Asian Masculinities and Parodic Possibility in Odaiko Solos and Filmic Representations

The racial self-imagination for the Asian American male has always obtained some relation to representations of Asian male bodies from or in Asia. Perhaps it is more accurate to state that while pernicious stereotypes of the Asian male body in the American context abound, establishing positive performed or mediated Asian male body types requires looking (often literally) to Asia. In stating this I do not mean that negative stereotypes from Asia are absent, only that positive stereotypes typically flow from Asia into the Asian American imagination and not the other way around. Whether it’s the kung fu master, samurai, yakuza, Ultraman, or ruthless Korean gangpae, these Asian male bodies are agentic and powerful, all of which are traits recognizably aligned with (at the very least) Western notions of masculinity that are typically constructed as “good.” And yet, being stereotypes, these images are themselves troubled. What Asian American boy hasn’t faced this playground taunt: “How come you don’t know kung fu? You’re Oriental aren’t you?” usually followed by a mocking imitation of Bruce Lee’s falsetto “WHA-PA!” Inasmuch as the Asian/Asian American male is politically emasculated and excluded from the national discourse (Lowe 1996) or, as David Eng argues, “racially castrated” (2001), social iterability is limited to a two-dimensional choice between a math whiz or the kung fu master.

That an Asian American man confronts or submits to constructions that are not of his doing is not a situation unique to him, or to any single group for that matter. Many within cultural studies take it for granted that we are, all of us, inserted into a world that is (obviously) not of our own creation, but, more importantly, one to which we must, at least in part, conform in order to be seen or, as in the case of musicians, heard. The latter is the Hegelian demand that our existence as socially viable entities arrives only through socially prescribed channels of recognition. We are all socially iterable in some way, even if that is in comprehensive opposition to standing definitions of what passes for “human” (or “male” or “female” or “sexual” or any other category you can imagine) since being the opposite is still being defined in relation to a presumed standard. The question is what do we do with normative points of recognition when they do not allow us to be fully “ourselves”? As Judith Butler describes (2004), one’s existence rests on preexisting norms that allow one’s self to be “seen.” My ability to do anything is rooted in conditions that are, paradoxically, not of my own doing. At the same time, Butler does not believe that we are condemned into a Sisyphean feedback loop that continually reestablishes a presumed normativity. Agency within structure is not found in a naïve denial of this condition or a return to an equally naïve free monad. Our ability to alter social iterability presents itself precisely because we must repeat these structures. Performativity of race or gender (or any other social position) is reified through repeat performances. However, this is a temporary reification that is subject to alteration or “contamination.” It is precisely at the point of performance that we can try something new or signify (Gates 1989) on the norms that are given to us with the hopeful, perhaps quixotic, goal of expanding the boundaries of social iterability.

This article concerns the intersection of male bodies in musical performance and film and the way performers have shaped and have been shaped by the images and constructions of masculinity that have traveled back and forth between Asia and the United States. Specifically, I discuss Asian and Asian American male bodies playing the odaiko, but also how the odaiko solo is itself impacted by or analogous to filmic representations of Asian male bodies. To paraphrase author Maxine Hong Kingston (1975), how can you separate what is traditionally Chinese or Japanese from what are the movies, performance, or theater? This question recognizes a heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) where both mediated representations and tradition are inseparably...