Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation

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Early in the movement of Asian labour to the United States, immigrants from the Far East were viewed by the dominant Euro-American society as a peril to a white, Christian nation. How far have we come since then This first comprehensive study of Asian-American representation on network television supplies some unsettling answers. A meticulous work of history, cultural criticism, and political analysis, "Monitored Peril" illuminates the unstable relationship between the discursive practices of commercial television programmes, liberal democratic values, and white supremacist ideology. The book clearly demonstrates the pervasiveness of racialized discourse throughout US society, especially as it is reproduced by network television. In treating his topic, Darrell Hamamoto addresses a wide variety of issues facing diverse Asian-American communities: interracial conflict, conservative politics, US-Japan trade friction, and post-colonial Vietnam. Through an examination of selected programs from the 1950s to the present, he attempts to correct the consistently distorted optic of network television. Finally, he calls for an engaged independent Asian American media practice, and for the expansion of public sector television.