Christina on Grey's Anatomy

I’ll be doing my analysis on Sandra Oh’s character, Christina, in Grey’s Anatomy. I think she’s a really interesting character to focus on, firstly because she is one of the only prominent Asian characters on t.v. right now; in addition to that she has a serious, respectable role and isn’t portrayed as a stereotypical Asian (besides being smart, but then again she has to be in order to be a doctor), she doesn’t have the typical Asian accent,  and isn’t there for the audience to poke fun of and laugh at. 

In addition to breaking the Asian stereotype, I also think that she breaks gender stereotypes; she is a female and yet she is incredibly independent (probably more so than most of the male characters on the show) and doesn’t need a man to make her happy. She is strong willed, driven, clever and incredibly non-emotional  (again, probably more so than most of the male characters on the show). Furthermore, she doesn’t possess the attributes of “conventional beauty” unlike Izzie, Meredith, Lexie and other characters on the show; she has had boyfriends (Burke and Hunt) and uses other attractive attributes about her, such as her intelligence and personality, to win them over.

I think Christina is also very interesting to analyze as she is a very multi-dimensional character; though she seems incredibly strong and tough on the outside she does have a soft side and reveals in a recent episode that when she was nine her father died in a car accident while she was in the car and she felt her father's heart stop beating, which is why she does her job and strives for perfection.

I’m choosing this episode because I think it captures the multiple layers of Christina’s character. Firstly, the episode begins with a ‘typical Christina’ moment,’ she wakes up being strangled by her boyfriend and yet handles the situation so rationally-even though her boyfriend just tried to strangle her she is pretty much emotionless and ends up being the one who consoles him. However, later on in the episode when she and her boyfriend, Owen, discuss what had happened she has tears in her eyes and it is evident that she is more complex and emotional than it seems on the outside. Then at the end of the episode, the wall which she hides behind eventually crumbles and she admits that she is scared to sleep next to him (this is one of the only episodes where Christina’s emotional side is evident).