How to watch yourself on TV
What happens when you track how often (or not) you're represented on screen?
For about an eight month period, I took a photo of every Asian man I saw on television. I did this because I was curious as to how often I got to see a person who looked like me on the screen.
Here’s the experiment in a nutshell!
I watched TV (shows, movies, and video games).
Every time I saw an obviously Asian man, I paused and took a photo.
Any Asian man would do. It didn’t matter if they were a lead, supporting actor, or an extra in the background.
This was an interesting experiment, because it forced me into a heightened state of awareness that I never normally have when vegging out on the couch.
Why do this?
They say it’s important to cherish your mirror and window moments in media, because it’s hard to be what you can’t see. You should try keeping track, too—diverse role models are important!
I’ll get to what I learned from all this toward the end. But first, let’s dive straight into the results!
To start, here’s a few of my favorite sightings:
Data, data, data!
All in all, I spotted a total of 38 Asian males on screen over 206 days. That’s an average of one sighting every five days!
Here’s a breakdown by type. Out of those 38 sightings,
22 were speaking roles.
6 were supporting roles.
2 were reality show interviewees.
1 was a lead role.
And here’s the raw screenshot data, in case you’re interested:
Methodology!
I didn’t explicitly seek out programming featuring Asian men. I just kept about my normal, meager viewing habits (an hour a day, far less than the national average of four hours a day). My process was this:
Pour myself a bourbon.
Curl into a tight ball on the couch, to brace myself.
Debate what to watch with Nicola while scrolling aimlessly through Apple TV.
Sip the bourbon.
Detect the first stirrings of that old familiar dread now growing within me: an unpleasantness I’m habitually loathe to confront, like a stain growing in the ceiling.
Sip more bourbon.
Keep scrolling.
Finally settle on something that isn’t based in the Marvel universe.
Push down the old familiar dread. It’s hard to articulate this dread, always has been. It’s that creeping sense I first noticed as a small boy when I learned my skin had a specific color, an official chromatic assignation. Same with when the older kids took to nicknaming me zipperhead or jujube, the meanings of which I didn’t know and was too scared to ask about, but nevertheless welcomed because I was just glad for the attention that felt almost like acceptance. I’ve lived with this old familiar dread for years and years. It’s this feeling that causes me to wonder: Was I somehow born the wrong type of person? Is it just me, or am I the only one who knows that a boy like me exists? Or am I really losing my mind, like one of those people who believes in ghosts and UFOs? The dread is enough to make me suspect that when I speak, maybe my voice sounds entirely different to my own ears compared to those around me. Maybe I sound like I’m not from here, but instead a visiting ambassador trying on native garb, forever trying on but never finding jeans that fit, glasses that fit, etc. Maybe, I wonder, I’m too gross to look at, alien, flatly reptilian, calmly threatening, hard to “read,” as if my gaze can somehow steal your mind, or at least your electronics and manufacturing industries. Maybe my voice isn’t even coming from my throat but from a hidden speaker, or some leaky inter-dimensional seam in the air. Why else, I’ve wondered, and still wonder to this this moment curled up on the couch, am I forever unable to shake this queasy worry that under these borrowed clothes my skin itself has become ghostly transparent, like I’m not really here, but actually am a highly advanced hologram projected from a UFO concealed within a storm cloud? Step 9 is to push this old familiar dread down just for tonight—okay?—because for once can we not talk about all this stuff and settle in for a nice stretch of brainless TV? Can we not talk about race just this once?
Watch TV with camera ready in hand.
What did I learn from all this?
Nothing I didn’t already know.
My endurance for self-abuse is precisely 206 days.
And that is how to watch yourself on TV!