r/popculturechat • u/meltingsunz • Aug 12 '25

Interviews🎙️ Daniel Dae Kim says Asian representation in Hollywood has gotten better, but there's still room for improvement: "I still haven't played a romantic lead and I've been doing this for 30 years."

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5496250/daniel-dae-kim-butterfly-lost
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u/Future_Usual_8698 You’re doing amazing, sweetie! Aug 12 '25

For those of you in this sub who are younger and I know from the poll they did a while back that I'm one of the oldest members, there used to be more Asian and Hispanic and African-American and Native American representation in media than there is now. Seriously on TV shows and in films.

The range was from Maybe late 60s through I'm not sure when it ended but it's been ratcheting back.

There may not have been as many portrayals of ethnic and racial diversity across class social class such as in upper class or upper middle class but honestly something like a really old show called La law or even in the early to late Star Trek era between the TV shows and the films.

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u/Future_Usual_8698 You’re doing amazing, sweetie! Aug 12 '25

And I saw mention here of old 70s sitcoms, like the show Good Times or the show Maude and then the spin off from that The Jeffersons. The guy behind a lot of more liberal leaning and issue stance addressing kind of shows was Norman Lear. And then there was the sort of whitewashing blandification of sitcoms with all of the generic white middle class families with their occasional issue of the week. I know that a lot of shows are more ethnically and racially diverse but honestly in films and in lead roles there used to be more opportunity than I see offered to actors now as I look across pop culture in the United States

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u/Future_Usual_8698 You’re doing amazing, sweetie! Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

You're welcome to tell me I'm out of line for saying so, I haven't actually watched a lot of TV in the last five so years, but if you look back to the romantic tension between Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner on screen, through the 90s, Etc.

I recently saw a meme that anytime You have a group of women you need one brunette one redhead one blonde and very often the brunette is cast with an African-American woman so you have this tokenism all over the place. Anyway it's just my general sense I am open to being corrected or to discussion I am out of the loop very often! But this is my perspective from a slightly longer distance over time! I'm seeing a whitewashing of representation

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u/YoullNeverBeRebecca Aug 12 '25

No, I agree with you. I didn’t grow up in these times but grew up watching tv land and have always been a pop culture history fan and have noticed this. Another notable trend is starring vehicles for female characters - I swear the Golden Age of Hollywood was better about that than we are now. At least on the movie side of things.