LOS ANGELES — Thanks to the sensational worldwide Netflix hit Squid Game, our society has completed a full 180, effectively putting an end to the historically ingrained demasculinization of Asian men.
“Squid Game shows us that, no matter how hot Asian men truly are, they are still all going to die, so we don’t have to worry about validating their freshly-masculinized sexuality anyway. It’s a win-win!” explained UCLA Professor Allison White via Zoom interview. “Sure, Asian men might long for more representation on the big screen, not as a math nerd, Jackie Chan, the token dorky friend, nor the wicked-smart side-kick of Captain Kirk, but as the hunks they truly are. But that dream can be realized by fictional characters whether they are alive or dead – and it indeed has been realized with the popularization of Squid Game.”
Film industry executives corroborate Professor White’s claims.
“In fact, the whole thing is a lot easier if they end up dead,” casting director Michael Waits said of Asian men in Hollywood, “because it doesn’t require conceptualizing and perceiving them as living, breathing, feeling, sexual beings, but rather figments of the past – sexualized, but now irrelevant. Of course, this is only worthwhile after they’ve been morally degraded by participating in infantilizing children’s games turned deadly.”
This new, highly-convenient-for-white-people social phenomenon has not gone unnoticed.
“Yeah, I was walking down the street, and some white girl came up to me. She was like, ‘You’re like, actually like, super hot… but it’s okay, because you look like that guy in Squid Game, you know, and he ends up dying, haha!’ And then she just walked away,” recalls Brian Wang. “I didn’t know what to say. She basically said it was okay that I was hot because my character dies? I’m confused because I feel like my sexiness made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t take the heat anyway. But wait, I’m not even Korean. What the fuck?”
See? We are moving forward. Asian men: masculinized hunks. Asian-male-representation in entertainment: dead and gone. And consequently, society can return to the good ol’ racializing and stereotyping of Asian men, with this fresh perspective of their sexuality – except, Society doesn’t have to acknowledge it, because they die anyway.