Meghan Markle is researching the problematic ways that Asian people are portrayed in Hollywood films.
Slamming Stereotypes
Following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the Duchess of Sussex disappeared from the airways, but she has returned for a new episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes.
In her most recent show, the 41-year-old actress attacked Hollywood for feeding “Asian stereotypes.”
The TV actor criticized Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Mike Myers’ Austin Powers for making caricatures of Asian women that were “hyper-sexualized” and “aggressive.”
The former princess sat down with journalist Lisa Ling and comedian Margaret Cho in an episode titled “Dragon Lady” to dissect the anti-Asian insults in Los Angeles after taking a four-week sabbatical from podcasting.
The two-decade-old movies were criticized by Markle for “promoting stereotypes of women of Asian heritage.”
The former actor was referring specifically to the movie Goldmember, which stars Carrie Ann Inaba and Diane Mizota as the Japanese actresses Fook Mi and Fook Yu.
In the iconic classic Kill Bill from 2003, Lucy Liu played the ruthlessly vicious Yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii.
Movies like Austin Powers and Kill Bill portrayed these Asian women as frequently being overly sexualized or aggressive, according to Markle.
There are plenty of other examples in addition to those two.
Naturally, Markle made sure that she had enough time to discuss her favourite subject of all: herself.
She remarked that Los Angeles was “full of culture” when she was growing up.
She also shared with her panellists how, at her mother’s insistence, she was pushed to go around naked while visiting a Korean spa as a teenager.
Be yourself, Markle continued, “Your entire complete whole layered, sometimes quirky, sometimes great, but always best and true self,” regardless of what any cultural framework, stereotype, or loud voice emanating from a small place tells you should be.
“Just be you. You’re so much larger than any archetype,” she said in closing.