Magtrabaho Ka!: Manila Luzon, Drag, and the Politics of Self-Orientalization

While Asian American scholarship has long discussed the history and politics of Orientalism, the representation and appropriation of Asian icons in Western cultures, relatively little has been written about the use of Orientalist tropes by Asians and Asian Americans themselves. In the early to mid-20th century, as Asians gained more exposure in the United States – first through immigration and, later, through war – the use of Orientalism marked Asians as foreign and exotic, ultimately working to deny them as rightful citizens of the Western world. As these generations grew and, because of strict immigration restrictions like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, new immigrants ceased entering the nation, American-born Asians were met with a unique dilemma: they did not “belong” to the country where they were born and raised.

During the 1930s-40s, a group of Asian American performers gained popularity in what was known as the Chop Suey Circuit. Mostly, but not entirely, composed of second-generation Chinese Americans, who grew up with an acute awareness of their “foreignness” in the United States, these performers built a name for themselves by performing a variety of vaudeville, comedy, and dance routines. In her essay “Performing a Geography of Asian America: The Chop Suey Circuit,” SanSan Kwan writes:

On the one hand, the Chop Suey Circuit entertainers succeeded at “playing Oriental,” performing acts like the “Fan Dance,” the “Chinese Sleeve Dance,” and the “Coolie Dance,” in order to give Americans a look at exactly what they expected the “Asiatic” to be. On the other hand, the Chop Suey Circuit was also about performing Americanness, as equated with  whiteness. Dressed in bunny costumes and tap dancing to “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,”  the mostly second-generation Asian American dancers and singers strove towards cultural assimilation. Presenting their Asian American bodies onstage, performing popular American numbers (which, incidentally, were largely black and Latin American forms appropriated and whitewashed), these entertainers simultaneously reproduced and blurred the boundaries of racial otherness. (122)

In utilizing these images, were they embracing their heritage, critiquing racist beliefs about Asian people, or perpetuating their own marginalization? In many ways, they could only present themselves as Orientalist stereotypes – in order to book shows and make money in a time when such images were the only exposure to Asian people (whether real or imagined) available to Americans. But was it merely a marketing ploy?

Whether consciously or not, by mixing Orientalist imagery with nationalistic, all-American references, these performers raise questions about the precarious nature of their own citizenship in America, about who belongs and who does not. In a time in which race relations and racial segregation relied on a black-white axis, making no room for Asian Americans, these performers could only measure their identities in terms of foreign (Asian) and citizen (American). As neither “colored” nor “white,” Asian Americans were simultaneously permitted to spaces barred to African Americans and barred from places permitted to white Americans.

In much the same way, Manila inhabits a hybrid space. Of mixed race (her mother is Filipino and her father is white), she can “pass” as either Asian or white; she chooses to identify and present herself and her persona as Asian, and in Asian costuming. On the other hand, in other challenges she adopts a particularly American persona – she has dressed like Big Bird, carrot cake, a flapper, and patriotic “white trash” with a blonde wig. (Granted, all of these examples except for the Big Bird costume were challenge-specific, but my point is that she does not limit herself to these Asian stereotypes; many of her costumes are actually devoid of any specific racial or national overtones.) This vacillation between Asian and American and between white and non-white harkens back to the Chop Suey Circuit.

Page 3 of 5 | Previous page | Next page