Reorienting The Vision: The Construction Of Chinese American Identity In Wayne Wang Films

Film does not simply present people with the reality out there, it is rather a means of constructing and shaping a reality that is geared to certain structures of thinking. The stereotypical images of the Chinese on Hollywood screen, as the present author sets out to argue, are part of the "Yellow Peril" discourse framed by the Eurocentric structures of thinking. Concurrently, the constructed nature of the cinematic apparatus has bespoken the possibility of cultural workers wielding the tool of the cinema to construct an alternative cultural identity.The present thesis is a tentative attempt at decoding the representational politics of Wayne Wang, one of the most powerful voices of Asian American cinema. Significantly, there are many contradictions about Wayne Wang: while the trajectory of Wayne Wang's career has been accompanied with accolades of political combativeness, some of his even politically progressive films have been subjected to acerbic accusations of political myopia; though there is a plethora of reviews about his films, there are only a few academic articles and, up to now, no book-length study devoted entirely to his films. Through the lens of a number of selected post-colonial theories that converge on the question of cultural identity, and by way of a detailed examination of the representation of Chineseness in selected Wayne Wang films particularly with regard to Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989), The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Chinese Box (1997), the thesis seeks to construct a body of Wayne Wang's representational politics. A corollary concern of the thesis is to examine how his representation of Chinese Americans has changed the way "they" are usually viewed on Hollywood screen, and through that examination, what entailments his representational politics spells for Asian American cinema.My decoding of Wayne Wang's films is primarily concerned with three aspects. First of all, most Wang films demonstrate a consistent quest motif. The obsession with exploring the relationship between the self and others belies a conscientious effort to stage and examine the sense of identity crisis that has been induced in a society that relegates the Chinese to the status of the marginal and the invisible. Conversely, this examination serves to reorient the vision of the spectators who are all inured to the image of the "unspeakable" Chinese as well asto demand Asian Americans' active engagement and negotiation with cultural identity.Second, most Wayne Wang films evince a conscious attempt at constructing a complex Chinese identity. The construction of a contingent cultural identity that is to be taken up, given meaning to, and shaped by people of different backgrounds, such as regional, educational and experiential, proves to be a strong indictment of the stereotypical depiction of the Chinese on mainstream cinema. A complex and hybrid cultural identity also gives testimony to the different cultural practices that Chinese Americans have all gone through, and the traces of then-resistance and survival. The liminal space, or the "third space" as Homi Bhabha has called it, that all Chinese Americans are supposed to occupy has hence enabled new possibilities to open up and new potentials to unleash.Third, the multidimensional narrative perspective in many Wayne Wang films has inherited the legacy of documentary traditions that have marked Asian American cinema since its inception, and incorporated elements of Hong Kong cinema. Combined with other aesthetic elements, they work to counter the linear causal-effect classic Hollywood narrative style, as well as creating an eclectic narrative form that befits the theme of a hybrid Chineseness.Concomitantly, the thesis argues that in order to bring about truly revolutionary changes in the way we perceive ourselves as well as the way we are being perceived, our viewing strategy must be reconfigured. In light of the degree of saturation that Chinese Americans have all been exposed to their representation in mainstream society, and particularly in view of the h...