Asian Stereotype and the Asian Body

by Tony Nam

THEA 313: Modern Theatre, Fall 1998

The act of embodiment is an assumption of power. It is, in the context of performance and in its simplest form, the act of an individual assuming the psychological and political appearance of another object. Indeed, it is ultimately an object that is represented. Embodiment is the basic function of the actor in the theater arts. It is the job of the actor to gain an understanding of the identity he/she is to represent and then to project that identity from the stage or the screen in order to be consumed by the audience. The development of realism in theater has deepened the idea of embodiment, subsuming it into a process through which an individual studies and adopts the physical, cultural, circumstantial, and all other factors which form a widely accepted perception of an 'othered' social, political individual, in order to project or intone that othered identity. Within the framework of realism, embodiment has also become a political strategy for culturally dominant groups to carve out and disfigure the identity of disempowered minorities as a means of reaffirming their hegemony. It is this use of realism and embodiment that has produced and maintained the pejorative stereotypes persistent in the representations of Asian identity by theater and the media.

Asian stereotypes in the American media are the products of centuries of exploitation and marginalization. In Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America, James Moy suggests that American prejudice against Asians originally evolved out of a European prejudice constructed out of a Western need to differentiate itself from the East. For Europeans around the fifteenth-century, the process of categorizing differences, constructing and labeling foreign identities, became a means of establishing and maintaining a sense of dominance. Using the term colonial as a designation of any culture searching for domination, Moy argues that current Asian stereotypes in America have evolved out of colonial constructs created out of the colonizers' need to differentiate themselves from indigenous or foreign people. For the colonial group, the development of stereotypes has the ability to reduce diverse identities into a binary relationship of "what is us" and "what is not us." Perpetually accentuating the differences between colonials and othered people, the colonial group can construct and continually reaffirm its own sense of dominance. In the fifteenth-century, European countries found themselves searching for a solution to the problem of their plague-decimated labor force through the importation of slaves. The criteria with which Europeans justified the enslavement of certain peoples were simply a categorization of difference. For Christian-dominated city states, such as Florence, a large importer of Asian slaves in the fifteenth-century, any group of people living outside the circle of European law could be immediately identified as 'heathen' and thus suitable for enslavement. The designation of foreignness, of difference, became a basis for establishing superiority. For this reason, Moy suggests, groups which can be identified as colonizers are in constant fear of similarity, because the recognition of similarity would in turn offer the possibility of equal standing between the colonial and the othered group, immediately robbing the colonials of their claim to dominance. The process of categorization is the first step towards oppression.

All Asian stereotypes are Western constructs. Some of the most common Asian stereotypes in American media today originate from the psychological relationship the West has developed towards the East. Western descriptions of 'Asian-ness,' a reduction of an entire cultural identity into a manageable object, created a dominant/submissive, male/female association between the West and the East. To relegate Asian identity to the status of an object, both admired and dominated, places the Asian identity in a traditional passive female position contrasted by the Western dominant male position. This psychological relationship, perpetuated by the Western identification of the East as an exotic object, produces and maintains several Asian stereotypes often seen in American media, including the submissive oriental woman and the effeminate oriental man. These European prejudices, the construction of 'Asian-ness,' and the West vs. East, male/female psychological relationship, were all exported into American culture.

The construction of Asian stereotypes continued in America, where political and economic constraints soon gave Asian identity an insidious darker side. While American culture literally imported Asian-ness in the form of live museum displays containing actual Chinese specimens, and staged musical entertainments with oriental themes, America made its own contribution to the development of Asian stereotypes through the dehumanizing anti-Chinese immigration propaganda of the late nineteenth-century. The large influx of Chinese immigrants in the 1800s created a tremendous amount of fear among the American public whose concerns ranged from the loss of jobs to the moral corruption of their country. The predominantly male Chinese immigrant population, donning the traditional cue, a long length of uncut hair with the rest of the head shaved, made the Chinese an easy target for political cartoonists working on anti-Chinese immigration propaganda. In widely distributed materials, the Chinese face and body were transformed into grotesque images of rats, pigs, and Asian devils. The Asian stereotypes that developed from this hostile atmosphere were quite different from the previously established images of the feminized passive oriental. The 'Chinaman' now assumed darker characteristics, such as the dim-witted opium addict, the sexually promiscuous Asian woman, the untrustworthy Chinese con-man. The purpose of creating such distorted images of Asian identity once again reflects the need of cultural colonizers to differentiate and marginalize foreign groups. By maintaining the image of Asians as outsiders, the colonial group succeeds in disempowering the Asian community and thus neutralizing any threat to colonial dominance.

These grotesque anti-immigrant cartoons, with various comical and villainous depictions of the Chinese figure, are the origins of later common stereotypical images found in American culture, such as Micky Rooney's 'Chinese landlord' in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the infamous Dr. Fu Manchu. In a long tradition of performing the oriental identity, a tradition that spans back to the late eighteenth-century, Asian characters on stage and later in film have almost always been portrayed by white actors. Moy maintains that the reason for this American media tradition of casting white actors in Asian roles is embedded in the original purpose of these Asian stereotypes as a means of reinscibing the political position of the Asian identity as an outsider; and who could better portray Asian stereotypes, with all the proper constructed political and cultural indicators, than the Eurocentric colonial culture that created them. This political and historical reality of the American media depiction of Asian identity becomes particularly painful for Asian American artists who must not only bear the degradation of these grotesque stereotyped images, but who must also cope with their historical disenfranchisement from the right to construct and reinscribe their own sense of identity.

No event in the recent history of the American theater has so perfectly illustrated the anger and frustrations of Asian American theater artists as the tremendously controversial Broadway opening of the Vietnam musical, Miss Saigon. The controversy surrounding the show centered on the decision of producer Cameron Mackintosh to cast Jonathan Pryce in the part of the vaguely ethnic Engineer, a character labeled with the ambiguous ethnic title of Eurasian. Pryce, a white British actor, originated the role of the Engineer in the London production of Miss Saigon; he was assisted in the creation of the character by stage make-up which gave him the appearance of being Asian. Mackintosh insisted he had thoroughly searched all channels to find an Asian American actor to portray the role of the Engineer for the Broadway production, but maintained no Asian actor with the proper qualifications could be found. Mackintosh's assertion was that Pryce was the best actor for the job. Responding to vigorous protest from Asian American theater artists, Equity attempted to block Mackintosh's import of Pryce by refusing to grant the British actor the proper licence which would allow him to perform in the States. Some in the American theater community viewed the move by Equity as unfair, going so far as to call its position racist, and insisted on the need for casting policies to be based purely on merit and devoid of issues of color. Even some Asian Americans felt Mackintosh's position and choices as a producer should be respected and not interfered with by essentially outside interests. Eventually, Mackintosh did win out: he forced Equity to concede defeat when he threatened to pull the show from Broadway completely, risking jobs and money. For some, the outcome was a victory for equality. For others, particularly among Asian Americans, it was yet another chapter in a long history of white actors playing ethnic stereotypes.

The importance of Asian American media history in the controversy surrounding Miss Saigon, as well as in the larger issues of non-traditional casting, should not be underestimated. Both sides of the Miss Saigon controversy put forth seemingly valid and attractive arguments. Ideally, casting decisions should be made solely on the merits of each individual performer, regardless of race. What comes into question, however, is the validity of the assumption that such a system of equality exists. The assertion that color blind casting promotes the distribution of roles based on merits alone presupposes that all performers, regardless of race, have equal access and equal representation in the theater and other media. What is being ignored in the argument for color blind casting are the political implications and the historical contexts of casting white actors in the roles of ethnic characters.

In the case of Miss Saigon, the desire of an Asian American performer to portray a role in a show filled with demeaning images of Asians, as well as a performer's willingness to recapitulate to the stereotype of the traditional submissive oriental woman, seems a great enigma. In Performing Asian America, Josephine Lee provides a possible explanation for the common occurrence of Asian performers recreating traditional stereotypes by suggesting that the assumption of such roles by Asian American actors is an act of both reclamation and subversion. Asian American performers now have the opportunity to take hold of their own image and identity in the American media, stripping the control of such important cultural channels away from the dominating white culture. In the hands of a white actor, the interpretation and reinscription of an Asian stereotype only marginalize the Asian identity in American culture. The political and historical context of such traditional casting automatically insinuates into the performance the validity of the white-constructed stereotype as well as an implication that the Asian performer is unable to "master" the art form at the level of his/her white counterpart. In both the domain of cultural politics and the politics of theater arts, the Asian is once again relegated to the position of an outsider. The interjection of the Asian body into the portrayal of the traditional stereotype, however, creates a juxtaposition which succeeds in subverting the traditional use of such stereotypes in the American media. The figure of the Asian on stage or on screen is no longer made merely an object to be manipulated. The Asian performer now has the power to portray such stereotypical depictions of the Asian identity in a manner which makes the color of the actor's skin, the shape of the actor's eyes, visible and a part of the performance. Does this further validate the image of the stereotype? What becomes important here is the politicization of the stereotyped performance. The Asian American is seen as reclaiming the right to construct or subvert cultural images which contribute to his/her identity. The image is no longer in the hands of the white majority who wish to marginalize the Asian American. Asian America can now be seen.