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Popular Culture Review
American imagination” (Moy 83). While embodying the yellow peril,
there also exists a strong Techno-Orientalist linkage between
Asian/American bodies and advanced technology in the recent comic
book film adaptations of the X-Men.
For Jane Park, Techno-Orientalism is based upon the fear and
resentment of the West toward the East for its penchant for appropriating
and advancing Western technology and modernity. In the World War II
era. Imperial Japan was cast as the yellow peril intent on conquering the
world as part of the Axis of Evil. Interestingly, many comic-book heroes
were bom during this period (e.g.. Captain America) as a way of
vicariously fighting real-world evildoers. During the 1980s, the yellow
peril again took the form of the Japanese who now posed an economic
threat to the U.S. as the world saw the ascent of Japanese corporations in
the electronics and car industries and the media began “reactivating
World War II stereotypes of the Japanese as less human and more
machinelike” (Park 7). Japan became inextricably linked with technology
in the cultural imaginary and this legacy still persists and continues to be
exhibited in imagery today.
Through their possession of economic capital, the Japanese
appeared to be appropriating American culture while, through
their expert manipulation of technology, also questioning what it
meant to be human. The combination resulted in new stereotypes
of the Japanese as dangerous agents of a new economic and
technological yellow peril that threatened to destroy the
authenticity and legitimacy of American culture. (Park 8)
These stereotypes were subsequently transposed to any and all other East
Asian/American categories and manifested in techno-orientalist imagery
in popular culture. Generally speaking, at the cmx of the X-Men films is
the science of genetics and genetic mutation along with the advanced
technology for detecting and curing mutations of DNA. As such, it is no
surprise that there exists linkage between technology and certain bodies
in the films, but this association becomes particularly questionable and
stereotypical when Asian bodies are at stake.
The premise of the X-Men franchise has commonly been
interpreted (rather reductively) as being a metaphor for the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s, with mutants serving as minoritarian subjects
and their two respective opposing leaders. Professor X and Magneto,
acting as fictional representations of the two most prominent figures of