Popular Communication

The International Journal of Media and Culture

ISSN: 1540-5702 (Print) 1540-5710 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hppc20

“Uncultural” Asian Americans in ABC’s Dr. Ken

Shinsuke Eguchi & Zhao Ding

To cite this article: Shinsuke Eguchi & Zhao Ding (2017) “Uncultural” Asian Americans in ABC’s
Dr.�Ken, Popular Communication, 15:4, 296-310, DOI: 10.1080/15405702.2017.1326604

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1326604

Published online: 12 Jul 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 256

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hppc20
POPULAR COMMUNICATION
2017, VOL. 15, NO. 4, 296–310
https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1326604

“Uncultural” Asian Americans in ABC’s Dr. Ken

Shinsuke Eguchi and Zhao Ding
University of New Mexico

ABSTRACT
In this essay, we interrogate the ways in which the uncultural masks
the cultural in ABC’s Dr. Ken. We analyze Dr. Ken’s first season,
through the conceptual lens of strategic whiteness, to identify and
critique the ambiguous and nuanced positions of Asian Americans.
By repeatedly demonstrating the simultaneous functions of Asian
Americans both as almost Whites and as (nonthreatening) Others,
Dr. Ken resecures invisible territories of whiteness as property. Our
goal is to disrupt the uncultural assumptions about Dr. Ken as it
strategically draws attention away from its reproduction of norms
of whiteness at the expense of Asian Americans.

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a major TV network owned by the Walt
Disney Company, today increasingly produces comedy-drama television programs that
feature racial ethnic minority casts. ABC has also introduced two sitcoms that center on
the lived experiences of Asian migrants and Asian American families in the year 2015. On
February 4, Fresh Off the Boat, a show inspired by the life story of the well-known chef and
food personality Eddie Huang, debuted on the network. This series focuses on two
immigrant parents from Taiwan and their three boys. On October 2, the first season of
Dr. Ken, which is based on the main actor and producer Ken Jeong’s life experiences as a
medical doctor prior to his debut as a comedian, was introduced to ABC’s lineup. This
series revolves around second-generation middle-/upper-class Asian American parents (an
unorthodox medical doctor and a therapist) and their children, migrant parents, and
professional lives. Both ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Dr. Ken have been seen as the first
two sitcoms focusing on Asian American families to appear in the two decades since
Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl in 1994. All-American Girl had been marked as a
milestone in Asian American television as it featured a predominantly Asian American
cast (Willmore, 2015; Woo, 2014).
Dr. Ken returned to ABC’s lineup in September 2016 due to the success of its first
season, and aired weekly between 2 October 2015 and 22 April 2016. Consequently, we, as
members of the Asian American audience, are drawn to Dr. Ken because of its production
and marketing strategy to be uncultural. During an interview with Slate magazine—an
online magazine of current affairs, politics, and culture (Yang, 2015, October 5)—Ken
Jeong says that, in comparison to Fresh Off the Boat, “our show is refreshingly uncultural,

CONTACT Shinsuke Eguchi seguchi@unm.edu Department of Communication & Journalism, University of New
Mexico, MSC03 2240, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001, USA.
An earlier version of this article was presented at National Communication Association (NCA), Asian/Pacific American
Communication Studies Division, Philadelphia, PA, November 2016.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 297

if that makes sense.” Ken continues that he wants to represent uncultural aspects of
Dr. Ken, because a White writer would tend to overtly introduce Asian jokes into the
sitcom. We recognize Ken’s effort to reframe images of Asian American characters as
cultural Others because, as a number of scholars have argued (e.g., Eng, 2001; Kawai, 2005;
Nakayama, 1994; Ono & Pham, 2009), we observe that Asian Americans are persistently
excluded from the hegemonic U.S. membership, driven by whiteness.
Still, we argue that Jeong’s language of uncultural is a trick, a red herring. Dr. Ken
deflects, denies, and excuses the significant and problematic cultural labor that it politically
and aesthetically engages. The uncultural narratives about Asian Americans in Dr. Ken
subtly operate as a rhetorical method of postracialism, that is, colorblinding the historical
and contemporary realities of racism to secure the territory of whiteness as the center. Such
a discursive frame is strategically constructed with “a pervasive language of individualism,
personal merit, responsibility, and choice” (Eng, 2010, p. 5). Hesmondhalgh and Saha (2013)
assert, “Racism continues to disfigure modern societies. It also scars symbol making and the
cultural industries that disseminate information and entertainment to audiences” (p. 179).
To demonstrate our argument, in this essay we carefully interrogate the ways in which the
uncultural masks the cultural in Dr. Ken.
More precisely, we analyze the 22 episodes of Dr. Ken’s first season to identify and
critique the ambiguous and nuanced positions of Asian Americans. In this methodological
process, we bring our racialized bodies to the fore. Calafell and Moreman (2010) articu-
late, “Our cultural identity is a successful achievement per the correct performance of the
discursive practice by which we are called forth. As we repetitively answer the discursive
call, our racial identity becomes naturalized for ourselves and for others” (p. 403). As we
moved from the region labeled Asia to the United States, both of us are frequently called
upon to answer the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical implications of our
bodies marked as Asian/American. In fact, we are the embodied mediums and products of
culture. Chávez (2009) reinforces, “In everyday life, we move among bodies, some
familiar, others foreign, and we rely upon scripts, frames, and discursive constructions
to produce meaning for these bodies and our own” (p. 23). Thus, we unapologetically
utilize our embodied experiences as a starting point of this critical engagement. In doing
so, our larger goal is to disrupt the uncultural assumptions about ABC’s Dr. Ken as it
strategically draws attention away from its reproduction of norms of whiteness at the
expense of Asian Americans.

Strategic whiteness and Asian American media representations

Before moving on to the analysis, we situate strategic whiteness as a conceptual lens to
identify and critique the textual materiality of Asian American characters in ABC’s
Dr. Ken. As a number of communication studies scholars (e.g., Griffin, 2015; Moon,
2016; Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Projansky & Ono, 1999) have previously argued, we
maintain that the U.S. American racial paradigm always already resituates whiteness as a
hegemonic identity, discourse, and structure that maintain existing power relations in
various localities. For example, Nakayama and Krizek (1995) call for uncovering taken-for
-granted ideas and social relations of whiteness as a strategic rhetoric. They argue,
“Whiteness has assumed the position of an uninterrogated space. In sum, we do not
know what ‘whiteness’ means” (p. 293). In other words, whiteness is rhetorically assumed
298 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

to be uncultural. However, whiteness strategically negotiates and reinforces its centered-

ness by sustaining its invisibility and colorblinding racial privileges historically given to
White people. Consequently, the territory of whiteness as the center and its power
relations are difficult to be mapped. Whiteness “is constituted in everyday discourse and
reinscribes its position on the social landscape” (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995, p. 296). It is
this everydayness of strategic whiteness—“the history of whiteness in the United States
entails a history of modifications to renegotiate the centrality of White power and
authority” (Projansky & Ono, 1999, p. 152)—that works to mask the social experiences
in which Whites are entitled to exercise their unearned racial advantages. The discursive
power of whiteness is subtly readjusted through everyday cultural and communicative
practices and processes.
This operation of power, which alters, shapes, and reinforces the White dominance,
serves to reposition non-White racial and ethnic minority groups in the historical con-
tinuum of racial hierarchy. As Griffin (2015) demonstrates, for example, the media and
popular cultural representations of non-White cultural Otherness relationally redefine
whiteness as it sustains its invisibility. Whites often use the stereotypes of non-White
racial and ethnic minority groups as a referencing point to mark the invisible territory of
whiteness as property (Moon, 2016). Yet they do not see their White privileges structurally
given to them because they occupy the normative space, centeredness, and believe that the
United States is free of racism. Accordingly, we argue that the culturally otherized images
of Asian Americans continue to be strategically utilized to insinuate what whiteness is and
what whiteness is not (Nakayama, 1994). Projansky and Ono (1999) reinforce that
“strategic whiteness relies on and utilizes the power to represent people of color as
different from and therefore inferior to the dominant political group in order to ensure
its power” (p. 152). Thus far, we have frequently observed that Asian Americans are
culturally marked as the yellow peril and model minority in the U.S. mainstream media
(Eguchi, 2013; Kawai, 2005; Ono & Pham, 2009; Osajima, 1988; Zhang, 2010).
The yellow peril stereotype that signified fears of Asian migration was widespread in
the news media during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It gave rise to some fears
that the yellow race would threaten White dominance and that Asia’s large population
would overtake the White race (Kawai, 2005). This stereotype led to the exclusion of Asian
immigrants and to the U.S. colonization of Asia and the Pacific Region (Ono & Pham,
2009). In the 20th century, the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing by Japan during World War II
escalated the yellow peril stereotype and sent Japanese Americans to internment camps
(Castro, 2007). After World War II, the establishment of communist China, the Korean
War, and the Vietnam War strengthened the “mutually exclusive binaries” between West
and East (Kim, 1993, p. viii). Under this binary thinking, Asian Americans have been
characterized as unassimilable aliens (Espiritu, 2004).
However, the U.S. mainstream media representations of Asian Americans have gradu-
ally transformed from the obviously negative yellow peril stereotypes to the seemingly
positive model minority stereotype (Eguchi, 2013; Kawai, 2005; Lee, 1999; Osajima, 1988).
The idea of model minority was constructed and popularized by the mainstream media in
the mid-1960s (Kawai, 2005). It refers to Asian Americans as honorary Whites, hard-
working, family oriented, law-abiding, and well educated (Kawai, 2005). However, It also
depicts Asians as nerdy, lacking feelings, creativity, and/or any social life (Guo & Harlow,
2014; Wang, 2010). The model minority image reinforces that Asian Americans achieve
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 299

material successes such as higher education and high income. A number of scholars (e.g.,
Chang, 1993; Kim, 2000; Lee, 1999; Ono & Pham, 2009; Osajima, 1988) have criticized
that its political implications perpetuate the colorblind ideology, insinuating that the
U.S. social system is fair and open. It ignores still-pervasive institutional racism. Kawai
(2005) asserts that Asian Americans “become the model minority when they are depicted
to do better than other racial minority groups, whereas they become the yellow peril when
they are described to outdo white Americans” (p. 115). Thus, model minority and yellow
peril stereotypes are not at opposite poles; instead, they coexist and are inseparable to
redefine invisible territory of whiteness as the center.
At the same time, we observe that the social and performative aspects of Asian
American women and men have been differently visualized for the U.S. media mainstream
gaze. As Shimizu (2007) argues, Asian American females are often portrayed, in contrast
to White women, as hypersexual beings in U.S. movies and television. Their characters’
images have been confined to the seductive and aggressive Dragon Lady or the hyperfe-
minine China Doll who needs a White male protector (Espiritu, 2004). However, images
of Asian American men are often limited to strangely nerdy, incompetent, and asexual
beings (Wang & Cooper-Chen, 2010). Simultaneously, Asian American men have been
portrayed as hypermasculine, in such roles as martial arts fighters or violent gang
members that connect to the yellow peril stereotype. Yet Asian American masculinity is
shown as weaker and more effeminate than White masculinity in media and popular
culture (e.g., Lopez, 2014; Nakayama, 1994). In so doing, hetero-patriarchal and mascu-
linist constructs of whiteness are simultaneously redefined and normalized.
ABC’s Dr. Ken enters into this historical and ideological landscape of the
U.S. mainstream media in which Asian Americans have been repeatedly represented as
cultural Others for the interest of strategic whiteness. The norm of whiteness remains
invisible as media representations “successfully strategize a maintenance of privileged
power and the concomitant marginalization and disempowerment of highly visible
‘others’ (Projansky & Ono, 1999, p. 171). Consequently, the uncultural production strategy
of Dr. Ken functions as an assimilationist move that is complementary and nonthreatening
to the invisible territory of whiteness as the center and its power relations. To emphasize
the uncultural is to tone down and/or mask cultural Otherness of Asian American
characters in order to be simply seen as the U.S. American. That is, a hegemonic mode
of U.S. American citizenship as whiteness. This “subtle discursive adjustment” (Projansky
& Ono, 1999, p. 152) is to minimize, erase, and/or ignore the historical and contemporary
realities of racism informed by the territory of whiteness as property. Now, we enter into
our embodied reading of the ways in which the uncultural masks the cultural in Dr. Ken.

Watching ABC’s Dr. Ken

Set in the contemporary present, Dr. Ken depicts the daily life of a brilliant Korean
American physician Ken Park (played by Ken Jeong), who tries to be a good doctor,
husband, and father. However, his good intentions encounter difficulties caused by his
colleagues, the new resident Julie (played by Kate Simses), receptionist Damona (played by
Tisha Campbell), registered nurse Clark (played by Jonathan Slavin), and Pat (Dave
Foley), his acerbic boss and the office manager of the Welltopia medical group where
they all work. At home, Ken’s popular, self-centered, and social teenage daughter Molly
300 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

(played by Krista Marie Yu) and quiet, smart, and quirky 10-year old son Dave (played by
Albert Tsai) also drive him crazy. His Japanese American wife, psychiatrist Allison Park
(played by Suzy Nakamura), often helps Ken out of his narrow and overly passionate
opinions and parenting manners with her expertise. Although they love each other, they
often have quarrels about parenting styles and how to pass down their own ethnic culture
to their children.

Asian Americans as almost Whites

Episode 3 begins with a situation where Ken walks into his office without getting wet from
the rain. He has the privilege of parking his car with valet parking. His subordinates such
as Damona, Julie, and Clark are trying to dry their wet clothes, as they have to walk from
the outdoor parking lot to the office. Then the office manager Pat shows up and tells them
that everyone but Ken must start working on Saturdays. While Damona, Julie, and Clark
are frustrated with Pat, Ken feels relieved, saying, “Whew! That was close. I almost lost my
Saturdays.” As Damona shakes her head, she confronts him. “What happened to you, little
man? You used to be one of us. When we first started here, we would hang out together
and complain about people like Pat. Now we complain about people like you [pointing to
Ken].” Ken asks Clark, “Seriously, Clark, is that true?” Clark mumbles for a moment and
then says, “I do not participate in that at all.” Damona says to Clark, “Oh! So, it wasn’t you
that came up with the nickname.” Later, Ken replies, “I am still Kenny from the block.” So,
Ken tries to persuade Pat to give them Saturdays off. However, Pat refuses to do so.
Toward the end of this episode, Ken shows up to work on Saturday when everyone else is
working. He says that he made arrangements to allow them to park with the valet parking
starting on Monday. He tries to go to his car to pick up bagels that he said he bought for
them. However, a male valet worker, Juan-Julio, brings the bagels that Ken has had him
buy for the group. Ken says, “What? So, I guess I am a tiny bit out of touch.” Damona,
Julie, and Clark begin to sing, “Oh, Dr. Ken you believe how out of touch I’ve become. I
have no regret for the lower income.” Juan-Julio also joins to sing “Oh, Dr. Ken you
believe how out of touch I’ve become.”
Here, we argue that this scenario (re)produces the postracial construct of Asian
Americans as what Kray (1993) and Dubrofsky (2013) argue is almost Whites. By almost
Whites, we mean an ambiguous domain for non-Whites in which the economic and
cultural capital enables them to visualize their proximity to the center maintained by
whiteness. This ambiguous domain is only visible when other racial and ethnic minority
groups remain physically present. The representations of non-Asian American characters
in Dr. Ken play strategically necessary roles in marking uncultural narratives about Asian
Americans as almost Whites.
For instance, we observe that Black/African American female office receptionist
Damona actively calls out Ken’s upward mobility in the aforementioned episode.
Damona’s blackness (and femaleness) authenticates her lower and vulnerable positionality
as an office receptionist on the corporate ladder that centers on whiteness. At the same
time, White male office manger Pat clearly occupies a position of power as he refuses
Ken’s request to give Damona, Julie, and Clark Saturdays off. This White cis-gendered
male body signifies the historical and contemporary materiality of White hetero-
patriarchal capitalistic supremacy, which holds power and privilege over other minorities.
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 301

At the same time, Ken is now doing what Ken and Damona used to complain about when
it was done by people like Pat. Ken’s workplace experience is no longer analogized to
Damona’s one because of how out of touch he has become. Consequently, Ken is
visualized as an almost White who occupies a space somewhere along the gap between
Damona (a Black woman) and Pat (a White man). Kim (1999) reinforces that “Asian
Americans have been racially triangulated vis-à-vis blacks and whites, or located in the
field of racial positions with reference to these two other points” (p. 107). Then again, we
call to complicate Kim’s theorization of racial triangulation in the context of this sitcom
further.
More precisely, we argue that Dr. Ken complexly and fluidly visualizes the idea of
racial triangulation along with the idea of marginalization within marginalization for
the purpose of securing Asian American characters as almost Whites. They are (mis)
framed to having overcome the racial constraints. For example, the Latino valet worker,
Juan-Julio, further marks Ken’s location. Ken had this Brown man relegated to the
physical labor of buying bagels for the office. Instantly, Damona, Clark, and Julie see
how out of touch Ken has become. Thus, Juan-Julio also joins the song. The power
difference between Juan-Julio and Ken is also illustrated through the portrayal of Juan-
Julio’s foreign language accent. Both Latinos-as-Americans and Asian Americans are
historically subjected to issues of migration, citizenship, and foreignness (Ono, 2005).
This reinforces that “nonblack minority groups, not fitting into the dominant society’s
idea of race in America, become marginalized, invisible, foreign, un-American”
(Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 78). However, Ken clearly has the linguistic, economic,
and cultural capital to walk away from un-American/foreign/cultural domains. His
highly educated and high-income occupation helps him to be closer to the
American/unforeign/uncultural domains. Juan-Julio’s brownness and foreignness, inter-
secting with his occupational status, are discursively and materially utilized to further
mark Ken as almost White. Consequently, Ken could pass as uncultural. Becoming and
being almost White is for a non-White person to mask their non-White/un-American
/foreign cultural markers.
Additionally, Julie’s brownness/South Asianness and femaleness crystalizes Ken’s almost
White position further. Julie is a South Asian female junior doctor who also assists Ken. The
power imbalance between Julie and Ken is obviously visible due to their occupational ranks.
Thus, Julie feels that Ken has privilege over her in the episode, so she joins in the song of
how out of touch he has become. However, both of these two characters ironically
reproduce the Asian American model minority stereotypes because both of them are
positioned to occupy classed spaces of higher income skilled labor. At the same time,
Ken’s East Asian/Korean American male body does not occupy the location in which
South Asian American women live. Skin-color-based gender/sexual differences, which
greatly inform the racial hierarchy, very often lead to a secondary marginalization within
marginalization. Lighter skin is mostly preferred, considering aesthetics, normativity, and
culture (Hochschild & Weaver, 2007). People with darker skin are more likely to encounter
difficult circumstances. Thus, we argue that the discrepancy of professional ranks between
lighter skinned male Ken and brown female Julie symbolically justifies and legitimizes the
racial inner workings and renegotiations of Asian Americans within such racialized labels
being inscribed. Ken is capitally resituated as the model minority within the model minority
class of Asian American. In other words, Ken is exceptional within the exceptional category.
302 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

Ken’s family settings further intensify the uncultural narratives of Asian Americans as
almost Whites. In the aforementioned episode, for example, Clark, who is an openly
flamboyant gay White male nurse, sings in a song that Ken has no regret “for the lower
income,” “for the great unwashed,” or “for friends with less money.” This apparently
reinforces the ways in which Ken’s economic status is occupationally marked as higher
than Clark’s. At the same time, we argue that Clark’s song also points to the exceptional (or
successful) images of Ken as almost White. In fact, Ken is a “model” minority or “good”
citizen medical doctor who sustains a membership of the heteronormative and patriarchal
traditions of family and kinship with his wife and two children. He is not an unmarried gay
male nurse without children. Moreover, Ken’s wife Allison is a therapist with a doctoral
degree. This makes Allison and Ken a successful and high-income married couple. More
importantly, in episode eight, the viewers are clearly introduced to cultural differences
between Allison as a Japanese descendant and Ken as a South Korean descendant. We
find these choices of East Asian ethnic representations very strategic because these groups
are economically marked as more successful than other (East/Southeast/South) Asian
cultural groups. As a result, Ken and Allison’s ethnicities once again signify that they are
exceptionally the model minority within the model minority construct. This discursive
frame mirrors the ways in which renegotiations of racial hierarchies always already reify,
justify, and legitimate relationally the particular hierarchy being inscribed. By overexagger-
ating the rhetoric of Asian American exceptionalism, Dr. Ken strategically manages to
emphasize uncultural narratives about Asian Americans as almost Whites.

Asian Americans as (nonthreatening) others

The first episode of the first season begins with Ken upsetting his patient. Ken
abrasively discounts what his patient thinks his medical condition is. As a result, this
patient is trying to sue the HMO (health medical organization) plan. Office manger Pat
tells Ken to apologize to the patient. Ken refuses to do so. Pat says to Ken, “Then I will
finally have grounds to fire your tiny Asian ass.” Later, this patient comes to the office
and says that Ken’s evaluation is correct, as another doctor provided the same diag-
nosis. He says to Ken, “You are a mean jerk person, but if you hadn’t been so tough on
me, I might have been a goner. So … thanks.” In the following episode, Ken’s
communication skills continue to be a problem. After interacting with Ken, a patient
named Sonya says, “What is the hostility?” Clark files a complaint against Ken because
Clark wants Ken to be nice to his patients. Therefore, Ken is sent to patient–doctor
communication training.
While Dr. Ken intends to be uncultural, we also find that this particular scenario
actively utilizes the socially awkward images of Asian American men. A highly educated
doctor like Ken is represented as someone who cannot perform nice, indirect, and
nuanced communication that is central to the White middle-/upper-class mainstream
United States. Ken is clearly not quiet, submissive, and passive; he is loud, aggressive, and
hostile. What makes this scenario very strategic is that Ken’s awkward communication
skills are surveilled, disciplined, and controlled by his White male colleagues such as Pat
and Clark. The White men are in charge of civilizing the Asian American man.
Consequently, Ken’s Asian American male body becomes an ideological and material
site of “backwardness” while he is framed as almost White.
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 303

Here, we take further steps to argue that Dr. Ken ambiguously, ambivalently, and subtly
makes exceptional (or successful) narratives about uncultural Asian American male
characters Asian for the marketing profits and needs of cultural industry. For instance,
Shimizu (2012) maintains, “The Asian American male body [is] a site of racial wounding,
gender grief, and sexual problems in ways haunted by the framework of falling short of the
norm” (p. 4). Because Asian male immigrants have been relegated to “feminine” profes-
sions such as laundries, housemaids, and restaurants, the mainstream framings of Asian
American male bodies continue to be feminine (Eng, 2001). In this historical context, by
utilizing the castration anxiety in relation to Asian American exceptionalism, Dr. Ken
strategically colorblinds the historical and contemporary realities of racism. Thus, Ken
could be further framed as uncultural. Kawai (2005) claims, “Asian Americans’ ‘success’ is
used to deny the existence of institutional racism and to ‘prove’ that U.S. society is
reasonably fair and open for racial minority groups to move up the social ladder”
(p. 114). Thus, we view that Dr. Ken paradoxically resituates Ken as a (nonthreatening)
Other who is simultaneously almost White in the age of postracialism. In this way,
invisible territories of whiteness as property are resecured.
This line of our argument can be also seen in episode 4 as Dr. Ken introduces a tanned,
tall, and buff plastic surgeon, Dr. Kevin O’Connell (played by Will Yun Lee). For example,
Kevin happened to be Allison’s college boyfriend. Ken describes Kevin as “the hottest
Korean guy” and the “Korean Channing Tatum.” At the end of episode 4, during the
celebration party for Kevin’s contribution to volunteering, Allison tells Ken, “I could never
end up with someone like him [Kevin]. He is kind of pretentious.” Ken instantly laughs
and questions, “Kind of?” Then Ken makes fun of Kevin by imitating how Kevin speaks.
Ken says, “Look at me, I save lives and can wear a backpack.” Allison also joins Ken by
imitating, “Look at me. I restore dignity and can do a million sit-ups.” On the surface
level, these aesthetic descriptions of Kevin go against the historical feminizations of Asian
American men as sexually unattractive. The postracial logic of individualism and personal
merit seemingly constructs Kevin’s uncultural performance of gender/sex and sexuality.
However, this counternarrative actually reinstates the Asian American castration anxiety
“through the very routinized workings of its denouncement of dominant discourse”
(Muñoz, 1999, p. 97). On the one hand, Kevin’s performance would be illusive and
unauthentic if he was actually compared to “(White) Channing Tatum.” On the other
hand, in comparison to Ken, we can see that Kevin’s sexually attractive performance of
Asian American masculinity could look like the discursive and material effects of the
White masculine ideal. However, Kevin does not own a cis-gendered White male body.
His hypermasculine performance could be read as an attempt to overcompensate for his
Asianness. Thus, Kevin never breaks free from the racialized hierarchy of masculinities
aesthetically re/centering whiteness as property. Therefore, Kevin is almost White and is
also the (nonthreatening) Other.
At the same time, in Dr. Ken we are introduced to Allison who seems to break the
stereotypical role set for Asian American women as a tiger mother and a submissive wife.
At first, she just appears to be almost White because her cultural Otherness is minimized,
erased, and/or silenced. For example, Allison is clearly framed as a mother who
encourages and supports what her children want to do. She performs the
U.S. mainstream ways of positive reinforcements as she interacts with her children.
Simultaneously, Allison is a wife who is very supportive of Ken. In episode one, Ken
304 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

visits Allison’s office. As a therapist, she attentively listens to Ken’s worries about their
daughter Molly taking a driving test. She takes care of Ken’s emotional needs and
intervenes in his excessive interference with Molly’s social life after she passes the driving
test. In the following episode, Ken’s parents come to dinner. Ken cannot make it to
dinner, as he must attend the patient–doctor communication training we have mentioned
earlier. In the meantime, Allison cooks dinner and entertains Ken’s parents with her
children. In episode four, facing the presence of her hot ex-boyfriend Kevin O’Connell,
who is a successful doctor, and Ken’s jealousy, Allison shows her support and love to Ken
during his roast at a banquet supposedly honoring O’Connell. In episode 7, she is the one
who gets along with Ken’s sister Wendi while Ken has a problem with her. In episode 9,
Allison confronts Ken’s persistent drive to push basketball on their son Dave. She cares
about their son’s happiness and shows this by encouraging him to do what he is really
interested in. All examples we have just described visualize the recurring theme that
Allison’s gender role does not actually disrupt the conventional idea of being a good
wife and mother informed by the (hetero)normative modes of family and kinship.
Throughout the season, Allison is repeatedly framed to be quite normal compared to
Ken, who almost always acts crazy or weird. Consequently, Allison can be read as a
desirable wife and mother.
Still, we critique that this uncultural framing of Allison reconstitutes the hetero-
patriarchal tradition of cis-gender male privilege that subordinates and marginalizes
women. Shimizu (2012) argues, “I want Asian American men to acknowledge their
privileges as men, instead of understanding their subject positions through mainly
straightjacket sexuality” (p. 243). By straightjacket sexuality, she means the U.S. popular
cultural representation of effeminacy and emasculation imposed onto Asian American
masculinity. As we have argued before, for example, Dr. Ken subtly represents the
castration anxiety surrounding Asian American male characters. Thus, Dr. Ken can
become and be an Asian American product while it is supposed to be uncultural. At the
same time, Dr. Ken presents ordinary episodes about Allison as a good wife and mother.
At first, we thought that Allison is normalized as almost White for the (mainstream)
audience because Asian American women have been historically desirable according to a
phallic economy of (hetero)sexual desire. Then again, we have questioned our initial
reading. We realize that the ordinary episodes about Allison as a good wife and mother
strategically shift the audience’s attention back to Ken as a husband and father.
In fact, we argue that Dr. Ken is about Asian American male character Ken, played by
Ken Jeong. He is also one of the program creators, and Dr. Ken’s story is based on his
actual background. During the interview we mentioned in our introduction (Yang, 2015),
Ken Jeong asserts, “I was approached about two years ago about doing my own sitcom,
and it wasn’t a great idea at the time—it was, ‘Hey, why don’t you play a doctor down
South?’ So I responded, “Well, why don’t we just do it based on my actual background?”
and they said, “Oh, okay, that’s good too.” Thus, overemphasis on Ken’s awkward Asian
syndrome as cultural marker resecures cis-gender male centeredness within this mostly
Asian American cast sitcom. Shimizu (2012) continues to say, “Since heterosexuality and
manhood historically have been denied Asian American men, they have become the
terrain of struggle in which men claim the right to define and control their masculinity”
(p. 123). Therefore, Dr. Ken symbolically and literally marginalizes Asian American
women and does not take complex negotiations of gender/sex and sexuality into account.
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 305

Because Dr. Ken does not disrupt hetero-patriarchal protocols of male privilege, it remains
an uncultural product for the mainstream in the age of a postracialism that obfuscates,
hides, and denies structural inequality.
Ken and Allison’s teenage daughter Molly and son Dave are also framed to support this line
of logic. At the end of episode 1, for instance, we are introduced to Dave, who makes a lot of
strange moves as he dances to Katy Perry’s song for his school’s talent show. Ken cannot stand
watching Dave dancing by himself because “it’s a train wreck.” So he jumps onto the stage and
dances with Dave. Then again, in episode 7, Ken’s sister Wendi verbalizes, “Dave is turning
out to be weirdo.” In the next episode, Dave wears a Hello Kitty t-shirt that is “normally” a
Japanese popular cultural icon for girls. The following episode depicts Ken forcing Dave to
learn basketball. However, Dave does not like playing basketball, but rather participates in a
city council meeting about California’s drought. Dave tells Ken, “I am not a jock like you.” In
episode 14, by applying his mom’s suggestion to “just be yourself,” Dave’s nerdiness and
nervousness finally win him a dance with Emma. At the same time, Molly continues to be
popular throughout the season. In episode 3, Molly offers various ideas to help dispel Dave’s
nickname, such as using positive messaging, social media, image consultation, and hiring a big
kid at school because some kids makes fun of Dave. In episode 16, Molly introduces her new
boyfriend Sean to Ken and Allison. However, Ken and Allison disclose to Sean that there has
been an overlap between Molly’s ex-boyfriend Brayden and Sean. Yet Sean comes back to
Molly because “she gave him [Brayden] up, which proves how much she likes me.” These plots
recurrently explicate that Molly is popular while Dave is quite eclectic. Then again, positioning
Molly as an extravert and normal teenage daughter strategically shifts the audience’s attention
back to Dave as an introvert and awkward son. Overemphasis on Dave’s awkward Asian
syndrome along with Ken’s reinforces cis-gender male/boy centeredness within this Asian
American sitcom. Dr. Ken is about (uncultural Asian American) men/boys in ways that serve
the heteronormative and patriarchal interest.

The future of Asian Americans

Then again, we are repeatedly introduced to the simultaneous functions of Asian
Americans both as almost Whites and as (nonthreatening) Others that reconstitute the
ways in which Dr. Ken suggests Asian Americans should be unculturally assimilated into
the mainstream United States. In episode 13, Ken’s father D.K. (played by Dana Lee)
comes to stay with Ken and his family when Ken’s mother In-Sook Park (played by Alexis
Rhee) goes to South Korea for two weeks. D.K. fixes broken materials such as the
dishwasher, bathtubs, and roof tiles. Ken is irritated with his father for fixing everything
in the house. During the confrontation, D.K. tells Ken, “I had to learn how to fix things
because we had no money. But you—you’re a doctor. Much better.” After Ken asks D.K.
to clarify what he means, D.K. says, “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. But you’re a very
important, busy man. I’m trying to do what I can to help you. I’m proud of you, Son.”
This scenario reinforces that “many Asian Americans grow up understanding that a good
education yields only one of these options: a professional job in medicine, law, or
engineering, or additional degrees” (Hyun, 2005, p. 75). Higher education is a strong
symbol of upward mobility the social ladder in (Asian) America. Ken and Allison, who are
both doctors living the American dream, signify the “successful” present. That is, Asian
Americans’ economic and cultural capitals are becoming and being almost Whites.
306 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

Here, we call for recognizing that Asian Americans still live in a historical continuum
of U.S. citizenship and immigration policy that has systematically excluded, limited, and
controlled migrants from Asia (e.g., Chang, 1993; Eng, 2001; Ono, 2005). Privileges of
assimilation have never been fully given to Asian migrants and Asian Americans. Kim
(1999) reinforces that “the most striking feature of the racial triangulation of Asian
Americans is its historical persistence” (p. 107). For instance, Ken’s parents D.K. Park
and In-Sook Park symbolize the past. Both of them are migrants from South Korea. They
speak English with thick accents. D.K. is a strict and stern father. In-Sook is a quiet and
submissive wife. They apparently continue to perform Korean cultural values that are
automatically translated as cultural Otherness in the mainstream. At the same time, Ken
and Allison’s daughter Molly and son Dave have fewer ties to the past—where D. K. and
In-Sook came from. Given that Molly and Dave were born and are being raised in the
United States, they are clearly much more “Americanized” than D. K. and In-Sook.
Accordingly, Molly and Dave symbolize the possibility of where they are going—the
future. By the future, we mean the cultural, political, and economic condition in which
the mainstream United States seeks to assimilate uncultural Asian Americans for the
invisible territory of whiteness as property. Dr. Ken suggests that the future of the nation
and its institutions and systems is to seek to assimilate Asian Americans without decen-
tering the center.
Dr. Ken’s episode 8, Thanksgiving Culture Clash, supports our argument further. This
episode begins with a fight between Allison and Ken because Ken feels that his children
are not familiar with South Korean cultures. Ken says to Allison, “You’ve always pushed
your Japanese agenda onto the kids, huh? Trying to ‘Japanify’ them with your field trip to
Little Tokyo [in downtown Los Angeles] and your edamame. You even rented Godzilla.”
Allison replies, “I am not going to apologize that our kids identify with their Japanese
background.” Ken says, “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but our kids are half-Korean, too. And,
you could have taught them about their Korean heritage.” This fight leads to a
Thanksgiving dinner that includes Korean and Japanese foods. To highlight Korean
culture, Ken wears Chima-jeogori, a traditional Korean woman’s outfit. Allison calls out,
“Oh my Shinto [indigenous religion of Japanese people] God. Are you kidding me?” As
this dinner progresses, D.K. says, “Where is turkey?” This comment reinforces what
Thanksgiving should be. Turkey historically signifies a social and performative practice
of thanksgiving as whiteness. Then Allison and Ken get into another argument. As a
result, in the kitchen, D.K. tells Ken, “You’re the whitest guy I know.” Then he continues,
“The most important thing is to be good father and good husband, which you are. But not
so much today. Besides, being Korean is not what you wear or what you eat. Korean in
here [points to his heart]. Trust me. You plenty Korean.” Then D.K. tells Ken to fix the
situation. As Ken goes back to a dining area, he says, “All right. Who wants pizza?”
Everyone cheers up.
Here, we are first exposed to Dr. Ken representing random mixings of East Asian
cultures as an assimilative requirement for uncultural Asian Americans as almost Whites.
For instance, we argue that eating Korean and Japanese foods together is a much more
common practice in restaurants targeting the mainstream U.S. customers. This kind of
performative mode of Asianness is neutralized for the mainstream. At the same time, we
are introduced to everyone’s desire for pizza on Thanksgiving. This literally signifies that
Asian Americans are actually more Americans than Asians. Particularly, we recognize that
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 307

pizza is one of the most popular fast-food items in the United States. However, pizza is not
on regular Thanksgiving menus. Still, the Asian American characters want to eat pizza
rather than Korean and Japanese foods that Ken and Allison have prepared. This scenario
becomes a symbolic and material site of postracialism in which Asian American characters
as almost Whites resecure the normativity of whiteness as a national identity by desiring
the popular U.S. fast food more than cooked Asian foods.
These random mixings of Asian and American cultures are further distinguished by the
unknown positionality of Julie. The storyline does not fully suggest her South Asian
heritage. At first, we thought she could pass as a Latina. However, we are introduced to
Julie’s on-and-off boyfriend Topher (played by Dani Pudi) in episode 14. Here, we could
now assume that both Julie and Topher are South Asian descendants. However, they play
unclear roles in constituting “Asian America.” Dr. Ken spotlights East Asian descendants
from South Korea and Japan to reconstitute “pan-Asian” Americans who could be
welcome to the mainstream United States. In the post-9/11 war on terror context,
however, Julie and Topher’s brown skin colors may signal a threat to the center, similar
to discursive and material effects of yellow peril during World War II. Burkart and
Christensen (2013) suggest that geopolitics always play into communictive pratices of
popular culture. Consequently, Julie and Topher’s unspecified South Asian cultural and
religious heritages may be deemphasized for the profit marketing needs of cultural
industry. Their brown bodies could be only accepted as long as they look like
Americans of color who ambiguously pass and navigate across racial lines. Thus, this
seemingly unknown positionality of Julie not only reproduces the stereotypical and
exclusive definitions of Asian Americans as East Asian descendants, but also subtly
suggests that Asian Americans being included by the mainstream United States must
redefine the invisible territory of whiteness as property. Therefore, Dr. Ken demonstrates
that the performances of Asian Americans being welcomed into the mainstream U.S. must
be unculturally safe and acceptable for the center, so the center is never decentered.

Conclusion
In this essay, we have attempted to identify and critique the ways in which Dr. Ken
demonstrates the pitfalls of strategic whiteness to achieve the goal of being “refreshingly
uncultural.” That is, this sitcom intends not to depict Asian Americans “culturally” to
avoid potentially reinforcing the pervasive media stereotypes. However, the “uncultural”
narratives about Asian Americans subtly serve as a rhetorical method of postracialism that
represents Asian Americans as almost Whites and as (nonthreatening) Others. By strate-
gically drawing attention away from its reproduction of norms of whiteness at the expense
of Asian Americans, Dr. Ken resecures the territory of whiteness as the center, for the
profiting and marketing needs of the cultural industry.
Due to the release of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Dr. Ken, we observe that the year
2015 saw an increase in Asian Americans on the TV screen (Johnson, 2015). Since
Asian Americans have not been historically well represented in the mainstream
U.S. media programming, we cautiously welcome the recent emergence of more
Asian American representations. We hope that Dr. Ken will continue to draw media,
audience, and academic attention as one of the first two ABC primetime sitcoms
centering on Asian American family in the two decades since Margaret Cho’s All-
308 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

American Girl was released. Still, these new Asian American TV shows present their
potential to subvert dominant narratives, but the chance is neither guaranteed nor the
only probability that may develop. Because Dr. Ken is contemporary and it has claimed
itself as refreshingly different from the problematic racial discourse of the past, its
participation in strategic whiteness is initially elusive. Such elusiveness represents the
complexity and fluidity of postracialism.
We end this essay by reiterating that we as the audience need to be aware of the
contemporary media discourse that may cloak the reality of racism today, with the aid of
“strategic whiteness,” “colorblindness,” and “post-racialism.” As Ono (2010) reminded us,
we must actively articulate what we see because we are unconsciously subjected to the
ideological operation of post-racialism. Therefore, we invite critical rhetorical projects
interrogating postracialism, making the invisible visible, and providing alternative ways of
thinking that exceed what contemporary media often want us to believe.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Andre Haag (University of Hawaii at Manoa) and the reviewers for their
careful and in-depth evaluations of this study.

References
Burkart, P., & Christensen, M. (2013). Geopolitics and the popular. Popular Communication, 11(1),
3–6. doi:10.1080/15405702.2013.751853
Calafell, B. M., & Moreman, S. T. (2010). Iterative hesitancies and Latinidad: The reverberances of
raciality. In T. K. Nakayama, & R. T. Halualani (Eds.), The handbook of critical intercultural
communication (pp. 400–416). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Castro, C. (2007). Voices in the minority: Race, gender, sexuality, and the Asian American in popular
music. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 19(3), 221–238. doi:10.1111/jpms.2007.19.issue-3
Chang, R. S. (1993). Toward an Asian American legal scholarship: Critical race theory,
post-structuralism, and narrative space. California Law Review, 81, 1243–1323. doi:10.2307/
3480919
Chávez, K. R. (2009). Embodied translation: Dominant discourse and communication with migrant
bodies-as-text. Howard Journal of Communications, 20(1), 18–36. doi:10.1080/10646170802664912
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical race theory: An introduction (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
New York University Press.
Dubrofsky, R. E. (2013). Singing to the tune of postracism: Jewishness, blackness, and whiteness on
Glee. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6(1), 82–102. doi:10.1111/cccr.12002
Eguchi, S. (2013). Revisiting Asiacentricity: Toward thinking dialectically about Asian American
identities and negotiation. Howard Journal of Communications, 24(1), 95–115. doi:10.1080/
10646175.2013.748556
Eng, D. L. (2001). Racial castration: Managing masculinity in Asian America. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Eng, D. L. (2010). The feeling of kinship: Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Espiritu, Y. L. (2004). Ideological racism and cultural resistance: Constructing our own images. In
M. L. Andersen, & P. H. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: An anthology (5th ed., pp. 175–-
184). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Griffin, R. A. (2015). Problematic representations of strategic Whiteness and ‘post-racial’ pedagogy:
A critical intercultural reading of The Help. Journal of International and Intercultural
Communication, 8(2), 147–166. doi:10.1080/17513057.2015.1025330
 POPULAR COMMUNICATION 309

Guo, L., & Harlow, S. (2014). User-generated racism: An analysis of stereotypes of African
Americans, Latinos, and Asians in YouTube videos. Howard Journal of Communications, 25(3),
281–302. doi:10.1080/10646175.2014.925413
Hesmondhalgh, D., & Saha, A. (2013). Race, ethnicity, and cultural production. Popular
Communication, 11(3), 179–195. doi:10.1080/15405702.2013.810068
Hochschild, J. L., & Weaver, V. (2007). The skin color paradox and the American racial order.
Social Forces, 86(2), 643–670. doi:10.1093/sf/86.2.643
Hyun, J. (2005). Breaking the bamboo ceiling: Career strategies for Asians. New York, NY:
HarperCollins.
Johnson, F. (2015, December 9). Asian men have often been misrepresented in television shows.
The Ithacan. Retrieved from https://theithacan.org/columns/asian-men-have-often-been-
misrepresented-in-television-shows/
Kawai, Y. (2005). Stereotyping Asian Americans: The dialectic of the Model Minority and the
Yellow Peril. Howard Journal of Communication, 16(2), 109–130. doi:10.1080/
10646170590948974
Kim, C. J. (1999). The racial triangulation of Asian Americans. Politics & Society, 27(1), 105–138.
doi:10.1177/0032329299027001005
Kim, C. J. (2000). Bitter fruit: The politics of Black–Korean conflict in New York City. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Kim, E. (1993). Preface. In J. Hagedorn (Ed.), Charlie Chan is dead: An anthology of Contemporary
Asian American fiction (pp. vii–xiv). New York, NY: Penguin.
Kray, S. (1993). Orientalization of an “almost white” woman: The interlocking effects of race, class,
gender, and ethnicity in American mass media. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10(4),
349–366. doi:10.1080/15295039309366876
Lee, R. (1999). Orientals: Asian Americans in popular culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Lopez, L. K. (2014). Blogging while angry: The sustainability of emotional labor in the Asian
American blogosphere. Media, Culture and Society, 36(4), 421–436. doi:10.1177/
0163443714523808
Moon, D. G. (2016). “Be/coming” white and the myth of white ignorance: Identity projects in white
communities. Western Journal of Communication, 80(3), 282–303. doi:10.1080/
10570314.2016.1143562
Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Nakayama, T. K. (1994). Show/down time: “Race,” gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Critical
Studies in Media Communication, 11(2), 162–179.
Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 81(3), 291–309. doi:10.1080/00335639509384117
Ono, K. A. (2005). From nationalism to migrancy: The politics of Asian American transnationalism.
Communication Law Review, 5(1), 1–17.
Ono, K. A. (2010). Postracism: A theory of the “post” as political strategy. Journal of
Communication Inquiry, 34(3), 227–233.
Ono, K. A., & Pham, V. N. (2009). Asian Americans and the media. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Osajima, K. (1988). Asian Americans and the Model Minority: An analysis of the popular press
image in the 1960s and 1980s. In G. Y. Okihiro, S. Hune, A. A. Hansen, & J. M. Liu (Eds.),
Reflections on shattered windows: Promises and prospects for Asian American Studies (pp.
165–174). Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.
Projansky, S., & Ono, K. A. (1999). Strategic whiteness as cinematic racial politics. In T. K.
Nakayama, & J. N. Martin (Eds.), Whiteness: The communication of social identity (pp. 149–174).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Shimizu, C. P. (2007). The hypersexuality of race: Performing Asian/American women on screen and
scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shimizu, C. P. (2012). Straight sexualities: Unbinding Asian American manhoods in the movies.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
310 S. EGUCHI AND Z. DING

Wang, G. (2010). A shot at half-exposure: Asian Americans in reality TV shows. Television and New
Media, 11(5), 404–427. doi:10.1177/1527476410363482
Wang, X., & Cooper-Chen, A. (2010). Gendered stereotypes of Asians portrayed on the websites of
U.S. higher education institutions. Visual Communication Quarterly, 17(2), 77–90. doi:10.1080/
15551391003788498
Willmore, A. (2015, April 15). The ’90s Asian sitcom that shows how far we haven’t come. Buzz
Feed. Retrieved from http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonwillmore/the-90s-asian-sitcom-that-shows-
how-far-we-havent-come#.pen1R6vOR
Woo, M. (2014, September 15). 20 Years later, Margaret Cho looks back on ‘All-American Girl.’ I
Am Koream. Retrieved from http://iamkoream.com/20-years-later-margaret-cho-looks-back-on-
all-american-girl/
Yang, J. (2015, October 5). Ken Jeong on Dr. Ken, becoming a leading man, and the early backlash
to his show. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/20/05ken_jeong_
interview_the_dr_ken_actor_on_the_hangover_community_diversity.html
Zhang, Q. (2010). Asian Americans beyond the Model Minority stereotype: The Nerdy and the Left
Out. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 3(1), 20–37.