Monitored Peril : Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation

The first major study of Asian American representation on U.S. television.

Early in the movement of Asian labor 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 programs, liberal democratic values, and white supremacist ideology. The book clearly demonstrates the pervasiveness of racialized discourse throughout U.S. 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, U.S.-Japan trade friction, and postcolonial 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.

Selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book for 1995

ISBN 0-8166-2368-6 cloth

$49.95x

ISBN 0-8166-2369-4 paper

$18.95

320 pages 6 x 9

August

Contents

Preface

1. White Christian Nation

2. Asians in the American West

3. War against Japanese America

4. Asian Americans and U.S. Empire

5. Southeast Asian America

6. Contemporary Asian America

7. Counterprogramming

Epilogue

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