This thesis studies the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, with a focus on the problematic masculinities of Asian-American men in Julia Cho’s two plays, Durango and Office Hour. The most pernicious influence on Cho’s male char...
This thesis studies the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, with a focus on the problematic masculinities of Asian-American men in Julia Cho’s two plays, Durango and Office Hour. The most pernicious influence on Cho’s male characters is the ideology of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity, which dominates the patterns of gender relations, is effective in a collective situation and gets reinforced by cultural ideals, institutional powers and social practices. Race and class are, therefore, crucial factors in the ideological operation of hegemonic masculinity in multi-cultural, multi-racial American society. This thesis draws on the myth of Model Minority in Asian-American men’s pursuit of the American dream and hegemony masculinity. The myth of Model Minority perpetuates the images of Asians as hardworking, diligent, and docile people who strenuously make efforts to overcome their minority status and get reintegrated into the mainstream American society, unlike other people of color. However, the exemplary characteristics of Model Minority are not naturally given to all Asian Americans, but imbued by the strategies of mainstream American culture, especially the ideology of hegemonic masculinity. The obverse of Model Minority’s success story is exclusion. Grouped as racial and ethnic minorities, Asian-American men are excluded from the cultural domains of hegemonic masculinity, and their masculinities get diminished. If Asian-American men are queer, they may have to give up their sexual identity because they are doubly marginalized as racial and sexual minorities. Nevertheless, the prevailing cultural belief in multiracial, multicultural America is that the status of model minority is a positive factor for Asian-American men’s self-perception and a driving force for their pursuit of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, despite the detrimental effects of the Model Minority myth, the images of exemplary Asian model minorities are constantly recreated and sustained by social and cultural discourses in America.