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Transnational Legitimization of an Actor: the Life and Career of Soon-Tek Oh1

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Transnational Legitimization of an Actor: the Life and Career of Soon-Tek Oh1 Transnational Legitimization of an Actor: The Life and Career of Soon-Tek Oh1 ESTHER KIM LEE He is the voice of the father in the Disney animation film Mulan (1998). He is Sensei in the Hollywood hit film Beverly Hills Ninja (1997). He is Lieutenant Hip in the 007 film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). These examples may trigger memories of Soon-Tek Oh in the minds of many Americans.2 Some would vaguely remember him as the “oriental” actor whose face often gets confused with those of other Asian and Asian American actors, such as Mako and James Hong. Theatre aficionados may remember him for his award-winning role in Stephen Sondheim’s musical Pacific Overtures in the 1970s, but more Americans will know him as the quintessential “oriental” man in Hollywood. This is not the legacy Soon-Tek Oh wanted. He would prefer to be remembered as an artist, an actor who played Hamlet, Romeo, and Osvald Alving; who founded theatre companies; who promoted cultural awareness for Korean Americans; and who taught youths with all of his integ- rity. He wanted to be a “great actor,” who transcended all markings, especially racial ones, and who was recognized for his talent as an artist. He has sought what I describe in this essay as “legitimization” as a respected actor at every crucial point in his life.3 Soon-Tek Oh was the first Korean actor to appear in American mainstream theatre, film, or television.4 He left Korea for Hollywood in 1959 as a young man, seeking to learn the craft of filmmaking. For over thirty years, Oh played multiple roles as an actor and in real life, as what David Palumbo-Liu describes as an “active agent” who participates in “the constitution of what ‘America’ was and is at any given moment” (2). He literally represented and embodied Asian images as a performer on screen and stage. His body was the canvas on which modern America projected its conceptualizations of Asia and Asian America.5 But, away from Hollywood and Broadway, Oh actively occupied and navigated other multiple cultural spaces. In the space defined as Modern Drama, 48:2 (Summer 2005) 372 The Life and Career of Soon-Tek Oh 373 “Asian American theatre,” Oh voiced his resistance to Hollywood’s racism, and in the space of the Korean American community, he promoted a particular form of ethnocentric cultural nationalism. Later in his life, he returned to Korea as a professor to teach western styles of acting. His decision to return to his “homeland,” as I discuss in this essay, was a way of talking back to Holly- wood and mainstream America; hence, it was more of an act of gaining lever- age for his sociocultural redefinition than a permanent move for personal resettlement. He crossed various boundaries, balancing his bio-ethnic identity and social worth, on the one hand, with the desires to dislodge and exceed such fixity, on the other. Indeed, Soon-Tek Oh was as versatile in real life as he was on stage and screen; he often subverted established cultural paradigms by straddling multi- ple cultural spaces. To use Aihwa Ong’s term, he has been a “flexible citizen” without aligning himself with the “cosmopolitan” entrepreneurs of global cap- italism, however implicated he may be in such forces and their cultural effects. He has both resisted and taken advantage of essentialism and homoge- nization, as an “ethnic” actor and a transnational subject. In this essay, I tell the story of Soon-Tek Oh’s multifaceted life and career, not merely as an indi- vidual passage, but also as an emergent pattern of life and action, indicative of potential or actual possibilities of human agency in our present moment in his- tory. Oh’s career provides a complex case study for examining how an Asian actor’s body has been marked in the topology of Hollywood’s global hege- mony. Moreover, the case study further illuminates a shift within Asian Amer- ican studies towards transnational inquiries. As noted by Inderpal Grewal, Akhil Gupta, and Aihwa Ong, “Transnational media, markets, and migration are altering the constitution of subjects by changing how nations are imag- ined, citizenship is experienced, and identities are formed” (661). Soon-Tek Oh, as a transnational subject, has certainly gone through many changes by adapting and surviving, and to a certain degree, transforming. Like all “suc- cessful” actors, he has seemed lucky many times, and his story appears excep- tional. And yet, what is involved in the story may well exceed the assumed meanings of a singular case of the “fortunate.” The essay concludes with Oh’s current activities in Korean academia. I argue that his choice to return to Korea as a professor signifies his sense of an ultimate legitimization of his life and career as an actor. I also discuss how such a legitimization challenges the current paradigms of Asian American politics and Pacific transnationality. asian/american actors, hollywood paradigm, transnational shifts Soon-Tek Oh was not the first Asian or Asian American actor to perceive his “homeland” as the ideal alternative to Hollywood and as a place to find recog- nition and validity. Philip Ahn tried several times to find his place in Korea. 374 esther kim lee Although Ahn was born in the United States and could not speak Korean flu- ently, he made several attempts to work in Korea as an actor and producer. In 1962, Ahn entered a co-production contract with Shin Films, which was, according to Hye Seung Chung, “the first and only Korean film company remotely resembling a Hollywood studio, run by legendary director Shin Sang-ok” (21). Ahn was devastatingly disappointed when the Park Jung Hee regime put a halt to the production. (Filmmaking was deemed insignificant and hence was written off the list of priority for post-war nation rebuilding in Korea.) Until his death in 1978, Ahn was never recognized in Korea, despite his lifetime dream of claiming the homeland of his famous father.6 The silent movie star Anna May Wong (1905–61) also looked to the homeland of her grandparents, mainland China, when she was emotionally depleted from play- ing Chinese villains who always died at the end of the film. She left Holly- wood vowing “never [to] act for the film again!” (S. Choi 137). However, Wong was surprised to find a hostile audience in war-torn China, with its mas- sive daily scenes of social pain and human suffering. She was criticized by a range of Chinese critics and audiences for portraying negative images of Chi- nese people for westerners and hence serving their big-power politics. And, in any case, she was seen as too American to be Chinese. It was in Europe that she was treated as a celebrity.7 The Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa (1890– 1973) also left Hollywood for his homeland but stayed only a few months. He was the first Asian male actor to play major roles in Hollywood. As a hand- some actor, he also commanded a salary that rivaled those of Douglas Fair- banks and Charlie Chaplin. But at the height of anti-Asian sentiment in America during the 1920s, Hayakawa seemed to have lost his patience with racism in Hollywood.8 Like Wong, Hayakawa found a certain acceptance and admiration in European countries, especially England and France. Unlike Philip Ahn, Anna May Wong, and Sessue Hayakawa, Soon-Tek Oh received a warm welcome back to his “homeland” in the 1990s. Racism in Hollywood may have been the same in the late twentieth century as it was in the 1920s, but Korea and its place in the rapidly shifting world order had dras- tically changed. Filmmaking, once thought of as irrelevant to the growth of the country, is now seen as the new frontier of Korea’s move towards becom- ing a leader in the world economy and culture.9 Filmmakers and actors are increasingly recognized as “artists” in the public discourse while becoming visibly prized economic commodities on the markets. Indeed, many describe the early twenty-first century as the “renaissance” of Korean film, constitutive and emblematic of Korea’s repositioning in an increasingly globalized world and world economy. Since the 1990s, Korean directors and actors have received numerous international film awards, and young, ambitious artists are leaving Korea to work in Hollywood. Concomitantly, the process of filmmak- ing in America has become increasingly transnational and global, and Asian film (especially Hong Kong film) has significantly influenced Hollywood.10 The Life and Career of Soon-Tek Oh 375 Thus, it should not be a surprise that Soon-Tek Oh, with his Hollywood expe- rience, would be in demand in Korea. theatrical legitimacy and unmarked identity: a sojourner becomes an actor In theatre history, the term “legitimate” means something quite specific. The term “legitimate theatre” emerged during the seventeenth century in Britain to identify the legal theatres in London permitted to present five-act plays. Also called Royal Theatres or Patent Theatres, the legitimate theatres in London promoted “high culture” and literariness of drama. In the nineteenth century, both in Britain and the United States, “legitimate drama” meant classic plays such as those by Shakespeare and Molière. And in New York City, “legitimate theatre” was established in the late nineteenth century to distinguish it from popular entertainments, such as vaudeville, films, burlesque, minstrel shows, and melodramas.11 Although, as Mark Hodin points out, the distinction be- tween the “highbrow” legitimate theatre and “lowbrow” entertainment was often blurred, the former was markedly “white,” while the latter was “ethnic.” Hodin argues that the promotion of “legitimate theatre” by N.Y.C.
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