Unpacking I-Hotel & Western Portrayals of Asians in Film

       Throughout class lectures, the effect of the tourist industry on local spots always seems flirted with when it comes to the likes of Japantown and Chinatown, perhaps because Imperial City and Reclaiming San Francisco have concise chapters on the subject. Yet these chapters are from the outside perspective of the historian and the author, figures who possess the ability to stand back, soak up decades of documents or knowledge, and synthesize it into a book chapter. With the change of pace to a literary character as the speaker who shatters the myths of these fabricated –Towns and customs, the perspective on the emotional experience of racism, which in turn causes internalization, is explored through Wittman in Tripmaster Monkey. His anxieties concerning a voice and place for himself as an Asian-American, more specifically a Chinese-American Beatnik theatre nerd, humanizes and expounds upon a struggle this humble blogger is all too familiar with: am I Asian or American enough and how do I balance it? Where do I get to vocalize it for myself? When can my creative energies flow with a balance between these modes of personal identity?

        These questions that reverberate continually within the novel and appears to conclude with a viable answer at the end not only portrays the tempestuous mind of Wittman, it harkens back to the city ordinated segregation that parasitically produces tourism. Though theatre is the means of escapism and mode of expression for Wittman, his physical ability to be a flâneur as a Chinese man is remarkable because it is a French term that Western writers tend to give themselves. His permeability calls to mind Karen Tei Yamashita’s I-Hotel, where within the final set of novellas, the third chapter titled “We Won’t Move” reflects on the outsider’s view of these –Towns and its people. This passage starkly contrasts Wittman’s physical movements, but supports his musings concerning his mental, emotional, and creative struggles as a figure in a liminal purgatory of sorts.

We grew up here, and we lived here: in Chinatown under colorful pagoda roofs and serenaded by flower drum songs down Grant Avenue; in Filipinotown in heroic Bataan bars and courted with sampaguita flowers along Kearny Street; in Japantown between jazz spots and cherry blossom festivals around Post and Buchanan. We lived in the centers of our city’s Oriental tourist attractions, our li’l towns described as “exotic Kodak moments” in Sunset and other travel magazines. We were always smiling for our customers, saying that if they visited our towns, it would be the next best thing to traveling to the real countries, even if some of us had never even been there. We supposed that joining our city’s tourist industry was part of our contribution, a survival feature that came out of the consequences of how we got here, but that’s a long story. And once we got here, well, that’s another.
      Maybe we all look alike, and maybe the laws lump us all together so we got to stick together, even though we’re really different and can’t understand each other and our folks back in the old countries hated each other’s guts. A good war will always get people to line up on one side or the other of the enemy lines, but those lines don’t last forever, especially if you can’t tell who is who without their uniforms. And when we all got stripped down to our bare bodies, it turned out we could be black, brown, red, white, or yellow. Now if we were going to have to work with the rules of a color wheel, well then maybe we should get to define what our color is. But creating that definition turned out to be a complicated and impossible task no matter how we circled around it or tried to confine it, and we argued long and hard about this until perhaps we’ve never really resolved it. Maybe there’s no resolution; the problem of the color wheel in America has a long and deep history, and just as we pass on our physical attributes to every new generation, we also pass on that long legacy of hatred and assumptions.
       But as we started to say, we lived here, many of us born and raised. While our towns’ borders were porous for outsiders, we ourselves were confined within- for example, a Chinatown bounded by California, Kearny, Broadway, and Powell. We didn’t cross those streets alone unless we wanted to get beat up. But then again, everything we thought we needed was contained within our towns- our foodstuffs and medications, our banking, our old country associations, our schools, our churches, our newspapers and means of communication, our extended families. Although outsiders may have though we operated large secret societies within our towns, there were very few secrets that everyone among us didn’t already know- our real and paper names, our real and assumed social positions, our political affiliations, our mistresses, our favorite and illegitimate children, our failed business negotiations, our good and bad habits. We were an open book written in a hundred dialects (593-4). 

 So, when it comes to the Western idealizations and representations of Asians, one gets either the leftovers of empire, rich with orientalist gazes and stereotypes, or one sees the seemingly picturesque fabrication. Thus the yearning to move physically outside of the boxes of the -Towns and outside of the popular culture's racist boxes is of great significance to Wittman's characterization and the author, Maxine Hong Kingston's commentary on confidently possessing an identity of the self. Of course, this is in spite of the blatantly racist constructs, both in the physical realm and consumable media.  

For example, here's a flurry of clips from various things Americans seem to thoroughly enjoy when it comes to pop culture. This will in no way be in chronological order, but it will showcase racial stereotypes of Asians that is deeply rooted in the mass media. Prepare to look upon all of these with brand new, yellow eyes.

BEST OF LONG DUCK (OR DUK) DONG FROM SIXTEEN CANDLES:

Every single stereotype and type casting trope that Wittman and Nancy converse about appears in this American classic. I mean, I too am-ah awk-ah-ward vir-geeen who no know dah American weh. 

Once upon a time my mother and I used to go to casting calls because she wanted me to follow my dreams to become a Broadway singer. So as a child, we stopped because I was told soooo many times that I could be in Roger and Hammerstein's THE KING AND I as a Siamese Child! Here's the whole musical turned movie:

Actually to be real specific here's the March of the Siamese Children. Polyamory is wild in the far East. 

Roger and Hammerstein didn't stop there with their yearn to include those mysterious Orientals by expanding into the Southeastern Asians with their lovely musical called South Pacific. They told my mom she could probably sing this song called Bali Ha'i because she, much like Juanita Hall, is short, round, brown, and proud with the ability to do the barely comprehensible to Westerners' unaccustomed ears Oriental accent. God forbid they call this Laos, Philippines, or the Marshall Islands- they simply refer to this setting wise as the Midway. Also they call this woman Bloody Mary because she's a witch doctor figure who sells cheap things to the navy men. 

Bloody Mary is the epitome of things that I hate about what Americans think we small minded Asians think because she actually pushes her daughter into marriage with one of the naval officers. It's really creepy it happens throughout the musical- the first time before a song lots of people like to cover called "Younger than Springtime," where Bloody Mary asks over and over "You like? You like? I leave you here with her yes!" Then the pair are "instantaneously attracted" to one another and have sex, with that dichotomy of the tiny Asian girl getting wrapped up in a big powerful American's arms. Mmm. Here's another snippet of the creepy in a song that's a precursor of that moment called "Happy Talk," where yes, mommy dearest is making sure that sex will lead to marriage so her daughter will have a better life. (These were not the preoccupations of my grandmother when my mom married my white Navy father. Shocking. Thanks Roger and Hammerstein for thinking that this is how the South Pacific women all thought of you guys.) 

In the end, this coupling mirrors that of Miss Saigon or Madame Butterfly in that SHOCKINGLY THE MAN HAS A WOMAN WAITING FOR HIM AT HOME. Thus he simply used this poor girl for the sex and such. Though the endings of these musicals are similar, they bring me to a slam poem that vocalizes the woes of typecasting Asians. This is from a slam poem competition where Rachel Rostad SLAYS THE STEREOTYPES WHEN IT COMES TO THE USE OF ASIAN WOMEN AND JUST ASIANS IN GENERAL.

This is from 2013 and it's still pretty awesome.

So in case one any of Wittman's and Nancy's bitching and moaning doesn't seem like an ongoing problem that still reverberates today, think again. When Halloween rolls around and some of your friends or family decide to be a geisha, ninja, hula girl, or any other racial caricature commodified into easy to fake morsels of culture, consider how it keeps the confining walls alive for Asians and other people of color.

(Lest we forget Disney's Mulan is a Chinese figure, which somehow had Japanese cherry blossoms as a main symbol in the movie...with Mongolians as snow zombies...and Filipino singer Lea Salonga as Mulan's main voice, which was closeted by the use of Christina Aguilera. OR HOW LILO AND STITCH IS NOT CONSIDERED THE FIRST DISNEY MOVIE WITH SISTERS AS THE MAIN SUBJECTS, BUT FROZEN IS. Aight mic drop. I'm done.)