Final: The fetishization of Asian women through the years

The development of the "Asian fetish"
-Orientalist painters of the nineteenth century, such as Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
-women of Turkey, northern Africa depicted in vulnerable, available positions with fair skin --> attractive to European men who were reacting to increased independence of European women


Josephine Baker -- "the wild beast from the jungle"
-American woman; immense popular in France, where she depicted ethnic women without a clear nationality (Asian? African? Arab? this is never clear--her role is a manifestation of orientalist fantasies)
-exoticized nudity
-racist and objectified image of the female body
-primitivism; exotic fantasies


Common stereotypes of Asian women in American film
-derived from racist attitudes toward Chinese immigrants in the West
-"dragon lady" --> Thief of Baghdad (1924) starring Anna Mae Wong
-Asian roles were played by Caucasians because of morality codes in the film industry at the time (Dragon Seed, 1944)
-Sayonara (1957) --> first film to address prejudices, but still perpetuated stereotypes of submissive Asian women
-The World of Suzie Wong (1957) --> sexy, submissive Asian prostitute is "rescued" by an American tourist
-Flower Drum Song (1961) --> Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about the assimilation of Asian immigrants into American society; starred Miyoshi Umeki as Mei Li, the submissive Asian woman, and Nancy Kwan as Linda Low, the sexy Asian woman
-Vietnam became the focus in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the Vietnam War with films like Deer Hunter (1978), Good Morning Vietnam (1987) and Miss Saigon (1989)


More recently
-At the beginning of the 1980s, Asian women were en vogue in Hollywood and New York City (result of beginning of globalization)
-"ornamentals" --> "Orientals" (derogatory term for an Asian woman who served as arm candy for an American man)
-Increase in the number of Asian models during the 1990s


Why the stereotypes?
-Connection between sexuality and commerce --> sex trafficking
-Begun with American and European soldiers during foreign wars, sex tourism has grown for 50 years
-White men have traditionally had free rein to sleep with minority women
-Devaluation of Asian women saturates modern Western society
-Mail-order brides (fulfill submissive stereotype)


Fetishes in pornography
-3.55 million results for "Asian fetish" on Google (more than any other type of fetish search)
-1994: eight of the ten most popular porn videos featured Asian women, often in sadistic-masochistic sexual situations, as submissive sex objects, or petite, child-like women framed as schoolgirls