Dear friends,
I’m pretty old–I’m older than I look–and I attribute my relatively youthful appearance to good genes. I am Eurasian: Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, English, German, and a little bit of Irish. (A former boyfriend insisted that I am Amerasian–American and Asian–but to my knowledge, Amerasian is a label for a very specific group of people: children of American servicemen and Vietnamese women from the Vietnam War. That term doesn’t cover just general people of both European and Asian descent.)
Because I am old, I have noticed the gradual metamorphosis of an interesting trend in popular culture, especially movies and television. When I was a kid, very few Asians made it to television and movies, and when they did, it was because the Asianness of the part was essential to the story. Heck, even parts that required some Asianness were sometimes given to non-Asian actors because it wasn’t trendy or cool to be Asian back then. I’m thinking specifically of the series Kung Fu, a story about a half-Chinese monk, banished from Qiang Dynasty China, and doomed to roam the Wild West, beating up people in bar fights, always successful because of his Shaolin training. Bruce Lee, the legend-status martial artist, was up for the role, but, because of the social tenor of the times, the role was given to David Carradine, who was neither Asian nor a martial artist, at least one of Lee’s caliber. Basically, back then, there were very few Asian roles, and Mako seemed to get 95% of them.
As time went on, Hollywood grew more tolerant of Asians, and more started appearing, but their Asianness was still central to the plots. Asians were never hired to play just general people; they were relegated to roles that ultimately contributed to stereotypes: the Inscrutable Oriental, the Exotic Eurasian, etc. The parts they got often had to do with the Yakuza or the Tong, or they portrayed people at the mercy of strange and immutable customs because everyone knows that all Chinese people preface every noun with the word “honorable” and every Japanese man commits seppuku (hara-kiri, ritual suicide by self-disembowelment). Asianness took over the plots; now, rather than hiding one’s Asian heritage, these new stories emphasized them, erroneously more often than not because, to many non-Asians, the cultures were interchangeable and the Western writers simply did not do their research. The cultures were often depicted as overly exotic, not understandable by Western standards, and always in need of modernization, preferably at the hand of some cowboy-like Caucasian male who fought or shot his way through the labyrinthine customs of outmoded Asian societies. This was the time when Asian actors (some of whom changed their real names to non-Asian ones in order to gain acceptance or some of whom were named at birth with non-Asian first names–I’m thinking of people like Joan Chen, James Hong, John Lone, even Bruce Lee.) played people with conspicuously Asian names. Asianness got more trendy, but it was still basically formed on stereotypes and misinformation.
Now, however, I have noticed a different trend. I have noticed that Asians are being hired more and more to play just general people whose Asianness is not a central plot point. They often play intellectuals, doctors or lawyers, because everyone knows that Asians are smart and not physical people. Put an Asian in a cowboy hat, and you have instant comedy. But the market is opening up, and now, one’s culture matters less because all the roles are not about the Yakuza or the Tong or someone’s daughter being sold into prostitution. The funny thing about this new trend is that the Asians, with no explanation, are starting to have non-Asian surnames. It’s almost like Hollywood is opening the doors, finally hiring Asians without making a huge deal about their Asianness, but it’s assimilating them by giving them last names like Barrett or Jennings or Bradford. It’s like Hollywood has gone on a campaign to declare, “Hey! We’re treating Asians just like everyone else!” and since everyone else has American surnames, they’ll get American surnames. It’s almost like it’s OK for people to look Asian, but it’s old-fashioned to identify at all, even by one’s surname, with one’s heritage.
I wonder if Hollywood will ever portray Asians realistically. It’s true that many Asians, when coming to this country, change their first names to something that Americans can get their mouths around. It’s also true that they don’t usually change their last names, except in the case of their last names being changed for them by customs officials. It’s true that Asians are just people, and not all of them are held hostage by antiquated cultural traditions–but it is also true that some families hang onto traditions that make the younger generation feel stifled. I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a huge range of Asian experience in this country and everywhere in the world, and I have to laugh at Hollywood’s progression of anti-Asianness to ultra-Asianness to assimilated Asianness. Check out modern tv shows and see how many Asians have non-Asian surnames without any explanation. Check out old tv shows and see how few Asians played anything (and how many of them were Mako). Check out shows from the 80s and see how many were about corny, larger-than-life generic Asian cultures that portrayed either drugs, organized crime, or prostitution as the negative collateral damage of hanging onto the old ways.
And don’t even get me started on how Eurasian women are portrayed in movies, tv, and pulp fiction…tigresses in bed, obedient everywhere else, women who love Caucasian men, but who are “trapped between two worlds” and who inevitably die tragic deaths, but remain enshrined in our memories as the Ultimate Woman, the woman who knew her place, who satisfied her men’s most domineering desires, who was exotic in all the right places, but not so much that she was alien. I’m thinking of the flagship of the Eurasian Sex Kitten in Trevanian’s novel Shibumi. This novel featured a courtesan named Hana (which means “flower” in Japanese, but note that it is homophonous with the more familiar “Hannah”) who was described as African in her hip and breast size, Caucasian in her high-bridged nose and high cheekbones, but Asian in her demeanor (read: obedience) and her soft skin. The story explains that her parentage was of all three “races” (I know that race is a biological illusion, but it is a sociological fact, so I am treating it as such because I see it treated as such in these examples.) but the only thing she is good for in the story is having sex. She is a professional courtesan, after all. She is Trevanian’s wet dream, the perfect woman, having none of the more distasteful traits of her ethnicities. Many books and movies have similar women, usually just of two, not three, ethnicities, all in possession of Asian soft skin and obedience but Caucasian features, especially high-bridged noses, because flat noses are not considered attractive in our culture. They’re invariably sex toys or victims or both, and the swaggering cowboy has to save them–or lose them to the traditions that he is trying to destroy.
Just once, I would like to see a fictional Eurasian who is not a sex object or collateral damage. Maybe it’s one who, like me, has a flat nose; despite having one Caucasian parent, I was not lucky enough to get the desired “aquiline” nose. Maybe it’s one who isn’t a doctor or lawyer or mysteriously trained purveyor of all ritual and sexual delights. Maybe it’s one who isn’t an intellectual or a martial artist, but instead is significant because of something that Caucasians usually corner the market on. There’s a show that does do that: it’s the popular show called Glee, and in it is a very Asian young man who is a fabulous dancer. When most people think “Asian,” they probably do not think “great dancer,” and, in this way, that show does a lot to break up stereotypes. I know that there are Asians who are great at everything, just like there are Caucasians who are great at everything, African Americans, Native Americans, white, black, yellow, red, blue, green–there is always an exception that trumps the idea that people are slaves to their heritage and gene pool. The world is becoming one village, thanks to the huge leaps in technology–the Internet, cyberspace, etc.–and the information is out there, so we no longer need to rely on writers who treat all Asian cultures as one. While our improved communication is making us more homogeneous in some ways, it is also opening up ways to embrace diversity so that we can know that fortune cookies actually originated in the U.S. and that “sayonara” is not Chinese for “good-bye.”
