When it comes to women of East Asian heritage there are stereotypes aplenty to choose from.
There’s the cunning Dragon Lady, the severely strict Tiger Mom and the model minority math
whiz. But in this episode I want to focus on one of the most persistent and highly fetishized
of these stereotypes that women especially young and single still encounter today: the
submissive China doll or Japanese geisha, the so-called yellow fever’s object of affection,
emphasis on object.
Officially East Asai comprises eight distinct nations with a population of more than 1.5
billion. So it’s no wonder then that we assume that any woman with any connection
to that region whatsoever even if she was say born and raised in the United States must
meet the criteria of being a submissive China doll right? Being diminutive, coy and sexually
permissive at the end of the day? No? The overarching theme to this stereotype is ascribing
ultra-femininity to prop up masculinity. [Disc scratch]. While the submissive Asian girl
stereotype is a vast over-simplification of course, it represents a highly complex geo-political
history spanning almost 200 years. So how did it originate? First up, orientalism. Ever
since Marco Polo’s 13th century jaunt to China the West has lusted after what the East
has to offer. But of course the European and British forces didn’t want to just go over
and make friends. They wanted the power, they wanted the riches, they wanted the glory,
they wanted the women. This gave rise to what culture critic and theorist Edward Said referred
to as orientalist or the persistent exoticizing and feminization of images of the East in
order to by contrast masculinize and project the power of the West. This related exoticizing
of the local women became a major export in the wake of the mid-19th century Opium Wars
which opened up trade access to China. Around the same time relations between Japan, Britain
and other European nations began to defrost. Which leads us to stereotype clue number 2:
Not a fan, but a book. In the late 1800s French naval officer and part time novelist Pierre
Loti loved writing about all of his travels in the Middle East and South Asian seas and
eventually his trip to Japan. That was the site of his 1888 breakthrough hit “Madame
Chrysantheme", pardon my poor French pronunciation. The book is a fictional diary account of a
French naval officer’s sojourn to Nagasaki where he takes up a so-called temporary wife
named Chrysantheme and he marvels at her diminutive doll-like sex appeal and how all of her girl
friends in Nagasaki are super feminine and submissive and sexy too. The book is a sensation.
It’s reprinted over 200 times and scholars today consider it the seminal text for cementing
our modern Western idea that East Asian women are all so diminutive and hyper-feminine,
docile and essentially ripe for sexual exploitation. But Chrysantheme’s artistic legacy doesn’t
stop there. It would ultimately inspire Puccini’s famous opera “Madama Butterfly” which
is the most-performed opera in the United States and it’s all about this naval officer
Pinkerton and his temporary wife named Cio-Cio-san. And if those two names ring a bell then that
probably means you’re a Weezer fan. [Music] “Listening to Cio-Cio-san. Fall in love
all over again.” [Scream]. So far our ingredients are a hearty dose of imperialism, a massively
popular book that we don’t really know about anymore and an opera that a lot of people
went to see. Is that it? Oh no, we’ve got a few more wars to talk about. World War II,
the Korean and Vietnam wars fully revived this geo-political image of the hyper-masculinized
West led by Uncle Sam going to invade the feminized and by virtue weaker and cunning
East. Quite literally relationships consensual and not were being formed between American
GIs and local women. But unlike during the Opium Wars era this submissive Asian girls
stereotype was more of an import than an export with American GIs encountering local women
many of whom were part of military-centric sex trades. Pop culturally during this time
Madame Chrysantheme busts out of her cocoon yet again with very familiar themes popping
up on screen only this time with the white guy playing a little bit more of patriotic
hero in productions like “South Pacific”, “The World of Suzie Wong”, and “Miss
Saigon”. [Disc scratch]. And spoiler alert one thing Chrysantheme, Madama Butterfly and
Miss Saigon is that when the romance with the white dude fails, they kill themselves.
One bit of good news is that recently Hollywood has done a noticeably better job of portraying
Asian women in less stereotypical and more nuanced roles and while that’s certainly
cause to celebrate we have to remember that actually dismantling the stereotype which
I have a feeling a lot of viewers have encountered in one way or another involves dismantling
an almost 200 year old assembly line that has consistently collapsed this diverse group
of women into these porcelain silent figurines that are meant to be ogled rather than truly
known.