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Daughter of the Dragon, AAST355: Asian American Studies, Toll of the Sea -…
Daughter of the Dragon
Movie Poster
Background Information
AAST355: Asian American Studies
Films
All Orientals Look the Same
The male voice is unchanging in inflection, however it becomes louder over the course of the film. It may represent an unchanging societal response to the blatantly different groups housed under the term "Asian American."
Cultural Norms
In the short film, the male voice makes repeated use of the label "oriental", whereas the female voice uses specific identifiers.
Umbrella Terms
Readings
Film
Asian American studies have long focused on the cultural impact of films:
"Film is recognized as a significant institution for establishing and maintaining a racial order within the American nation and empire.
"The demand for political and 'positive' representations has been understood to be a manifestation of cultural nationalism and has been the site of feminist, queer, and post-colonial critique."
Influence of Film on Culture
Asian American filmmaking as an avenue for self-representation and "modality of cultural citizenship."
"Hence, assertions of legibility and belonging within film and media are not only fundamental to claims and belonging, but film and media also marks and determines those who deserve access to citizenship."
Cultural Citizenship
The Other Question - Stereotype, Discrimination, and the Discourse in Colonialism
Romance and the "Yellow Peril"
"Hollywood's Asia promises adventure and forbidden pleasures"
Hollywood's Asia
White Savior
Imperialism
"Any radical deviation from the mainstream is unlikely to be voiced openly..."
Silence
"Hollywood's romance with Asia."
Romanticization/Sexualization of Asian American culture
Few critical examinations of the big-screen presentation of Asian Americans, "With the exception of Eugene Franklin Wong's
On Visual Media Racism
and Dorothy B. Jones's *The Portrayal of China and India on the American Screen."
"Hollywood favors romance involving white males and Asian females, while Asian males are often depicted as sexually available to the white hero."
"Asian females are often depicted as sexually available to the white hero."
The Red Lantern
, also produced in 1919, features the love of an illegitimate Eurasian woman (Alla) Nazimova) and an American missionary."
"Hollywood returns to miscegenation narratives because they sell."
"[The Yellow Peril] combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East."
Yellow Peril
Historical Roots
"The rape of the white woman becomes a metaphor for the threats posed to Western culture as well as a rationalization for Euroamerican imperial ventures in Asia."
"The Oriental rape of the white woman signified a spiritual damnation for the woman, and at the larger level, white society."
These Hollywood narratives are part of what Edward W. Said has described in
Orientalism
as 'a Western style for dominating, manufacturing, and having authority over the Orient."
"Hollywood used Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders as signifiers of racial otherness to avoid the far more immediate racial tensions between blacks and whites or the ambivalent mixture of guilt and enduring hatred toward Native American and Hispanics."
"As slavery ended and immigration to the United States increased in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the yellow peril became a flood of cheap labor threatening to diminish the earning power of white European immigrants."
In Search of Asian American Citizenship
"The label 'Asian' is not used in Asia—it is only used in the West."
"Ideally, the 'Asian American' banner connotes solidarity while denoting diversity."
Solidarity
'Asian American' as a designation for people who are seen as "outsiders".
"Mainstream media critics also lump Asian American media with the product from Asia...as examples of 'Asian chic.'"
"Anything Asian, anything that comes from Asia, is considered Asian American film: critics say it's a boon for Asian American filmmakers."
Film as a Representation of Culture
"A sense of 'community' pervades much Asian American media from the same period."
"[Asian American] has meaning because it was coined by Asians, as opposed to the term 'Oriental'."
Toll of the Sea
