.
Markle made it known that she had taken issue with how Asian women were often viewed on the big screen by drawing examples from movies such as 2002’s “Austin Powers: Goldmember” and Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 flick “Kill Bill,” saying both films presented Asian women to be either “over-sexualized” or “aggressive.” And while the Los Angeles native says she grew up in a very cultured environment, she didn’t take notice of the stereotypes until she was much older.
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“This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment. But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.” In “Goldmember,” Austin Powers famously takes out his bucket list and ticks off “threesome with Japanese twins” while “Kill Bill” saw actress Lucy Liu take on the role of Yakazu leader O-Ren Ishii, who some say used her sexuality as a tool to manipulate her opponents while still remaining emotionally cold and threatening the man’s masculinity.
In the same episode, Markle later touched on the importance of not only staying true to oneself in the process of trying to define who we are as individuals — a remark which a few fans on Twitter had even regarded as a slight dig at the Royal Family.
“You want to be weird, or sponge-like, be silly or fierce or curious, or even self doubting or unsure some days and strong and brave and others,” the mother of two continued. “Whatever it is that’s up to you. Just be yourself no matter what any societal framework or archetype or loud voice coming from a small place tells you you should be – be yourself.”
Looks like #MeghanMarkle is about to face huge backlash from Hollywood and the Asian community. Oops!
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In regards to the “Dragon Lady” stereotype, however, Liu addressed the two-decade-long debate from people who believed her character lacked diversity and was more or less just another character that lacked true Asian representation.
“Hollywood frequently imagines a more progressive world than our reality; it’s one of the reasons ‘Charlie’s Angels’ was so important to me,” she wrote in her Washington Post op-ed last year. “As part of something so iconic, my character Alex Munday normalized Asian identity for a mainstream audience and made a piece of Americana a little more inclusive.”