Pacific Rim Discourse, UCSC
LTWL 114 – Fall 2001
Professor Rob Wilson
11/30/01
It is only because we have a movement and
discourse of Asian Americans, Asian-American studies, and Pacific Rim
perspectives, that I can look at how Japanese Animation (better known as
“anime” to fans around the world) influences American culture. In general,
any popular media influences the people subjected to it. Japanese animation
influences American film and television, and in turn, influences society and
the people within. Specifically, it has come to my attention that Asian
women, who are typically stereotyped as “passive geisha hooker dragon lady
butterfly,” (Chin) are being represented in both Japanese and American media
as: strong, sexy, and aggressive - the ultimate male fantasy: a lady in the
dining room and a whore in the bedroom. It begins with female representation in
Japanese animation as a form of societal representation that crosses the
Pacific to America. It then in turn, is consumed by Americans and becomes a
hybridized popular culture. The Asian female is portrayed with ideological
assumptions in American media such as television and film. Some might see it
as a positive thing to have Asian actresses on the big screen, and it is –
but in the end, the thinly veiled stereotypes remain. After all is said and
done, the female, powerful and sexual, is further mysterious and confusing (but
perhaps more intriguing) for the man. Rarely has there been a regular
television show or film with a lead character of Asian heritage. Not only are
Asian Americans underrepresented, the little representation that Asians do
get are characteristically stereotypical. George Gerbner completed a
fairness and diversity in television report in 1998 and found that
Asian/Pacific characters are still less than one half of their proportion of
the population, with 2.6 percent of the cast in the nineties. In the past,
Asians have often been portrayed as cooks (Happy Days), loyal
assistants (Green Hornet, Star Trek), or heavily accented landlords (Suddenly
Susan). Why does Hollywood restrict its portrayals of Asians to a limited
range of clichéd characters? Today Hollywood promotes a couple of mainstream
Asian actresses – and they speak accent-free fluent Mandarin and English!
Asian actresses have crossed over into more contemporary and significant
roles but are still stereotyped in another way. One particular popular actress is
Michelle Yeoh. She is a female warrior that wields a sword in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Turning
Chinese moral and history upside down, the characters celebrate the birth of
a daughter, not son. Further, for
a woman to touch a sword is a dishonor to the sword, but that doesn’t stop
the women. The films cinematography and action is stunning,
applauded by audiences worldwide, and awarded by the academy, but what is
really the appeal of the film for American viewers? Ang Lee’s film was
released overseas years before being distributed in the states. The fighting
genre is and has been plentiful overseas, so how did this film make it big in
Hollywood? Perhaps the film is appreciated as more mainstream with the
headlining stars and director, but the theme of sword fighting and love story
twist is too generic. What is perhaps overlooked by most viewers is the fact
that the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, uncharacteristically, features
leading women that fight as well as, and often better, than the men. The female characters receive as much
screen time as the male counterparts. They are also young, beautiful,
graceful, and feminine. Another popular actress in film is Lucy
Liu; she was the first Asian-American female to host Saturday Night Live. Liu
was cast as one of the super trio of ass-kicking girls in the film, Charlie’s
Angels. The theme involves three women, detectives with a mysterious
boss, using martial arts and sex appeal to fight crime. In a better-known
role, Liu is a growling, ill-tempered lawyer, who remains mysterious and
sexual to her co-workers, in the television show, Ally McBeal. But
then she was cast in a stereotypical role as a dominatrix in the Mel Gibson
action film, Payback. Though Asian female representation is limited in
media, Lucy Liu manages to get herself into film and television roles.
However, her popularity and survival in Hollywood depends on her dominatrix roles - the sexy,
cock teasing, and seductive mistress stereotype, is still intact. Who knows if
America would welcome older and less seductive Asian females? I would assume
they’d receive the same constructed and limited role as older females do in
Hollywood – that is, seemingly evil and lacking sexiness. Without sexuality,
it’d be hard to argue that Asian females wouldn’t be casted. At the same time women are powerful and equals to their male
co-stars, their power is subject to their ability to remain highly
aggressive, domineering, and sexy. Why? In regards to gender roles, the
“western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the
Orient,” (Orientalism, 3) will exist as long as Asian women remain sexual
objects. This idea can be linked to the similar representation of female hero
roles in Japanese animation. First, we need to understand what anime is: While anime has its origins in Japanese
wood block printing as well as American animation, it posits technology as a
positive force in contemporary society and, therefore, much anime has a futuristic
quality. The works in the exhibition focus on slick, sci-fi concepts such as
futuristic technology, cyborgs and other humanoid robotics, aliens and
fantastic creatures, and post-nuclear apocalyptic landscapes. The exhibition
also explores social and economic themes such as gender roles, consumerism,
and pop culture. Anime is
the term used outside Japan to refer to Japanese animation but in Japan,
anime is the term for all animation. Anime is based on the style and content
of manga, which are Japanese graphic comic books. Anime is versatile in its
ability to construct social gender roles and contemporary values in the face
of an unknown future - it is a
reflection of society and culture. As anime is imported
across the Pacific into America, the foreign images and ideas make their way
into American society as well.
In animation, female protagonists are also young, hyper sexual, and
aggressive. They are often matched to hapless male character leads. It wasn’t
too long ago when anime featured females as weak and submissive to males, but
animation in the past decade has shifted to the super-female ideology. As
M. Butterfly’s, Hwang, tried to break through not only Gallimard's fantasies
about Chinese culture and feminine subservience, but also the viewer’s
preconceived ideas about the Orient, anime attempts to flip gender roles and
expectations. Why? Is it due to the
artist, the market, or the society? Japanese animation master, Hayao
Miyazaki, draws comparisons to Walt Disney, and is a pioneer in anime.
Perhaps the most prevalent theme that is consistent through his films is the
capability of young women to function as heroes without being stereotyped the
other way. Miyazaki has always given strong roles to women, both emotionally
and in terms of action and adventure, yet his female characters are given
room to be as “feminine’’ as they want to be. Miyazaki isn’t the only
animation master to promote the “super-female” idealogy in anime. As Eri
Izawa points out in her idea of “The Initially Unequal Relationship: Super
Women Who Bring the Male Up.” A
recent style of anime introduces the "Super Woman" notion, though
it could be said the earliest "super woman" was Oscar, of Rose of
Versailles, from 1974. Main character heroines such as Mikami (Ghost Sweeper Mikami),
Gally (Gunnm) and Natsuki (Natsuki Crisis) are of this type, stronger and
smarter than everyone else around them, including their love interests. And,
unlike some other anime, they are not ashamed to be better, and they fight
hard to stay sharp and competent. The male doesn't strive to change/lower the
woman, but instead strives to raise himself to her level. (It doesn't help
that sometimes the male is slightly unstable in some way --- usually a tad
dense, a bit lacking in self-discipline, a bit unreliable, or sometimes
overly sex-crazed). The trend is for the heroine to remain independent and
aloof until the male character gets enough of a "grip" to improve
himself until he is worthy of her. The end result of this type seems to be a
more equal partnership --- though it's notable that, at the very end of the
series, Gally loses her powers and Mikami may be far surpassed by her
apprentice. Make no mistake, these animated super women are powerful
and equals but they still reveal panties and up-skirt shots. They are beefed
up in their masculine mecha robot suits and fight evil with prowess and
confidence, as exemplified in the popular anime series, Bubblegum Crisis, but after unarming themselves,
they return to the sexy and beautiful school girls who stereotypically dream
of romance, staying at home, playing with dolls, and doing the laundry. The
idea is that women, no matter how physically powerful or independent they
are, are actually looking for someone whom they can depend on and who will
protect them. Does this dual-identity of women exist in Asian values and
cultures? It does seem to satisfy the, “lady in the dining room and a whore
in the bedroom” chauvinistic fantasy, but that’s what it is – a fantasy. The binary isn’t
limited to just Asian females; you see the binary in all types of media. On
one hand you see the barely legal pop-diva Britney Spears performing a
seductive and revealing sex-romp dance in her latest MTV video, “I’m a Slave
for You.” On the other hand, you see her on huge billboards and nationwide
magazine ads as the proposed idol of millions of teenage girls (as the
successful commercialized Pepsi girl). Look closely, and you’ll see the
exposed hot pink thong riding up her thigh. Britney Spears, not surprisingly,
happens to be a fantasy of many men, worldwide. According to Cynthia Enloe, “there exists
an American sexual gaze towards the exotic, malleable third-world female -
specifically, the colonial gaze displaced upon the female "other"
as hyper-sexualized, embodying female masochism, and a one-dimensional
willingness to seduce and please. The
propagation of sex tourism, and the prevalence of the military in ‘Oriental’
prostitution is a case in point, and gives credence to the underlying
lingering paradigm of the exotic female lacking the purity intrinsic to the
imperial Christian female.” Influences abound; stereotypes are a product of
prevailing myths propagated by various medias, films, and television. The stereotyping
of Asian women often is towards the extreme of the docile, subservient sexual
object, or dragon lady. Despite the general under representation of Asian
Americans, Asian female roles have at least received more exposure due to the
sexually charged stereotypes whereas Asian male roles are more confined due
to the lack of sexuality. Whatever way you take it, it is important to
remember while stereotypes can negatively label and affect a group, in real
life, you still have to define yourself individually. Bibliography Chin, Justin. Mongrel:
Essays, Diatribes, and Pranks. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Chun, Kimberly. “Princess
Mononoke” Comes to Life. 28 October 1999. <http://www.asianweek.com/1999_10_28/ae_mononoke.html>. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas,
Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics.
University of California Press: Berkeley, 1990. Gerbner, George. The
1998 Screen Actors Guild Report: Casting the American Scene. 1998
December. <http://www.sag.com/special/americanscene.html>. Hwang, David Henry. M.
Butterfly. Stanford, 1988. Izawa, Eri. Gender
and Gender Relations in Manga and Anime. 29 November 2001. <http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rei/manga-gender.html>. My Reality:
Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation. 28 November 2001. <http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/Exhibitions/Reality/reality.htm>. Said, Edward W. Orientalism.
New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland
Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1997. |
Wilson Tai, Copyright ã 2001