I recently watched the entirety of the Silicon Valley HBO TV show. A few years too late, I know, but it was a nice nostalgia trip to the early 2000’s when people were excited about apps and shit. At least until I got to the later seasons, and then it got too real.
The show is hilarious and witty and surprisingly accurate in hindsight, but the Asian (and Asian American) representation on the show bothered me in particular. All of the Asian characters on the show end up being unlike-able caricatures, and rarely get their personal wins or moments to shine like the other characters on the show. I’m sure if you aren’t Asian, you probably wouldn’t even notice. It doesn’t stand out too much at first, but once you notice, it just starts getting weird. I am especially disappointed by this, considering how many Asian and Asian Americans are clustered in the Bay Area.
This topic has been brought up a few times before, but it never goes well. Here’s a Reddit thread with someone asking this question, and here’s another Reddit thread about how vehemently people in the comments disagreed with the question asker.
Vehement Push-Back Against Asian Americans Trying to Take up Space
In the reddit thread mentioned above, the poster describes some of the Asian characters on the show and complains that Mike Judge made them all stupid and gross:
Dinesh: weak and socially retarded beyond just being a tech geek, more like a classist asshole. Sucks with women, and women openly make fun of his looks. He’s only competent in coding, god forbid he have any talents outside of coding.
Jian Yang: weak and retarded. Him being a sexual person isn’t even a remote possibility. He can only create knockoffs of technology. In fact, all of his accomplishments are the sole work of him leeching off of his white colleagues.
The strange thing is that the Reddit comments are all angry and really trying to refute what the OP is saying. Or maybe that’s not so strange, because Reddit sucks, but you know what I mean.
The most common counter argument is that everyone, even the white characters are idiots too. The show is a satire with everyone’s unlikable attributes turned up to 11.
Other comments are not very substantial, just kind of mad at the OP.
But throughout the whole discussion, I did not see anyone who brought up some of the thoughts that I had on the topic, which is why I will subject you, the reader, to them in this blog post.
An Inventory of Silicon Valley Characters
There are basically two named characters in the cast with speaking roles that are Asian/Asian American:
- Dinesh Chungtai – part of the core cast, he’s Pakistani American
- Jian Yang – a side character who lives in the same hacker house as the main cast
There are other characters who don’t really get mentioned much, but do play some part in a couple episodes.
- Ed Chen – the douche-y associate that is competing with Monica when she joins Laurie Bream’s new VC firm
- Tracy Robertson – this is the new HR lady who is on Gilfoyle’s ass all the time
- Priyanka Singh – this is the Indian American pied piper employee who wins a bet against Dinesh and he has to buy her a Tesla
- Gwart – an Indian American coder who joins the incubator and is reminiscent of a young Richard Hendrix
The Subtle Difference
To focus on Dinesh and Jian Yang for a second, I feel like the show treats them 99% like the white characters on the show, but there is a subtle difference that sets them apart.
The Flanderization of Dinesh
At the beginning of the show, Dinesh and Gilfoyle (the Anglo Canadian) formed a sort of comedy duo of two bickering software engineers. The gags were really funny, with both of them getting into a pissing contest over something stupidly trivial, like how many code reviews they could get done. It was a fun dynamic where they each end up getting their just desserts.
Eventually, Gilfoyle ended up becoming the more “shrewd” of the pair, while Dinesh became the bumbling idiot and it felt like Gilfoyle ended up on top of their petty arguments more often. What would happen is that Gilfoyle would find some clever way to get ahead and Dinesh ends up shooting himself in the foot.
This dynamic ends up rubbing off on his interaction with other characters too. Dinesh gets positioned as a comic relief punching bag subject to being drive-by clowned on by whatever side character is in the episode at the moment (e.g. Jian Yang, or literally any side character).
By the end of the show, Dinesh wouldn’t be out of place in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Most of his storylines involve Seinfeldian schemes to bilk his lucky cousin out of his money or trying to impress people by wearing a Pied Piper jacket. At this point, from the audience perspective, it also feels like Gilfoyle is quite a competent engineer, while Dinesh is mostly a charlatan.
You really hate to see it. 😞
Jian Yang ends up Being a Chinese Spy
Something similar happens to Jian Yang.
Jian Yang goes from the incubator’s “stray dog” to a Chinese spy after Erlich goes missing in Tibet. In this part of the show he transforms from scruffy freeloader to someone who is conniving and in a foul mood. Also willing to backstab the pied piper team for a quick buck. At one point he does admit that he misses the hacker house, but it’s quickly glossed over and never really feels like a full redemption or genuine moment that brings him into the fold of the regular cast.
I’d also like to add that my personal experience of working in the Bay Area does not really involve thinking about protecting myself against Chinese spies at all really, so I think that is one thing that the show doesn’t seem to accurately portray. Unless white people think about Chinese spies all the time, but that is not my general impression of working in the south bay area.
The other characters don’t really get much screen time
Just to be comprehensive, the other characters don’t really receive enough screen time to actually have fans. Except for Gwart. Gwart is funny and cool and I guess is the closest thing to an exception to this whole thing.
Ed Chen only shows up as a douche who is competing with the likeable Monica. Tracy is an annoying HR lady who is always bothering Gilfoyle who just wants to code in peace like when Pied Piper was a small company in an incubator. And the Indian employees of Pied Piper in the later seasons are cool, but don’t really do anything noteworthy aside from clown on Dinesh.
Here’s my Point
Lets look at the white characters in contrast with the above depictions. Sure, like Reddit says, everyone on the show is weird and off putting. Erlich Bachmann, Russell (the three comma club guy), Jared, Guilfoyle, Richard Hendrix, but all of them have a mix of both redeeming qualities to offset their quirks and nastiness.
At the end of the day, when the inspirational music starts playing and the breakthrough happens, we see someone in the white group pull through against all odds, redeeming themselves with their better qualities. Richard speaks from the heart about consumer privacy and the purity of tech. This overshadows his feckless indecision, growing assholishness, and willingness to make hard business decisions. Erlich shows a street-smart savvy and loyalty to the Pied Piper team that counterbalances his persona of being a complete asshole. Both Jared and Russ are crazy in an endearing way, especially Jared who comes hard with absolutely insane one-liners about his dodgy past. Russ also happens to have some business sense (see time when he talked to Richard about never revealing his company’s valuation).
So with that juxtaposition, it is clear that the other characters on the show are multi-dimensional and contain a mixture of good and bad traits. The moments where each character gets to shine let them endear themselves to the audience. Unfortunately, I don’t think the show was as generous to the Asian characters who don’t have the same balance or multi-dimensional feel.
It’s not just Imaginary
Do I think that Mike Judge and the other show runners did this on purpose? It’s possible–when you look at everything together, the trend seems solidly along ethnic lines. It could be an unconscious bias, which is totally possible, or it could be just an accurate portrayal of the “Bamboo ceiling” that is actually present in the real Silicon Valley (less likely, imo).
That’s kind of interesting to think about thought, isn’t it?
