The Litmus Test for Representation is Evil Characters and War Crimes

It used to be that POC characters or LGBTQ+ characters were relegated to comic relief at best, or victims and villains at worst. It’s incredibly important to move away from those stereotypes and make positive representation mainstream—if it still needs to be said, positive representation can teach children to have self-confidence, pursue relationships that make them feel loved, and feel accepted in society.

What we tell stories about is what we become. It is very difficult to pursue a version of yourself you cannot imagine. As a child, I never thought I would become a late-night gamer, but thanks to emerging media depicting girls playing video games, I was able to succumb to a mild gaming addiction with minimal judgment from my peers. I generally do believe that stories do affect how we perceive people and ourselves. 

Margaret Atwood, Sarah J. Maas, and Holly Black are all excellent with super complex white characters...but not really characters of other identities, to my knowledge. Still fantastic writers!

And yet, I would argue that becoming a morally grey character is the height of socially accepted representation. In a roundabout way. When we allow a character to be evil or morally grey without considering them a stereotype of their demographic, we accept that they represent a group of nuanced, multifaceted people. And humans are nuanced and multi-faceted. They aren’t wholly good or bad. 

Consider any straight white villain in recent memory. The Lannisters (Game of Thrones), Wilson Fisk (Daredevil), and Snape (Harry Potter) are generally considered to be terrible people. Yet no one looks at these characters and thinks that most people of European descent also share their weak attachment to morality. That’s what I consider terminal representation: when you’ve gotten to a point that positive and negative representation doesn’t matter because your place in society is firmly cemented in acceptance. 

Our acceptance of terrible white people in fiction is defined by historical contexts, of course, but also by story diversity. We have seen so many stories about white characters that it’s very difficult to say modern media stereotypes these characters into one archetype or another.  Personally, I’ve never heard someone espouse the belief that Caucasians are more predisposed to incest because of Cercei and Jaime. 

Lannister family tree? More like the Lannister family wreath.

In a nutshell, let POC characters be evil. Let LGBTQ+ characters commit war crimes. Everyone’s human, everyone makes mistakes, and every character has the potential for good or evil. Positive representation is really important, don’t get me wrong. But at some point, we should also allow POC characters and LGBTQ+ characters to be morally gray or downright villainous, because these characters have nothing to prove to us. They don’t need to perform morality for real people of color and LGBTQ+ community members to be accepted. 

It’s absolutely crucial that children are able to access positive representations of characters they identify with. But story diversity is also important. We can’t only have stories about nerdy Asian characters; then we’re more susceptible to believing every Asian person falls into that stereotype. We also can’t only have stories about rebellious, brash Asian characters. I don’t think ‘good representation’ can be achieved with a single book or movie. It’s about creating a vast array of stories that show characters in different roles, both positive and negative. 

Obviously, the current wave of polished, positive representation is a reaction to the disrespectful caricatures of the past. And that is completely understandable. It’s good, actually, as I mentioned, we all deserve to see ourselves in stories with happy endings. But as the trend of first-wave positivity tapers off, I think we can start telling more nuanced stories as well. Strong positive representation is necessary to establish a baseline of respect in the literary world; now we can tell other stories as well. 

With regards to the representation evolution, a few Asian American works of fiction come to mind. There was a wave of immigrant experience stories, like American Born Chinese (Gene Luen Yang, 2006). Next, the positive representation: Loveboat, Taipei (Abigail Hing Wen, 2020), Portrait of a Thief (Grace D. Li, 2022), and many others. It’s not that earlier works lack nuance. All of these titles have characters that overcome inner anxieties and complex problems. It’s that in most Asian American fiction I’ve read, there seems to be an implicit voyeur within each character. They all know they represent Chinese culture, and specifically, they represent it to Americans.

American Born Chinese is also a TV show on Disney+. Haven't watched it yet, but it has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and also a mythical semi-divine monkey.

How these characters act is how Americans perceive Chinese people, or Chinese Americans. And so, although they’re far from perfect, polished Mary Sues, I still think they all fall into the category of positive representation that is reactionary. 

POC and LGBTQ+ characters should be allowed to exist without having to be ‘good examples’ of their demographic. And they should be allowed to exist in stories without being the token representation character. Diverse characters can be in stories just doing their own thing. Or even being evil. Either way, there shouldn’t be pressure to perform a certain way or erase someone’s negative views. 

Portrait of a Thief, in particular, is a good example of this. While it’s a fantastic read from a talented writer that I encourage you to peruse, it is extremely single-minded in its examination of Chinese-American heritage. The novel follows a handful of Chinese-American college students who more or less all have the same relationship with China: there’s some desire to be closer to their homeland and parental culture, but also the inevitable distance of being brought up in America. How does one reconcile being Chinese despite very little familiarity with China itself?

Populated by academic apex predators, Portrait of a Thief is an Ivy League applicant's paradise.

It’s not a bad question to ask. It’s certainly one I’ve asked before. And I think it’s a valuable addition to the growing number of Asian American novels that have entered the popular mainstream. But here’s the thing: China has done some very bad shit. Every country has. And I’m not sure I like the complete romanticization of China and Chinese culture. I do love my mother’s culture. It’s beautiful, without question. But we can love something while we acknowledge the messy, ugly aspects of it. 

In addition, even within this novel, most of the characters are the same. They have the same struggle with their Asian American heritage. They approach this struggle in the same way. They resolve their identities also, you guessed it, in very similar ways. This is still a journey and a viewpoint worth representing, but I would advocate for some complexity, or at least diversity, in how the main characters approach China. It's a good book, but I wouldn't say the characters are overly complex. People can have different feelings towards their respective cultures.

I would describe Portrait of a Thief as a beautifully written love letter to China. And we need those. I don’t think the author was trying to provide what I’m pushing for, and that’s okay. Not every novel has to do everything. However, I do think it would benefit society in the future to allow for unsanitized, unromanticized depictions of other cultures and identities. A wholly positive depiction of anything, anywhere, is not accurate. Still, it is better than the negative caricatures of old.

The abuse this copy of China Rich Girlfriend has suffered is a testament to the entertainment value of Kevin Kwan's work.

Past Lives (dir. Celine Song, 2023) is a refreshing departure from the polished positivity of some recent Asian American representation. It follows Nora, a Korean American living in New York City as a writer. She's married, but the return of her childhood sweetheart tears open an old wound of regret.

Nora is a fascinating character. She's openly nostalgic towards what could have been: a future with her old flame from Korea, instead of the current life she lives in NYC with her white husband, Arthur. She's arguably rather selfish; it's evident that her rumination on the past is negatively affecting Arthur, who acknowledges this, saying he's "in the way" of her childhood sweetheart. I can't imagine many would be thrilled to hear their partner misses their ex; it can easily be construed as emotional cheating.

Yet Nora is allowed to love and regret. She isn't demonized for her reflections on the past, whether it's okay for her to think that way or not. Instead, she's a flawed adult trying to navigate the choices she's made and the choices that were forced upon her. Are things better with Arthur? Or could she have been happier with Hae-Sung? We'll never know. In the end, asking that question doesn't make her disloyal to Arthur. It just makes her human.

It's a testament to the masterful production of Past Lives that Nora's morality is never the focus. It's just a bittersweet story of lost connections and what could have been. We never even stop to wonder if Nora should be thinking like this; it's just accepted that one of the quirks—or tragedies—of being human is to never know if you made the right choice.

Nora looks at her phone because she is most concerned with her own feelings. Hae-Sung looks at her because he is most concerned with Nora.

Nora just is. Her place in the narrative isn't questioned. It isn't justified. There's no attempt made to make the audience like her in the way one might like a lovable mascot. She's a character that is not defined by her identity or Asian American-ness; she's so much more than that. She does not court your love. She searches for her own.

When we let characters exist without performing for certain gazes, we’re saying it’s okay to just be human. When we let characters slink about in the shadows, thinking socially taboo thoughts and indulging in selfishness, we’re saying that the actions of a single person don’t define a demographic. Positive representation will always be essential. But the thing about reactions—the positive stereotype, then the rebellious one—is that they’re still reactions. They’re still performing for someone, somewhere.

When we allow characters to exist just for the sake of existing, we also allow them to tell their own stories. Nora's story isn't about how you or I see her. It's about the deeper human questions of who we spend our lives with and whether we can live with regret.

To exist is to acknowledge that humanity needs no audience or justification. It's a luxury that not everyone is afforded, and we must work to remedy that.