Asian Performance on the Stage of American Empire in Flower Drum Song

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's original Broadway production of Flower Drum Song opened in 1958, marking a milestone in the sociopolitical realm of American popular culture in the post-World War II era. The musical was the first in Broadway history to feature a predominantly Asian American cast, including Miyoshi Umeki, Keye Luke, and Pat Suzuki. Loosely based on C. Y. Lee's 1957 hit novel of the same title, which was "more dark-humored" (R. Lee, 173), this landmark musical was a huge success both aesthetically and commercially.¹ It was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning for Best Conductor and Musical Director, and was performed on national tours and in London. Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 1961 cinematic version of the musical was also a commercial hit. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Music Award; and the musical number "I Enjoy Being a Girl" remains a popular standard to this day. Yet critics accused the musical's portrayal of Asian Americans as being "condescending" and even "less than fully human" (Tacorda, 119). As a result, David Henry Hwang wrote an adaptation of the original play in 2002, reworking it to repudiate its stereotypical representation of Asian Americans.² Ironically, however, despite a favorable reception upon its opening in Los Angeles, Hwang's version was ultimately criticized for spoiling the original, for losing its "charm, warmth, and wit" (Murray). In 2008, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress added the film to its list, officially denoting it as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Flower Drum Song's remarkable popularity is indicative of more than its artistic and commercial achievement in American popular culture. Its true significance arguably lies in its status as a historical cinematic document that reflects radical changes in the U.S. immigration policy toward Asians amid the Cold War, changes that continue to affect the lives of Asian Americans today. The film premiered at a time when the United States was stuck in, as Mary Dudziak puts it, a "quintessentially American dilemma" (8). On an international level, the nation's victory against totalitarianism in Asia and Europe was being compromised by ongoing domestic issues of racial and sexual oppression and discrimination. The country's growing need to enact civil rights legislation resulted in a widening rift with local authorities in the South, while racial violence and segregation significantly tainted the nation's international reputation (Dudziak, 13). With the onset of the Cold War, a uniquely American paradox emerged between the deep-seated practice of domestic racism and the political imperatives of the global proliferation of democracy, thus requiring the nation to improve its international image in the face of the Soviet's communist expansionism.

In the early Cold War era, with memories of Pearl Harbor, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima still very fresh in the collective mind, one of the most complicated aspects of this dilemma was resolving how the nation could assimilate Asians into its antiracial endeavors. The primary issue, however, was not just figuring out how Asians could possibly be accepted as fellow Americans, but rather determining how a nation with a long legacy of white supremacy could suture the ontological gap of national identity in the wake of multiculturalism. Throughout the civil rights movement that ran roughly from the end of World War II through the 1960s, the United States struggled to challenge white supremacy, which greatly exacerbated the racial tension and violence that ensued in the South.³ Despite the government's attempts to promote its nationwide efforts toward racial tolerance, racial discrimination remained an ineradicable fact of American life, much to the frustration and embarrassment of its policymakers, whose efforts to claim leadership of the free world were being severely hampered by the Soviet Union's censure for the hypocrisy of American racism. If the United States was going to expand and enhance its relations with Asia, and make Asian immigrants "a permanent part of the American landscape, not only as labor, but as [a] sexualized and reproductive force" (Palumbo-Liu, 102), then the anxiety over...