미국 시각이미지 속의 동북아시아 여성: 1850년대 - 1870년대

조은영 미술사학연구회 2009 美術史學報 Vol.- No.33

This paper is the first in a series of articles in which I will investigate the stereotyped images of Northeast Asian women and Asian American women appearing in American art and visual culture from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The changing and conflicting visual images of each nation and its male inhabitants resulted from the shifting political, economic, and cultural relations between the United States and Northeast Asian nations since the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating the politics of representation and image-making. The stereotyped images of Northeast Asian women, however, have consistently remained in the American imagination even to this day and have replaced the reality of the women. American visual images of the past one and a half centuries have not only reflected, but also helped formulate the two most prevalent characterizations of Asian women: submissive and delicate figures who exist to serve men or conniving "Dragon Ladies." Previous scholarship on this subject has largely focused on the representation system of American portrayals of Asian women in film and mass media since the 1920s. However, the purpose of this paper is to examine the origin and dissemination of the stereotyped characterization of Northeast Asian women in American visual representations from the 1850s to the 1870s. It also shows that its roots extend to the beginning of American relations with East Asia in the mid-nineteenth century. A comprehensive examination of widely- circulated visual images of Asian women, mainly Japanese and Chinese, that appeared so often in American households, artists' studios, and public arenas in the form of multitudes of book, magazine, and newspaper illustrations, paintings and sculptures, photographs and prints, postcards and trade cards, ornaments and advertisements, confirms that the majority of imagery can be categorized into one homogeneous group regardless of their individual characteristics and circumstances. They are not portraits of specific individuals; instead they display characteristics of the stereotypical images of sexualized, exotic, and submissive Asian women. This was true both in the visual images produced or imported by Americans, reflecting their preconceptions and preferences for specific aspects of Asian women, and also in those executed by Japanese and Chinese artists and artisans who complied with American desires and tastes and aimed for American markets. In this sense, the dissemination and popularization of the stereotypical images of Asian women in the United States was co-produced by Americans and Asians themselves. The exotic, docile, delicate, submissive images of Japanese women as "geishas" and "cherry-blossoms," in particular, were held strongly by American men from the very onset of American-Japanese relations. Early accounts and visual representations of Japanese maidens seen through rose-tinted glasses stimulated Western fancies and became the most powerful lure of Japan. Some images of Chinese women, in comparison, were less romanticized and became the prototype of the "Dragon Ladies" partly because of white Americans' xenophobia toward Chinese immigrants as they were seen as an unstoppable horde threatening the labor market and ultimately the foundation of white society itself.

미국 대중매체의 아시아 여성 재현과 대항적 문화예술 활동: 최근 아시아계 여성 영상제작자들의 활동에 주목하며

정은주 ( Chung Eun-ju ) 경희대학교 글로벌인문학술원 2022 비교문화연구 Vol.67 No.-

이 글은 아시아와 아시안 아메리칸 여성에 대한 미국 대중문화의 왜곡된 재현과 그에 대해 아시아계 예술가들이 펼쳐온 저항 문화예술 활동의 역사적 맥락과 의의를 분석한 글이다. 아시아계가 흑백 대립에 기초한 미국의 이분법적 인종 구조 속에서 보이지 않는 존재이거나 문화가 달라 이질적인 존재로 취급되어 온 가운데 여성의 경우, TV나 영화 등 가장 대중적인 매체에서 주변적인 존재 혹은 과도하게 성적인 이국적 존재로 재현되어왔다. 위험한 ‘드레곤 레이디’이거나 순종적인 ‘연꽃 아기’로 재현한 성적 대상화는 19세기 아시아 남성의 노동 착취를 위해 혹은 20세기 미국의 아시아 전쟁에의 참여 속에 이식되었던 매춘과 연관되어 고정관념화한 것으로, 실제 이민사 속에서 당시 미국의 산업 발달에 불가결한 역할을 수행하며 아시아 여성이 담당했던 노동자로서의 모습은 반영하지 않은 채 오랜 기간 일면적으로 재생되어왔다. 아시안 아메리칸 문화예술가들에 의해 왜곡된 재현을 비판하고 수정하려는 노력이 소설, 연극, 영화 등 다양한 영역에서 이루어져 왔으나, 아시아계 여성에 대한 고정관념은 여성 영상 창작자들의 적극적인 개입이 있기 전까지 쉽게 수정되지 못했다. 2010년대 중반 무렵, 기존의 미디어가 주목하지 않았던 아시아와 여성 등 소수자적 주제를 전략화한 영상 스트리밍 서비스가 활성화된 변화는, 미투 운동으로 촉발된 여성적 주제에 대한 관심사 증가와 더불어, 아시아 여성에 대한 오랜 고정적이고 일면적인 재현방식에 균열을 가져왔다. 논문은 기술적, 사회적 변화의 맥락 속에서 작가, 감독, 프로듀서, 스태프 등 아시아 여성 창작자들의 영상 제작 참여가 증가함으로써 스크린에서 최근 몇 년간 아시아계 여성이 여느 미국인 여성과 마찬가지로 삶의 주인공이 되기도 하고 다양한 캐릭터와 삶의 여정을 겪는 모습으로 재현되는 정상성을 찾아가고 있음을 분석했다. This paper analyzes the distorted representation in American popular culture against Asian and Asian American women, and the historical context and significance of Asian American artists' resistance in their artistic activities. Asian descents in the USA have been treated as invisible or heterogeneous in the dichotomous racial structure of American society based on black-and-white opposition, and it has been repeated in the most popular media such as TV and movies in a way that represents Asian women as peripheral or excessively sexual exotic beings. Sexual objectification, represented as a sexy but dangerous ‘Dragon Lady’ or a sexually obedient ‘Lotus Baby’, is a stereotype of prostitution transplanted for labor exploitation of Asian men in the 19th century or due to the United States' involvement in the 20th century Asian Wars. It has been reproduced for a long time without reflecting the reality of Asian women as mostly laborers who played an indispensible role in the U.S. industrial development at that time. Asian American artists, playwrights, and filmmakers have all made attempts to address inaccurate depictions of Asians, but until Asian female creators actively intervened, preconceptions of Asian women remained unabated. The increase of verified characters of Asian women was related to the emergence of video streaming services which had the strategy of specifying minority issues, the spread of social networking, and the interest in female stories triggered by Hollywood's ‘Me Too’ movement in the mid-2010s. Above all, female creators who have begun to see the light in such technical and social changes played a significant role regaining normality in the representation of Asian women. Through their participation, Asian women are now being represented as they go through various characters and life journeys rather than one-dimensional sexual objects, reflecting the reality of Asian women little by little.

The Deconstruction of American Orientalism in Diana Son’s R.A.W. (’Cause I’m a Woman)

주경정 한국현대영미드라마학회 2013 현대영미드라마 Vol.26 No.3

This article examines the deconstruction of American Orientalism through stereo-typicality of Asian American women in Diana Son’s R. A. W. (’Cause I’m a Woman) (1993). She is known for her exploration of Asian American identities from various angles with idiosyncratic and disturbing women characters in her plays, 2000 Miles (1993), Boy (1994), Stop Kiss (2000) and Satellite (2006). R.A.W. is significant in presenting possible oriental Asian women stereotypes in various perspectives and creating a new identity of them. These stereotyped images mainly come from American Orientalism. Edward Said’s West Orientalism extends to American Orientalism which is related to American imperialism and it influences on American culture. Asian American women in American culture generally appear as distorted and stereotypical objects; in particular they are sexually objectified. In this article, the identities of Asian American women are analyzed with such critical terms as passivity, Oriental sensuality and unknowability. These stereotypical images discriminate and oppress four female Asian American characters. In the end, they deconstruct the false oriental images and replace them by the obverse images of powerful, independent and positive Asian American women. In other words, they try to be free from oriental negative restraints, in particular race-negative sexuality. This play succeeds in presenting, testing, and subverting deeply rooted Oriental identity of Asian American women. The play theatrically presents deconstructive strategy through avant-garde theatre. Son experiments theatrical devices such as slides, a song, non-characteristic characters, no-dialogues and fragmentary narratives. In particular, she uses theatricality of the Theatre of Image as one of American avant-garde theatre influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre. The play presents a new and diverse paradigm to Asian American theatre which was stuck with political realism plays. Ultimately, Son suggests political and social change of American society as well as theatrically subversive avant-garde theater in her play.

Politics of Representation : Americanization of Korean Comfort Women and Camptown Sex Worker Discourses

Ko, Jeongyu 한국중앙영어영문학회 2014 영어영문학연구 Vol.56 No.1

“Politics of Representation: Americanization of Korean Comfort Women and Camptown Sex Worker Discourses” examines the phenomenon of Americanization process of literary representations dealing with Korean comfort women and camptown sex workers. Examining various Asian/American writers’ interviews and scholarly articles, the paper interrogates continuous publication of these discourses in relation to US Eurocentrism and Orientalism which have produced fascinated Western gaze toward the oppression of Asian women in general. Started with mostly Korean American female writers’ works on comfort women, representational efforts on Korean comfort women and also US military camptown sex workers have been expanded to American writers with different ethnic and gender identities. The paper examines the fallacy found in the repetitive ethical claims appeared in the interviews of those American writers, who highlight political objectives of such narratives. Instead, the paper urges for a critical intervention on the part of Asian/American scholars to frame a new mode of discussion that enables to first fully recognize Korean comfort women and camptown sex workers as a cherished American topic and then to provide tools for critical readings of those discourses on the topic.

1980~1990년대 아시안 아메리칸 여성미술가들의 미국역사 재현

김현주 미술사학연구회 2016 美術史學報 Vol.- No.47

Asian American women artists emerged in earnest as significant artistic agents in the 1980s and '90s. For them, representation of American history became a subject of research as a starting point in their search for identity. This study classifies Asian American women artists’ works, which represent American history, into three detailed topics: becoming significant agents of history, a history of labor, and a history of internment camps. It explains why these works can be a site for a dispute of meanings by the use of theoretical interpretation methodologies: Asian American discourse, Asian American feminist cultural criticism, and post-colonial feminist cultural discourse. Asian American women artists revealed the contradiction of the concept of nation–patriarchal and based on white racial identity–by focusing on women’s experiential Petit Narrative that is doubly marginalized, by gender and race. Additionally this study will force questions and require the re-inspection of the idea of “the great and united America” which is an image of a modern nation, constructed by the birth narrative which began with Columbus and passed through the “melting pot” discourse in the 19th century; it will ask how much of the process of creating consistent developing narratives is artificial and fictional and is accomplished by seamless suturing together of numerous wounds. 아시안 아메리칸 여성미술가들은 1980~1990년대 본격적으로 집단적 예술주체로 부상하였다. 그들에게 미국의 역사 재현은 자아 정체성에 대한 물음의 답을 찾기 위한 출발점으로서 진지한 탐구 주제가 되었다. 이 연구는 미국의 역사를 재현한 일군의 아시안 아메리칸 여성미술가들의 작품을 역사의 주체되기, 노동의 역사, 강제 수용의 역사라는 세부 주제로 분류하고, 왜 그런 작품이 의미 경합의 장소가 되는지를 아시안 아메리칸 담론, 아시안 아메리칸 여성주의 문화비평, 탈식민 여성주의 문화담론 등을 이론적 해석 틀로 활용하여 밝히고자 하였다. 아시안 아메리칸 여성미술가들은 성과 인종에 근거해 이중적으로 소외되어 온 여성들의 경험적 소서사에 주목함으로써, 미국의 가부장적이며 백인성에 기반 한 국민 개념의 모순을 드러낼 것이다. 또한 콜럼버스에서 시작된 탄생 서사에서부터 19세기의 ‘용광로’ 담론을 거치며 위대하고 통일된 하나의 미국이란 근대국가 이미지를 구축하고, 일관된 발전 서사를 만들어가는 과정이 얼마나 인위적이며 허구이고, 수많은 봉합들로 이뤄졌는지를 문제시하고 재성찰을 요구할 것이다.

American Vs. Woman: Asian American Identity and Queer Intimacy in American Woman

( Jae Eun Yoo ) 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2011 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.19 No.3

Susan Choi bases her second novel, American Woman, on a famous kidnapping case of the 1970s. Patty Hearst, when she declared that she would join her radical kidnappers, stirred public anxiety over the dominant family and national values. Focusing on a Japanese American Woman who was arrested with Hearst and represented as the model minority in an attempt to undermine the political effects of Hearst`s rebellion, Choi explores the implications of queer insight for the question of Asian American identity. Jenny Shimada, the fictional counterpart of the Japanese American Woman, finds herself constantly read as a poor third world or mysteriously oriental girl. She is never accepted as an American, nor can she imagine herself as a properly mature woman. Choi traces this problem to Jenny`s father`s internment experience during the Second World War. Jenny finds different ways of imagining and presenting herself only when she develops a queer relationship with Pauline, a fictional counterpart to Patty Hearst. Choi`s depiction of queer intimacy between the two women reveals the terms and conditions, as well as omissions, implicit in the phrase American Woman. Choi`s queer imagination thus helps her readers imagine alternative identities outside the dominant norms of the national and public culture, as well as alternative ways of storytelling that reveal silenced connections and possibilities.

한국계 미국시인 캐시 송의 시에 나타난 아시아계 여성들

윤석임 현대영미어문학회 2009 현대영미어문학 Vol.27 No.4

Cathy Song was the first Asian American to win the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1982. She said that the major themes of her poetry include familial relationships, art and feminism. She provides a view into the lives and daily existence of Asian American women. With her quiet tone Song engages a wide variety of experiences of Asian American women from the ecstatic to the distasteful. She wrote various stages of Asian American women's life candidly in her work. Day to day life for Asian American women is an ordeal and offers little excitement and few meaningful rewards. However, instead of the victimization of poor Asian American women, representation of a strong and independent Asian female identity becomes a predominant theme for Song. Not shrinking from the hard realities of the societal and familial traps set for women, her female characters in her poetry attempt to rebel against systematic repression of women and find power to survive through relationships among women.

아시아계 미국문학 칙릿 소설로서의 『스물일곱, 내 청춘이 수상하다』

고정윤 ( Jeongyun Ko ) 사단법인 아시아문화학술원 2019 인문사회 21 Vol.10 No.2

본 연구는 캐롤라인 황의 『스물일곱, 내 청춘이 수상하다』를 아시아계 미국문학으로서의 칙릿 소설로 분석한다. 특히 아시아계 미국인 여성의 사회적 이슈들을 재현하는데 있어 칙릿 소설 장르의 효과성을 검토하기 위하여, 논문은 먼저 기존의 칙릿 소설들이 여성 문제를 다루는데 있어서 보여준 가능성을 논의한 학계의 토론들을 살펴본다. 논문은 『스물일곱, 내 청춘이 수상하다』가 한국계 미국인 여주인공의 이야기를 통해, 아시아계 미국인 여성이 미국사회에서 직면하는 문제를 다채롭게 재현함으로서, 백인 여성의 문제에 집중한 기존의 미국 칙릿소설 장르의 가능성을 확장하고 있음을 살펴본다. 결론적으로, 본 논문은 캐롤라인 황이 인기장르인 칙릿 소설의 틀을 활용하여 기존의 아시아계 미국문학 독자층을 넘어서서 성공적으로 더 많은 독자층에 다가설 뿐 만 아니라 더 나아가, 미국 주류 독자들을 만족시키기 위하여 아시아계 미국인에게 중요한 사회 정치적 이슈를 희생시키지 않고 작품의 전면에 내세우고 있음을 검토한다. This study aims to examine Caroline Hwang’s In Full Bloom as an Asian American Chick-lit novel. To consider the effects of Chick-lit genre in conveying Asian American women’s issues, the paper first examines existing scholarly discussion on Chick-lit novels’ potential in highlighting feminist agendas. Then, it considers how Hwang’s Korean American heroine expands the possibility of the Chick-lit genre by tackling Asian American women’s social issues. The paper concludes that by employing popular genre of Chick-lit, Caroline Hwang succeeds in reaching for broader readers beyond typical Asian American literature readers without risking serious questions related to Asian American women’s lives.

『조용한 오딧세이』: 역사의 주체로서 삶 쓰기

이소희 ( So-hee Lee ) 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2016 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.24 No.2

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize and analyse Mary Paik Lee`s life writing, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America (1990), from two perspectives: the autobiographical narrative as a subject of history, and the historiographical narrative as a social commentary, heavily editied by historian, Sucheng Chan. In sixteen brief chapters, this energetic and determined optimist recounted the vicissitudes of a poverty-stricken Korean woman growing up in California with a long history of anti-Asian sentiment and practices during the first half of the 20th century. Although it is significant because of the scarcity of such works by Asian women, as well as by one of six hundred Korean women who came to the United States before 1905, it is clearly a sanitized memoir that Lee wanted "to pass down to posterity." It is very conspicuous that awareness of the harsh existence of family and community members back in Korea under Japanese colonial rule profoundly shaped the nationalism of Korean Americans. On the other hand, Mary Paik Lee is very keen on racism, rather than sexism, influenced by her lifelong experience in California. The detailed appendices describe the process by which Chan tackled and verified Lee`s manuscript, explain how the Lees actually farmed their land, and briefly summarize Korean rice cultivation in California from 1910 to 1925. Such a strong historical verification makes this autobiography the most prominent and reliable historiography among the early autobiographical narratives by Asian American women. Therefore, readers are able to gain a much better sense of the lives of Asian American women in rural California, through sustained glimpses of their arenas of struggle and survival. In short, Quiet Odyssey is an important contribution to Asian American history because it provides an insider`s perspective on women and Korean Americans, both of which comprise an increasingly significant dimension of the Asian American experience. Furthermore, it reminds us of the continued importance of collecting personal narratives and documenting life stories-to preserve the complex details of women`s lives.

Onoto Watanna`s A Japanese Nightingale: Shifting Identities of the Pioneer Asian American Woman Writer

( Mi Seong Woo ) 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2002 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.10 No.2

Asian American literature may be said to have had its beginning with the Eaton sisters` publication in the late nineteenth century. Although Edith Eaton may be the first Asian American writer who published short stories and journal entries with her Chinese pseudonym Sui Sin Far beginning from 1896, it was Winnifred Eaton, a novelist and Edith`s younger sister, who had a commercial, mainstream success in the American literary arena. Because of anti-Chinese sentiment and craze for things Japanese during the late nineteenth-century, Winnifred Eaton, a Chinese-British Canadian, had published her first novel, Miss Nume of Japan (1899), under the Japanese-sounding name Onoto Watanna. Her second novel, A Japanese Nightingale (1901), that was known to sell 200,000 copies and was adapted as a play and performed on Broadway to compete with David Belasco`s long-running one-act play, Madame Butterfly, swept her to fame. With her pseudonymity and her own representation in public, Winnifred Eaton`s original half-self as a half-Chinese had disappeared from public sight with the emergence of her created second self `Onoto Watanna.` A Japanese Nightingale is an interracial romance between a young American man and a Eurasian-Japanese woman. Unlike Madame Chrysanthemum (1887), the French progenitor of Madame Butterfly`s narrative by Pierre Loti, and Miss Cherry-Blossom of Tokyo (1895) and Madame Butterfly (1898) by John Luther Long, Winnifred Eaton`s unique identity as a Eurasian-American woman writer provides her characterization with multiple dimensions and vitality. Winnifred Eaton`s identification with the characters constantly shifts between the position of the Western male hero and that of the Eurasian female protagonist. Despite the fact that Eaton`s novel has stronger female subjectivity, the masculine, Western perspective emerges victorious because that was the dominant mainstream perspective of women and Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. Onoto Watanna`s A Japanese Nightingale, as the first commercially successful novel written by an Asian American woman, provides a poignant illustration of a mentality of an ethnic minority who wished for a mainstream success in a literary arena.