For Asian Americans like myself who've grown up hungering for images of other
Asians in mainstream media, Liu is a potent figure, the Farrah Fawcett of
Asian-American pop culture. Yet it is also Asian Americans who voice the most
damning criticisms of her.
In a Village Voice article titled "The Ling Thing," New York writer Chisun Lee
argues that "Ling frequently brings to mind the dragon lady, the geisha, and
the inscrutable Oriental, often in whiplash-inducing rotation." She questions
if Hollywood, as well as the general public, "is capable of viewing the
nation's leading Asian-American actress as more than the fetishized sex symbol
she plays on TV."
Her views are supported by Darrell Y. Hamamoto, associate professor of
Asian-American Studies at University of California, Davis, who says that Ling
is "a neo-Orientalist masturbatory fantasy figure concocted by a white man
whose job it is to satisfy the blocked needs of other white men..."
Such reductive assessments seem unfair, considering that all of the characters
in Ally McBeal were hypersexual. The fictional law firm, as created by
writer-producer David E. Kelley, included three couples who get embroiled in
more discussions about spanking and sex in cars than about litigation. One
might wonder if it is not Ling's cheesecake appeal that rankles some Asians,
but that she is yet another Asian woman coupled with a white man. There isn't
an attractive Asian male character on the show for Ling to date. Instead, she
dates a chauvinistic white lawyer named Richard Fish (Greg Germann).
Though she may be a farcical caricature, Ling is a stinging reflection of what
is going on in the real world: Approximately half of Asian-American women date
and marry outside the race. And they're often accused of selling out.
In the cover story of the June/July issue of aMagazine (an Asian-American
publication), Liu denies that her character's relationship with a white man
perpetuates stereotypes of Asian women as sensual or exotic: "It's been a
battle of gender and has never had anything to do with racism or where somebody
originates from. It hasn't been like I've pinned him to the wall with
chopsticks or anything like that. It's really more about a mental battle than
anything."
Asian Woman, White Man: A Short Dating History
The combination is common, but not always welcome. In 1987, when I was a
college freshman in upstate New York, I dated Richard, a white, long-haired
architecture major. The following year, after Richard and I had broken up, I
became acquainted with Han, a Korean-American pre-med student whose social
circle was comprised mostly of other Asian Americans.
At one point, he told me that when he used to see me with "the white hippie,"
he wanted "to slap some sense into me." He said that his Asian friends
considered me a snob who preferred to date white boys. While their assumption
was false, it signaled a serious gender gap within the Asian-American
community. If interracial dating and marriage is a sign of cultural
assimilation, then Asian-American women were being accepted into white
middle-class society at a far higher rate than the men. It also meant that many
Asian-American men were feeling rejected by those who should be their closest
allies.
In 1995, while working for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, I had
dinner with a group of indie filmmakers visiting from all over the country.
There were six men and two women, all of whom were in their 20s or early 30s.
The conversation revolved around Asian women dating white men. Many of the
filmmakers expressed distaste for mixed-race couples. But their bias was very
gender-specific: They were tired of seeing Asian women with white men, and
suspected that many of the women - especially those who were recent immigrants
- were being taken advantage of.
While there may be some truth to their suspicions, I was surprised; I would
have thought that these filmmakers, who had defied so many Asian stereotypes
and expectations, would be more hip to interracial dating. I did not reveal
that I was dating Larry, a white guy.
Now I am dating Albert, a Chinese-American. I introduce him freely to Asian
acquaintances. Having him at my side gives me the semblance of a politically
correct Asian-American female. My last two brief relationships were also with
Asian men - a Filipino- and a Korean-American. I am clearly down with my race.
Albert tells me that he has several Asian-American female friends who are
reluctant to date Asian men. His roommate, Susan, a Chinese-American, bluntly
says that she is not attracted to Asian men. I find this appalling - yet I know
where she's coming from, because I felt that way when I was younger. While I
dated a few Asian-American boys in high school and college, I honestly felt
better standing next to a Caucasian guy - it meant that I had a better chance
of being perceived as an American.
Speak for Yourself
Everyone has a different story; obviously, no one article can represent the
views of an entire population. But more often than not, individualism is a
luxury for minorities. Some Asian Americans will find my story familiar, others
will find it foreign, even offensive.
I grew up in communities where Asians were rare. I spent my childhood in
Mississippi, Texas, and later, in New York. When I entered junior high school
in Long Island, there was only one other Asian girl in the entire 300-plus
class of seventh-graders. No doubt being a conspicuous minority during my youth
has had tremendous influence on my views. Like other teenagers, I was plagued
with insecurities, but mine were primarily race-based: For years, I was
convinced I was ugly simply because I wasn't white. Negative images of Asians
on TV and film reinforced my sense of being an outcast.
Many Asian Americans who grew up in the '80s will speak of watching Sixteen
Candles (1984) as a traumatic experience. The film featured a greasy-haired
Chinese exchange student named Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe) who chased after
a horrified Molly Ringwald. (The crashing of a gong heralded his on-screen
appearances, reminding the viewer of his foreignness.) I was 14 and at a video
party with a bunch of white friends. While everyone else laughed at the
ridiculous figure, I wondered if Molly Ringwald rode off with a studly
boyfriend in a Porsche, was someone like me supposed to be paired off with a
guy like Long Duk? Was I the living counterpart to this hideous creature? I
sunk into my chair and faked a smile at the sight of the poor guy.
Sixteen years later, there's another similarly crude portrait of an Asian man
on the Internet. Despite this summer's protests from Asian-American civil
rights groups, Icebox.com continues to feature its insulting animated series
Mr. Wong, starring a sickly, yellow-faced butler with buck teeth. Wong's
unfunny jokes revolve around his not being able to pronounce the letters l and
r properly.
Yellow is the New Black
Aside from the Connie Chungs and Lori Matsukawas of urban network news
broadcasts, there are virtually no Asians in the media, and when there are,
they're usually uncool. To put it bluntly, they're Chinks thrown in for comic
effect for a non-Asian audience. In one episode of HBO's Sex and the City, an
Asian woman with a heavy, fake accent appeared as a sadistic maid. It was the
only time an Asian was cast on the show, which is set in multiracial Manhattan.
Then in a recent episode of ABC's Dharma & Greg, an Asian woman was cast as
a mail-order bride. The portrait was so insensitive that it recalled the kind
of treatment that blacks received in the media several decades ago. As for
Asian men in the media, they need to know karate and fight off a dozen thugs to
get any respect. Yet even Jackie Chan played a bumbling, inept Japanese in
Cannonball Run (1981), his first role in an American production. Talk about
taking a step down on new territory.
Dan Wu, publisher of a 'zine titled Oriental Whatever thinks it's a matter of
representation versus self-representation. How Asian-American is a character
like Ling if she is being penned by a white writer? "On the one hand, she's
watchable and interesting. On the other, she's playing up to some combination
of the dragon lady/lotus blossom," Wu says.
To purge our popular media of negative stereotypes or anything else that is
potentially offensive would leave our entertainment industries about as
exciting as a PTA meeting. But film and television in America are largely a
celebration of the average white person, very often of the average white guy
(who ends up with a long-legged beauty). Why can't producers trust audiences to
see themselves similarly through an Asian character? Why isn't there an Asian
member on a show like Friends? Why aren't Asian actors ever cast in real,
full-on romantic leads? Jet Li, who played a kung-fu knight in shining armor,
never even kissed his Juliet in Romeo Must Die (2000). Neither did the suave
Chow Yun-Fat in Anna and the King (1999) or The Replacement Killers (1998).
Connie So, a lecturer of Asian-American studies at University of Washington,
points out that while Asian superstars like Li and Chow are gaining more
American fans, Asian-American men are still invisible in the media. "The ones
who do make it are mixed-race, like Russell Wong and Keanu Reeves, who doesn't
even play Asian-American [roles]."
Frustrated by Hollywood's brand of racism, many Asian Americans are taking
things into their own hands. Seattle filmmaker Jay Koh, who has directed three
independent films about Korean Americans, will soon be launching igooTV.com, a
Web site that will be streaming feature programs for and by Asian Americans.
"Power brokers of white Hollywood and network TV show only a tiny pinch of what
Asian Americans are really like. They obviously only see nerdy techies or
kung-fu masters in their circles," Koh says.
"I don't want a bunch of middle-aged white guys writing dialogue and stories
about an Asian-American girl," continues Koh. "I want igooTV shows to be
authentic, I want Asian Americans who are bursting to pour their stories onto
the screen."
Professor Hamamoto of UC Davis observes, "Black cinema has exploded in the past
10 years. It's our turn now." To that end, he's putting together an
all-Asian-American television network, called YENTV, or Yellow Entertainment
Network Television, which he expects to launch next year. "There is already a
huge library of Asian-American programming that [YENTV] will tap into. This
will be complemented by news/information and original drama shows," says
Hamamoto.
Defending Our Brothers
Inevitably, many Asian Americans have internalized the media's racist images.
Professor So's UW classes often prompts deeply personal confessions from
students. "Some of my male students say that they don't get as many girls. They
[assume] the girls only like white men. I ask them, 'Do you even ask them out?'
And they say, 'No.' Then I say, 'Why not? Because I bet you not all women are
just into white men, including white women and black women.' "
But So herself is married to a white man and is quick to defend her choice,
pointing out that she met her husband when attending Princeton University,
where 90 percent of the student body was white. "You don't marry someone just
because of their ethnicity," she says. "You marry for other [reasons].. ..It
just so happens that my husband and I attended two schools together.. ..and we
were both English majors in undergrad, and we had other things in common."
If Asian men have been emasculated in our society, some Asian women, like
Professor So, are making conscious efforts to revamp their public image. Cyn, a
Taiwanese-American university administrator in San Diego, has created a site
called Goldencandy.com, featuring pictures of single Asian-American men. Cyn
writes provocatively on the site, "We like to look at your ass. Yes, we check
out your legs. We admire your shoulders, we take in your arms - we find you
fuckable."
Cyn explains that she developed the site in response to the dearth of sexy
images of Asian men on the Web. "I couldn't find even one amateur photo of a
naked Asian man. I searched for it, and it was all targeted toward the gay
population. Why can't women have eye candy too?"
But there may also be a more personal reason for creating Goldencandy. Cyn is
married to a Caucasian man and has been "labeled a sell-out" by some
Asian-American acquaintances. "I never claimed to only like white men, though,"
she says. "I've had plenty of crushes on Asian-American men."
How does Cyn's husband feel about the site? "He wasn't pleased, but he
supported me. He knows it's easier and safer to allow me my whims than to fight
about it," she says.
Asian Men, White Women
Asian men are the topic du jour. In February, Newsweek reporter Esther Pan
wrote an article titled "Why Asian Guys Are on a Roll." The story discusses how
actors like Jet Li, Rick Yune, and Chow Yun-Fat are showing that Asian stars
can be objects of lust, while men like Jerry Yang of Yahoo! are changing the
image of Asian males as "son of a laborer or laundryman" to "future Internet
millionaire." It cites the increasing numbers of Asian men marrying outside the
race. "Ten years ago, an Asian man dating a white, Hispanic, or black woman
would have been a rare event... [but now, according to a study of California
marriage licenses] Asian-American men born in the United States are far more
likely to marry women who are white (18.9 percent), or other Asian ethnicity
(22.7 percent), or another racial minority (6 percent)."
In one ridiculous moment that is to be remembered in many a follow-up story, an
interviewee jokes that Asian men are the next "trophy boyfriends." His
Caucasian wife agrees: "It's almost like Asian boyfriends are the fashion
accessory of the moment."
The article was circulated heavily on the Internet among Asian Americans. I
received a copy from the local Korean American Professionals Society mailing
list. My friend Steve received one from an Asian-American female friend, who
prefaced the attachment with, "To all my Asian brothers out there: We knew it
all along."
Then in May came a package on Asian men in the Sunday Seattle Times, featuring
a satirical essay by David Nakamura, who was so overjoyed by the new popularity
of Asian men that he "could have kissed (his) pocket protector." Alongside
Nakamura's piece is an article by Sharon Pian Chan, who says that Asian men
"are the hottest things since sizzling rice." Both stories incite a flurry of
letters from readers who talk about how wonderful and sexy Asian men are.
Wait a minute - what just happened here? Asian women have long been accused of
whoring themselves to white men, but now, we're practically told, "Hooray,
Asian men are sleeping with white women." When Asian women outmarry, it's
betrayal; when Asian men do it, it's social progress. While the articles may
indeed indicate a more accepting society, it is disturbing that this new
popularity of Asian men amongst white women is seen as validation of their
appeal. Some of the published comments in response to the Times article sound
like racist jokes. One white woman married to an Asian man writes, "Asian men
make love even better than they make television sets."
If Asian-American guys were repulsed by lines like "Me so horny," uttered by a
Vietnamese woman in Full Metal Jacket (1987), they are now seeing themselves
portrayed in a similarly degrading manner.
Steven Haruch, a Korean-American adoptee and a recent UW MFA graduate in
creative writing, has dated both Asian and non-Asian women. Of the Newsweek and
Seattle Times stories, he says, "I felt more marginalized after reading those
articles. It was like they were saying, 'Hey, look, you guys can feel better
about yourselves now.' If I read something like that about another group, I'd
feel pity for them. And I don't want to feel pity for my own sexuality."
Tommy Kim, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota who teaches a
class on the sexualization of race, concurs. "A million and two things pissed
me off about [the article in] Newsweek. On a superficial level was simply the
fact they chose a really dorky-looking guy [for the photo]. If they're going to
write about the fetishizing of Asian men, couldn't they have found someone a
little more worthy of fetishization? More substantively, I don't like the way
the article reified stereotypes. It accepts as truth that Asian men are dorks,
but that dorkdom has now become financially lucrative..."
"The fact that Asian-American men are seen as nerds hasn't changed, only the
appeal of nerds has," Kim continues. "Nerds are now rich in this dot-com world,
and money has always been sexy."
Professor So observes, "It's kind of pathetic that Asian-American men have to
say they're good-looking. Of course they're good-looking. Like any men. There
are subjectively good-looking men and not so good-looking men... I think it's
sad that Asians have to cry out ... but it tells you how much [racism] is
ingrained, because of what's happened historically to Asian Americans in the
US."
Can You Separate Sex from Race?
Because Asian Americans have been misrepresented for so long, we are especially
attentive to the few images of us that do exist. Perhaps in some cases we are
overzealous in our critiques. Lucy Liu is just one of many successful
Asian-American women who have polarized the community; novelist Amy Tan has
also been accused of pandering to Orientalist desires. Many Asian-American
literary scholars feel that Tan's best-selling The Joy Luck Club exoticizes the
Chinese culture and portrays Chinese men as oppressors and white men as
saviors.
When the book was made into a movie, many Asian men were upset by the idea of
white men attracted to the mostly female cast. Some called it The Joy Fuck
Club, disregarding the film's positive impact on viewers who may not have been
previously aware of San Francisco's multigenerational Chinese-American
community.
Professor Hamamoto feels that Ling's exaggerated sexuality is an extension of
the intercontinental Asian sex trade. In an e-mail, he writes, "Like I was
telling my class.. ..the White Man's lust for the Yella woman stems from his
imperial presence beginning in the Philippines, to occupied Japan.. ..to
Korea.. ..to Vietnam, to Thailand... Linked to this imperial presence is the
system of military prostitution that has migrated overseas to the US in the
form of 'Oriental' massage parlors, dating services, and marriage brokerages. I
understand the character 'Ling' played by Lucy Liu in this larger context. For
Liu or any other Yella woman to feel flattered that the White Man fetishizes
her simply as an un-raced, ahistorical, universalized 'human being' is simply
deluded."
History can't be altered, but continuing to judge Asian-American women in light
of an ugly past is dangerous. For one thing, it makes Asian women out to be
victims. But by making the most of her stereotyped role on Ally McBeal, Liu has
become a more successful and powerful actress than her white co-stars. As for
ordinary Asian-American women who find themselves under a social spotlight
whenever we choose to date a non-Asian man, our issues are not necessarily
about racial inequality and public perception. Just what makes Asian men think
that they treat Asian women any better? It would be a much simpler world if
things were black and white (and yellow), but in reality, sexism and racism
aren't traits confined to white male TV producers.
Soyon Im is a staff writer for the Seattle Weekly
