“Performing Images, Embodying Race: The Orientalized Body in Early 20th century U.S. Performance and Visual Culture” is an eye-opening array of media picturing stereotyped “oriental” identities, and it is currently on display at the Davison Art Center (DAC).
Grappling with media as diverse as postcards, sheet music covers, movie posters, theatrical programs and even a CD recording of related music, this exhibition attempts to expose the widely-shown racialized images of Asian Americans in the 20th century.
The exhibit’s most salient feature is its volume: the small exhibition room is jam-packed to show how common these images were.
“[The exhibitor] has just shoved as many images at you as possible,” commented Christie Kim ’04, who has worked at the DAC since her freshman year. “One of the most impressive things about this exhibit is the sheer number of images, crammed in for shock value.”
Other students agreed.
“When I first walked in, I was kind of overwhelmed…the walls were just covered,” said Mike Walsh ’06, a student in Professor Su Zheng’s class, “Diaspora and Asian American Experiences,” who visited the exhibit with his class on its opening night.
The stereotyping was certainly not subtle—there is even a disclaimer outside of the gallery warning younger viewers not to take these images at face value.
According to Exhibition Curator Rob Lancefield, these images show how these depicted stereotypes can make racial categories seem natural despite being socially constructed. In his exhibition, Lancefield explores such categories as the “oriental,” the “coolie,” the negative portrayal of a Chinese worker, and various expressions of “yellowface.” The counterpart to blackface, “yellowface” describes the technique whereby white performers dressed up and wore makeup to look Asian.
The exhibit puts the pictures in a historical perspective, showing the negative representation of Japanese people during World War II as a contrast to the idealized image that Russian media put forth. During the Cold War, sheet music and Hollywood promotional media used the symbol of a white male with an “oriental” woman to show American power in Asia. An advertisement for the movie “Sayonara,” for example, shows Marlon Brando embracing an Asian woman.
The exhibition ends with “self-definitions” by Asian Americans in the form of late 20th century works of art that contest these representations in the media. Such pieces included photographs by Saiman Li and prints by Mayumi Oda, as well as the cover of “A Grain of Sand,” a compilation of music released in 1973 that was part of the Asian American movement.
Students were struck by how common and accepted these images were.
“It’s amazing…these were images that were thoroughly circulated,” Kim said. She pointed out that a cutout mask that advertised to the reader, “Look like a Jap!” was on the back cover of the widely distributed Boston Globe.
“There are so many examples in national publications…that are laden with these racist images,” Kim added.
Walsh was also struck by the variety of media used and said he recognized a few of the advertised movies and plays.
“I noticed ‘Madame Butterfly’ because it’s so historically well-known,” Walsh said.
The “Madame Butterfly” display juxtaposed both Tamaki Miura, an Asian actress famously thought of as the “authentic” Madame Butterfly, and white singers that took on the role.
Lancefield said that the exhibit is meant to serve two purposes: to show how performance can give powerful support to racial ideology and to see how many of the ways in which print media did this in the early 20th century are still common today. He mentioned the fact that the latter purpose was more self-evident than explicit in the gallery, leaving the viewer to make connections to present-day advertising. He says that many viewers have commented on this.
Lancefield borrowed all these images from an anonymous collector’s private research collection. He added that it is related to a long-term project in ethnomusicology he is currently working on.
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