On the surface, 1993 may have seemed like a banner year for films that dealt with the culture, lifestyles and conflicts of Asian people.

From The Joy Luck Club to Farewell My Concubine, Hollywood distributed a number of films that presented audiences with vivid, three-dimensional Asian characters -- truly a vast improvement over the stereotypical geisha girls and Charlie Chan characters of the past.

But was the release of films such as Heaven and Earth and The Wedding Banquet a step forward or mere lip service? Although The Joy Luck Club was a box-office hit, Hollywood has been slow to produce more films dealing with the exploration or integration of Asian themes or characters.

Joan McGettigan, an instructor of media studies, said the success and quality of The Joy Luck Club was an improvement over previous works, but Hollywood probably views the success of the film as an isolated incident.

"I haven't seen anything about future projects involving these actors or story lines," McGettigan said.

The reaction to the film was interesting, not to mention troubling, she said. Many people wanted to play the film as a story of familial relationships, ignoring, in turn, the intracultural conflicts in the Asian community that lay at the heart of the film, she added.

"Mostly everyone I spoke to seemed to focus on the universality of mother/daughter relationships and not at all the specifics of the cultural conflicts that these Asian-American women had," she said.

Although The Joy Luck Club did manage to break previous notions, stereotypes still prevail. Films such as The Karate Kid and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins have further enshrined the all-knowing karate instructor into our memories. More recently, last summer's Rising Sun, like the novel that inspired it, raised more than a few eyebrows for its rather nasty portrayal of Japanese businessmen in America.

While Hollywood has moved beyond some Asian stereotypes, Chris Murphy (junior-film) said many are difficult to get by because they are expected by audiences to an extent.

"You see a bunch of Japanese walking around with cameras around their necks and you immediately think of that tourist stereotype," Murphy said. "Hollywood also stereotypes the language and how it sounds to the general public -- these are going to be apparent in all films whether they be of a comic nature or not."

Although many stereotypes are far from being 100 percent realistic, many are tied closely to the heritage of Asian people, said Jason Dy (sophomore-biology).

"Some of the stereotypes are reflective of our background, especially where martial arts and technology are concerned," Dy said. "I understand it doesn't do us a lot of justice and can be offensive at times, but that's the way Hollywood perceives us."

Yet many feel Hollywood has not successfully integrated Asian actors into standard roles reflecting everyday life. Rarely do we see an Asian portray an everyday character such as a lawyer or a next-door neighbor, said Steve Wei (sophomore-molecular and cell biology).

"In The Joy Luck Club, the fact that the characters are Asian is made very important," Wei said. "The problem is that we haven't seen Asian Americans in a role in which their ethnicity isn't a factor."

Asian characters are usually either male computer nerds or demure females who are sexually attractive and speak in broken English, Wei added.

The lack of accurate Asian-American portrayals has a lot to do with the absence of an established Asian director in the Hollywood community, Murphy said. Although Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) and action maestro John Woo (Hard Target) have established names for themselves, they lack the status that African-American directors such as Spike Lee and John Singleton have achieved, he said.

"(Lee and Singleton) have secured a name in directing, therefore they are able to portray African-American culture as it is," Murphy said. "With the exception of Woo, who is just starting to build a name for himself here, you don't have anyone with that power to portray Asian Americans."

And many films dealing with Asians aren't produced because there is not an Asian actor around who Hollywood sees as commercially viable, McGettigan said. She cited the practice of putting a white male star in a role to compensate for the Asians who make up the majority of the cast -- a method practiced in such films as Come See the Paradise with Dennis Quaid and the recent Matt Dillon flop Golden Gate.

"It's the establishment that says you have to have somebody like a Dennis Quaid as your central character because nobody knows anything about Asian cultures or Asian people, so you better have your main character be a white male," McGettigan said.