Madison Avenue Stokes Racial Division During AAPI Month With New Film “The Myth”
The global creative firm Wieden & Kennedy (W+K) released a new film in May, just in time for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) month.
“The Myth” is the perfect title for the new film promoted by the leading advertising firm. That’s because the entire film is based on sophistry and a conspiratorial theory, resulting in a story that totally ignores Asian excellence, stokes racial tensions, and worse, outright promotes Anti-White animus.
How, you ask, could I say such a thing?
After all, the film starts with a little Asian girl next to an American flag. It’s a story about belonging and inclusivity, right? That’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
If only that’s what “The Myth” was about: The American story of an immigrant population who, in spite of real hurdles like, yes, racism, have managed to achieve stratospheric success.
Asians, in fact, have the highest median income of any group in America. Far higher than whites, who, we are constantly told, oppress and prevent other non-white groups from succeeding.
But to understand the message of the film, “The Myth”, you must first understand the underlying poisonous argument of its narrative. A lie emanating from the Left today.
“The Myth” Embraces A Conspiracy About White America
The argument being made by the Left and embraced in “The Myth” is this: White people are the source of all ethnic tension and “whiteness” is what truly ails us as a society—specifically, those twin scourges of “white privilege” and “white supremacy”.
White people, the argument goes, are born racists by deign of their skin. And everything they have created—all American laws, institutions, and policies—are, therefore “systemically” racist and “white supremacist”.
This is the basic premise of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) movement. In a nutshell, these movements claim the very fabric of America was woven together with the expressed purpose of oppressing people of color, to keep them in check. All done with the intention of preserving “white power”.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Asian Americans, CRT/DEI’s porous logic runs into the hard brick wall of reality. Asian excellence defies the assertion that “People of Color” (POC), can’t succeed because of America’s supposed “systemic racism”.
Asian achievement throws a monkey wrench into the Left’s “white supremacy” argument – a charge that’s recently been mainlined into America’s body politic by the Democratic Party.
Asian American success bears witness to the imperfect, but still enviable, U.S. system of individual rights, free markets, and equality before the law (not equity which demands equal outcomes).
This may explain why so many Asians immigrate here and are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country.
So, why is the progressive Left hellbent on dividing Americans into warring tribes? And what does it have to do with America’s overachieving Asians?
Conjure up a new pernicious myth.
“The Myth” Replaces A Positive Myth With A Negative One
“The Myth” attempts to blow up the stereotype of Asians as America’s “Model Minority”.
What is the “Model Minority”? It’s essentially a common, positive stereotype about Asian-Americans:
it’s an ethnic minority demographic group whose members are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average. This success is typically measured by income, education, low criminality, and high family/marital stability” [1]. Asian Americans are commonly seen as the ‘model minority’.
While the film’s title suggests the goal of the piece is to shatter the “myth” of the “Model Minority”, bringing more nuance to the Asian-American story, it doesn’t actually do that. It just swaps one “myth” about Asians for another, replacing the supposed “myth” of Asians being high-achievers with another more vile myth: that Asians are servile, agreeable, and “model citizens”, but only because white people made them this way.
Dissecting The Not-So Subtle Racism In “The Myth”
The filmmakers of “The Myth”, start the film, with a uniformed, forlorn-looking Asian girl, about to have her school picture taken. White hands from a man appear from out of frame, as he raises her chin to orient her for the photo.
“A model student… a model citizen”, the narrator says as we watch this.
The suggestion here, of course, is that she is already being molded into some perfect “white standard” by white people, even as a young girl.
It’s instructive to note that by constructing a new “Model Minority” myth, the film avoids any depiction of Asian success. Our female Asian hero is fatherless and low income. She is presented as servile, quiet, and agreeable—all familiar Asian stereotypes—and “They”, she tells us, made her this way.
Clearly, this is the new “myth” about Asians we are being asked to accept.
But that’s not the only troubling part.
A Film Dripping With Anti-White Racial Animus
What reveals “The Myth” to be anti-white? The narrator’s monologue.
Repeatedly she says “They” did all these terrible things to her. “They” made her a “model citizen”. “They” wanted her to comport to some inauthentic cultural standard.
The film continues with its
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