Figure 1: Lucy Briggs-Owen in ‘yellowface’ as The Princess in Royal Shakespeare Company’s Orphan of Zhao (2012) How Does an Applied Theatre Playwright Subvert the Exoticisation of ‘East Asian’ Women? This essay reflects on my performative analysis of the exoticisation of East

Asian women on British stages and in popular media (film and television)

(Appendix A) and considers possible “strategies for subversive repetition”

(Butler 1999: 188).

Edward Said defines ‘Orientalism’ as “a way of coming to terms with The

Orient…[as a] European invention…of romance, exotic beings, haunting

memories and landscapes”. ‘The Orient’ is also “one of [Europe’s] deepest

and most recurring images of the Other” (Said 1978: 1). Although ‘The Orient’

in Said’s time referred mainly to the Middle East, the term ‘Oriental’ is

currently used on Spotlight (the online casting service for actors) to categorise

‘East Asian’ performers. I also found some remanence of Said’s ‘Orientalism’

in my performative analysis of the exoticised images of East Asian women

(Appendix A). Said quotes Flaubert as the source of the most persistent

image of exoticised ‘Oriental’ women, characterised by silent and submissive

“unbounded sexuality” (Said 1978: 188). I have elaborated on ‘Orientalism’

and the exoticised ‘Oriental’ woman in Appendix B.

As a Singaporean woman, I am well aware of the lack of homogeneity in ‘East

Asia’, not just amongst women (Butler 1999; Hooks 1984; Yegenoglu 1998),

but also in the diversity of cultures represented within the term ‘East Asian’.

Yet, a tentative community of British East Asian Artists (BEAA) has formed,

brought together by “emotionally charged affiliations” (Amit 2002: 16) to voice

their objection to ‘yellowface’ casting in Royal Shakespeare Company’s

(RSC’s) Orphan of Zhao (Appendix B). This motivated me to understand the

negative effects of exoticisation as applied to ‘East Asian’ women in London

and its relationship to exclusion and discrimination (Gardner 2013; Johnson

2013; Ka-Shing 2008) experienced by the larger community of East Asian

artists on stage, television and film.

Intending to devise a play with five East Asian women, I considered three

strategies that could be employed to subvert ‘latent Orientalism’ and

challenge the exoticisation perpetuated in ‘Western’ popular culture and

media: humour, reappropriation and making authoritative statements. This

essay will focus particularly on humour whilst reflecting on reappropriation and

making authoritative statements as alternative strategies in Appendix A.

Borrowing from Judith Butler’s performative analysis of gender, where not just

‘speech acts’ but ‘bodily acts’ are regarded as performative (Butler 2004:

198), I analysed the representations of East Asian women “loved” and “found

troubling” as cited by the interviewees (Appendix F), the casting of RSC’s

Orphan of Zhao as a ‘speech act’, Beijing and London Olympics Opening

Ceremonies, Singapore Airlines advertisements and performances by East

Asian theatre companies in London (Appendix A). Through this process I

found that there are no unanimous positive or negative representations

amongst East Asian women but there are industry pressures to play to certain

stereotypes and these representations shape aspiration and perpetuate ‘latent

Orientalism’ and potentially encourages self-exoticisation that reinforces

stereotypes (Kwon 2012; Jericho 2013). These findings are elaborated in

Appendix A.

Whilst I acknowledge the necessity to perform and consciously grow the

plurality of voices representing ‘East Asians’ in London, I argue that more

could be said about how one voice could compromise another being heard.

Some at Opening the Door argued for an all-East Asian production of

Shakespeare or some other canonical British playwright, but in doing so, do

the East Asian artists reinforce the idea that Western literature and

playwrights are superior to East Asian plays? Are East Asian artists guilty of

assuming that audiences in London would only enjoy watching adaptations of

canonical British works?

In one of the Opening the Door reports, “humour”, was recommended as “a

way into the industry” (Kuroda in Opening the Door 2013). I was

uncomfortable with the proposal of “Asian actors stereotyping themselves”

and the observation that “humour has allowed them to become part of the

British population” (Ibid). Who is it that holds the authority to “allow”

acceptance? What kind of humour does one need to adopt for acceptance?

Does being “part of the British population” come at the expense of one’s

cultural diversity? Goodness Gracious Me was cited as a good example of

how Asians gained acceptance to the theatre industry, but are all ‘Asians’

accepted because of Goodness Gracious Me or is the caricature that makes

everyone laugh the only version of ‘Asian’ that is accepted?

Humour is defined as “the psychological state characterised by the appraisal

that something is funny, the positive emotion of amusement, and the tendency

to laugh” (McGraw & Warren 2010; Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Martin, 2007;

Veatch, 1998). In Goodness Gracious Me’s ‘Go for an English’ skit, the

humour lies in the role reversal when the Indian cast the dining experience.

Although I enjoyed this greatly as a form of entertainment and was reflective

of my own novelty-driven ’English’ dining experiences after, I was not wholly

confident of humour’s ability to counter discrimination. Broderick Chow, one of

BEAA’s founding members, argues that “the political dimension of

performance comedy…is not found in satire (which is focused on the object or

content of the joke) but is found in the incommensurable gap between set-up

and punch-line, or between ‘getting-it’ and 'not getting-it' (Chow 2010: 12).

Humour’s success as a strategy of subversion depends on the ability to

comprehend the joke which only works if people realise that what is portrayed

is a parody of a stereotype to begin with. Should the joke fail, does it

reestablish “contexts of hate and injury” through the repetition or citation of

“injurious speech” (Butler 1997: 27)? Does Lucy Liu’s intimidating and highly-

sexualised Ling Woo in Ally McBeal parody or reinforce ‘Oriental’ exoticisation

via the ‘Dragon Lady’ stereotype? As a Singaporean woman, I perceive the

parody and the “benign violation” (McGraw & Warren 2010: 1141) that jars

with my reality in a harmless way, but perhaps someone less acquainted with

Chinese women may believe it to be a realistic portrayal. What does success

of a joke look like? Are Asian performers able to play non-race specific roles

on British stages, television and film now? One could read Meera Syal’s

performance as Beatrice in RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing as an indication

of how difficult it is to leave a stereotype behind. Can East Asian artists

change the rules of the game if they have to seek permission to belong?

Perhaps it is the consumer who has the power to change the theatre industry.

Popularity ratings make or break a television series and contestants in reality

shows like So You Think You Can Dance depend on viewer votes to stay on

the show. One could read RSC’s appropriation of a classic Chinese text, A

World Elsewhere exhibition and Mandarin-translated programme for Orphan

of Zhao as motivated by its interest in Chinese consumers. Perhaps it is true

that “capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history” (Fisher 2009:

4), assigning a monetary value to all cultural objects but could this ‘evil’ also

offer a means of resistance? Perhaps BEAA should organise a boycott of all

RSC performances by its supporters until non-race specific casting is

practiced with regularity in all RSC productions.

Figure 2: Singapore Girl Advertisement, 2011 However, consumers are notoriously ‘trend-fickle’ and women find it

increasingly difficult to separate advertising-manipulated aspiration from

identity. In analysing women’s magazines and mainstream films, Myra

Macdonald finds that popular media has “fetishised and commoditised female

sexuality” to sell push-up bras, cosmetics and chocolate, noting that “when

the coloniser shows signs of departing, it is the entrepreneur who moves in”

(Macdonald 1995: 189 – 191). These advertising campaigns rode on the

financial independence that women found through the feminist movement and

convinced women that flaunting one’s ‘assets’ with a Wonderbra is equivalent

to being ‘liberated’. In the same way, the Singapore Girl (Nigam 2011,

Singapore Airlines 2011) packages jet-setting financial independence with a

silent and subservient “Asian hospitality”, making it difficult for Singaporean

women to separate lifestyle aspiration from being an exoticised object

(Appendix A). Consumer-pressure has proved an effective tactic against

animal testing in beauty products and sexist advertising slogans, but its

message can be easily coopted by advertisers and I am doubtful of consumer

pressure as strategic subversion.

Perhaps what we need are stories that capture the comic-tragic struggles of

life. Sylvia Chang’s 20-30-40 is humourous, not because it is a ‘benign

violation’ of reality, but precisely because it captures how a woman’s

perception of what life should be at twenty, thirty and forty years of age

drastically differs from one’s plans and expectations of one’s self. Unlike Sex

and the City, the East Asian women in 20-30-40 do not yearn for romance.

Rather, the women struggle to resolve the conflict between who they

presently are and what they had aspired to be at this age. By portraying these

complex identity negotiations, Chang frees her characters from stereotype

and therefore, exoticisation. Baz Kershaw argues that an ideology that is

“amenable to adaptation and elaboration in the phenomenally wide variety of

different cultural practices” (Kershaw in Kuppers et al. 2007: 95) was key to

the effectiveness of British alternative theatre between 1960 and 1990.

Chang’s 20-30-40 is situated within the larger ideology of gender equality for

women, whilst resisting exoticisation.

Addressing the exoticisation of East Asian women may be just one of many

tactical steps that East Asian women must take in joining BEAA as it

campaigns against industry exclusion and discrimination, but I argue that it is

an important step that must be embraced by all East Asian artists.

Exoticisation is demeaning. It perpetuates gender inequality, even within the

‘East Asian’ community, and denies ‘East Asian’ women the performative

ability to “act with agency, control and power through everyday acts of self-

articulation and self-creation” (Harvie, 2009: 44 - 45) on the same level as

their male counterparts.

Separately, the BEAA must leverage on the larger ideology of ‘diversity’ if it

wants to eradicate industry discrimination and encourage the adoption of a

‘multi-cultural’ Britain. Reading the Olympics as an example of “signifying

practices [that] establish, regulate and deregulate identity” (Butler 1999: 188),

Danny Boyle’s London Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony slogan, “This is for

everyone”, foregrounds the hotly debated topic of ‘diversity’, and the related

question of ‘integration’. Is ‘multi-cultural’ Britain a vision shared by all?

I started this project wanting to devise an intimate alternative theatre reading

of a play devised with a small group of East Asian women, but this has shifted

to subverting a signifying practice with a tragic-comic story framed within the

larger shared aspiration of multicultural diversity, with intent to share this

online on a scale of millions. Whilst Foucault’s ‘subject’ may have found itself

separate from the “transmitting authority” (Foucault 2002: 104), knowledge

today is self-selected through search engines that present a list of sites

ranked in terms of popularity and ‘crowd-sourced’, constructed in collaboration

with others through online platforms like Wikipedia where open-source

platforms encourage verification amongst its users. As an applied theatre

practitioner, I choose to situate my work within the online and offline debates

about ‘multi-cultural’ Britain on Facebook and YouTube, whilst paying

attention to opportunities within offline signifying practices that offer the

opportunity to establish the pluralistic identity of East Asians in London.

Perhaps, we should celebrate a contemporary ‘East Asian’ New Year,

defining the community as it is now without the need to draw on tradition for

identification. This would more accurately reflect the identity of East Asians

born in London, and one hopes that, if this could be performed instead of the

annual Chinatown Chinese New Year parades, this pluralistic image of ‘East

Asian’ diversity will begin to replace the stereotyped and exoticised images of

‘Orientals’.

Appendix A - A Performative Analysis of the Exoticisation of East Asian Women on British Stages and in Popular Media (Film & Television) This project was motivated by the formation of the British East Asian Artists (BEAA), a pressure group set up to demand an apology from Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for casting only three East Asians in The Orphan of Zhao, a play that was dubbed ‘The Chinese Hamlet’. The other 14 roles went to a mostly Caucasian cast who played ‘yellowface’. More details of the set-up of BEAA and activities undertaken by them can be found in Appendix B. Having read that, “The Orient is its women for many of these travellers” (Harper in Yegenoglu 1998: 73), I decided to undertake a performative analysis of the exoticisation of East Asian women on British stages and in popular media (Television and Film). I was also shocked to hear that performers were asked during auditions to sound more ‘Chinese’ or use the ‘Oriental’ category for highlighting themselves as East Asians, for East Asian roles, on Spotlight (an online casting service) during the Opening The Door session organised by BEAA. This assumption of East Asians speaking with a Chinese-accent seemed ridiculous since East Asians come from a diversity of backgrounds and Chinese is just one of many languages spoken in East Asia. I was amused at having to use the term ‘East Asian’ to differentiate myself from ‘Asians’. I wanted to get a better understanding of why East Asian women are exoticised and why exoticisation continues or is perpetuated. As a Singaporean applied theatre student who had started out as a performer, I found myself conscious of being a minority for the first time in my life. In Singapore, I never thought twice about performing “whiteface”, perhaps because my school life focused on racial harmony, emphasising what different ethnicities share in common rather than celebrating our difference. I performed roles in Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, David Auburn, David Mamet, Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane without awareness of the statement made. I never realised that I was performing “whiteface” until I came to London and heard anecdotes of East Asian performers being told they were not suitable for period plays. Perhaps Freire would view Singapore’s English theatre scene as a manifestation of internalised oppression. Some theatre companies consciously choose to bring West End and Broadway experience to a Singaporean audience through the presentation of these West End works. Caucasian actors were occasionally flown in to play certain parts, but the Singaporean theatre community would criticise this and so companies who persisted in this practice were viewed negatively, as companies driven by commercialism and a “foreign is better” syndrome, generally disinterested in developing the local theatre scene. My consumption of Asian films also informs my personal aspirations and general perception of Asian women. I have wide access to films from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, China, Korea and independent films from Thailand, Malaysia and of course, Singapore. I identify myself as

‘Singaporean’ or ‘Peranakan’ rather than ‘Chinese’. My parents believed in English education and never spoke Mandarin or any Chinese dialect at home. My Chinese-speaking friends laugh when I attempt to speak Chinese because I take too long to translate what I want to say in my head as I think in English then try to rephrase myself in Mandarin. My Foochow and Hainan dialects are lost forever. My parents had never learnt to speak their own dialect and there aren’t many in Singapore who remember how to speak these dialects of the past. The descendants of intermarriages between indigenous Malay women and immigrant Chinese men were called Peranakan Chinese and spoke mostly Malay and English but lost their ability to speak Chinese as English became the official business language (first language) in Singapore. My classmates in Primary School used to call me a ‘Banana’ - literally, yellow-skinned but white on the inside because my mom’s insistence that I speak Queen’s English meant that I spoke “with an accent” to all my friends at school. This was considered ‘snobbish’ compared to Singaporean-accented English or Singlish because it was mainly the middle-class families that adopted English as the language spoken at home. To document the research process, I have decided to use Robin Nelson’s ‘Modes of Knowing’, classified as i) ‘Know How’, ii) ‘Know What’ and iii) ‘Know That’ (Nelson 2012) that work together to inform one’s ‘Art Praxis’ which is “Theory imbricated with practice. I Taking stock of ‘Know How’ and ‘Know That’ (Nelson 2012) I had intended to review scripts/performances featuring East Asian women on British stages over the last 20 years, but my interviews with East Asian performers surfaced more interesting themes of self-identification, self-representation and how this evolves over time. I found myself exploring the following questions: • What representations do East Asian women object to or find troubling

what representations of East Asian women are aspirational (admired by East Asian women themselves)?

• How do we perform our race as East Asian women in a Western society?

• How do the expectations of others influence our self-identification and self-representation?

• How have alternative theatre practitioners tried to subvert exoticisation? In Orientalism, Said credits Gustave Flaubert with creating an enduring perception of the ‘Oriental’ woman who becomes, for Flaubert, a symbol of “luxuriant and seemingly unbounded sexuality” (Said 1978: 187 - 188). She “never spoke of herself...never represented her emotions, presence or history. He spoke for and represented her” (Said 1978: 6). Even though Said was talking primarily about the Middle East and the mysterious attraction of the veiled woman, Flaubert’s writings influenced the perceptions of many others, and their remanence can still be found in the ‘Madame Butterfly’ representations of East Asian women found in popular culture today. In her insightful feminist analysis of Orientalism, Yegenoglu states, “The Orient, seen as the embodiment of sensuality, is always understood in feminine terms

and accordingly its place in Western imagery has been constructed through the simultaneous gesture of racialisation and feminisation” (Yegenoglu 1998: 73). More background on ‘Orientalism’ can be found in Appendix B. This performative analysis acknowledges that the British East Asian community of artists are not culturally homogenous but were, in this context, brought together temporarily by “emotionally charged affiliations” (Amit 2002: 16) to voice their objection to RSC’s casting (Appendix B). The East Asian artists present at Opening the Door hold differing personal positions even though the statement released by BEAA demands an apology from the RSC (British East Asian Artists 2012). Some feel that having a dialogue through Opening the Door is enough, and others want to push for a public apology and seek to continue placing pressure on the industry to address discriminatory casting practices (Baluch 2009; Steiner 2012) until ethnic monitoring is practiced and proves that casting practices have changed. Whilst it was generally agreed that a proactive stance to make more ‘East Asian’ theatre was encouraged during Opening the Door, I argue that it is necessary for us to be conscious of how some voices silence others. I read with sadness how Broderick Chow was told to “stop complaining and start making your own work” (Chow 2012) when he experienced discrimination in Canada. Although he chose to take it positively and has created his own practice, such comments too easily allow for dismissal of the discrimination experienced and make the societal or structural factors that reinforce discrimination invisible. There is a natural tendency for people caught in complex problems to want to solve a problem by doing ‘something’ without thinking through what the consequences of performing ‘East Asian’ in a way that complements our established identity or needs might compromise others’ performativity. Sometimes ‘busyness’ without thoughtfulness can be counterproductive. Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender speaks of a “bracketing of the universal” that highlights its exclusionary nature and “works against and destroys...conventionally accepted foundations” (Butler 2004: 190) and it is in this spirit that I undertake the devising of a performance with this (community) of British East Asian women in London. The (community) of British East Asian women does not exist right now and cannot exist until British East Asian women develop a “critical consciousness” (Freire 1996: 85) of their own exoticisation and choose to challenge it collectively. British East Asian actresses are, as evidenced by the performative analysis of Orphan of Zhao below, thrice alienated from casting opportunities: first by their gender, then by their descent and finally by the persistence of exoticised representations on stage and in popular media. II Gathering ‘Know That’ (Nelson 2012) My research process involved: • Reflecting on Yellow Earth’s Why The Lion Danced at RichMix, 03.02.13

2.

• Reflecting on Mono Box session with casting director Helen Sorren

(NYT, Guildhall), playwright Ella Hickson (Precious Little Talent, Eight) and actress Vanessa Kirby (Three Sisters, Women Beware Women, BBC’s Great Expectations) at The Actor’s Centre, 25.11.12 3.

• Interviewing East Asian women on representations they loved or found

troubling and incidents where they were treated differently because of their race.

• Watching and reflecting on Elementary, Chungking Express, In the Mood

for Love, The Lady (Frayn 2012), Hawaii Five-O, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Joy Luck Club, Ju Dou, Sideways, Tomorrow Never Dies, Sherlock Holmes’ The Blind Banker to understand what East Asian women felt about the actresses’ representations in these shows.

• Reflecting on the casting of Orphan of Zhao, Bombay Dreams, Much

Ado About Nothing, Charlie’s Angels, Nikita and what this conveys in terms of an illocutionary or perlocutionary ‘speech act’.

• Reading the reports of Opening the Door and BME Student Experiences

report by Catherine McNamara from Central School of Speech and Drama (McNamara & Coomber 2012).

• Reading and reflecting on the scripts of Goldenchild by David Henry

Hwang (presented by True Heart Theatre) and Why the Dragon Danced by Carey English (presented by Yellow Earth).

• Watching the London Olympics 2012 ceremony and contrasting it with

the Beijing Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony. • Reflecting on moments of exoticisation in Lea Salonga’s audition for

Miss Saigon, The Singapore Girl advertisement and interviews from RSC’s The Orphan of Zhao.

• Reflecting on alternative portrayals proposed in The Lady (Frayn 2012),

Jennifer Lim’s satirical portrayal of East Asian female stereotypes in Orient - a short film (York 2012), Anna Chen’s Anna May Wong Must Die, David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face and of course, Goodness Gracious Me.

A call for research participants was sent out through the British East Asian Artists’ (BEAA) Facebook page and Yellow Earth’s database of actresses and past students. Six women responded and answered three semi-structured questions. Those who responded did so within an hour of the postings. Excluding the founders of Yellow Earth and BEAA, there were 44 actresses who voluntarily registered for listings on the Opening the Door casting directory. Whilst acknowledging that most posts only garner ‘views’ from approximately a third (or less) of those who ‘liked’ the page, six is a meagre response. Hence, my observations cannot claim to offer a generalised opinion

and can only be taken as a case study of a small group of actresses who are aware of and feel strongly about exoticisation as can be evidenced from their responses in Appendix D. Perhaps ‘East Asian’ performers are unwilling to put their jobs on the line to speak up about racial discrimination in casting decisions. The BEAA statement (BEAA 2012) highlights that there should be no “professional reprisals” for those who speak out:

“East Asian actors and professionals have shown great courage speaking out about the clear inequality that currently exists within our profession, and we would like that to be respected. Too often, there exists a climate of fear in the arts world and we feel this is detrimental to free speech as well as to fundamental human rights.” (BEAA 2012)

Perhaps some identification with these exoticised representations makes some women feel there is no need to challenge exoticisation. Yet, I argue that if ‘latent Orientalism’ defines ‘The Orient’ through its women (Yegenoglu 1998: 73) then dismantling the exoticisation of ‘East Asian’ women is necessary to counter industry exclusion and discrimination. III ‘Know What’: Research Findings and Reflections (Nelson 2012) Three semi-structured questions were posed to women who responded to the callout through Yellow Earth’s database of past students and the BEAA facebook page. Names are anonymised and the full interview transcripts are omitted from this report and data-protected to protect the identity of the respondents. Understandably, some felt wary of being misinterpreted or having their quotes taken out of context. Confidentiality of identity allowed them to respond freely and the respondents were generous in their replies, conveying direct and clear examples of discrimination. The questions posed assume that East Asian actresses maintain a public persona, consciously created based on an image that they seek to convey to their audiences. It is also assumed that the roles these actresses choose to accept not only give them wider exposure but also develop their craft as actresses. I acknowledge that actresses may individually differ in terms of level of consciousness in terms of cultivating their public persona, and degrees of perceived and actual control over their public image, but ultimately acting is a profession that one chooses to stay with despite its high income instability and insecurity, so one exercises the choice to be an actress. There is agency in choosing that profession, or choosing to stay in that profession. One has the freedom to step out of the spotlight and relieve one’s self of the burden of representation at any time in one’s career. There are no unanimously agreed positive or negative representations amongst East Asian women. When asked for names of actresses they “loved” and the films/productions they were in, names cited more than once were: Faye Wong (Chungking Express), Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love), Michelle Yeoh (The Lady).

A performative analysis of the role played by Faye Wong in Chungking Express reveals a character that is the anti-Madame Butterfly. She chooses to walk away from a man who loves her, standing him up and choosing to see the world before settling down. She is resolutely unwilling to commit to relationships and challenges the image of ‘suttee’ (a mourning ritual where Indian women throw themselves onto their husband’s burning funeral pyre). Loomba highlights that this juxtaposition of “Oriental barbarity and female helplessness and devotion“ was a “favourite figure in colonial inscriptions” from Job Charnock to Jules Verne and William Savage (Loomba 2005: 130). Maggie Cheung’s Su Li-zhen in In the Mood for Love challenges the sexualised notion of the ‘Oriental’ woman. She restrains her emotions for Chow (played by Tony Leung) and chooses not to acknowledge her feelings for him. In the film, Chow and Su realise that their partners are having an affair with one another. They first meet to share the pain of betrayal with one another and try to figure out how and when the affair might have started. After their spouses leave them, they write a martial arts novel together and find each other to be kindred spirits. However, Su is very mindful of keeping their relationship non-sexual and seems to worry a lot about respectability. In one scene, she is trapped in Chow’s room, unable to go back to her apartment because the landlady returns earlier than expected. Su insists on physically distancing herself from Chow and he ends up sleeping in the chair. She is the antithesis of Suzy Wong and defies the “unbridled sexuality” of Flaubert’s ‘Oriental’ courtesan (Said 1978: 6). Michelle Yeoh’s portrayal of Aung San Suu Kyi in The Lady is ostensibly based on watching more than 200 hours of audiovisual material featuring Suu Kyi and a meeting with Suu Kyi in 2008. The script, written by Rebecca Frayn, was reportedly based on interviews with Suu Kyi’s confidants who insisted on remaining anonymous. The movie was directed by Luc Besson. And yet, reading these characters, as they are presented by male directors, with a feminist perspective troubled me. Names that appeared under both “loved” and “troubling” were: Sandra Oh (Sideways, Last Night were “loved” but her “unattractive” appearance was not considered aspirational by one respondent); Zhang Ziyi (conflicted responses to Memoirs of a Geisha); Lucy Liu (conflicted responses to Charlie’s Angels, but “loved” Elementary); Gemma Chan (“loved” Fresh Meat, “troubled by” Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The Blind Banker in BBC’s Sherlock Holmes). These were more interesting to analyse in the sense that those who “loved” these characters qualified this by stating that the actresses were very good actresses, hence attributing their admiration to skill of the actress rather than personal qualities embodied by the character. Those who were “troubled” by these characters attributed that to a stereotype portrayed: Memoirs of a Geisha is essentially a Cinderella fairytale; Gemma Chan in Blind Banker was the helpless ‘damsel in distress’ who gets killed in the action. Hence, the rejection of such stereotypes indicates a desired independence from men.

Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels is “loved” for appropriating a role originally written for a Caucasian woman, but criticised for portraying almost three stereotypes: the Asian nerd, fetishised ‘Dragon Lady’ and ‘Kung Fu chick’ wrapped in one. At this point, Liu was riding on the success of playing Ling Woo on Ally McBeal, yet another over-sexualised ‘Dragon Lady’ character, but one that makes the men in the series look foolish and comical. Liu acknowledges that she has achieved popularity through stereotyped roles that “beats everyone up” or “portrays no emotion”, noting that “race confounds any casting decisions” in Hollywood. Apparently, her casting as Watson in Elementary was met with “considerable racial hatred” from Sherlock Holmes fans who “[lobbyied] against her casting” (Smith 2013; Racebending 2012). On this issue, several Hong Kong film stars from Maggie Cheung to Andy Lau, have indicated that they are “not interested” in Hollywood because “Hollywood is only looking to tap the Chinese film market and does not respect Chinese actors” (Lau in Channel NewsAsia 2013). Cheung also indicates awareness of the stereotypes that one must compromisingly accept to achieve stardom in Hollywood and rejects this as “cheating”. Cheung turned down a role in X-Men 2 saying, “I'd feel like I was cheating. And I don't want half the world - we have 1.3 billion people in China - to know I'm cheating. That matters to me. I have more pride than that." (Cheung in Dominus 2004). There is no reward for playing to stereotype. In Lucy Liu’s interview on the stereotypes she has played, she states, “it feels really good to be always breaking down walls and starting something new and trying something new” (Brillantes 2012). She admits that she has played stereotyped characters (Smith 2013) ranging from ‘Dragon Lady’ (Ling Woo in Ally McBeal) to yakuza/chinese triad (O Ren Ishii in Kill Bill) to Asian nerd (and martial arts expert) in Charlie’s Angels but insists that she always “thinks outside the box” (Brillantes 2012). Liu highlights that it is a “big step forward” to portray East Asians on camera “without having an accent or without having to be spoofy” (Ibid). Given her past roles, one might infer that “breaking down walls” (Ibid) is something that Liu has only recently learnt to do and that it has been absolutely necessary to helping Liu break out of stereotype. Liu has tried to play by the rules of the game, taking on roles that were stereotyped but high profile, but possibly found that staying in these roles would only limit her career. She had to break down barriers, “be a pioneer” (Lee 2012) by trying something different and take the risk that in doing so, she will no longer be able to return to the stability of stereotyped roles available in Hollywood. In contrast, Lea Salonga was discovered in Philippines and brought to London in 1989 at the age of 17 to play the role of Kim in Miss Saigon. Chow has fully described the exoticisation of Salonga in terms of the way that the young Salonga was dressed citing her traditional dress and the flower in her hair (Chow 2012). I too noticed the flower in her hair and how she asked the pianist for his autograph before she started with the audition. In Miss Saigon, Kim is relegated to secondary position in comparison to an American woman. She is punished for choosing to be with a foreigner instead of her cousin

Thuy, whom she was promised to. Despite warnings from her countrymen, she believes that Chris truly loves her and will keep his promise and bring her to America. Even though Kim never got to ask Chris to choose between her and Ellen, it is obvious that his choice would have been to choose Ellen. This is again an enunciative statement that recognises one union over another. One is more accepted, therefore one has more legitimacy than the other to be a mother. After playing ‘Kim’ in Miss Saigon for four years, Salonga was invited by Sir Cameron Mackintosh to play the role of ‘Eponine’ for the 10th anniversary production of Les Miserables (Les Miz) at Royal Albert Hall in 1995. She also played ‘Fantine’ in the 25th Anniversary of Les Miz, yet another role that was not created specifically for Asians. Whilst one might be persuaded to conclude that perseverance will be rewarded Salonga’s career outside of Broadway has indeed been limited by conforming to stereotypes. Broadway career from ‘Kim’ in Miss Saigon to ‘Eponine’ and ‘Fantine’ in Les Miserables might lead one to conclude that playing stereotypes helped Salonga break into Broadway and establish some measure of success and control over the roles she takes on. On television, Salonga was relegated to the role of a Vietnamese-American on Redwood Curtain and As the World Turns (never mind that she is Filipino). On film, Salonga has voiced Princess Jasmine (Aladdin) and Hua Mulan (Mulan) for Disney and remains ‘invisible’ as she speaks through the animated character. Salonga, unlike Liu, is still very much struggling to break out of stereotype when it comes to roles that are not on Broadway, and I wonder if a fear of losing the relative stability of these stereotyped roles has made it more difficult for Salonga to break out of stereotype, and if this has limiting her growth as an actress on TV and film. Perhaps it is this fear of losing the stability of employment that prevents East Asian actresses in London from rejecting roles that perpetuate exoticisation. The performing industry in London is highly competitive and there is much pressure to ‘persevere’: conforming to expected behaviours and roles in order to be employed, to progress in one’s career so that one day one might have the ability to negotiate the roles one takes on. Yet, can success bestowed by the dominant order be satisfactorily controlled by the subject caught within it? Is it a satisfying success when it is bestowed rather than won on one’s own terms? Consumption and Aspiration Myra Macdonald highlights that women have been “particularly associated with consumerism” (Macdonald 1995: 73) where shopping is linked to women’s desires and aspirations. Hence, whilst it is an important step forward taken by ‘Western’ beauty companies from Guerlain to Maybelline and Olay to have an East Asian ambassador (as opposed to mainly Caucasian models), it is also important for the consumer to question the aesthetics endorsed by ‘western’ beauty companies as being representative of what ‘East Asian’ women should aspire to look like. Actresses like Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung have been contracted as ambassadors for the brands listed above whilst actresses like Sandra Oh are considered “unattractive” by some of the East Asian women interviewed.

Sandra Oh in Grey’s Anatomy Zhang Ziyi in a Maybelline advertisement Consumption can shape aspiration and unconsciously result in self-exoticisation. Oh is known for her portrayal of strong, intelligent and emotionally complex characters, and her characters are not meek or submissive. In Grey’s Anatomy, Oh’s character ‘Christina Yang’ is unsentimental, frighteningly intelligent and the most promising surgical intern on the team. She is portrayed as being rational compared her fellow surgical interns and romantic partners. In comparison, Zhang Ziyi’s ‘Sayuri’ for Memoirs of a Geisha pines for a man she only knows as ‘Chairman’ because he gives her some money and a handkerchief and she becomes a geisha so that she might have the opportunity to meet the ‘Chairman’ again. And yet, Zhang is the ambassador for Maybelline, not Oh. Some might argue that Zhang was chosen because her physical appearance is a better ‘fit’ with the image of Maybelline, but I would argue that such endorsements of beauty function as an enunciative statement that holds Zhang’s role in Memoirs as one that (East Asian) women should aspire to, over and above strong characters like those portrayed by Oh who do not conform to certain expectations of the ‘Oriental’ woman. Do such enunciative statements shape the aspiration of East Asian women? I believe they do.

The Wonder Girls Unlike Korean celebrities like Girls Generation or The Wonder Girls, Oh possesses an unconventional (unmodified) beauty. She has not succumbed to any plastic surgery like 20% of the women in South Korea, and has never attempted to modify her appearance with double eyelids, a thinner nose or a ‘V-line’ face as many other South Korean teenagers and women have done (Stone 2013; Ashcraft 2013; Willett 2013). Some argue that these modifications are not made to conform to a Western standard of beauty as a ‘V-line’ face is “unique to Asians and stands out rather than conforms to American sensibilities of beauty” (Stone 2013). Dr. Kaw asserts that surgeries requested now by these Korean women are not done to “fit in with their Western peers” as Dr. Kaw found twenty years ago, but rather, “Korean women are themselves propagating these expectations” (Lee in Stone 2013). However, I would argue that the V-line face, double eyelids and thinner nose conform to a ‘Western’ expectation of ‘Oriental’ beauty and Dr. Kaw’s findings indicate that ‘Western’ expectations of ‘Oriental’ beauty have shaped aspirations that East Asian women have of their own appearances. This expectation is communicated through beauty advertisements, fashion and beauty magazines and the East Asian actresses contracted as brand ambassadors for these ‘Western’ beauty companies and these expectations carry remanence of a behaviour expected of ‘Oriental’ women in a ‘Western’ society. I found myself admiring Oh for being able to resist the pressure to look ‘good’ according to these unrealistic, surgically enhanced beauty conventions and expectations that have become normalised amongst Korean pop-stars and celebrities, and found her much more attractive as an actress because of it. Although the aspirational effects of stage casting are arguably less influential,

the casting of Lucy Briggs-Owen as The Princess, and Susan Momoko-Hingley as The Princess’ Maid in Orphan of Zhao can be read as an enunciative statement endorsing Briggs-Owen’s beauty above that of the East Asian Momoko-Hingley. It also suggests that Briggs-Owen’s ‘Western’ performance of ‘Chinese’ femininity is more ‘accepted’ in terms of what is assumed by ‘Orientalists’ of the behavior of ‘Oriental’ women. What is evident is that it is acceptable convention for a Caucasian to play a Chinese person and to perpetuate “yellowface” casting despite the diverse availability of East Asian talent in London. This has remanence from earlier ‘speech acts’ (in Judith Butler’s definition of ‘bodily acts’ as performative) like the casting Myrna Loy as a Chinese princess (albeit a sadistic one) and Anna May Wong as Fu Manchu’s vengeful daughter (another Dragon Lady stereotype) in the Fu Manchu films. What this reveals is an ‘Orientalist’ desire for ‘Western’ women to be like the ‘Oriental’ women: submissive and devoted like Madame Butterfly, “silent” like the Singapore Girl, or a symbol of “luxuriant and seemingly unbounded sexuality” (Said 1978: 187 - 188) as Flaubert’s courtesan. I found several online costume shops advertising Japanese schoolgirl outfits and geisha kimonos that were cut to the length of miniskirts with a ‘Western’ model posed in suggestive positions. In contrast to the aspirational Princess character, the casting of two East Asians as the Demon Mastiff (a dog puppet) requires the actors to “act through the puppet” (Achilleos in RSC 2012), hidden rather than visible as the Caucasian actors are. Dr. Broderick Chow, one of the founding members of the BEAA, highlights the problematic nature of this invisibility, arguing that it “reproduces, rather than challenges, the existing distribution of the sensible, in which East Asians are typically seen as the ‘model minority’: high-achieving, but silent, and especially, compliant” (Chow 2012). I read this speech act as something more akin to Said’s identification of Orientalist superiority, where the Orientals are demonised by Lord Cromer as “subject races” who are “inveterate liars ...lethargic and suspicious and in everything oppose the clarity, directness and nobility of the Anglo-Saxon race” (Said 1978: 39). In The Mood for Love and Chungking Express were well-received by North American and British audiences and critics and whilst I acknowledge the independence portrayed by Maggie Cheung and Faye Wong’s characters in these films, I am slightly troubled by my own feminist readings of the characters portrayed (not the actresses themselves).

In The Mood for Love is a beautifully shot story of two people in love who long to be with each other but will not allow themselves to compromise the others’ reputation in a highly conservative and restrictive society. The most painful scene happens in a steakhouse where the characters try to imagine how their spouses started having an affair together. Unable to place herself in a situation of infidelity and betrayal, Cheung’s character (Su) breaks down. The film captures longing and restraint beautifully but I struggled with historical representations of East Asian women in general. Does Su character reinforce the exoticisation of ‘Oriental’ women because her character fits Flaubert’s description of the ‘Oriental’ courtesan? Flaubert observes, that the courtesan “never spoke of herself...never represented her emotions, presence or history. He spoke for and represented her” (Said 1978: 6). Does historical realism constitute what Judith Butler identifies as a repetition of an “injurious word” which does injury through the “citationality of discourse” (Butler 1997: 27)? Butler argues that the one who repeats hate speech is responsible for “reinvigorating such speech, for reestablishing contexts of hate and injury” (Ibid). Although the portrayal of Su is not as obviously hurtful as hate speech, does period film reestablish the contexts of injury caused by ‘Oriental’ exoticisation?

Faye in Chungking Express In Chungking Express, Wong’s character (Faye) stands Cop 663 up for a date because she wants to see the world before settling down. He buys over the snack shop where she used to work, hoping that she would one day return. Faye exhibits a ‘masculine’ ability to detach from emotion and tests Cop 663’s ability to devote himself to her. I uncomfortable with Faye’s identification with the ‘masculine’. In The Heroine’s Journey (Murdock 1990) this identification with the masculine is highlighted as a behavior that perpetuates the dominant (masculine) order. Butler’s Gender Trouble (Butler 1999) and Hook’s Feminist Theory (Hooks 1984) have elaborated on the problems that arise when women identify with the masculine and replicate oppressive power structures that are sexist and do harm to those who do not conform to gender norms. Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey seeks to reflect the journey taken by successful women who “identified primarily with the father”, seeking to be their “father’s daughters” and separating or distancing themselves from the maternal figure in their lives whom they perceive as “dependent, helpless or hypocritical” (Murdock 1990: 29 - 32). They fear their inherent “female inferiority” and are “addicted to perfection” (Ibid: 41), becoming heroic but are always “left with a gnawing sensation that they will never be enough” (Ibid: 42). Wong’s character in Chungking Express spends most of the film trying to help Cop 663 recover from heartbreak. Cop 663 pines after his lost girlfriend who is an air stewardess whilst Wong’s character tries to cheer him up by taking care of his apartment. Eventually Cop 663 realises that Faye cares for him, and asks her out for a date which she accepts but pulls out of at the last minute, leaving her cousin to convey that she has decided to fly off to California. Faye eventually becomes an air stewardess herself and I read this as Faye wanting to occupy the position of the desired ex-girlfriend in Cop 663’s life. Having witnessed how Cop 663 pined her loss, it appears that Faye seeks to have Cop 663 pine after her, more than Faye desires his love. This seems a little cruel to Cop 663 who is just starting to open himself up to the possibility of love again. Wong Kar Wai is masterfully captures how women cultivate desirability through unattainability, even though desire is not the same as being loved. And although I acknowledge that these love games are common amongst men and women, I wondered if one should aspire to be cruel to be desired rather than loved, but it is the role reversal in Chungking Express that troubles me the most. In Colonial Fantasies, Meyda Yegenoglu highlights how the ‘masculine’ gaze might be used by ‘Western’ women and I felt uncomfortable again with the voyeuristic nature of this gaze. Whilst the women described “supplemented” the findings of ‘Western men’, this violates the assumed sisterhood extended to them by the ‘Oriental’ women in the

harem (Appendix B). In bell hooks’ Feminist Theory: from margin to center, she points out that women who pushed for social equality wanted “to obtain greater power in the existing system” whilst other women saw the exercise of power as “a negative trait” (hooks 1984: 84). Women who rose to positions of “relative or absolute power within the existing structure might just imitate men, and in the process become oppressors of other people, including women” (Chesler & Goodman in hooks 1984: 84). This seems to be the case in terms of Faye’s relationship with Cop 663 in Chungking Express. Whilst one might argue that what defines ‘the masculine’ fluctuates according to the “cultural ideals” held within each culture (Cuddy et al. 2010: 3) it is sad to note here that women aspire to imitate men because men are held up as ‘cultural ideals’, possessing more “culturally valued” traits than women (Ibid). Michelle Yeoh’s portrayal of Suu Kyi in The Lady is that of a ‘heroine’ who makes great personal sacrifices and overcomes great trials and challenges to advocate for political freedom and democracy in her country. Aung San Suu Kyi was educated at Oxford and was separated from her family whilst enduring fifteen years of house arrest. Aung was only able to meet her husband five times between the first house arrest in 1989 and his death in 1999. As if to compensate for Aung’s absence as a mother and wife, the film is marketed as “a love story” set amidst “political turmoil”. The trailer places heavy emphasis on the love between Suu Kyi and her husband with many shots of him reminding her that she is her country’s “best defender”. Were the distributors afraid that the story of a woman who sacrificed motherhood and conventional notions of being a good wife would not be marketable? Butler states, “I cannot be who I am without drawing upon the sociality of norms that precede and exceed me” (Butler 2004: 32). Perhaps achieving the aspirational status of a “heroine” in Hollywood requires recognition and acceptance within the sexist norms perpetuated by the industry. Suu Kyi has won a Nobel Peace Prize and yet, Hollywood feels the need to emphasise her womanhood and qualify her as a good mother through a love story. Moving to television, the Singapore Girl as an ambassador of Singapore Airlines’ advertisement campaigns was revived in 2011 by a French Vice President of Public Affairs. The advertisements portray the Singapore girl as helpful, smiling, gracious, beautiful, “showcasing the Singapore Girl’s Asian hospitality” as completely mute. She does not say a word throughout the one-minute commercial, letting the song speak for her instead. In a breathy voice, the song says, “Such a gentle way about you, all around the world. Wouldn’t go away without you. Singapore Girl, you’re a great way to fly” (Singapore Airlines 2011). There are, of course, many double entendres that can be read in that jingle. Introduced in 1972, being a Singapore Girl was an suitable aspiration for women in 1970s’ Singapore because it gave women the opportunity to see the world whilst being paid well. The Singapore Girl is, according to Ionides, “a global marketing icon recognised as one of the airline industry’s as well as Singapore’s most prominent figures”. SimpliFlying lauds this as a brand differentiation that is hard to replicate for other airlines. Nigam says, “Just try imagining a subservient, almost Geisha-like stewardess on an American carrier – yeah, I know it’s difficult” (Nigam 2011). Branding thrives on icons because of its high visual recall and associative potential. These

icons often perpetuate a stereotype. Marilyn Monroe and diamonds. Singapore Girl and the “verbally inexpressive femininity” (Said 1978: 187) of the ‘Oriental’ woman. ‘Latent Orientalism’ and ‘internalised Orientalism’ ‘Latent Orientalism’, described by Said as “an almost unconscious (and certainly untouchable)” (Said 1978: 206) knowledge that is not manifestly stated, but is taken as ‘common sense’. This latent Orientalism assumes knowledge of what the ‘Oriental’ thinks and how the ‘Oriental’ acts. Hence, the RSC assumes that its research has given it the authority to present a ‘Chinese Hamlet’ to a Chinese audience and assumes that Chinese tourists would travel all the way to London to watch an appropriated version of its own legend. The Beijing Olympics’ Opening ceremony in 2008 could be said to manifest a form of ‘internalised Orientalism’. 2008 Chinese drummers drumming followed by thousands of martial arts pugilists practicing Tai Chi. The Chinese women leading the competing contingents were almost identical: tall, slim, porcelain-skinned, immaculately groomed and again, mute. I am certain that Zhang Yimou who directed the Olympics was aware of what would ‘sell’ China to the world and he portrayed a China that the world knew and understood. This may not be the same China that people living in China know, and it is certainly different from the China I have come to understand through Singapore’s business investments in Suzhou. Yet it is inevitably the image of China that Chinese businessmen seek to portray to potential investors. In Sherlock Holmes’ The Blind Baker, Gemma Chan plays ‘Soo Yin Yao’ (following the ‘Western’ norm of first name before surname) who looks after the tea collection at the British museum and gives talks on the art of the Chinese tea ceremony. She wears a traditional cheongsam and is kidnapped one day. Sherlock Holmes sets out to rescue her and it turns out she is trying to save her brother who is working for the Black Lotus society, which runs a rundown makeshift travelling circus in Chinatown. Gemma Chan’s put-on Chinese accent and ridiculously impractical cheongsam for The Blind Banker in BBC’s Sherlock Holmes could have arisen from being asked to sound and look more 'Oriental’. Comments surfaced from Opening the Door indicated that actors were still being asked to sound more ‘Oriental’ during auditions. One said, “I work hard on being an actor but everyone is more interested in my Chinese accent” (Fajilagmago in Opening the Door 2013: 2). A report titled ‘What are you most angry about?’ surfaced accounts of actors being asked to sound more “Chinese” and put on a “strong accent” during auditions. They also expressed discomfort with the “Oriental” (Fajilagmago in Opening the Door 2013: 2) casting category they were asked to check under Spotlight because “casting directors look for it” (Ibid). It appears that there is still significant external pressure put on by the casting directors and directors to perform the image of the ‘Oriental’. Some challenged the point of the “Oriental” categorisation in Spotlight when East Asians want to be cast in “non-race specific roles” (Rogers in Opening the Door 2013: 9). I argue that external pressure from casting directors to look and sound ‘Oriental’ at

auditions forces actresses to perform the part of the ‘Oriental’ in order to secure employment. Should success follow, the curriculum vitae of actresses like Lucy Liu and Lea Salonga who have proven that they get stuck in a role and are requested to perform to stereotype even more. Casting directors and producers would insist on it for the marketability of the show. Would East Asian actresses have the courage and financial capability to say no? Yet why should one pander to what is requested when the so-called ‘gatekeepers’ (casting directors, directors, producers) don’t know what they want? I attended a talk at MonoBox in The Actor’s Centre on 25 November 2012. Present at this session were Ella Hickson (playwright), Vanessa Kirby (actress) and Helen Sorren (casting director for National Youth Theatre and Guildhall). Sorren said that casting directors usually “don’t have a particular look for a character in mind” and that they were looking for a “blank slate”, an actress they could “hang a character onto”. One black actress pointed out that she was asked to sound “more Black” at auditions. She didn’t talk with an accent and could not talk in anything other than Queen’s English. Sorren told her to be “herself” at auditions and keep “celebrating her uniqueness” and what is special about her and ignore these racist comments. However, one wonders, does one have to deny one’s ‘uniqueness’ in order to become a “blank slate”? I argue that the “blank slate” is a metaphor for the ‘norm’ where anything other than the ‘norm’ constitutes a mark, therefore not a ‘blank slate’. “Uniqueness” highlights the assumed norm that Black actresses are supposed to speak with a ‘Black’ accent and she is ‘unique’ because she doesn’t. This parallels the latent Orientalism observed in reports from Opening the Door where casting directors assume that ‘Chinese’ accents are the norm for East Asian performers. I am troubled by this because it confirms discrimination: this actresses’ race is perceived as ‘colouring’ the speech even before she starts her audition. Beyond actresses who are unfortunately (unfairly?) burdened to represent a demographic whenever they are cast, do external expectations that carry latent Orientalism also encourage an ‘Oriental’ performance? Butler states, “what desire wants is the Other, where the Other is understood as its generalised object...and the Other’s desire where the Other is a subject of desire” (Butler 2004: 137). Are there East Asian women who consciously perform the exoticised ‘Oriental’ in order to present themselves as desirable to the Other? Reflecting on Singaporean assumptions of ‘Westerners’, the local Hokkien term carries the anger and resentment that locals felt towards their colonial masters. However, as Singapore developed and adopted an aggressively pro-globalisation stance towards foreign investments, particularly from the West, a certain segment of Singaporean women (known as the Sarong Party Girls) started to see Caucasian foreigners, in particular the high ranking ‘foreign experts’ who were brought in as chief executive officers of corporations, as ‘honey pots’ who had lots of money to spend. Marrying them was considered ‘marrying up’ for these women and the opportunity to lead a life of luxury and travel. Today, Singapore is touted as the “new Monaco” where the wealthy feel their investments are safe (Mahtani 2013), but one wonders, if these ‘Western’ men will be able to survive the wiles of the Sarong Party Girl. Interestingly, on the Internet where anonymity allows for blatant

display of sexual desire, Nakamura finds ‘Western’ men posing as Asian women on LambdaMOO (an online chat community, based in a virtual house). Nakamura terms this cross-cultural and cross-dressing of identities online as “identity tourism” (Nakamura in Bell & Kennedy 2000: 716). Perhaps these LambdaMOO men and the Sarong Party Girl are complementary manifestations of exoticisation that verify Butler’s observation: “Fantasy is what establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points...elsewhere and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home” (Butler 2004: 217). In Singapore, Singapore Repertory Theatre (which does not have a repertory) has taken as its mission the replication of West End/Broadway experiences for Singaporeans in Singapore, replete with an almost 40% Caucasian cast and creative team flown in for most of their Shakespeare in the Park series. Wild Rice just produced The Importance of Being Earnest with an all-Singaporean cast. Such performances are considered commercially safe investments as they sell quickly amongst the middle-high income theatre-going crowd in Singapore. Perhaps Freire was right in observing that: “at a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction towards the oppressors and their way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them” (Freire 1996: 44). Perhaps, the aggressive globalisation adopted by Singapore’s government has created a ‘foreign is better’ mentality, leading Singaporean audiences to believe that West End and Broadway plays are better than local plays. Or perhaps the dominance of ‘Western’ media, television and film have cultivated a preference for ‘Western’ plays. Perhaps, the endorsement of the play’s commercial success on West End and Broadway reduces the risk of having to endure a bad show. It is likely that a combination of all the above exist in varying degrees. Do stereotypes become less harmful as they evolve over time? In the web write-ups for Orphan of Zhao, exoticisation of China abounds from Doran’s thickly descriptive blog that marks his wonder and awe at the visual spectacle of China’s history and culture (Doran 2012), to Fenton’s adaptation of The Song of the Groom begins with “the loveliest girls have begun to lower their eyes” (Fenton 2012) perpetuating the notion of compliance and sexual availability. Evidence of Doran’s generalisation of all East Asians is Doran’s blog where he mistakenly calls the Chinese opera costume a “kimono” which is only worn by Japanese women (Doran 2012). This has remanence from past generalisations perpetuated on British stages (the casting of Filipinos as Vietnamese in Miss Saigon) to film (Chinese actresses as Japanese Geishas in Memoirs of a Geisha). Two of the interviewees cited this generalisation as an incident where they were made aware of their difference in a way that was uncomfortable to them. None of the interviewees mentioned an incident where their difference was embraced positively. Although generalisations about ‘Orientals’ as a race appear resistant to change, I have observed some slight evolution of specific stereotypes (Jericho 2013): ‘The Dragon Lady’ has evolved from the evil and vengeful daughter of Fu

Manchu to sexy and fetishised Ling Woo of Ally McBeal. These stereotypes are reductive but there is some grain of truth in them. Wendi Deng is the ‘Dragon Lady’ manifest in real life. As the wife of Rupert Murdoch, she made news when she slapped a comedian who threw a foam-pie at her husband during a highly publicised Parliamentary testimony. A newer ‘model-minority’ stereotype has emerged, moving away from the unsexy nerd to Jenna Ushkowitz’s Tina Cohen-Chang in Glee who dresses like a goth schoolgirl and fakes a stutter in the first few episodes as she prefers to be left alone. The term ‘model minority’ is said to have been popularised by William Petersen’s 1966 New York Times Magazine article “Success, Japanese-American Style” where their “hard work and discipline” led to a perception of East Asians as “successful, high-achieving people who are well adjusted and integrated into American industry, culture and society” (Leong & Grand in Li et al. 2008: 96 - 97). Harry Shum Jr’s Mike Chang is a dancer who does not get ‘As’. Both do not speak with an Asian accent and challenge the image of the ‘unsexy’ Asian nerd. Are these new and evolved stereotypes as harmful as the older versions of ‘Dragon Lady’ and ‘Asian Nerd’? Leong and Grand highlight that even positive stereotypes can be just as detrimental as negative stereotypes. They argue that Asian Americans were alienated by their colleagues in the workplace who felt “intimidated by the purported work ethic and ingenuity of their Asian American counterparts” and this led to discrimination, “obstacles to career advancement, outright acts of prejudice and in some cases, violence” (Ibid). I would argue that this ‘model-minority’ stereotype has developed from a minority complex where Asians feel the need to overcompensate for their minority status by working extra hard and proving that one is useful to the new country that one has settled in. Jung defines “complex” as “psychic entities that have escaped from the control of consciousness and split off from it, to lead a separate existence in the dark sphere of the psyche whence they may at any time hinder or help the conscious performance” (Jung in Jacobi 1973: 36). Adler expanded on Jung’s theory of ‘complex psychology’ to define the ‘inferiority complex’ which is well known. Thomas Singer and Samuel Kimbles’ The Cultural Complex analyses the psychological nature of conflicts between cultures and links Jung’s ‘Complex’ theories to “the cultural level of the psyche and the life of the group” (Singer & Kimbles 2004: i) It proposes that a cultural complex creates conflict and this is useful for examining the ‘model-minority’ stereotype which I would argue is caused by what I call a ‘minority complex’ where a minority group exhibits certain overcompensating behaviour to justify its importance to the wider society. In the case of the model-minority stereotype, the Japanese-American minority may have felt that contributing actively to the productivity of the workplace that they are in would encourage people to view them as willing to work hard and contribute to the growth of the company, and by inference, the larger American society. They hoped this would ease their acceptance in a culture where they are the minority, but sadly this has resulted in colleagues feeling threatened, afraid that Japanese- Americans would put them out of a job. This indicates some truth in Leong and Grand’s findings regarding positive stereotypes.

Perhaps, one has to insist on uniqueness and respect for one’s individuality instead of wanting to assimilate. Assimilation implies a need to conform to expected stereotypes and ‘latent orientalism. Anecdotally, I have observed some sense of the adage, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Amongst the East Asians in London there seems to be an acknowledgement, that one is seeking opportunity in a foreign land and should therefore ‘play by the rules’. My analysis of Salonga, Zhang and Liu’s career have indicated that conforming to expected stereotypes can be damaging, and worse, perpetuates self-exoticisation when beauty companies endorse one physical aesthetic (and expected behaviour) over another. Should East Asians play by the rules when the ‘rules’ are limiting and perpetuate exoticisation? Subversion on Television? In the skit Go for an English on Goodness Gracious Me, it is revealed that the characters patronise an English restaurant every Friday night to sample English cuisine and experience being English. They ask the waiter for the “blandest thing on the menu” and one declares that he will be eating it with a fork and knife, to much applause. When Nina asks for chicken curry they chide her and ask the waiter, “What have you got that is not totally tasteless?” No doubt, the skit uses role reversal to parody stereotypes from both Indian and English cultures but what I enjoyed most was how the skit highlights how something as seemingly ‘harmless’ as culinary experiences can provide a platform for exoticisation. We view a culture from the perspective of our own culture and make assumptions about its people, their way of life, and their motivations for behaving in certain ways. We consume the experience (including whatever performance they have put together for culinary tourists) and feel confident in claiming knowledge about the culture and its people. In Singapore, whilst I have many Indian friends, I am embarrassed about how little I know about their religious beliefs. Apart from the public holiday of Deepavali, and the different types of staples or curries presented as ‘North Indian’ or “South Indian’ cuisine, I know very little about what ‘being Indian’ means to my friends despite living in a multicultural society for most of my life. Racism still pervades everyday life where you can hear Chinese grandparents whispering derogatory racial remarks whilst indicating an Indian on public transport and treating it as a joke. I wished for more Goodness Gracious Me reruns. In Elementary, Liu’s Watson is an ex-surgeon who has had to give up her practice and becomes a carer to Holmes. There is no sexual tension between the characters, just irritation and friendship. She does not do any kungfu and is of course, not the Asian nerd who outsmarts everyone else. That role belongs to Holmes. So far, the show has subtly acknowledged the cultural and gender tensions without being didactic. In the pilot episode, Holmes buys Watson a rose to make up for his bad behavior. He had made a mistake in approaching a witness with accusations and lied about how he had anticipated the witness’ response. Holmes is not omniscient, just slightly more observant than the normal guy. Holmes calls Watson his “valet” or “assistant” but this tends to generate a response of disbelief from the police (in Episode 1

at least). Holmes is portrayed as a brat: refusing treatment and exhibiting self-destructive tendencies; Watson moderates with maturity but maintains a professional distance. With Elementary confirmed for a second season, one hopes that this quiet voice will be an authoritative voice in setting precedence for non-race and non-gender specific casting decisions in Hollywood. Independently subversive films Orient – A Short Film identifies the stereotypes associated with Thai, Japanese and Chinese women. “Subservient” (York 2012) as a given quality of all ‘Oriental’ women is appropriately highlighted, implying that Western men desire ‘Oriental’ women because they will serve him as the master of the house, deferring to his superior knowledge in all decisions, cooking for him and of course providing various forms of “erotic happiness”' (Nakamura in Bell & Kennedy 2000: 716). Whilst I reacted to the first skit with laughter, I found it harder to laugh as the skits went on and started to wonder if this actually reflected what Western men thought of ‘Oriental’ women. ‘The West’ has always been presented as more liberal than ’The East’ and with all the hype about freedom and respect for one’s rights as an individual, I had the impression that ‘Western men’ would respect all women regardless of race. I questioned my assumptions about romantic relationships in a liberal society and wondered how ‘Western women’ negotiate gender inequality at home. Directed and written by Sylvia Chang, 20-30-40 is a film that offers a peek into the lives of three women grappling with the struggles of being a woman at 20-, 30- and 40-years of age. At 40, Lily (Sylvia Chang) is recently divorced and grappling with her new identity as a single woman. At 30, Xiang Xiang is dating two men whilst missing an ex-boyfriend in New York and has not found someone she actually loves. At 20, Xiao Jie is facing the realities of pursuing a music career in Hong Kong, waking up to industry politics and exploitation whilst trying to stave off cynicism. Their voices clearly describe the expectations that one balances as a woman in East Asian society, feeling judged and disappointed with gender inequalities encountered in work and love whilst trying to find happiness in their own way. Lily and Xiao Jie are not ‘man-haters’ despite being unlucky in love and work respectively. The struggle is about gender identity: the conflict of what wants and what one is expected to want as a woman. Lily acknowledges her libido at 40 does not match with what people expect from a mature Asian women, whilst Xiang Xiang is unfulfilled by the sex and the devotion sworn by the men. She wonders if true love is the cure, but maintains skepticism. This film challenges the exoticisation of ‘Oriental’ women because Xiang Xiang and Xiao Jie are unmotivated by sex but are not nerds in any way. They are not ‘Madame Butterflies’, waiting for men to complete their lives. Lily challenges the idea of mature East Asian women as unsexy, matronly, gossipy ‘spinsters’ or mothers. The women are not ‘masculinised’ even whilst they are in no way desperate for romantic relationships or dependent on men. This is a film that quietly contradicts all assumptions of the ‘Oriental woman’ and makes the women from Sex and the City look like caricatures. I am glad it was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival.

Alternative Theatre Representations In 1998, Singapore Repertory Theatre presented Goldenchild by David Henry Hwang. I remember vividly how uncomfortable I felt with the portrayal of women in Goldenchild. Three women married to one man. The youngest, who was also the most educated and ‘Westernised’, was the most loved. The first wife, though stern, was the one that I felt most compassion for as she had already been replaced once, and now with a third wife entering the family she was more like a piece of furniture belonging to the family. A reminder of the past. As a production in Singapore, this reminded me of a time where women were treated as pieces of property and men were allowed to have more than one wife. The Women’s Charter, established in 1961, protected the rights of women by insisting on monogamy and making it punishable for men to physically abuse women and girls. It also ordered that a maintenance fee be paid by the husband for the upbringing of the children in the case of a divorce where the woman has less financial means to provide for the children under her care. Goldenchild affected me and made me reflect on Singapore’s idolisation of all things ‘Western’ and how putting the West on a pedestal has been detrimental to local culture and local talents in many ways (Isherwood 2012). In 1997, Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore’s former Minister Mentor and ‘founding father’) brought in John Olds from J.P. Morgan to replace the Chief Executive Officer at a local bank so he could push Singaporean banks towards global banking and hasten Singapore’s adoption of globalisation (Lee 2002: 80). Bringing in ‘foreign experts’ for consultation on matters ranging from banking to business and transport became common practice and making Singapore an attractive city for expatriates became a matter of government policy. In 2013, the People’s Action Party (the dominant party in government) put forward a proposal to increase Singapore’s population to 6.9 million by 2030. Although there was some mention of how it would maintain “a strong Singaporean core” (National Population and Talent Division 2013: 3) through pro-family policies, the Population White Paper estimated that up to 45% of this expanded population would need to be comprised of “foreign workers” (Ibid: 7) in order to maintain an “ambitious stretch target” (Ibid: 6) of 2-3% productivity growth per year. The long-term effects of globalisation have been detrimental to nurturing local talents and developing a local pride for local culture and its creators. In Singapore, Goldenchild struck a chord in more ways than one. Will Goldenchild accomplish this in London? Or will it perpetuate an image of Chinese people as stuck in old ways and unfair customs, encouraging further exoticisation of East Asians in London? Goldenchild is not the only play that touches on Chinese history and culture, and it will not be the last. Whilst I believe that it is important to celebrate our cultural heritage and history, I wonder if this very heritage and history reinforces latent ‘Orientalism’ in the current context of East Asian interactions with the ‘West’. I suspect that it does, and I am troubled by how latent ‘Orientalism’ might be internalised through ‘Western’ media and discourse that frames such representations as aspirations. In particular, East Asian women are caught in a larger battle of consumerism that defines the aspirations of young people all over the world, hypersexualising young women and

militarising young men (Giroux 2019: 46). Within this larger battlefield, ‘Oriental’ discourse is dominated by ‘Western’ men (Said 1978) and supplemented by ‘Western’ women (Yegenoglu 1998). A small, but growing, number of scholars in the field of Asian-American Studies have begun in recent years to debunk this assumed knowledge of ‘Orientals’ but it is a soft voice that needs to grow louder. Yellow Face produced by Park Theatre is written by the same playwright as Goldenchild (David Henry Hwang). It challenges people to reflect on what race means to them and what race they perform through the comical error of David Henry Hwang (DHH) casting a Caucasian actor in his own play as an Asian American and then trying to pass him off as a Siberian Jew when the mistake is discovered. He asks, “To what extent do we as Asians play our ethnicity at certain times of our experience? Why do we choose to do that? And also, can we choose our ethnicity to a certain extent? Can a white person who is very involved in Asian things be to some extent, 'Asian American'? And that's the confusing point that we are at” (Hwang 2007). Harvie highlights that contemporary urban life is defined by “ambivalence” where one has “at least two – usually contrasting – feelings about the same thing” (Harvie 2009: 70). Interview with Anna Chen. Anna Chen’s Anna May Wong Must Die (Chen 2008) highlights exoticisation of ‘Oriental’ women in Anna May Wong Must Die – Anna May Wong, an Asian American actress who was denied opportunities to play Chinese beauties in Hollywood films. Chen’s ‘Yellowface sequence’ is a slide show of Asian characters played by Hollywood legends who are not Asians. The names range from Katherine Hepburn in Dragon Seed to Myrna Loy in The Mask of Fu Manchu. Of Anna May Wong who gets to kill someone in a film, Chen says, “this is one of the few times she’ll have a happy ending, she’ll spend the rest of her life having to give happy endings”. As a performer, Chen is pointed, vocal and powerful. Not mincing any words, she highlights the racism that Anna May Wong experienced and described as the “dagger that left a scar on my heart” whilst enacting how Wong tries to make her eyes rounder. Chen then subverts this with a laugh about how she thought she had lost her contact lens. Wong gets her first ‘break’ in The Toll of the Sea, Hollywoods technicolour method that uses red and green, “but no yellow”. Wong plays ‘Lotus Flower’, a Madame Butterfly type who is left with a baby whilst the guy returns to America – a “romance for him but tragic for us”. Chen shows an image of a white child being carried by Anna May Wong as her son in the movie. An excerpt from Anna May Wong Must Die is performed as follows:

“Oh no! This white child living with the heathens! If only there was someone like Madonna or Angelina Jolie! And the American wife shows up and persuades Lotus Flower to hand over the child. Lotus Flower walks into the sea and kills herself whilst the white couple lives happily ever after. No guilt whatsoever. But it had to have that ending because there is evidence that she has had it off with the white man and interracial marriage is not allowed. Miscegenation is

not allowed.” (Chen 2009) As an independent performer and poet, Chen is not “embraced” by the establishment and there are some in the East Asian community who would prefer her to be less aggressively outspoken and direct (Appendix B). That motivated her to write scripts like Suzy Wrong Human Cannon where she fires ping-pong balls at the audience with a blow-up doll. Chen’s writing “makes people angry” she says, even those “on the left”. She calls it a good ‘wanker filter’ that identifies who is “embracing” and who is just paying “lip service to free speech”. Chen does not compromise and refuses to back down on how ‘yellowface’ portrayals on stage and film should be abolished completely. She is still campaigning for an apology from RSC over Orphan of Zhao, even though some in the East Asian performing community would prefer to put the matter to rest. In Excitable Speech, Butler identifies hate speech as a performative act that “deprives the one addressed of precisely this performative power” (Butler 1997: 81). In order to “set ourselves free” one must “locate the cause of our injury in a speaking subject and the power of that injury in the power of speech” (Ibid: 80) Chen and others in the BEAA like Jennifer Lim, Daniel York and Dr. Broderick Chow are not afraid of naming the source of ‘injurious acts’. They have named RSC’s Orphan of Zhao as an example, but by pursuing an apology they are setting precedence, deterring other theatre companies from casting ‘yellowface’ in future. Considering Reappropriation and the Making of Authoritative Statements as Strategies of Subversion I have already elaborated on humour as one possible strategy of subversion in my reflective essay. Here I will elaborate on some thoughts regarding reappropriation and the making of authoritative statements. On reappropriation Can reappropriation of appropriated stories subvert exoticisation? Butler argues that it is possible for an utterance to be “turned, untethered from its origin” and so “shift the locus of authority in relation to the utterance” (Butler 1997: 93) but I found that this depends on its ability to displace the appropriated usage of the word, or the memory of the appropriated story. Perhaps Fisher is right in observing that “no cultural object can retain its power when there are no longer new eyes to see it” (Fisher 2009: 4) and there is validity in finding a new audience for classic Chinese stories that would otherwise be forgotten. I remember feeling a sense a pride when Mulan found a place in the gallery of Disney ‘princesses’. I thought, “Finally there is a heroine based on a Chinese folktale and I’m glad young girls all over the world will know that Chinese women are not damsels in distress!” But I am wary of appropriation that excludes the community from contributing knowledge to their own story. It feels like one’s history has been ‘mined’ for a story, which somehow was not quite “stageable” (Fenton in RSC 2012) in its original form. The new adaptation becomes the ‘official’ form of the story, recognised internationally, whilst the original story is discarded and forgotten. It is therefore understandable that the BEAA were worried that this would also

be the case with Doran’s appropriation of Orphan of Zhao (2012). RSC's reputation in the theatre industry and Doran's position certainly provides the "force" for a 'speech act' to succeed if analysed in Bourdieu's sense of the "social power of one who speaks: the one who is invested with legitimate power" who "makes language act" (Butler 1997: 146). However, I argue that this depends on the audience addressed. If Orphan of Zhao is targeted at Chinese tourists in London who are from China (as indicated by the translated play information available on RSC's website), and if these Chinese are well acquainted with the original version of the story, this Doran/Fenton adapted version of Orphan of Zhao would lack authenticity in comparison to the opera versions staged in China. How can one tell if reappropriation of a word or work has succeeded? In Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler sets as her agenda the reclamation of the word ‘vagina’ and several other words describing the female genitalia, commonly used in demeaning references. Sixteen years after the play I still feel uncomfortable using the ‘V’ word in celebratory fashion. Can the word 'Oriental' ever be reappropriated? Perhaps only if the original images and literature associated with the exoticised 'Oriental' can be forgotten. On Making Authoritative Statements The Orphan of Zhao casting is an enunciative statement that holds because of an “internal consistency about its constitutive will to power over the Orient” (Yegenoglu: 1998: 23). This is “transmitted from one generation to another” (Ibid) and RSC is but one in many who accept the convention of Caucasians playing “yellow face”. Foucault, in defining statements, states that “an enunciative statement ”cannot operate without existence of an associated domain” (Foucault 2002: 108). This associated domain is made up of “all the formulations to which the statement refers (implicitly or not)” (Ibid: 110). In relation to performative speech acts, Butler echoes Foucault in saying that a performative only provisionally succeeds when the action “echoes prior actions and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior and authoritative set of practices” (Butler 1997: 205). Does the ‘exoticisation of Oriental women’ exist because we as East Asian women allow it? The internet has provided means for a protest like that organised by the BEAA to gather international support and contest RSC’s claim that it had “made considerable efforts to audition actors from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds” to “cast an ethnically diverse company” (RSC 2012) and demand an apology. The backing of Equity lent influence to the protest but the “authority” to challenge RSC’s claims lies with the East Asian community itself. In Opening the Door, Yellow Earth and True Heart Theatre have offered their support for East Asian performers looking for opportunities to present their works. Performers like Anna Chen have been denouncing exoticised ‘Oriental’ stereotypes since 1994. Why haven’t we successfully stopped “manifest Orientalism”? Can alternative theatre effectively reach those who need to hear the message most? With limited funds, an intimate venue and a limited number of shows, one can only feasibly reach a few hundred people when what we need are for millions to believe and join our cause. Whilst I

believe that it is important for alternative theatre companies and independent artists to continue making theatre that challenges dominant discourse, I am also conscious of the fact that most audiences attending such performances are usually those who have come to support the message and are themselves already convinced of challenging the dominant discourse. How can we reach the audience that needs to hear us? Perhaps East Asian artists need to rethink message delivery methods and work online, as well as offline, to advocate for industry diversity. Although the Internet is imperfect and one’s message is easily lost in noise, there was enough targeted noise made through Twitter regarding Orphan of Zhao for RSC to respond to BEAA with a statement. And although I acknowledge that people select information on the Internet based on what they are interested in, I find hope in the innovative ways in which people on Kickstarter garner support for their cause, and how flash mobs are organised for maximum exposure in high traffic areas. There is still much work for theatre to do offline. Danny Boyle’s London Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony slogan, “This is for everyone”, was criticised by some who were against the vision of a multi-cultural United Kingdom whilst others renewed public commitment to “a tolerant place in which people of many hues and beliefs can find a home and build a better future” (Massie 2012; D’Ancona 2012). The performance starts with choirs from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, perhaps reminding all that the United Kingdom is “not quite the same thing as England” (Massie 2012) and ends with an ode to the World Wide Web and flash mobs. Read performatively, Boyle has used the ‘signifying practice’ of the Olympics 2012 ceremony as an opportunity to foreground discussions regarding Britain’s cultural identity. Baz Kershaw argues that an ideology that is “amenable to adaptation and elaboration in the phenomenally wide variety of different cultural practices” (Kershaw in Kuppers et al. 2007: 95) was key to the effectiveness of British alternative theatre between 1960 and 1990. I argue it is important for East Asian artists to acknowledge that their push for industry inclusion and acceptance depends on this larger vision of a ‘multi-cultural’ Britain and stronger alliances between BEAA and those who fight for diversity is required to push for this vision of ‘multi-cultural’ Britain to be adopted by more. Postscript: Reflecting on my own performance in everyday life Harvie describes “performative analysis” as an “alternative critical practice” that concentrates “overwhelmingly on the ways people can and do act with agency, control and power through everyday acts of self-articulation and self-creation” (Harvie, 2009: 44 - 45). Through this research, I have had to reflect on how I perform my ethnicity and whether I perpetuate a ‘model-minority’ stereotype. I have, throughout my academic life in Singapore, tried to hard to compensate for my lack of natural ‘smarts’ by working hard. This Appendix (which is not included in the word count) is now close to 12,200 words long, which seems ridiculous when I am well aware that our instructions were to submit an essay of no more than 1,800 words. But I felt compelled to

give this topic the attention it requires as I struggle with how to subvert exoticisation as an applied theatre practitioner who believes in diversity. I believe that we should not try to find a universal definition for ourselves that homogenises us. Butler writes, let us think of the “universal” (Butler 2004: 191) as a term that is troubling because it highlights who is excluded from the “norm”. She advocates the bracketing of the universal because it calls attention to those who are excluded from the norm. In this spirit, I want to encourage more East Asian women to present contemporary stories of their perspectives, their lives, that challenge and problematise stereotyped and exoticised representations. I have realised that it is important to present contemporary identity conflicts that struggle with the cultural identity formed in London – and this is as important as embracing (or rediscovering) my cultural heritage and history. My multi-faceted cultural identity will constantly evolve, but I could certainly do more to present facets that are not often acknowledged or recognised. Separately, I also acknowledge that my feminist position comes into conflict with some of the positive representations identified by the East Asian women I interviewed. Whilst I acknowledge that it is their right to choose to adopt a non-feminist perspective, I find it hard to separate the push against discrimination of ‘East Asians’ without talking about the need to push for greater gender equality precisely because the ‘Oriental’ woman is defined by Flaubert (quoted in Said) as submissive to men, as one who “never spoke of herself...never represented her emotions, presence or history. He spoke for and represented her” (Said 1978: 6). My personal position leans towards performing a contemporary Singaporean woman who is aware of and constantly negotiating the balance between inherited and lived identities. Judith Butler, in talking about gender difference, advocates a celebration of ambiguity to avoid the universality that assumes heterogeneity and excludes diversity. Perhaps becoming “strange” (Butler 2004: 191) and celebrating the diversity and the plurality of (East Asian), bracketed to highlight that it is not a universality, is how I choose to identify whilst I am in London, intentionally leaving the question of my cultural identity as something open and intentionally unresolved.

Appendix B – Background The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Orphan of Zhao In October 2012, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) announced the cast list for Orphan of Zhao, touted as “The Chinese Hamlet”. The cast featured 17 actors, of which only three were of East Asian descent. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the three East Asian actors were playing two halves of a dog (The Demon Mastiff), and a maid. This led to a protest by the East Asian acting community in London and was supported by East Asian actors in Los Angeles, Singapore, Malaysia and New York. A pressure group called the British East Asian Artists (BEAA) was formed and, together with Improbable Theatre, facilitated an Equity-sponsored discussion called Opening the Door, held in February 2013 at the Young Vic. During this event, actors reported being asked to sound more “Chinese” and put on a “strong accent” during auditions. They also expressed discomfort with the “Oriental” (Fajilagmago in Opening the Door 2013: 2) casting category they were asked to use in Spotlight, an online casting directory. There were questions surrounding when casting directors look under the “Oriental” tab in Spotlight and many felt this ‘Oriental’ category was not helpful. It did not help casting directors view East Asian performers as versatile performers. What emerged was that East Asian performers would like to be considered for all roles available to British performers, including period roles and canonical works. The East Asian artists present felt it was necessary to highlight that RSC assumed that the ‘White” actors cast could play Chinese, Russian and Venetian characters in RSC’s Winter Season 2012, but East Asians could not. There were many calls for Asians to be cast in “non-race specific roles” (Rogers in Opening the Door 2013: 9). The origins of Oriental exoticisation Edward Said’s Orientalism Said attributes the genesis of the word “Oriental” to the “canonical” writers ranging from Chaucer to Shakespeare, Byron and Marx, designating “Asia or the East, geographically, morally, culturally” (Said 1978: 31). Artists like Nerval are cited as describing the East as “wonderfully, ingeniously connected to exoticism, glamour and promise” (Said 1978: 340) largely because of its distance from the West. From this distance comes the desire to know. In Orientalism, Said credits Gustave Flaubert with creating an enduring perception of the ‘Oriental’ woman who becomes, for Flaubert, a symbol of “luxuriant and seemingly unbounded sexuality” (Said 1978: 187 - 188). She “never spoke of herself…never represented her emotions, presence or history. He spoke for and represented her” (Said 1978: 6). Even though Said was talking primarily about the Middle East and the mysterious attraction of the veiled woman, Flaubert’s writings influenced the perceptions of many others, and their remanence can still be found in popular culture today. A feminist reading of Said’s Orientalism Meyda Yegenoglu’s feminist reading of Said in Colonial Fantasies argues that “The Orient, seen as the embodiment of sensuality, is always understood in feminine terms and accordingly its place in Western imagery has been constructed through the simultaneous gesture of racialisation and feminisation” (Yegenoglu 1998: 73). “The Orient is its women for many of these travellers” (Harper in Yegenoglu 1998: 73). Yegenoglu finds, in her examination of the writings of western women like Sophia Poole and Lady Mary Montagu who could gain access to the harems, that they not only saw their writings as being able to “supply the deficiencies” (Poole in Yegenoglu 1998: 76) of men, but also provide authority on the “truth of the Orient” (Yegenoglu 1998: 80) because they could view the Oriental women “stripped of their veil, in all the brilliance of their beauty” (Gautier in Yegenoglu 1998: 75). Yegenoglu's analysis of their writings (particularly that of Lady

Montagnu) reveal that Montagnu took on a masculinised, “phallic/voyeuristic” (Montagnu in Yegenoglu 1998: 91) enjoyment that she was aware of. She writes that she had

"wickedness enough to wish secretly that Mr Gervase could have been there invisible. I fancy it would have very much improv'd his art to see so many fine Women naked in different postures, some in conversation, some working...many negligently lying on their Cushions while their slaves (generally pritty girls of 17 or 18) were employ'd in braiding their hair in several pritty manners" (Montagnu in Yegenoglu 1998: 91)

This happens after Montagnu is let into the confidence of the 'Oriental' women and wears their clothes. The ‘latent Orientalism' is apparent because she perpetuates in her writings the idea of ‘Oriental’ women as sexualised. Montagnu also exhibits ‘masculinised’ traits where she feels the need to assert herself as the authority of the 'Orient', having seen the women naked. The 'Orient', was to many in those days, embodied by its unknowability, and the women of the 'Orient', veiled and hardly speaking to foreign men, embodied all that men wanted to know about it. To assert her own position as the authority on the ‘Orient’, Montagnu asserts that the writings of other men and women are "full of mistakes from one end to the other". Montagnu almost directly accuses ‘Lady ___’ of plagiarising the French historian, Jean Dumont who writes with "equal ignorance and confidence" (Montagnu in Yegenoglu 1998: 80). This resonates with how masculinised women put down other women in the workplace today, but it also makes the 'Oriental' woman a spectacle, not just in the eyes of the 'Western' man, but also the ‘Western’ women who betray the openness of the harem made available to them.    

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