I've been reading National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage by Karen Shimakawa this week. In it, she discusses the role of Asian Americans in drama and how they are represented as either intractable foreigners or noble converts to the American way. Her point being that Asians were not allowed to have their own culture and to have that culture be valuable. Either they maintained their cultural roots and were perpetual outsiders or they gave up their own traditions in favor of assimilation. The implications her arguments make are that white Americans cannot suffer independence of being. Now, I can argue against her claims all I want, but her proof is there in the examples she provides of theatrical performances where this type of stereotyping is painfully prevalent. What's worse is that this type of abjection is not reserved solely for Asian Americans. It is everywhere. Latino, African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern. What happened to "give me your tired, poor and huddled masses"? When did American's become such terrible people?
I can't help but think back to Sesame Street. Those monsters were some of my best friends. They taught me to count, spell, write and to be a kind person. To include others and share my toys. To listen to my parents and teachers. I can still spell and count. I know the colors and that C is for cookie. I even still listen to my parents. So why did I (the universal I) stop being inclusive? At what point between stopping watching Sesame Street did we unlearn that lesson? Did we really unlearn it? If that's the case, then human nature is exclusionary and tribal. Or did someone teach it to us? In that case, why didn't some other adult stand up and protest that lesson plan?
These questions concern me. It seems that I am part of a society that is oppressive, hateful and ignorant. These are some of the things that I cannot stand in others, and yet I must now accept it in myself because I choose to remain part of this society? I have always been plagued with this concern over being helpless, incapable of action and ultimately ineffectual. I can dedicate my life to righting the wrongs that Shimakawa addresses, but what good will it do in the grand scheme of things? Probably nothing. It's quite a disheartening prospect, being ineffective.
Karen Shimakawa - National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage
ReplyDelete"...in each case abjection evolves as a process of exclusion specific to the "threat of contamination" posed by a given nonnormative group/identity formation - theatre artists have evolved responses specific to the particular brand(s) of abjection of concern to each of them." (161)
"Chinaman, then, marks a process of abjection, an attempt to circumscribe and radically differentiate something that, although deemed repulsively other is, paradoxically, at some fundamental level, an undifferentiable part of the whole." (2)
One of the most remarkable aspects of American Cultural studies is that in order to attempt to maintain any cohesive identity, the dominant identity requires the presence of the subaltern to reify its own existence. This subaltern other, is a necessary component in the creation of the privileged class - one requires the existence of the other. As we move more fully into the 21st century I wonder if this condition is abating. Does new technology break down these proscribed caste systems, or, because of something called "the digital divide" are we creating new groups of subaltern others? What are the images today relative to the past two hundred years? When we think of "American" do we think of a skin tone? Is it a different skin tone than we would have considered in 1950. Probably so, much how much so. Additionally, as certain groups become more visible in certain areas, are other groups still erased, or circumscribed to stereotypical arenas?
This is a difficult question because when I begin to answer it in my own head I have to wonder about the lens I am using to make my assessment. When I start to align race with areas of visibility I have to hold myself accountable to my own inherited viewpoints - which can be so very dangerous. It is this same viewpoint that makes gay men perfect comedic foils - and though I'm not overly concerned with that dead horse at this very moment it is close enough to home to make me reconsider my own ability or inability to allow for an Asian American Blanche DuBois.
I am the recent recipient of a NEA grant to direct an original play about a freeborn woman of color who is sent behind Confederate lines to teach the Gullah slave women on St. Helena Island, in South Carolina to read. The playwright and I cast the play, and we cast a very talented actor, who is of mixed racial heritage, to play the role of a jailer. It is a difficult role, violent and racist - probably fairly accurate for the position at the time. We were pleased by our decision but then we were informed by one of the departments sponsoring the project that they did not want to see a person of color in that role and they asked us to recast and use a white actor. We did.
On one hand, and to a great extent, I see their point. So much of our history is about race and color and how that relates to privilege and power - maybe even ALL of our history. So when can we stop referring to it? Does this mean that anything prior to the civil rights movements in the 1960s is off limits? Do we mount Death of a Salesman for an all black cast - or do we forget doing something like that altogether and focus on August Wilson - who probably speaks to similar issues yet remains faithful to historical and cultural matricies? Or do we continue to create new work that keeps examining this idea of abjection so we can move beyond it - we can move beyond it, can't we?