Yellow Skin, White Masks Mina Yang
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Yellow Skin, White Masks Mina Yang Abstract: Ethnic studies scholars have long bemoaned the near absence of Asians on the big and small screens and popular music charts in the United States, rendering them as outsiders vis-à-vis the American public sphere. In the last few years, however, Asians have sprung up on shows like “Glee” and “America’s Best Dance Crew” in disproportionately large numbers, challenging entrenched stereotypes and creating new audiovisual associations with Asianness. This essay considers how emerging Asian American hip- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/24/1831582/daed_a_00232.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 hop dancers and musicians negotiate their self-representation in different contexts and what their strate- gies reveal about the postmillennial Asian youth’s relationship to American and transpaci½c culture and the outer limits of American music. Music, as purveyed by the mgm Grand Holly- wood Theater and Monte Carlo Resort & Casino in the heart of Las Vegas–the entertainment mecca of the United States–is supposedly the very inspi- ration for life itself. Featuring JabbaWockeeZ, the winning hip-hop group from the ½rst season of the televised dance competition America’s Best Dance Crew (ABDC), MÜS.I.C. (read both as “music” and as “muse I see”) is comprised of fanciful episodes from a life lived creatively. The show featured synchronized dancing, comic miming, athletic feats, extravagant lighting effects, and glittery costumes, held together by a thumping soundtrack made up of familiar tunes, old and new. The JabbaWockeeZ members, who spe- cialize in popping and b-boying, brought dance front MINA YANG is an Assistant Pro- and center in this musical experience, citing classic fessor of Musicology at the Univer- dance moments from the history of American pop- sity of Southern California. Her ular music, from Gene Kelly’s elegant footwork in publications include California Po- Singin’ in the Rain, to James Brown’s struts and Michael lyphony: Ethnic Voices, Musical Cross- Jackson’s moonwalk, to the more recent hip gyrations roads (2008) as well as articles in of Beyoncé’s “Single Girls” and the “Party Rock” such journals as Asian Music, Popular shuffle courtesy of lmfao. Music and Society, and the Black Music Research Journal. She is working on From the beginning to the end of the show, one a book about classical music and element remained constant: the blank white masks globalization at the turn of the that the dancers wore and that have become Jabba- twenty-½rst century. WockeeZ’s signature look. Used as props and as part © 2013 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00232 24 of the stage set, the masks signify mystery Or rather, is this another means of facili- Mina Yang in one moment and represent the every- tating neo-minstrelsy, of allowing a more man in the next. In addition to the masks, privileged group to appropriate black music the dancers’ costumes cloaked every inch and dance in an act of “love and theft,” a of their bodies, covering hair, skin, hands, misguided attempt to tap into the hipness and any other features that would distin- long associated with African American cul- guish one dancer from another (see Fig- ture without having to be directly account- ure 1). Unless one had some acquaintance able for crimes committed?3 The late polit- with JabbaWockeeZ from before the show, ical scientist Michael Rogin, in his study it would have been nearly impossible to of Jewish entertainers, suggested yet know that this crew, embodying and cel- another model to explain the appeal of ebrating the history of American popular minstrelsy’s racial cross-dressing, and it Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/24/1831582/daed_a_00232.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 music in this hyper-commercial venue, might also apply to JabbaWockeeZ: that is in fact made up predominantly of Asian through their participation in blackface American men. minstrelsy, a racialized culture of black and Masks are deployed in contemporary white working-class Americans, immi- performances for an array of reasons. grant Jews (or Asians, in this case) could They could represent a throwback to older emerge as full-fledged Americans.4 dramatic traditions like the Japanese Noh As signi½cant as these contributions and ancient Greek pantomime or could have been to understanding American race refer to rituals from masquerade cere- relations, they do not go beyond the par- monies that take place in various parts of adigmatic binary racial scheme of black the world. In the case of JabbaWockeeZ, and white, and thus their concepts of racial however, the fact that the masks have passing/crossing/co-opting/emulating something to do with race is con½rmed fall short of adequately explaining the dy- by the dancers’ own explanations. For ex- namics at work for these Asian American ample, one article about the popular dance b-boys. To better grasp the multiracial group reported that “Jabbawockeez in- and polycultural complexities of the late cludes dancers of various ethnic back- twentieth and early twenty-½rst centuries, grounds, including Vietnamese, Filipino, other cultural theorists situate the United Korean, and African-American. ‘But that’s States within larger global forces, keeping the beauty of the mask,’ [group member] in view the fluid interplay of economic, Nguyen says. ‘When we put it on, it’s not social, and cultural flows across racial about who we are or where we came from. and national boundaries. For example, We’re all one.’” In another interview, sociologist George Lipsitz, following lit- JabbaWockeeZ dancer Eddie Gutierrez erary scholar Gayatri Spivak, sees in the put it even more bluntly: “The idea of the cultural exchanges between communities mask is to remove all ethnic and social of color a mode of “strategic anti-essen- barriers when we perform.”1 tialism,” whereby youths of one group tem- What does it mean to “remove all eth- porarily assume the cultural practices of nic and social barriers” through masking? another group in order to express aspects Does the removal of these barriers achieve of themselves that would otherwise not for the group a state of racelessness, which be comprehended or acknowledged by the in the U.S. sociopolitical context is equiv- mainstream. By practicing black dance, alent to whiteness, making the Jabba- Asian American artists highlight the WockeeZ mask a Fanonian “white mask” “families of resemblance” that unite mi- that hides from view the t(a)int of color?2 nority communities in the United States, 142 (4) Fall 2013 25 Yellow Skin, Figure 1 White Masks JabbaWockeeZ Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/24/1831582/daed_a_00232.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 From JabbaWockeeZ, “Devastating Stereo” music video, jbkwz Records (2011). even as mainstream institutions continue backdrop of persistent structural racism to promulgate policies of “divide and in the United States, some African Amer- rule.”5 icans have expressed their resentment of The last decade has seen the publica- Asian Americans “stealing” their musical tion of several scholarly volumes devoted culture, and black rappers are just as guilty to the complexities of Afro-Asian relations. of circulating and perpetuating Oriental- In one of the most recent of these, Afro- ist ideas and images as are those in posi- Asian Encounters, writers who have con- tions of power.6 In a book-length study of tributed signi½cantly to this scholarship South Asian Americans in hip-hop, Nitasha –Vijay Prashad, Gary Okihiro, and Fred Tamar Sharma argues that her subjects are Ho, among others–remind readers of the more likely than not to be knowledgeable historic connections between the for- about the historical allegiances between merly colonized peoples of Asia and colonized peoples and to identify person- Africa and the cultural overlaps shared by ally with the counter-hegemonic rhetoric Asian and African Americans in areas like of politically conscious rappers, especially martial arts and music, even while they as South Asian Americans have come under recount past incidents of racial tensions intensi½ed racial scrutiny in the post-9/11 between the two minority groups. Shining political climate.7 a spotlight on hip-hop in particular, Oliver There are perhaps elements of all these Wang and Deborah Elizabeth Whaley arguments, especially at the level of the caution against romanticizing the relation- individual actors, but as a whole, Jabba- ship between the two groups: against the WockeeZ’s MÜS.I.C. emblematizes what 26 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Karen Shimakawa has identi½ed as the Asian Americans have participated in the Mina Yang liminal positionality of Asian Americans larger hip-hop culture from its early days, “between the poles of abject visibility/ yet their contributions often go unrecog- stereotype/foreigner and invisibility/ nized, especially in rap, which is by far assimilation (to whiteness).”8 Behind the the most lucrative and visible element of white masks, the members of Jabba- hip-hop.10 WockeeZ dance within the constraints Representing a smaller subculture of imposed upon Asian American artists a½cionados who prize skill over commer- generally, between the poles of whiteness cial viability, Asian deejays like the Filipino and blackness, presence and lack, visibil- American dj Qbert, Mix Master Mike, ity and invisibility, subject and object. As and dj Apollo have dominated interna- part of the fastest