A white actor can masquerade as an ethnic character without fear of becoming one because he or she does not change his or her complexion but simply blackens it (in the case of blackface) or reshapes the facial features by taping and stretching them (in the case of yellowface). Conversely, a so-called mulatto can pass as white only when his or her exterior visible body is light enough. The skin or the epidermis in both cases serves as the center of signification and the site where one’s racial identity is lodged.
By this logic, racial masquerade is strictly reserved for the white actor. As a color that is “no colour because it is all colours,” whiteness constitutes the “source of its representational power,” according to Richard Dyer. Thus when a white actor acts in yellowface or blackface, he or she is taken as a skillful performer of someone apparently not him-or herself, hence the impossibility of conflating the actor with the role of the racial Other. For a non-white actor, whoever, his or her transitive and mimetic connection with racialized roles remains fixed.
Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era”
This is a great article for anyone interested in a critical analysis of the historical roots of yellowface, as well as how Anna May Wong (though not by her own agency) contributed to how Asian actors today are perceived by the western mainstream media.
(via anniepology)
—Back in 1993, Japan’s then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono shared the results of a Japanese government study of the country’s use of brothels (i.e., “comfort stations”) where women (most of them Korean) were forced to have sex with soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army. “The Government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women,” Kono said in a statement.
Even though Kono was a member of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, his statement has rankled many other conservative Japanese politicians ever since. Now fresh signs are emerging that denial of Imperial Japan’s use of sexual slavery during World War II has become firmly entrenched in mainstream Japanese political opinion.
During an Aug. 21 press conference, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, a rising star in Japanese conservative circles, declared that, “there is no evidence that the comfort women were taken by force or coerced by the Japanese military.” Similarly, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda claimed during an Aug. 27 parliamentary committee meeting in Tokyo that Japan never independently verified the testimony of so-called “comfort women.”
And in an editorial that ran Aug. 29, the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest daily newspapers, made the same argument and urged Japanese political leaders to “review” the 1993 apology (italics are mine): “The government must take measures to prevent misunderstandings on the comfort women issue from spreading further. As there is no conclusive evidence that the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly recruited comfort women, the Noda Cabinet should review the Kono statement…and explain the government’s stance on the issue to the public and the world in a manner easy to understand.”
Not all Japanese politicians and media outlets deny the use of sexual slavery during World War II. In an Aug. 31 story about the ongoing tensions over the issue, the Asahi Shimbun stated the obvious: “’Comfort women’ is the euphemism for Korean and other Asian women who were forced into frontline brothels for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.”
Still, the benighted attitudes of prominent figures in Japanese society will ensure that World War II-era sexual slavery will continue to be a front-burner issue in South Korea-Japan relations.
Toru Hashimoto, Mayor of Osaka, Japan • Claiming the necessity of Japan’s World War II-era so-called “comfort women,” a collection of 200,000 or so females (many Chinese, South Korean and Indonesian), forced into sex slavery for soldiers. Hashimoto’s statement of apparent sympathy with forced prostitution has been decried internationally, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei speaking in condemnation: “The conscription of sex slaves was a grave crime committed by the Japanese military. We are shocked and indignant at the Japanese politician’s remarks, as they flagrantly challenge historical justice.” Hashimoto, age 43, is leader and co-founder of the nationalist Japan Restoration Party. source (via shortformblog) —
Esperanza Spalding (via albinwonderland)
(Source: blackcoffeebluez)
—Ryan Gosling (via imfantasyparade) —
