YORK UNIVERSITY YORK UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY ASIAN NORTH AMERICAN FILM: IMAGES, REACTIONS AND CRITICISMS KEVIN LIM A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIRMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF FILM 224 CENTRE FOR FILM AND THEATRE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA M3J 1P3 MAY 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-38801-3 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-38801-3 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada ASIAN NORTH AMERICAN FILM: IMAGES AND CRTICISM by Kevin Lim By virtue of submitting this document electronically, the author certifies that this is a true electronic equivalent of the copy of the dissertation approved by York University for the award of the degree. No alteration of the content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are as a result of the conversion to Adobe Acrobat format (or similar software application). Examination Committee members: 1. Sharon Hayashi 2. Scott MacKenzie 3. Wendy Wong 4. Ted Goossen Abstract Key histories in Asian/North American interactions provided the foundation for Asian representations in dominant motion pictures. Although blatant racist representations have arguably subsided, these once overtly racist images have shifted in form and today diey continue to subversively perpetuate racist ideological beliefs. It is within Asian North American cinema that counter hegemonic images provide a space to react. A look at history, image production and Asian North American film will reveal how processes of Asian identity, community and culture are formed. iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank my family for their love and encouragement, my supervisor, Dr. Sharon Hayashi for her care and direction and my undergraduate thesis supervisor Dr. Suzie Young for her continual support. I am grateful to the staff at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and my loving partner Rei Nakanishi. Finally, I would like to thank the Asian North American filmmakers and authors whose movies and books have influenced and provoked this research. v Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgement v Contents vi Preface 1 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Asian and Western Interaction 6 1.1 Head Tax and Internment 6 1.2 Killing Asian Men and Saving Asian Women 9 Chapter 2: Asians on North American Screens 13 2.1 Asian Women on Television and Asian Men not on Television 14 2.2 Asian Women in Pornography and Asian men not in Pornography 27 2.3 Pornographic Reactions and Shortcomings 34 2.4 Miscegenation and Sex Crime 38 2.5 Race as Performance 42 Chapter 3: Asian North American Films 46 3.1 Alternative Cinema 48 3.2 Justin Lin and Angry Asian Man/Men and Bruce Lee 50 3.3 Michael Kang's The Motel 62 3.4 Criticisms from Within 66 3.5 Asian North American Feature Length Narratives at SFIAAFF 2008 72 3.6 The Asian North American Film Festival 76 Conclusion 81 Epilogue 84 Work Cited 86 Appendix 92 VI Preface A pornographic website titled, Me Fuck you Long Time, sells memberships to a collection of pictures and videos of exclusively Asian women.1 The website's banner is a collage of images: on the right side is a picture of the Statue of Liberty, the American Flag and an army tank. On the opposite side there is an image of a White man receiving fellatio from an Asian woman wearing a cheongsam.l The text below reads, "Asian babes getting their pussies pounded by American Cock. Petite Asian Girls Take Big Cocks in their Tiny Holes!!!" This website's sexual, racial and political cues serve as a starting point for my research. I have chosen to explore the state of Asian North American representations in motion picture.2 lam concerned with the (lack of) progress representations have made on both film and television screens. Although arguably there have been improvements in terms of frequency of exposure, representations of Asia and Asians are in need of critical analysis. Images of rice hate wearing, opium smoking coolies and seductive dragon lady temptresses are perhaps gone but these caricatures have been reinvented on today's screens. The second half of my research looks at the Asian North American film industry as a site that reacts to dominant motion picture. It is here that Asian North American 1 A cheongsam is a Chinese one-piece dress traditionally made of silk. 21 use the term Asian North Americans to refer to people of East Asian origin born or living in Canada or the United States. Some critics would call attention to my exclusion of South Asians. However, I feel in terms of North American media representation, South Asians are subject to a different process of othering and thus a different set of studies. 1 filmmakers and audiences produce counter hegemonic images and often attempt to reconcile social, racial and sexual anxieties and fears, all of which I contend are a direct result of a history of racism and sustained racism through dominant motion pictures. An analysis of key contemporary Asian North American films will reveal how and why these anxieties are manifested. It is necessary to understand racism on screens as a result of early interactions with Asians in North American history. I begin with a select overview of early Asian immigration and examine how racist laws policed and restricted processes of settlement and adaptation. In the late 1800s, the Chinese were subject to a racially targeted head tax to enter Canada. The tax worked to curb Chinese immigration, financially cripple generations of Chinese immigrants and cause a debilitating gender imbalance that stunted population growth. During World War II, Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians were forced to live in internment camps because they were seen as a threat to American and Canadian national security. Despite their American and Canadian citizenships, these individuals were viewed as perpetual foreigners. American anti-miscegenation laws were created to suppress the marriage of Asians men and Whites women. Additionally, in instances when an Asian American woman married an Asian man, the government revoked her citizenship (Koshy, 2004: 7). Racist laws such as these were compounded with gender biases and consequently promoted the union of 2 Asian women with American men.3 U.S. military campaigns in Japan, Vietnam and South Korea, led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Asian men. Through American military and government propaganda, Asian men were demonized and Asian women were viewed as innocent victims. Finally, postwar Asia experienced "the transformation of former military rest and recreation centers...into popular sex tourist destinations [and] the emergence of a burgeoning mail-order bride industry" (Koshy, 2004:12). A combination of the aforementioned histories became the foundation for producing images of Asia(ns) in North America. The second chapter explores how American television programming instills racial norms that under the guise of easy viewing, subversively program both White and non-White audiences with racial expectations and prejudices. Darrell Hamamoto heeds, "Even the most seemingly benign TV programs articulate the relationship between race and power, either explicitly or through persuasion" (Hamamoto, 1994:2). I uncover these processes of persuasion and suggest that representations created by the dominant hegemony act as a new means to exclude and subjugate Asians and Asian North Americans. Popular examples of Asian female fetishization and Asian male emasculinization will demonstrate how historical conceptions of Asians extend onto screens today. Asian festishized 3 The term 'American' is used synonymously for White. 3 American pornography is a contentious but important site to specifically explore this. Hyperbolic in terms of racist representations, American pornography provide a means to analyze sexual desire and pleasure that lead into my study of Race as commodity and constructed performance. The final chapter looks at how Asian North American filmmakers have reacted to dominant images and "engaged in an intertextual dialogue with Hollywood films" (Xing, 1998:53). By analyzing key films it is evident that Asian North American male filmmakers in particular use film to react to and counteract racial stereotypes in dominant motion pictures.