10.13125/americacritica/5005
L’articolo parte dall’idea che la correlazione tra soggettività asiatica americana e esemplarità sia una declinazione della questione razziale nel contesto americano. Il mito della minoranza modello rappresenta gli asiatici americani come un esempio di assimilazione di successo alla società americana, segnalando simultaneamente la loro esclusione dalle norme e dagli ideali del gruppo dominante. In questo saggio, esploro questioni di rappresentazione, rappresentatività e accesso alle scelte identitarie, attraverso una lettura di Yellow Face, il play del 2007 scritto da David Henry Hwang. Considero innanzitutto come Hwang costruisca una parodia delle politiche identitarie e metta in scena la razzializzazione dei corpi nella società americana “post-razziale”. Nella seconda parte, mi occupo di dinamiche di invidia (Ngai 2005) e di come esse rendano possibili una serie di pratiche di disidentificazione e anti-appropriazione, che finiscono per interrompere l’iterazione di modelli prestabiliti di soggettività. Infine, mi focalizzo sulla “condizione melanconica” (Eng e Han 2000) come strategia politica di costruzione e preservazione delle comunità all’interno e oltre i confini razziali, di classe e nazionali.
application/pdf
2532-6724
5005
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urn:nbn:it:unica-28366
Fulvia Sarnelli
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América Crítica
Representability and Relationality
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap
6
Articoli
2022-07-11
2021-11-19
2022-07-12
2022-07-12
37-47
1
Fulvia Sarnelli
2022/07/11
10.13125/americacritica/5005
37
University of Napoli "L'Orientale"
2532-6724
1
en
47
urn:nbn:it:unica-28366
Representability and Relationality
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/article/download/5005/5160
6
                                                                        doi: https://doi.org/10.13125/americacritica/5005




Representability and Relationality: Yellow Face and the
exemplarity of a model
Fulvia Sarnelli1
1 Università   degli studi di Messina, Italia
E-mail: fulviasarnelli@gmail.com

Received: 19/11/2021. Accepted: 29/04/2022.

How to cite: Sarnelli, Fulvia. 2022. «Representability and Relationality: Yellow Face and the exemplarity of a
model». América Crítica 6 (1): 37-47. https://doi.org/10.13125/americacritica/5005


Abstract—This essay starts from the idea that the correlation between Asian American subjectivity and
exemplarity is an instance of race relations in the American context. The model minority myth represents
Asian Americans as an example of successful assimilation into American society and simultaneously
signals their exclusion from mainstream norms and ideals. In this essay I explore issues of representation,
representativity, and access to narratives of identity choice by reading Yellow Face, the 2007 play written by
David Henry Hwang. I first consider Hwang’s parody of identity politics and his staging of the racialization
of bodies in contemporary “postracial” American society. Next, I discuss how dynamics of envy (Ngai 2005)
enable a series of disidentificatory and antiproprietory practices, which ultimately disavow the iteration of a
preestablished model subjectivity. Finally, I focus on the “melancholic condition” (Eng and Han 2000) as
a political strategy of building and preserving communities within and beyond racial, class, and national
boundaries. — David Henry Hwang, yellowfacing, model subjectivity, Asian American exemplarity, envy
and racial melancholia.
Abstract—L’articolo parte dall’idea che la correlazione tra soggettività asiatica americana e esemplarità
sia una declinazione della questione razziale nel contesto americano. Il mito della minoranza modello
rappresenta gli asiatici americani come un esempio di assimilazione di successo alla società americana,
segnalando simultaneamente la loro esclusione dalle norme e dagli ideali del gruppo dominante. In questo
saggio, esploro questioni di rappresentazione, rappresentatività e accesso alle scelte identitarie, attraverso
una lettura di Yellow Face, il play del 2007 scritto da David Henry Hwang. Considero innanzitutto come
Hwang costruisca una parodia delle politiche identitarie e metta in scena la razzializzazione dei corpi nella
società americana “post-razziale”. Nella seconda parte, mi occupo di dinamiche di invidia (Ngai 2005) e di
come esse rendano possibili una serie di pratiche di disidentificazione e anti-appropriazione, che finiscono
per interrompere l’iterazione di modelli prestabiliti di soggettività. Infine, mi focalizzo sulla “condizione
melanconica” (Eng e Han 2000) come strategia politica di costruzione e preservazione delle comunità
all’interno e oltre i confini razziali, di classe e nazionali. — David Henry Hwang, yellowfacing, soggettività
modello, esemplarità asiatica americana, invidia e malinconia razziale.


                                                              nineteen-twenties and thirties, must have been a
         For [Nancy] Kwan, being the only Asian               burden. David Henry Hwang—the most success-
     pinup of note since Anna May Wong, in the                ful Chinese-American playwright this country has
38                                                                       América Crítica 6(1): 37–47, 2022. ISSN: 2532-6724

      produced—must, at times, feel similarly burdened.                required to apply spirit gum to give their eyes a higher
      Hilton Als, The New Yorker                                       slant, she experienced the impossibility of resisting
                                                                       her ethnic identity in her entire career. Wong came
    n November 2020, Searching for Anna May Wong, the
I     short documentary film directed by Denise D. Chan
(2020), premiered in Los Angeles. By tracing the journey
                                                                       to embody images of the Orient and exotic portrayals
                                                                       of China in Hollywood films, being caught in what
                                                                       Karen J. Leong calls the China mystique, the cultivation
of young actor Natasha Tina Liu in the Hollywood                       of “a romanticized, progressive, and highly gendered
industry and featuring interviews with many Asian                      image of China, the new China” (Leong 2005: 1),
American movie and theatre actors and actresses, the                   which served to recast American orientalism according
documentary tries to answer the question: “If trailblazing             to the geopolitical and social changes that the United
actor Anna May Wong were still alive today, would she                  States underwent in the international context of the
still face the same racism and challenges she experienced              1930s and 1940s. Bringing Wong’s story to today’s
during her time in Hollywood?”1 Born in Los Angeles                    context and merging it with many stories of Asian
to second generation Chinese American parents, who                     American actors and actresses, Searching for Anna May
ran a laundry in the Chinatown area, Anna May Wong is                  Wong is the last of a series of recently released works
considered the first Asian American actress. Her long                  about the challenges that Asian American creatives still
and varied career in the American film, television, and                experience because of the underlying racism behind the
radio industry, spans an era when Asian protagonists in                yellowfacing and whitewashing casting in the movie
Hollywood movies were typically performed by white                     and theatre industry.3 In a 2020 press conference, while
actors in yellowface. Wong starred in classic movies,                  discussing the current condition of underrepresentation
such as The Toll of the Sea (1922), The Thief of Bagdad                of Asian American artists, the documentary’s producer
(1924), and Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express                     Quentin Lee and some cast members shared a few ideas
(1932), in which Warner Oland played the Eurasian                      about future possibilities for a change. The first idea is
Henry Chang and Wong’s sexually charged scenes with                    that Hollywood is a business, therefore Asian American
Marlene Dietrich fed rumors about a lesbian liaison. For               presence should be implemented by adopting capitalist
the most part, in truth, sensual performances in Wong’s                values and means (grit, jostling, marketshare, and box
career were limited by American anti-miscegenation                     office logic). A second common belief anchors the
laws, which prevented her from sharing an on-screen                    betterment of both representations of Asian America
kiss with any person of another race, which means                      and opportunities for Asian American artists to the
that she could only be kissed sexlessly by a child or                  breakthrough of a generation of talented Asian American
greedily by a rapist Japanese general. Although she was                playwrights, decision makers, and directors, who
frustrated with being constantly underpaid and always                  would tell Asian American stories through an Asian
typecast as either a “Madam Butterfly” passive young                   American cast.4 Far from new, the idea of turning to the
woman or as a “Dragon lady” murderous villainess,                      “talented tenth” foregrounds some old questions about
Wong eventually became an icon to Asian people of                      the role of community-based art: shall art produced by
North America. Conversely, Time reports that she was                   colored artists be exemplary and representative of the
ostracized in China: “whenever she appears in a movie,                 community? And conversely, are artists of color allowed
the newspapers print her picture with the caption Anna                 to transcend their identity locus through art?
May again loses face for China” or called her “the female                  Whereas the idea of exceptional individuals who
traitor to China,” blaming the actress for the stereotypes
in her roles (Corliss 2005).2                                          3 See also Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown (Yu 2020), which
    Despite Wong’s long career of unremitting identifica-              won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction.
                                                                       4 The          interview        can      be      watched        on
tion with China and embodiment of nationhood, leading                  https://www.asianamericanmovies.com/searching-for-anna-may-
Asian roles were given to white actresses in yellowface.               wong. The long history of erasing Asian actors in films made
Whereas white actors playing “Oriental” characters were                the release of Crazy Rich Asians (2018) full of expectations. The
                                                                       romantic comedy is an escapist fantasy with a predictable happy
1 The documentary is available for streaming on asianamerican-         ending which, as has been repeatedly noticed, eases collective
movies.com.                                                            anxieties about Asia and Asian Americans through the universal
2 Her negative reputation persisted despite Wong’s public expression   rhetoric and aesthetics of ultra-luxury capitalism. However, the
of her fondness and longing for a closer connection to her Chinese     movie has also been heralded as a landmark case for Asian American
heritage, and her fundraising campaigns during World War II. See       visibility, for it is the first Hollywood-produced movie with an
A. B. Chan (2003) and Crewe (sd).                                      all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club was released in 1993.
Sarnelli, Representability and Relationality                                                                            39

can lead the rest resonates with both the American way         representation, including in interactions between Asian
and the international capitalist ethos, the belief that        Americans, Hwang’s Yellow Face provides the means for
only prominent figures inside the community can help           distancing our perspectives from the narratives that such
the community rise does not sound very much in tune            stereotypes narrate. Thus, the play shifts the audience’s
with the logic of a multiculturalist, postracial society; or   attention from images to the social and political struggles
does it? In the wake of the 2008 presidential election         of subjects, and brings up questions such as: what does it
of Barack Obama—the (singular) black man who made              mean to be hailed as an—or the—Asian American ideal
it to the White House—postracial discourse flourished          and example, by both white and Asian America? How
in American media. In its different articulations,             do subjects negotiate “the trauma of a racist capitalist
postethnicity and postracism promote the narrative of a        system that keeps the individual in place” (Park Hong
society in which social and economic inequalities due to       2020: 93), through the model minority paradigm and the
race and ethnicity would be reduced to the point that they     national myth of individual triumph?
no longer matter. As a result, ethnic and racial categories        The pervasive staging of stereotypes in the play also
central to identity politics would become a matter of          points to the historical legacy of racial representations in
choice rather than ascription (Hollinger 1995). As is          the United States. In my attempt to explore the unstable
well known, such logic shifts all the emphasis on the          nature of the sociopolitical dialectics of being and
definitive and definitional potential of “culture matters”     becoming—the physical body and the social, historical,
in identitarian choices (Bhabha et al. 2002; Harrison and      and cultural embodiment—within the context of cultural
Huntington 2000).                                              representations of Asian Americans, I will read the
    I have started this essay with Searching for Anna          “minor feelings” of envy and melancholia as affective
May Wong as a way of foregrounding the ongoing                 ideologemes of a racialized set of discourses. Following
currency of the issues of representation, representativity,    Fredric Jameson, Sianne Ngai defines “affective
and access to narratives of identity choice that I will        ideologemes” as “concepts that becom[ing] the site and
explore in Yellow Face, the 2007 play written by David         stake of various kinds of symbolic struggle” take on “the
Henry Hwang (2009). Since M. Butterfly was first               form of a ‘value system’” (Ngai 2005: 8). Accordingly,
performed in 1988, Hwang has been considered “the              I will first attempt an analysis of the characterization
most successful Chinese-American playwright this               of the three main characters in the play—DHH, his
country has produced,” as Hilton Als (2014) writes in          father HYH, and Marcus G. Dahlman aka Marcus
The New Yorker (emphasis added), or, as Hwang himself          Gee—and will argue that the play invites an analysis
ironically puts it, “the official Asian American.”5 Yellow     of why specific models of subjectivity, collectivity, and
Face is an autobiographical satire, which was conceived        agency are emphasized over others within both the Asian
as a “mock stage documentary that would poke fun at            American community and mainstream America. I will
some of the absurdities of the multicultural movement”         then move to my second part, in which I shall discuss
(Hwang 2008b). In discussing the play, I am interested         Hwang’s undermining of exemplarity through an ironic
in the emotional release simultaneously produced               representation of the ever feminized feeling of envy
and suspended by widely circulating contemporary               and a mocking emulation of his own position as Asian
representations of what I would call Asian American            American role model. Finally, borrowing David L. Eng
model subjectivity. I will trace how feelings and              and Shinhee Han’s concept of racial melancholia, I will
emotions become means of political contestation that           suggest a few ideas on encounters and intimacy with
move subjects to action. By “model subjectivity,” I mean       communal potentiality across positions of race and class.
a subject position determined by the model minority
myth, but that foregrounds matters of interpellation
and agency beyond the mobilization of stereotypes by           DHH-HYH-M ARCUS
considering power dynamics from within as well as              Yellow Face is a two-act play, which weaves together the
from without the Asian American community. I argue             author’s personal story and historical events of his time
that by overusing racial stereotypes at all levels of          with his opinions and feelings, as well as with excerpts
                                                               of media headlines and quotations of public figures, thus
5 Hwang refers to himself with this expression in many
public events and interviews.       See for example the
                                                               inventively blending facts and fiction, information and
discussion with Dr.       Amanda Rogers in London on           interpretation. There are multiple intertexts in the play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HozDlldcGwk                    and three main characters, surrounded by few actors, who
40                                                               América Crítica 6(1): 37–47, 2022. ISSN: 2532-6724

play different roles of different races and genders. At        role in soliciting Chinese contributions in support of Pres-
the opening of act one, Hwang draws from his own pub-          ident Clinton’s campaign for re-election. The accusations
lic and artistic experience as a spokesperson for Asian        of treacherous behavior are proved preposterous, while
American actors: DHH, Hwang’s alter ego in the play,           HYH continuously professes his love of America: much
recaps his frustrating role as a leading voice in the 1992     to his son’s despair, HYH believes that Miss Saigon is a
campaign against the casting of Welsh actor Jonathan           wonderful musical, for he identifies with the narrative of
Pryce as the Eurasian pimp in a Broadway staging of            the land of opportunities, claiming that he migrated to the
the musical Miss Saigon, produced by British Cameron           United States to pursue his American Dream. When other
Macintosh. Although the protest failed (not only was the       members of the Asian American community, including
production a big success in New York, but both Pryce           Marcus, see their loyalty questioned and find themselves
and Lea Salonga won a Tony award), Hwang made of               under pressure from the government, DHH persuades
the opposition to the yellowface casting the subject for       Marcus to publicly confess that he is Caucasian. Thus,
his unsuccessful 1993 play called Face Value, in which         by reenacting the internal motif of the play and its in-
two Asian American protesters make themselves pass             tertexts—a white man in yellowface who has the ability
for whites in order to disrupt the opening night of a con-     to deceive his spectators, including the American gov-
troversial and offensive musical that stars a Caucasian        ernment—and projecting it outside the theatre so that
actor in yellowface makeup. During the auditions for the       it shows the racial nature of the prosecution, Marcus’s
play within the play, DHH ends up giving the Asian lead        whiteness deflates the case. Yellow Face closes on HYH’s
role to Marcus G. Dahlman, a white actor scouted from          disillusionment with the American Dream while he dies
a play about the loyalty dilemma of a Japanese Ameri-          of cancer, DHH’s search for his own face as he attempts
can soldier during World War II, in the mistaken belief        to write a happy ending for Marcus, who is revealed to be
that Marcus is part Asian. When DHH later realizes that        a fictional character, and Marcus’s letters from a Chinese
the reason why Marcus does not look Asian is that he is        village he has chosen as his newly adopted country.
not Asian American, he would like to dismiss Marcus                Throughout the play, DHH is the most clearly defined
but discovers that firing him for his whiteness would be       character: as an autobiographical representation of David
against anti-discrimination law. Therefore, DHH rein-          Henry Hwang, he is a worldwide famous playwright and
vents Marcus, by publicly creating for him a fictional         respected community member. However, despite his au-
Asian identity based on his alleged Russian family roots:      thoritative public stance, he is intimately burdened with
Marcus is reborn as Marcus Gee, a Siberian Asian Jew,          a confusion about his own feelings on the racial issues of
who not only fully embraces his new identity and partic-       the present time. In the course of the play, this confusion
ipates in the social activism of the community, but also       evolves into a disconcerting disorientation about being
becomes a sought-after Asian American actor. At the            an Asian American. While protesting Miss Saigon, DHH
end of the first act, Marcus is given the lead role in the     has doubts about rebuking the musical’s production for
big production of The King and I, while DHH becomes            its artistic choice and backs up from the “Rosa Parks
increasingly angry and obsessed over what he perceives         moment” of his community (YF 28). Instead, he decides
as Marcus’s usurpation of his position as symbol of Asian      to process his bewilderment by writing a play. In Yel-
America and community role model.                              low Face, Face Value is advertised by DHH himself as
    In act two, the play shifts from a parody of identity      “a comedy of mistaken racial identity” which poses the
politics to a more serious documentation of racism and         question: “Is race a construct which is still useful or is it
the effects of both stereotypes and racial politics in the     mythological?” (YF 34). As the question migrates from
everyday lives of Asian Americans. The second half of          one text to the other, Yellow Face tries to look at racial
the play foregrounds the political context at the end of the   dynamics by considering different possible permutations
1990s, when a sort of national witch-hunt was directed         within the idea of yellowface.
against Asian Americans, suspected either of espionage             Yellow Face enacts many Asian American stereotypes,
to China, as in the case of Wen Ho Lee, or of violating        not only pertaining to the model minority paradigm. Ad-
the political campaign finance law through fundraising         dressing the fraught legacy of Asian American cultural
activities for the U.S. Democratic Party. This is the case     representations in a playful and irreverent way, the au-
of Hwang’s father, Henry Yuan Hwang (HYH in the                dition scene reproduces the gender stereotype of Asian
play), who as the founder and CEO of Far East National         feminization, thereby displaying how pervasive it still is
Bank, in 1996 went under investigation for his bank’s          and how easily it can be perpetuated also among Asian
Sarnelli, Representability and Relationality                                                                         41

Americans:                                                     in Marcus, who in that precise moment is created as a
     DHH: [. . . ] For M. Butterfly we were looking for        racialized subject.
     a Chinese transvestite who could sing and dance!              As race is still sought in the visibility of the body
     And we found lots of them!                                by both Asian American and white characters, corporeal
     STUART: Yes we did.                                       qualities are conveniently turned into subject positions.
     DHH: So why is this so much harder? All we’re             Throughout the play, Marcus is created by DHH a num-
     looking for is a straight, masculine, Asian leading       ber of times: a white unknown actor, Marcus is made
     man.
                                                               into an Asian American first by DHH’s desire to find
     STUART: I’ll tell Miles to keep looking.
     DHH: Tell him—there are hundreds of masculine             the paradigmatic interpreter for his community-based art
     Asian leading men out there. Dozens!                      and later by his need to conceal his own casting mistake;
     STUART: He keeps asking if you know any. (YF              subsequently, by urging Marcus to confess that he is Cau-
     36)                                                       casian, DHH reconverts him into a white man; finally,
                                                               Marcus is revealed to be a fictional character created by
Hwang’s use of citations here summons the cultural
                                                               DHH in order to give materiality to his father’s dream
and theoretical horizon of M. Butterfly, thus setting the
                                                               of a world where “you can imagine who you want to
ground for another story of disguisement and entangled
                                                               be—and, through sheer will and determination, become
desires. This time the tone is boldly ironic: in a rather
                                                               that person” (YF 109), “a world where he [HYH] could
comical evocation of M. Butterfly’s plot, not only is the
                                                               be Jimmy Stewart. And a white guy—can even be an
“straight, masculine, Asian leading man” actually a white
                                                               Asian” (YF 111).
guy, but DHH’s self-celebrating desire “[t]o make some
                                                                   Presented as a beautiful multicultural fantasy of pos-
fresh Asian face into a Broadway star” (YF 36) puts a
                                                               tracial identity, HYH’s dream is both another Hollywood
yellow mask over Marcus’s white face. When the pro-
                                                               masquerade and a celebration of capitalism. For HYH,
ducer invites him to pay attention to the body as a locus of
                                                               money represents the tangible proof that signals his Amer-
meaning, DHH condemns his comments for their implicit
                                                               ican becoming. He believes in the opportunities offered
racism, but ends up restoring the power of the visual to
                                                               by a country which made possible for a low-class Chi-
detect the truth, only from a different eye:
                                                               nese immigrant like himself to achieve a successful life
     STUART: But guys, does he—? Does he look                  through his hard work: “I looked around, at my office on
     Asian to you?
                                                               the thirty-ninth floor, my house the swankiest part of San
     DHH: What do you mean, “look Asian”?
     STUART: Well, he doesn’t seem to possess—any
                                                               Marino, my Mercedes, my kids all in top colleges—and
     Asian features . . . at all.                              I thought, now, I am finally living my real life—here
     DHH: And what exactly are “Asian features”?               in America” (YF 33). In his attempt to demonstrate the
     STUART: He’s got dark hair, but—                          value and beauty of a life that could imitate the movies
     DHH: Short, high cheekbones, slanty eyes?                 he loved as a child in China, HYH succumbs to a col-
     STUART: David—                                            orless universalism and patriotic celebration based on
     DHH: I gotta say, I find your questions sort of offen-    globalized capitalism: he wears Armani, drives a Mer-
     sive. Asian faces come in a variety of shapes and
                                                               cedes, buys many useless technological devices, delights
     sizes—just like any other human beings. Which we
     are, you know. [. . . ]                                   in international big theatre productions. Embodied in
     DHH: I have to cast this in a way that feels right to     Jimmy Stewart, the American Dream that HYH’s “real
     me. And I can tell an Asian when I see one. (YF           life” mirrors is revealed to be a performance of nation-
     41)                                                       ality, wealth, and masculinity. In fact, HYH denies the
DHH strives to reject any assumptions of an Asian              persistence of racial discrimination in the United States
identity based on body features. However, his effort           only to be betrayed, in the second act of the play, by its
boomerangs on him, becoming the source of his trou-            omnipresence in the material experience of individuals.
bles as the Asian American protest leader who ends up              Act two brings on stage Wen Ho Lee’s accusation
reproducing the yellowface paradigm in his own work.           of espionage and the 1996 Congressional investigation
Moreover, the insertion of Marcus’s lack of corporeal          of the Chinese government’s alleged effort to influence
difference in the white universalist category of “human        American politics through improper fundraising. This
being” recreates a disturbing racial epistemology. DHH’s       political background shows, as Esther Kim Lee states,
own racial stereotyping, although apparently removed           “how the scandal was a 1990s version of the ’yellow
from the body, claims self-evident signs of authenticity       peril’, one that characterized China as the biggest threat
42                                                               América Crítica 6(1): 37–47, 2022. ISSN: 2532-6724

to the United States” (E. K. Lee 2015: 111). By draw-          Senator Fred Thompson, posted on realclearpolitics.com:
ing parallels between the infamous case of Wen Ho Lee
                                                                    The Chinese won the first round. But we were on
and that of his father, and between both and Ethel and
                                                                    the right track. 9/11 threw this country into an ex-
Julius Rosenberg’s executions, Hwang questions the nar-             tended distraction phase. Once Osama bin Laden
rative of an all-encompassing capacity of assimilation              and his cronies have been brought under control,
into American democratic citizenship and culture. There             this country will wake up and realize—while we’ve
is no final dissolution of the assumed contradiction be-            been expending our time and resources in the Mid-
tween racialized bodies and national belonging. In an               dle East, our real enemies have been taking advan-
interview with a reporter identified as NWOAOC (Name                tage of this window to make themselves even more
Withheld on Advice of Counsel), DHH tries to defend his             formidable. The Chinese investigations aren’t over,
                                                                    not by a long shot. They’re merely on hiatus un-
father’s loyalty to America. The conversation becomes a
                                                                    til our next war begins—because America’s real
Foucauldian moment, in which an unnamed embodiment                  enemy in the twenty-first century—will be China.
of a power-knowledge dispositif reveals how discourses              (YF 87)
of the body produce subjectivities:
                                                               In the context of the investigation, the prophecy about
     NWOAOC: Mr. Hwang, your father is a Chinese
     banker.                                                   America’s real enemy discloses that behind the rhetoric
     DHH: Chinese American.                                    of a new Cold War, the actual interests of the United
     NWOAOC: Exactly.                                          States lie in a capitalist competition. Hence, by con-
     DHH: There’s a difference.                                necting the War on terrorism to a fight with China over
     NWOAOC: [. . . ] Does your father see himself as          economic supremacy and showing the consequences
     more American, or more Chinese?                           of both on the domestic enemies—Asian Americans
     DHH: That question makes no sense.
                                                               and Middle Eastern Americans—Hwang’s play gathers
     NWOAOC: On the contrary, I think it’s quite rele-
     vant.                                                     multiple communities in a shared history rooted in
     DHH: How about you? Do you see yourself as                geopolitical and economic interests, which also captures
     more American or more white?                              the contemporary legacy of racialized politics in the
     NWOAOC: That’s not the same thing.                        United States. Despite all effort at preserving HYH’s
     DHH: No?                                                  postracial dream as a righteous fantasy, Yellow Face
     NWOAOC: Not in the least.                                 closes on the experienced materiality of America’s racial
     DHH: Why not?                                             history. Hence, postracism and postethnicity remain
     NWOAOC: Because there’s no conflict between
                                                               mere ideals for a new set of ethical fights.
     being white and being American.
     DHH: Did you really just say that? There’s a con-
     flict—between being Chinese and being American?
                                                               E NVY, IRONY, EXEMPLARITY
Despite the intended irony of the (much more) extended
exchange targeted to detect the assimilability of HYH,         Yellow Face could be seen as an ironic enactment of the
namely the personification of the self-made man and the        dialectic between identification and desire and its role in
character who mostly identifies with the American way          the construction of subjectivities, a theme that Hwang
of life, the conflation of “whiteness” and “Americanness”      has extensively explored in other works. The play the-
is irredeemable. If act one mocks the model minority           matizes dynamics of “wanting to be” and “wanting to
paradigm through a comical representation of DHH as            have” through an interplay between various individuals,
“Daddy’s little boy,” who is as artistically gifted as un-     who are tested against each other as possible role mod-
qualified for a scientific, business-oriented job, act two     els or ideals. Whereas Jimmy Stewart’s all-American
represents HYH’s multicultural fantasy of Asian Ameri-         heroic and military aura exerts a seductive fascination
can achievement as a paradox unable to withstand racial        on HYH, Marcus’s emotional connection with Asia and
categorizations. HYH’s American Dream remains the              its authentic soul provides a perfect counterexample: in
symbol of an incomplete Americanization, as discrimi-          a sort of frame narrative to the play, Marcus’s letters to
nation based on the racialization of bodies readily over-      David narrate his journey to China in search of a sense of
comes free affiliation rights.                                 purpose. The letters recount Marcus’s slow acceptance
    In the concluding pages of the play, once the investiga-   among the Dong, an ethnic minority found mostly in
tion has been quelled, Hwang reports the following dec-        southern China, via the songs that the entire village sings
laration that Rocco Palmieri, former aide to Republican        in a ritual of communal belonging. At first considered
Sarnelli, Representability and Relationality                                                                                                  43

an outsider, one day Marcus is invited to join in: “it’s so                other ironically creates a mirroring effect, which distorts
much a part of who they are—of who I’m not. And yet all                    normatively established paradigms of exemplarity for
these songs once came from somewhere else—sorta like                       racialized identities.
me” (YF 61). The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion                           Sianne Ngai defines envy as an affect that “lacks cul-
and of affiliation and identification with one’s acquired                  tural recognition as a valid mode of publicly recognizing
country or people create a mutually implicating parallel                   or responding to social disparities, even though it remains
not only between the characters of HYH and Marcus, but                     the only agonistic emotion defined as having a perceived
also between nations—the United States and China—and                       inequality as its object” (Ngai 2005: 128). As an al-
communities—Americans and the Dong, Americans and                          ways feminized (penis envy) and proletarianized (class
Asian Americans, Asian Americans and the Dong. Mar-                        envy) minor feeling, envy is recast in the ideologemes of
cus feels rejected by white America and welcomed by                        hysteria and resentment, thus turning the subject’s pub-
Asian Americans, but only until he passes for a Siberian;                  lic reaction to social injustice in the external world into
afterwards, when his Caucasian identity is disclosed, the                  private dissatisfaction, individual deficiency, or patholog-
community turns away from him. Similarly, his final                        ical flaw. Opposing such cultural attitudes of moralizing
acceptance by the Dong is revealed to be the overly senti-                 and shaming, which strip envy of its polemical mode
mental, hopeful happy ending that an author not so gifted                  of engaging institutionalized forms of inequality, Ngai
at finales has written in celebration of his dead father’s                 focuses on the relational quality of the affect and on the
dream of integrating descent and consent in American                       antagonistic nature inherent in dynamics of envying and
citizenship.                                                               emulating others. She asserts that since Freud’s theo-
    No doubt, there is a clear echo between HYH and                        rization of the female identity formation, emulation has
Marcus, as both characters embody a postracial set of                      often been conflated with identification.7 By subtending
values grounded in the liberal right to choose one’s identi-               feelings of envy, the equation is mistakenly translated
fications and identities;6 such right is continuously tested               into the desire of a lacking subject to be like an ideal or
and historically disproved in the play. In what follows,                   idealized object, while “[i]nstead of being a means of
however, I would like to draw attention to the relation-                   altering one’s self in deference to another, emulation can
ship between DHH and Marcus, for it enables a different                    be a form of aggressive self-assertion” (: 142). Conse-
experiment with doubling. In Yellow Face, Hwang plays                      quently, Ngai holds that envy on the one hand has the
with the idea of exemplarity as a fixed concept that forces                ability to catalyze the transition from singular to plural
Asian Americans to become a copy of the national myth                      subjects and on the other hand discourages acts of identi-
of individual triumph, and therefore singles them out as                   fication.8 I read Hwang’s parodic emulation of himself
a uniform, successful, and accountable model for other                     and his ironic representation of aggressive self-assertions
minorities. Simultaneously, as Eng and Han argue, the                      as a means of moving away from the model subjectivity.
iterated reproduction of the model functions as a marker                   I will try to show below that in Yellow Face feelings of
of ethnic otherness, which “estrange[s] Asian Americans                    envy circulate among characters, rather than possessing
from mainstream norms and ideals (as well as from them-                    a unidirectional vectorial orientation; thus, the play sus-
selves)” (Eng and Han 2000: 677). Mediated through the                     pends a naturalized and almost mechanical identification
figure of HYH, whose American Dream stereotypically                        with a preestablished and transferable mode of being
materializes only as a prescribed model of economic inte-                  Asian American.
gration while he never achieves a subject position that is                     Throughout the play, DHH resentfully complains
politically and culturally represented, the relationship be-               about what he perceives as Marcus’s attempts at imitating
tween DHH and Marcus falls outside the psychoanalytic                      him, by stealing both his public and private life. In fact,
terms of identification and desire. Rather, I suggest that                 when DHH receives a “Visionary Warrior Award” for his
Yellow Face leads to more productive discussions when                      activism within the community, Marcus is awarded the
considered within the affective framework of envy and
emulation. The envy that the two characters feel for each                  7 See Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Trans.
                                                                           James Strachey. New York: Bantam, 1965.
                                                                           8 Ngai’s analysis situates itself in recent feminist debates concerning
6 Compare with Hollinger, who writes: “Postethnicity prefers volun-        the topic of perceived aggression between women. She maintains
tary to prescribed affiliations, appreciates multiple identities, pushes   that because of its agonistic, relational nature, envy enables women
for communities of wide scope, recognizes the constructed character        to escape patterns of totalization and, simultaneously, it helps form
of ethno-racial groups, and accepts the formation of new groups as         group alliances by combining multiple individual subjects into a
part of the normal life of a democratic society” (Hollinger 1995: 116).    single force.
44                                                             América Crítica 6(1): 37–47, 2022. ISSN: 2532-6724

“Most Promising Newcomer Warrior”; Marcus is con-            an allegory of good exemplarity. Despite his public
tended by ethnic political associations, journalists, and    face, privately DHH is portrayed as a much more flawed,
fans for the insightfulness of his speeches, which are       comic individual: he is self-centered and self-serving,
bursting with DHH’s own ideas and words; as Marcus           often hesitant and hypocritical, at times seeking refuge
becomes an Asian American leader, DHH is accused             from his problems in alcohol or sex, and for the most
of having abandoned his political life; finally he dates     part looking pitiful and goofy. Ironically, the play sum-
DHH’s ex-girlfriend, Korean American Leah, who be-           mons DHH as the unquestioned and widely recognized
lieves Marcus a Eurasian. Having been disguised as an        embodiment of an Asian American model, who stirs ad-
Asian American by DHH and accepted as such by the            miration by both white and Asian America, while also
community, Marcus increasingly molds his own beliefs         depicting DHH’s acts and behavior as troubling, prob-
and behavior after the example of DHH. The construction      lematic, and surely not ideal. Inasmuch as envy leads
of DHH as an exceptional example of racial subjecthood       to antagonism and irony reverses the idealization of the
reproduces the implicit correlation between Asian Amer-      model, Yellow Face builds critical agency by supporting
ican subjectivity and exemplarity: being Asian American      such strategies of non-identification. Marcus, in fact,
can only be acknowledged in terms of being a model.          does not become a copy of some pre-existing positive
Hence, Marcus strives to prove himself a distinctive one.    model, but by emulating DHH, he transforms DHH—a
    Marcus’s successful mimeticism, however, generates       non-exemplary, self-mocked character—into a model for
DHH’s feelings of envy. He becomes obsessively and           a white man. Shifting the perspective: if DHH’s ironic
hysterically jealous of Marcus’s popularity as well as an-   de-idealization questions the embedded narrative that
gry at a white man’s appropriation of his ethnic identity.   defines Asian American subjectivity as a model for mi-
Yet, what DHH tries to protect is a social role that he      norities, Marcus’s envy dismisses the idea of whiteness
simultaneously desires to resist. At the beginning of the    as the only desirable subject position. Thus, the play fore-
play, he is recognized within and without the community      grounds envy’s critical capacity of “transforming X into
as an Asian American role model, whose name has a            something nonsingular and replicable, while at the same
weight and some power to be both wielded and exploited.      time enabling acknowledgment of its culturally imposed
As a public figure, he finds himself split between the       desirability” (Ngai 2005: 161–162).
political requests of his community and the national ex-         In most of the play, Marcus seems to act as DHH’s
pectations of the American postracial moment. His Tony       double in order to preserve his chosen ethnic identity;
Award acceptance speech, for example, becomes the oc-        in so doing, he becomes a valid, even better, example.
casion for a celebration of the US transformed cultural      In fact, Marcus does not show any sign of animosity to-
landscape, which prefigures a break in racial discrimina-    wards DHH and his repeated attempts to get rid of him:
tion: “Asians have consistently been caricatured, denied     first DHH fires Marcus, then he tries to make Marcus
the right even to play ourselves. Well, it’s a new day in    look bad, and finally he demands a corrective interven-
America. We’re entering the 1990s, and all that stops        tion from Marcus’s own mother. On the contrary, Marcus
now!” (YF 22). However, as noted earlier, his public         remains annoyingly “all good and noble” (YF 104) until
stance does not always mirror his personal beliefs. At       the end: he keeps soliciting DHH’s support to all com-
the end of the play, DHH confesses to Marcus: “Years         munity actions since he recognizes the other’s value and
ago, I discovered a face—one I could live better and         respects his authority. Marcus does not necessarily show
more fully than anything I’d ever tried. But as the years    a desire to replace DHH in the community, rather to be
went by, my face became my mask. And I became just           part of it. This exchange is a case in point:
another actor—running around in yellow face” (YF 110-
                                                                  MARCUS: David, do you have a problem with any-
111). Like his father’s and Marcus’s, DHH’s mainstream
                                                                  thing I’m saying?
success is a performance. In Yellow Face, all subjective          DHH: No, it’s not what you’re saying—
categories seem to bring acceptance or induce imitation           MARCUS: It’s that I’m the one who’s saying it?
by others as long as they iterate authorized versions of          Doesn’t that make your position kind of racist?
otherness. Wearing masks becomes a constraining, ten-             DHH: This is not that hard! In order to be Asian,
tative response to a multiplicity of interpellations and          you have to have at least some Asian blood! [. . . ]
expectations, which speak through the rhetoric of exem-           DHH: You come in here with that, that face of
plarity.                                                          yours. Call yourself Asian. Everyone falls at your
                                                                  feet. But you don’t have to live as an Asian—every
    Nevertheless, Hwang’s fictional self does not become          day of your life. No, you can just skim the cream,
Sarnelli, Representability and Relationality                                                                                         45

      you, you, you ethnic tourist!                                      well as the disjunctions and differences among them.
      MARCUS: You’re right. I don’t have to live Asian                   Hwang disavows an understanding of Asian American
      every day of my life. I am choosing to do so.                      subjectivity as both an exclusively racial embodiment
      DHH: Funny thing about race. You don’t get to                      and a generalized raceless theory.
      choose. If you’d been born a minority, you’d know
      that.
      MARCUS: David, are you familiar with the Chi-
      nese concept of “face”?                                            M ELANCHOLIA , CLASS , ENCOUNTERS
      DHH: Am I—? Of course—It’s, it’s, you know...                      In these final remarks, allow me to focus one more time
      MARCUS: Basically, it says that the face we
                                                                         on Marcus’s choice of living in yellowface, since the
      choose to show the world—reveals who we really
      are.                                                               representation of a white man who takes ethnicity as his
      DHH: I knew that.                                                  prime identity by pretending to be Asian, poses the ques-
      MARCUS: Well, I’ve chosen my face. And now                         tion of which subjects are able to “assimilate into the
      I’m becoming the person I’ve always wanted to be.                  regimes of whiteness” (Eng and Han 2000: 677) from
      (YF 71-73)                                                         yet another angle. Marcus loves being Asian American
                                                                         because his new identity provides him with a commu-
While Marcus’s imitative behavior is not reducible to
                                                                         nity, which initiates him into a collective subjectivity and,
the identification with a model, DHH’s irritation with
                                                                         therefore, into politics. DHH invents Marcus’s Siberian
Marcus is expressed against the latter’s appropriation of
                                                                         American identity during an event with students at the
his symbolic property—his Asian Americanness and
                                                                         Asian American Resource Center hosted by Gish Jen, a
his position within the community. When Marcus’s
                                                                         writer whose stories are often set in multicultural con-
yellowface performance becomes successful to the extent
                                                                         texts:
that it exemplifies Asianness better than the model, the
discursive threat of racial colonization escalates DHH’s                      STUDENT 3: Marcus, as an actor of Jewish
antagonism toward Marcus.9 In the above exchange,                             Siberian heritage—have you faced a lot of barri-
DHH claims an essentialist idea of race materialized in                       ers?
Asian blood, thus apparently endorsing the connection                         DHH (To Marcus): Sure you have. You can tell
between genetics and identity that he utterly denies in                       them.
                                                                              MARCUS: Well, uh, before this, my career was
the first part of the play. On the other hand, though, by
                                                                              sort of going nowhere. I mean, directors just didn’t
defining Marcus as an ethnic tourist and rejecting his                        seem to know what to do with me.
idea of choosing ethnicity as a lifestyle, DHH links racial                   STUDENT 1: Bastards!
subjectivity to the material and conceptual consequences                      MARCUS: Last November, I went in on this com-
of race and argues against a liberal human subject,                           mercial call. They had me back five times. Five
whose whiteness entitles him to choose an identity,                           times! And in the end, you know what they told
even a non-white one. Thus, the play brings into sharp                        me? They said I didn’t “look right.”
                                                                              STUDENT 2: That is so racist! [. . . ]
focus the multiculturalist distinction between ethnic
                                                                              STUDENT 3: Was growing up hard for you?
assimilability and racial exclusion (R. G. Lee 2010).                         DHH (To Marcus): Yeah, it was, right?
Multiplying the models and equally accepting and                              MARCUS: Well, yeah—see, when I was seven, my
distancing itself from all of them, Yellow Face reveals                       parents moved to this fancy neighborhood because
their constructed and politically contingent nature. Yet,                     it had good schools. But that made me sort of . . .
by reasserting that some performances are not only more                       the poor kid in town.
successful than others, but the only legitimate ones, the                     STUDENT 2: I know what that’s like.
play manifests the enmeshments in subject positions as                        MARCUS: You do? Um, thank you.
                                                                              STUDENT 1: Bastards!
                                                                              MARCUS: You really wanna hear this?
9 I believe that Yellow Face only tangentially meets Bhabha’s un-             DHH: Trust me, they do.
derstanding of colonial mimicry. Although the dynamics in the play
                                                                              MARCUS: See the other kids all knew the truth
contain both mockery and a certain threat (“mimicry is at once re-
                                                                              about me. So on the outside, I was trying to fit in
semblance and menace” Bhabha 1994: 86) as two strategies that in
disclosing the internal ambivalence of power “also disrupt its author-        with everyone else, but inside, um...
ity” (Bhabha 1994: 88), relationships of power and authority in the           STUDENT 2: You knew they were lookin’ down
play cannot be easily described in the dualistic terms of the colonial        on you!
and the colonized. The hegemonies with which Hwang deals have                 MARCUS: That’s right! God, this is so weird, I’ve
more unstable, fractured, and blurred boundaries.                             never even... and in public like this...
46                                                                América Crítica 6(1): 37–47, 2022. ISSN: 2532-6724

     STUDENT 2: Marcus, we’ve all been oppressed!               for melancholia preserves the lost object as loss, Eng
     (YF 45-47)                                                 and Han (following José Esteban Muñoz) “focus on the
Marcus’s minor class difficulties are presented as dis-         melancholic’s absolute refusal to relinquish the other—to
turbingly easy to translate and understand in racial terms.     forfeit alterity—at any costs” (Eng and Han 2000: 694).
The irony that marks the interplay between the students’        In their view, the subject’s melancholic attachment to
coarse chanting against racism, DHH’s efforts to deceive        the unattainable object is a refusal to sacrifice the real
them, and Marcus’s misunderstanding of both the reason          conditions of any marginalized existence, a sacrifice that
of their support and his privilege as a white kid, exhibits     would subscribe to the narrative of the national postracial
and explodes these interdependencies, precisely implicat-       order.
ing one set of preoccupations in and with another.                  The melancholic condition is then that of an ethical
    Significantly, apart from this exchange, class antago-      “holding on” to identity, a mechanism that fosters self-
nism seems to be absent from Yellow Face. Yet, Marcus’s         reconstruction: “There is a militant refusal on the part
feelings of not fitting in white America because of his so-     of the ego—better yet, a series of egos—to let go, and
cioeconomic status become the reason why he embraces            this militant refusal is at the heart of melancholia’s pro-
an ethnic identity and community. Being the element             ductive political potentials” (: 696). Marcus’s choice of
that triggers the conflicts, class difference is absolutely     an Asian identity points to Hwang’s militant refusal to
central to the play, albeit mostly invisible. Hwang, in fact,   bypass the conditions of race and class inequalities and
reframes all conflicts in the play by using the familiar,       allow all differences to disappear through a finite process
well-proven rhetorical model of race. This strategy on          of mourning; instead, Marcus reconstructs himself in
the one hand connects the two paradigms, revealing a            sharing the struggles of a community. Thus, the happy
general matching of forms of marginalization, and on            ending that DHH imagines for him among the Dong con-
the other hand signals and confirms a peculiar resistance       sists in keeping alive the encounters with minoritarian
from American culture to represent class inequalities           communities, on a transnational basis: “I joined the ’big
without mediation. When in order to save the community          song,’ and found the thing I had lost. A reason to hope.
from the government’s accusations Marcus removes the            And now, I can go home” (YF 112).
racial filter from his story and reveals that he is a white         In Yellow Face, feelings of envy and melancholia be-
man, he loses his people’s support: Leah breaks up with         come resources of intimacy and relationality that bring
him, fellow activists dispense with him, and fans simply        together a series of unresolved subjectivities. The multi-
forget him. Although such a conclusion points to the            plication of such feelings, constructions of identity, and
incommensurability of class and race, Marcus’s success          subject positions creates a dialogue between DHH and
ultimately lies in his embracing an activist project that       Marcus, that is between the author and his fictional char-
allows him to process his failed assimilation into Ameri-       acter. Their exchange ultimately compels the two fig-
can society and culture. This processing finds support in       ures to constantly question and redefine what it is that
the language of group exclusion from dominant norms             they supposedly exemplify. Teasingly split or doubled in
and democratic ideals, rather than individual loss.             Hwang’s character and DHH’s character (the character of
    David Eng and Shinhee Han call racial melancholia           an author-character, who anyway circles back to Hwang),
the non-pathological structure of feeling that underpins        Marcus is an ironic personification of community-based
everyday conflicts and struggles with experiences of im-        art, whose Caucasian identity amplifies the paradoxical
migration, racialization, and assimilation. They move           tone of the play. In the end Marcus does not occupy
away from Freud’s definition of melancholia as the dis-         DHH’s place; rather he transforms his author, accom-
ordered psychic state of an individual, who is incapable        plishing, albeit inwardly, the role usually expected from
of processing the loss of the loved object and therefore        the art devoted to raise the community’s consciousness.
remains in a state of mourning without end. For Eng             At the end of the play, DHH is left reflecting on who he
and Han melancholia addresses the estrangement of mi-           wants to be, a reflection, which in one last interference
noritarian groups from ideals of whiteness, heterosexual-       between the inside and outside of the text, is entrusted to
ity, and middle-class status, as well as from affiliations      his future works. In an interview with the Asia Society,
with the “original” Asian cultures, which become com-           Hwang describes the logic of his play as an interrogation
pelling fantasies that can only be obtained through partial     about
imitations. Whereas Freudian theory understands the                  to what extent we as Asians play our ethnicity at
melancholic’s inability to get over loss in negative terms,          certain times in our experience, when do we do
Sarnelli, Representability and Relationality                                                                            47

     that, why do we choose to do that, and then also           Eng, David L., and Shinhee Han. 2000. “A Dialogue on Racial
     can we choose our ethnicity in some sense. Can a                Melancholia.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues 10 (4): 667–
     white person who is very involved in Asian things               700.
     and Asian American things be in some sense Asian           Harrison, Lawrence E., and Samuel P. Huntington. 2000. Cul-
     American? (Hwang 2008a).                                        ture Matters. New York: Basic.
In Yellow Face, Hwang critically explores the conditions        Hollinger, David A. 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multi-
and possibilities for an Asian American sense of collec-             culturalism. New York: Basic.
tive self in multicultural times. Through dynamics of           Hwang, David Henry. 2008a. Asians in ’Yellow Face’. Ex-
envying, the play offers an unstable set of good and bad            clusive interview conducted by the Asia Society. https:
examples, or no example at all, thus enabling a series             //www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdOvAP5QITU.
of dis-identifications that ultimately disavow the itera-       Hwang, David Henry. 2008b. Fun with Race and the Media.
tion of a preestablished model subjectivity. Melancholic            An interview with David Henry Hwang about his play
strategies, on the other hand, pave the way for contin-            ‘Yellow Face’. https://www.americantheatre.org/2008/04/
                                                                    01/fun-with-race-and-the-media/.
gent group formations with political potential for social       Hwang, David Henry. 2009. Yellow Face. New York: Theatre
recognition.                                                        Communications Group, ebook.
                                                                Lee, Esther Kim. 2015. The Theatre of David Henry Hwang.
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