Asian-American Experience - Essay Example

 Asian-American Experience Race has been always been a sensitive topic in any country and more so in America. Although this country claims to be multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, subtle forms of some kind of racial discrimination still exist even today. First, it was the blacks fighting for their rights in the Civil Rights Movement, then the people of Hispanic origins and later on other minorities like the Asian-Americans. The last group constitutes the fastest-growing minority in America and also the most cohesive among other racial ethnic minorities. Even its socio-economic profile is much closer to that of the non-Spanish white majority (Lott, 28). Although progress has been attained in many areas of American life, there is still some residual or latent form of discrimination practiced against them. Immigration laws have shifted dramatically over the last few years. Some governmental actions such as gathering census data can gain momentum to expand into other areas for which they are not well suited, in short, the potential for abuse. It is a fact that racial status and hence identity is largely defined by the white majority in this country and this puts a lot of pressure on the minorities to conform and be assimilated. This essay looks at two Asian-American experiences that are symbolic of ambivalent attitudes towards people of mixed race. The US had previously barred Chinese immigrants from being naturalized, owning land or having property rights (Naturalization Act of 1870). It became blatant with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and extended indefinitely in 1904 and was followed by the National Origins Act of 1924. The Flower Drum Song's character is the first generation to be recognized as legitimate American citizens (Cheng, 33). Of course, we also know that the Japanese-Americans likewise suffered incredibly during World War II. Discussion The two stories I had selected are Adrian Tomine's “Shortcomings” and the “Flower Drum Song” by Rodgers and Hammerstein. In the case of “Shortcomings”, the main part is played by Ben Tanaka (a Japanese-American) who is living in Berkeley, California and works at a movie theater. He considers himself more American than Japanese in his ways and he is always confounded and confused by his Japanese girlfriend named Miko Hayashi. He claims he could hardly understand Miko anymore by this statement: “Her name's Miko and, uh, she's Japanese, so you know ....” to hide his own feelings of sexual insecurity and misanthropy. Ben can be considered to be no better than an adolescent wrestling with his own internal demons about conflicts regarding his real identity (although he is now 30 years old). He soon fell into disgrace and disrepute when Miko leaves him temporarily ostensibly to take up an internship in New York and showed his preference for blonds by becoming entangled with two women. This preference is not actually sexually related but a manifestation of his cultural brainwashing or an unexpressed desire to assimilate and belong to the larger community instead of his own racial minority. Ben, perhaps due to some cultural innocence, was very much surprised upon learning that Miko had gone to New York not for the internship but to hook up with someone else - a photographer. This naiveté is indicative of the sometimes confusing world faced by all Americans of mixed ancestries. Ben Tanaka had staked his cultural identity by going out with the two women, hoping to somehow erase his ethnicity in the process and also find love. A failure to find love means he has not assimilated well yet. In a way, Ben goes through life almost by instinct, an automaton almost. Miko had defended her choice of new boyfriend by saying, “He's half-Jewish, half native American” as if it can make her decision somewhat palatable to Ben, an obvious attempt on her part to join a mainstream. She seems to think that this action will make her more acceptable to the majority of people. Ben belongs to a distinct Asian-American category, that of the Japanese-American that had a longer history of immigration to the country like the Jewish and Italian groups instead of the other Asian ethnic groups. Many in the Japanese-American communities are already fully assimilated today with third, fourth or even higher generations among them. But Ben is still struggling with his own personal cultural issues despite being born in America which only shows the difficulties faced by those who straddle two cultures in their lives (Min, 148). We can only sympathize that someone dug himself into a hole without knowing it. The storyline of the Flower Drum Song is one of excessive euphoria or what we might call today as irrational exuberance. The film was produced in the early heady years when the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed. The novel's transformation from book to play to film was extraordinary in itself and mirrored the significant reforms in US immigration laws. But on a deeper level, the story is a conflict between choosing cultural identity and citizenship that faced the main character Wang Ta. He had to choose one beauty (the totally Westernized Linda Low as a nightclub singer) and the traditional Mei Li whose subtle charms seem to tag at the cultural nostalgia faced by those living in foreign lands but cannot or will not sever the cultural ties that bind them to their original culture. The Flower Drum Song is actually a joyous affirmation of the Chinese part in the American cultural narrative after the period 1850 to 1950 when immigration laws were not only racially-biased but also gender-biased. Female immigrants had been barred from entering America during this period that resulted in significant “bachelor societies” in the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco. This was a positive attempt to paint a more benevolent image of Chinese in American society through the side plot of romantic and marital customs among the Asians and Americans but actually celebration of new citizenship with insistent jubilance. It seems like a new nation suddenly came into being with the invention of an Asian America. The beauty of Tomine's work is that serious readers are beginning to like comics even without consciously knowing about their choice to do so. He had managed to transform prose into graphics. The girl asks Ben, “Do you want to go to bed?” to which he lamely replies that, “I'm not really tired yet, I slept in today” that got an implied retort, “Well, we don't have to go to sleep right away.” This objectification characterizes Ben as an Oriental in the sense that he is becoming a jerk not only to himself but to those around him as well (Tomine, 45). Tomine had succeeded in stereotyping and typecasting Ben as someone who is a gook, one of the six faces of an Oriental (Chung, xiii), the other five being the pollutant, coolie, deviant, a yellow peril and the very model of a minority. On the other hand, both the Broadway and Hollywood versions managed to portray an Asian-American (a Chinese-American) as the face of the new citizens but one who is not even good to look at, an objectification of someone who is not exactly ugly but instead unsightly by the line in the song which goes, “Love, look away . . . from me.” The newly-arrived Wang family, refugees from communist China, struggled to adapt to their new homeland using old Chinese traditions in an entirely different ecological polity (Rodgers, 106). Conclusion Although Tomine is also effective in conveying his messages through his graphics, the more preferred mode of transmitting such cultural nuances would be either the theater or film as the combination of several experiences (sight and sound) helps to imprint several images in the memory of the audience. The first Broadway production employed some Westerners but the original Hollywood version cast was composed entirely of authentic Oriental actors and actresses to help bring the message more clearly that the film is about the Asian-Americans and even today, Flower Drum Song has entered common language as the one film singularly evocative of the Asian-American experience. The comic-novella will soon gain acceptance. Works Cited Cheng, Anne Anlin. The Melancholy of Race: Race and American Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press US, 2001. Chung, Hye Seung. Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006. Print. Lot, Juanita Tamayo. Asian-Americans: From Racial Category to Multiple Identities. Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, 1998. Print. Min, Pyong Gap. Asian-Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues. London, UK: Pine Forge Press, 2006. Print. Rodgers, Richard, Lee, C. Y. & Hwang, David Henry. Flower Drum Song. New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group, 2003. Print. Tomine, Adrian. Shortcomings. Montreal, Québec, Canada. Drawn and Quarterly Publications, 2009. Print. Read More