Opinion: Toxic Ethnocentrism of the West in Asian Fandoms

W3T2: Opinion Piece

As the world gets swept by the Hallyu wave of K-pop along with the rising popularity of other Asian media such as Chinese danmei dramas and Japanese yaoi - one thing’s for sure, the community that resides in such fandoms are no longer just Asians. There is an influx of Western fans in these communities - which is inherently great as there is no restriction as to who is allowed to enjoy Asian media - but the problem lies in the West’s ethnocentrism forced upon the community as a result. To put it simply, many Western fans often project their own Western mindsets and upbringing into Asian media, refusing to acknowledge the cultural history of the medium and the voices of those who are a part of the culture.

Wang Yibo (left) and Xiao Zhen (right) in a promotional poster for The Untamed (Source: The Film Daily)

While there are many types of Asian media, the focus of this article will be ethnocentrism in the online danmei community, specifically on Twitter. Danmei is a genre of boys-love, targeted towards women as the term itself suggests “indulgence in beauty”. It symbolises and occasionally (over)romanticises the homoerotic relationships between two males as part of the story - sometimes often hyperfixating over the beauty rather than the plot. With many danmei recently gaining popularity overseas such as the Netflix series, The Untamed, which received over 8billion views - it is no surprise that the community has received a staggering inflation of Western fans.

Since the popularity for the Untamed, many other danmei works such as Heaven Official’s Blessings (天官赐福) and Winner is King (杀破狼) have since gained a huge amount of international fans and are in the works of producing live actions. As the title suggests, many of these danmei are often set in a fantasy world of ancient China. Authors often go through an intensive amount of research in order to fully capture the essence of ancient China and with that, also impose its traditional values within the story. These traditional values are often what many Western fans find hard to understand as it does not coincide with their current modern values. Ancient China’s class system is aggressive and their treatment of women? Often close to scum.

What Western fans find hard to swallow is these ideologies that have been weaved into the medium and often voice out their opinions online. To illustrate some of the discourse that has happened over social media, some of the main arguments stemmed from ideologies is the idea of love between family members. Ancient China often prides sons over daughters, so gender equality is definitely out of the equation. Filial piety is also an important value that remains true to today’s Chinese culture however, many Western fans fail to understand that and often criticise the medium for being abusive or encouraging toxic family behaviour when really, it is just traditional culture.

Twitter user @personbabbles, perfectly encapsulates what toxic Western ethnocentrism looks like in social media:

As a young female Asian fan who consumes these mediums on a daily basis, it is hard not to feel anger when I am being spoken over by a Western voice when on social media. I know my own culture best, so how is it that when a Westerner who took three years of Mandarin classes suddenly knows more about the Chinese culture than I do? What many Westerners fail to understand and see from our perspective is that they will never experience our culture the same way they experience it. Just because you are a fan of Chinese danmei doesn’t allow you to speak over my experience as a young Chinese woman.

Asian countries often over-glorify the opinions and people of the West, a sour side-effect from years of colonisation, and that in turn has fed the egos of the West to believe that the idea of their culture is the superior one.

It’s ironic that the West often prides their “freedom of speech” when they refuse to listen to any other voice. What many Westerners need to stop doing is walking over the voices of ethnic people in a conversation about said culture. It is not your position as an outsider to silence the voice of a community that has already been silenced for years. Culture is meant to be shared, so be the better person and listen.