Fun or bias? American TV series and China humor

The American TV industry is no stranger to mockery. It just uses people's set ideas, or prejudices, towards a certain race or group of people to make fun of them. Chinese people often form a target in this way. Let's take a look at some prime examples.

In the latest installment of popular TV series "The Big Bang Theory" (CBS), Sheldon Lee Cooper Ph.D claimed he had discovered a method for synthesizing a new stable super-heavy element. Despite the fact that a Chinese research team at the Hubei Institute for Nuclear Physics ran a test on a cyclotron with extremely promising results and later found the element, his calculations proved off. This may imply the issue of China's academic credibility.

In one episode of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." (ABC), agent Phil Coulson talks to former agent Akela Amador about how she was held in a cage inside a copper mine in Shanxi Province, China. The embarrassing Shanxi mines reference caused heated discussion among Chinese audiences.

American TV series usually portray Asian people in a stiff or exaggerated manner. In Fox's new sitcom "Dads," Crawford (Martin Mull) refers to Asian people as "Orientals," and when he learns that his son Warner has a meeting with Chinese investors, he insists, "The Chinese are a lovely and honorable people, but you can't trust 'em. There's a reason 'Shanghai' is a verb."

The line was considered racist and was later protested against by the Asian and Chinese communities. "This is a show that will be evocative and will poke fun at stereotypes and bigotries -- sometimes through over-the-top, ridiculous situations," Fox Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly and COO Joe Earley wrote in a statement. In the recent blockbuster "The Wolverine," the Japanese samurai was contemptuously referred to as "little man."