Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 79
Film and Asian American Literature
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cems for his daughter’s welfare and future.
Orientalism sustains itself by relying on the fabrication and prolongation
of cultural stereotypes and myths rather than facts. American literature and film
are replete with modem fairy tales in their portrayals of Caucasian male and Asian
female, savior and the saved relationships. Many Asian American writers have
challenged this myth. Lena St. Clair in The Joy Luck Club is Amerasian. In “The
Voice from the Wall,” she recollects her mother’s ambivalent feelings toward a
relationship with her father. Clifford St. Clair is a very complicated character. His
feelings for Ying-ying St. Clair are sincere and compassionate. But his ethnocen
tric and sometimes patronizing attitude is astonishing and overbearing. It makes
him insensitive to Ying-ying St. Clair’s yearnings for respect, understanding, and
appreciation. As Ying-ying St. Clair’s Lena recalls:
My mother never talked about her life in China, but my father said
he saved her from a terrible life there, some tragedy she could not
speak about. My father proudly named her in her immigration
papers: Betty St. Clair, crossing out her given name of Gu Yingying. And then he put down the wrong birthyear, 1916 instead of
1914. So, with the sweep of a pen, my mother lost her name and
became a Dragon instead of a Tiger. (107)
The “sweep” of Clifford St. Clair’s pen does not only have an effect on Gu Yingying’s name and birthyear, it also threatens to obliterate Ying-ying St. Clair’s past
and identity by cutting her off from her cultural roots. Ying-ying St. Clair’s insis
tence on using her Chinese first name, therefore, takes on a thematic significance.
Chinese American playwright David Henry Hwang also parodies the
“Madame Butterfly” myth in his Broadway hit, M. Butterfly. In the “Afterword”
attached to the published version of the play, Hwang discusses the inspiration for
his play:
The idea of doing a deconstructivist Madame Butterfly immedi
ately appealed to me. This, despite the fact that I didn’t even
know the plot of the opera! I knew Butterfly only as a cultural
stereotype; speaking of an Asian woman, we would sometimes
say, “She’s pulling a Butterfly,” which meant playing the submis
sive Oriental number. Yet, I felt convinced that the libretto would
include yet another lotus blossom pining away for a cruel Cauca
sian man, and dying for her love. (95)
M Butterfly dramatizes French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot’s love affair with a