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4. Comics and Lovers: Postwar Transitions and Interpretations
- Wayne State University Press
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four Comics and Lovers Postwar Transitions and Interpretations “You are like the Chinese dish the Americans invented. What do they call it?” “Chop Suey.” “That is it. Everything is in it, all mixed up.” —Flower Drum Song (1961) The preceding dialogue occurs during a scene in the film Flower Drum Song (1961) that portrays a communal celebration in San Francisco ’s Chinatown. The guests of honor include both the elder Madam Liang (played by Juanita Hall), granted U.S. citizenship after five years of schooling, and her young nephew Wang Ta (played by James Shigeta) who just graduated college. In this exchange, Madam Liang’s brotherin -law Master Wang (played by Benson Fong) expresses a deeply suspicious view of American cultural assimilation when he compares his sister to the U.S.-concocted Chinese dish chop suey. Implicit in his commentary lies a critique of the Western-fabricated Oriental cultural product as well as its rendering as an indiscriminate cultural mix. Established as somewhat of a curmudgeon, Master Wang’s character nevertheless succinctly articulates what becomes the hallmark chapter 4 174 of the postwar years in Hollywood’s depictions of Asian characters. Indeed, during this time the performances and performers of Asian archetypal roles do mix it up in various ways. This chapter will examine how the enactment by non-Asian actors in Oriental roles reworks traditional archetypes and wartime characterizations in its later phase as a predominant Hollywood performance practice. In both conception and reception, Hollywood’s non-Asian Oriental impersonation during this period grew at the same time more inclusive and more exclusive. The range of Oriental comic heroes, musical spectacles, and tragic figures exemplifies a more exclusive demarcation in terms of genre and dramatic treatment but at the same time is more inclusive in terms of the ideological issues addressed. Clearly, these tendencies demonstrate a marked shift away from the stridently virulent depictions of the war years. The critical reception of the films discussed in this chapter also provide evidence of a gradual shift in the discourse toward what appears to be a more conciliatory rhetoric concerning the Oriental figure during the postwar years. The films discussed in this chapter “belong to a distinct cultural moment in which Americans turned their attention eastward”:1 Between 1945 and 1961 American cultural producers churned out a steady stream of stories, fiction and nonfiction, that took Asia and the Pacific as their subject matter. Journalist John Hersey documented the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan (Hiroshima), playwright John Patrick brought U.S.-occupied Okinawa into Broadway theaters (Teahouse of the August Moon), novelist James Michener probed the merits of the Korean War (The Bridges at Toko-Ri), travel writer Lowell Thomas Jr. explored Tibet (Out of this World: Across the Himalayas to Forbidden Tibet), Hollywood director Richard Quine put contemporary Hong Kong onto movie screens (The World of Suzy Wong), and photographer Margaret Bourke-White framed views of India (Halfway to Freedom).2 This obviously raises the question of why Asia and the Pacific held such a fascination for so many Americans during the immediate postwar years. Why did Americans want to produce and devour so many stories about this part of the world? While the intensity of American [3.236.139.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:51 GMT) Comics and Lovers 175 interest in Asia was certainly not entirely new (as previous chapters attest), part of the reason was that the Cold War made Asia important to the United States in unprecedented ways. U.S. political, military, and economic expansion into the region was massive, with an influence that was unparalleled: The great arc stretched from Korea in the north, down through the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, along the offshore island chains of Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, out into the Pacific, across the Southeast Asian peninsula, and up into the Indian subcontinent. Hundreds of thousands of Americans flowed into Asia during the 1940s and 1950s as soldiers, diplomats, foreign aid workers, missionaries, technicians, professors , students, businesspeople, and tourists.3 Hollywood obviously plays a significant role as a producer of the dominant representations of Asia of the period (explorations of the noncommunist parts of Asia; mainland China, North Korea, and North Vietnam predictably remained largely beyond their chosen boundaries ). The films selected for this chapter possess narrative and performative features that epitomize the practice of Oriental impersonation by non-Asian actors as well as anticipate its eventual dissolution. (This closely...