Fixing the Problem that is Tiffany From Bunk’d

         In my last blog, I touched upon how Tiffany from Bunk’d is the epitome of the “smart Asian” stereotype— she’s abnormally academically intelligent yet socially unintelligent, she’s pressured to do well in school because of her “tiger mom,” and the show only attributes her intelligence to her Asian-ness without showing how much extra effort she’d have to put in to rise above her peers.

    There are several ways to address this problem and rewrite Tiffany so that she’s more of a 3-Dimensional character and not just a positive stereotype. The first and most obvious one is to make her socially intelligent as well. The show already demonstrates that she’s academically intelligent— in one episode she and Ravi build a wifi router from scraps they’ve found around the camp grounds. However, she’s also portrayed as awkward and socially unaware. Despite being more academically knowledgeable than the oldest characters in the cast, she doesn’t share their level of emotional maturity. Tiffany is written to be a dork, which is what her friend Zuri often calls her. The idea that Tiffany has never even tried a piece of candy before coming to camp is absolutely absurd, and insinuates she’s been living an extremely sheltered life in what must’ve been a jail cell run by her mother. And although that episode plot was comedic, it’s understandable how it left Asian-American audiences feeling upset and misrepresent ate d; especially with Tiffany being one of four fully Asian-American actors on Disney Channel, the episode makes a fool of Asian Americans and how sheltered their children must be. No one truly admires Tiffany for her intelligence because it’s negated by her social immaturity/unawareness— if she’s rewritten to be a generally wise character all around, then this problem would be resolved.

    The next problem that we could address is Tiffany’s “tiger mom.” Instead of having her mother only be “strict” without any deeper explanation, the show should dive into why her mother is hard on her. As a first Asian-American, I would’ve loved for the show to explore the nuanced, complex relationship between first generation children and their immigrant parents. There definitely is a pressure within the community for children to do well in school and in life, but the show never delves into WHY there is this pressure. Asian American children are highly aware of the amount of sacrifices that their immigrants make. The pressure to do well in life come from a need to make up for what their parents couldn’t do in life due to language and cultural barriers. The show could’ve shown that Tiffany doesn’t just have a fear of her strict mother, but also a yearning within herself to do well to make her mother’s sacrifices worth it. She could’ve been shown having not just a fear of her mother in general, but a fear of not making her mother proud, a fear of being a disappointment, a fear of not matching up to everything her mother’s sacrificed to be in this country.

    The last problem is how the show doesn’t SHOW Tiffany excelling in school. We never see how tiring it must be for her to stay up late reading as many books as she can. We don’t see her spending hours in misery doing out-of-school practice worksheets as the other kids run and play outside (yes, this example is very specific and yes it’s from my real life). Of course you can have a smart Asian character! We love seeing Asian excellence on screen. But making it so that you don’t see how much extra work that this Asian character has to put in verses their peers is feeding into this fallacy that Asian people are just innately intelligent. This myth that Asian people are just born smarter is horribly harmful and negates all the time and effort sacrificed by actual Asian individuals that ARE academically above average. 

    It’s always interesting to see how a few simple changes to a character can give them so much more depth, and make them a much more accurate representation of their community on-screen. Tiffany from Bunk’d had so much potential to be a character that Asian American children could look up to, so much potential to be an admirable character and not just the butt of the joke. I hope this article inspires future filmmakers to delve into research or at least reach out and talk to people of that community they’re writing these characters for before deciding to create characters like Tiffany from Bunk’d.