Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
Dragon Lady
Played by Lucy Liu, Ling [Woo] was an icy, abrasive ChineseAmerican lawyer who also spoke Mandarin. Unlike the 1970s depictions
of docile Japanese and Korean women on TV, Ling’s character was the
stark opposite—the classic stereotype of Dragon Lady.
Early in the show, Ling made her entrance in an episode to the
theme music that accompanied the Wicked Witch of the West in The
Wizard of Oz. Depicted as a sexual predator who nonetheless “doesn’t
much like sex; it’s messy” … She spouted such lines as … “there’s
nothing I enjoy more than seeing a happy couple and coming between
them.” Her liaisons are with white men, of course …
When asked in an interview how she felt about perpetuating the
Dragon Lady/Vixen stereotypes, Liu replied, “I don’t have many options
now.” There may well have been truth in that … The movie-going
public, it seemed, wasn’t yet ready for a kick-ass Asian woman in a
leading role. (73)
Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
Me Love You Long Time
Typical were the scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket that
incensed an Asian-American community just starting to find its voice in American
public life. In the movie, our first glimpse of Vietnam comes with a hooker in high
heels walking down a street in Saigon to the tune of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots
are Made for Walkin’” and encountering two soldiers at a café.
Hooker: Hi baby, you got girlfriend Vietnam?
Soldier: Not just this minute.
Hooker: Well, baby, me so horny, me so horny. Me love you long time. You party?
Soldier: Yeah, we might party. How much?
Hooker: Fifteen dollar.
Soldier: Fifteen dollars for both of us.
Hooker: No, each you fifteen dollar. Me love you long time. Me so horny.
Soldier: Fifteen dollars too beaucoup. Five dollars each.
Hooker: Me sucky sucky. Me love you too much.
Soldier: Five dollars is all my Mom allows me to spend.
Hooker: Okay, ten dollar each.
Soldier: What do we get for ten dollars?
Hooker: Everything you want.
Soldier: Everything?
Hooker: Ev-erything.
Soldier (to another soldier): You know, half these gook whores are serving officers
in the Viet Cong. The other half have TB. Make sure you only (have sex with) the
ones that cough.
…
Our protagonist, Joker, shoots [a female sniper] in a firefight, then looks
over her supine body and shoots her again as she draws her last breaths and pleads
for a quick death. “No more boom boom for this baby-san,” a fellow soldier says.
Fighter or prostitute, it hardly matters. (97-98)
Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
Long Duk Dong
There’s another stereotype of weak Asian male in Hollywood—that
of the geek. Many Asian-Americans recall gasping in horror while
watching Sixteen Candles (1984). This movie featured a greasy-haired
Chinese exchange student, “Long Duk Dong,” who mortified Molly
Ringwald with his foreign nerdiness, and whose entry into scenes was
punctuated by the clash of a gong. Her grandparents call him a
“Chinaman,” the old epithet from a century before; the filmmakers have
him get drunk, trash the car, jump out of a tree yelling “banzai,” and end
up face-down on the front lawn. He does get a girl, but only for the
comedic contrast of her being a weight lifter – taller, stronger, and sturdier
than he---with enormous breasts. Yes, it’s comedy, and it’s a teen genre
movie. But just think of how the outcry if, for example, and AfricanAmerican actor was depicted eating a watermelon, being called by an
epithet, and performing other stereotypically racist conduct. We wouldn’t
think it was funny. It would be so unconscionable that no Hollywood
director would even dare do so. (111)
Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
Charlie Chan
The entire genre of Charlie Chan, in the detective novels
of 1925-1932, movies of the 1930s and ’40s, and the TV
series of 1957, could be viewed as a slight exception [to
minor roles for Asian men]. But Chan, whose deductive
reasoning always cracked the case, was not only half sage, he
was half buffoon, rambling off proverbs like fortune cookie
messages with a personality reduced to a Chinese takeout
menu. As a white cop once tells him: “You’re all right. Just
like chop suey. A mystery, but a swell dish.” Chan was
played by a long list of non-Chinese actors in yellow face, a
practice that led to caricaturing the Chinese. Chan’s son,
Barry, bumbling and always at risk of fumbling the case, was
played by a real Asian-American, James Hong. (112-113)
Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
Fu Manchu
Perhaps Detective Chan’s moral rectitude was meant to counter the
image of the evil Asian male in The Adventures of Fu Manchu (1955-56), the
television adaptation of the many screen versions of Chinese evil.
Mustachioed and elegantly gowned, Dr. Fu Manchu (also played by a white
guy in yellow face, Glen Gordon), was an oriental scientific genius operating
out of the exotic locale of Macau, and his nefarious goals included the
destruction of Western democracy. Fu Manchu was no new character; he was
based on the series of novels by Sax Rohmer from the early 1900s that played
on fears of Chinamen taking away the jobs of whites and the resulting Yellow
Peril of the 1870s. The revived Yellow Peril of the 1980s, caused by the
perceived threat of the burgeoning Japanese economy, gave us the movie
Rising Sun, with all manner of evil Japanese characters intending to take over
the U.S. computer industry, based on the 1992 novel by Michael Crichton.
“For a Japanese, consistent behavior is not possible,” a Los Angles police
detective informs us. Why for Japanese more so than for anybody else? (113)
Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique. New York: Perseus Books,
2005
The asexual leading man
Chinese kung fu action hero Jet Li in Romeo Must Die (2000), for
example, risks his life to save the girl. The families disapprove of any romance
between them, hence he’s nominally Romeo; she’s Juliet. (And, in an unusual
twist to such action movies, she is black—played by the now-deceased actress
and singer Aaliyah.) But, while there’s lots of chemistry, they never even kiss.
He saves her father, avenges her brother—she gives him a nice, big hug.
It’s the same thing—but worse—in Kiss of the Dragon (2001). This time,
Jet Li saves the American farm girl in Paris (Bridget Fonda) and her daughter
from a corrupt French cop, who has kidnapped the daughter and is forcing
Fonda’s character to work as a hooker. Li kills the bad guy with a single needle
jab of the neck that causes a terrible, eye-poppingly bloody death. The grateful
Fonda, reunited with her daughter, grabs Li’s hand and gives the back of it a
fond kiss.
Hong Kong’s screen hunk Chow Yun-Fat doesn’t even get that in The
Replacement Killers (1998). He may be one of the hottest sex symbols in Asia
but, on the Hollywood screen, he doesn’t get the girl either. There seems to be
chemistry between Mira Sorvino and Chow and, for a time, it appears that she
kind of wants to “get got” or, at the very least, wants to give him the obligatory
pat of affection that Chinese action stars get from American girls after saving
their lives. But, at the airport, ending, as Chow prepares to return to China, she
simply says goodbye. Chow turns around and walks to the jetway alone. (104)
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