Chinese Looks

Sean Metzger

Description

Fashion, film, and changing US-China relations

Listen to a podcast with the author on New Books in Asian American Studies

From yellow-face performance in the 19th century to Jackie Chan in the 21st, Chinese Looks examines articles of clothing and modes of adornment as a window on how American views of China have changed in the past 150 years. Sean Metzger provides a cultural history of three iconic objects in theatrical and cinematic performance: the queue, or man's hair braid; the woman's suit known as the qipao; and the Mao suit. Each object emerges at a pivotal moment in US-China relations, indexing shifts in the balance of power between the two nations. Metzger shows how aesthetics, gender, politics, economics, and race are interwoven and argues that close examination of particular forms of dress can help us think anew about gender and modernity.

Introduction

Part I. The Queue
1. Charles Parsloe's Chinese Fetish
2. Screening Tails

Part II. The Qipao
3. Anna May Wong and the Qipao's American Debut
4. Exoticus Eroticus, or the Silhouette of Suzie's Slits during the Cold War
5. Cut from Memory: Wong Kar-Wai's Fashionable Homage

Part III. The Mao Suit
6. An Unsightly Vision
7. Uniform Beliefs?
8. Mao Fun Suits

Epilogue: The Tuxedo

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Theater
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Película fotográfica
• América
• Theatre
• History of Asia
• History of film
• American
• Asia
• China
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 25 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253015686
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CHINESE LOOKS
CHINESE
LOOKS
FASHION, PERFORMANCE, RACE
Sean Metzger
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone
800-842-6796
Fax
812-855-7931
2014 by Sean Metzger
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Metzger, Sean, [date]
Chinese looks : fashion, performance, race / Sean Metzger.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01247-0 (cloth) - ISBN 978-0-253-01256-2 (pbk.) 1. Fashion-China. 2. Fashion design-China. 3. Popular culture-China. 4. Chinese in motion pictures. 5. China-Race relations. 6. China-Social life and customs. I. Title.
TT 504.6. C 5 M 47 2014
746.9 20951-dc23
2013042016
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
To my mother, Ruth Metzger, and her mother, Lucy Jung
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1 THE QUEUE
1 Charles Parsloe s Chinese Fetish
2 Screening Tails
PART 2 THE QIPAO
3 Anna May Wong and the Qipao s American Debut
4 Exoticus Eroticus, or the Silhouette of Suzie s Slits during the Cold War
5 Cut from Memory: Wong Kar-Wai s Fashionable Homage
PART 3 THE MAO SUIT
6 An Unsightly Vision
7 Uniform Beliefs?
8 Mao Fun Suits
Epilogue
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I thank the editorial staff at Indiana University Press, particularly Rebecca Tolen and Sarah Jacobi. They have made the publication process efficient and transparent, and our collaboration has been a delight.
In its various incarnations, this book has traveled with me for longer than I care to remember. The intellectual grounding for the work owes much to Marilyn Alquizola, Joseph A. Boone, Meiling Cheng, Dominic Cheung, King-Kok Cheung, Ruby Cohn, Cathy Comstock, Joel Fink, Gayatri Gopinath, David E. James, Susan E. Linville, Dana Polan, Janelle Reinelt, David Roman, Barbara Sellers-Young, Bruce R. Smith, Peter Starr, Claudia Van Gerven, W. B. Worthen, Haiping Yan, and Michelle Yeh. I suspect that some of them may no longer remember how they influenced me, but I have not forgotten what I have learned from them.
My work with Teresa de Lauretis, Marsha Kinder, Susan L. Foster, and Dorinne Kondo in particular enabled me to conceive of this project. Each of them has been in my thoughts often as I have written and rewritten these pages.
Chris Berry, Sue-Ellen Case, and especially Karen Shimakawa have been mentors to me for longer than they might care to remember. I am ever thankful for their continued support.
Somewhere in my graduate school days, a group of us began to form a network of Asian American performance scholars. It has sustained me in the profession and been foundational to my development as a scholar, teacher, and person. Love and thanks to Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Sansan Kwan, Esther Kim Lee, Josephine Lee, Karen Shimakawa, Priya Srinivasan, and Yutian Wong.
In a related vein, I would also like to thank Dan Bacalzo and Andy Buck, whose enduring friendship and conversations about the theater have enriched my thoughts. More recently, Minh-Ha Pham and Brian Camaro have also provided valuable intellectual camaraderie during my visits to New York.
I also need to thank a group of once-fellow students. They read some of the earliest drafts of the chapters in this book: Michael Blackie, Cathy Irwin, Lynn Itagaki, and Hope Medina. Of course, Olivia Khoo and Eng-Beng Lim must be on this list, as they have provided sage advice on this book and my academic career from the time we were students to the present; my life would not be the same without them!
Most of this book was completed during my years at Duke University. Two people eased my transition from California to the South. Eden Osucha and Marc Schachter have continued to inspire me with their inquisitiveness, rigor, and very different embodiments of fabulousness from the moment I first met them. They and my writing group buddies of various moments, including Monique Allewaert, Lauren Coats, Matt Cohen, Nihad Farooq, Robert Mitchell, Vin Nardizzi, and Jini Watson helped me appreciate academic work in North Carolina. Jennifer Ho deserves special mention here for showing me how to be the best Asian Americanist I can.
I owe a great deal to the generosity of several colleagues at Duke. Many, many conversations have shaped my scholarship. In this regard, I am grateful to Francisco J. Hern ndez Adri n, Anne Allison, Srinivas Aravamudan, Houston Baker, Catherine Beaver, Sarah Beckwith, Neal Bell, Jennifer Brody, Cyndi Bunn, Chris Chia, Leo Ching, John Clum, Cathy Davidson, Tom Ferraro, Daniel Foster, Jane Gaines, Sharon Holland, Karla Holloway, Hae-Young Kim, Susie Kim, Aimee Kwon, Yan Li, Ralph Litzinger, Jody McAuliffe, Claudia Milian, Jules Odendahl-James, Hank Okazaki, Jocelyn Olcott, Danette Pachtner, Maureen Quilligan, Jan Radway, Carlos Rojas, Miriam Sauls, Sara Seten-Berghausen, Laurie Shannon, Dierdre Shipman, Fiona Somerset, Jeff Storer, Julie Tetel, Marianna Torgovnick, Maurice Wallace, Robyn Wiegman, and Ara Wilson.
Further exemplifying the spirit of critical generosity, several of my colleagues from Duke and North Carolina State University took the time to read a nearly complete, if still tentative draft, of the whole manuscript as part of the Franklin Humanities Institute Mellon Book Workshop. This event was instrumental in advancing my work. For their responses and encouragement, I thank Ian Baucom, Rey Chow, Claire Conceison, Guo-Juin Hong (also for help on many levels), Ranjana Khanna, Fred Moten, Maria Pramaggiore, Leonard Tennenhouse, Rebecca Walsh, and Ken Wissoker. Dorinne Kondo and David Eng-always dependable, kind, supportive, and stylish-flew in to help.
If I separate out Michaeline Crichlow and Priscilla Wald from these overlapping groups, it is because life as a Duke faculty member was unthinkable to me without them. From very different directions, they have informed how I approach my scholarly life more than anyone else in the last several years.
A number of past and present students have taught me how much I still need to learn. It may not be surprising that many of them are now my colleagues in the profession. Several of them have also assisted me by helping me with research or allowing me to develop ideas in a pedagogical setting. Thanks to Ignacio Adriasola, Lindsey Andrews, Phillip M. Carter, Brenna Casey, Ashley Chang, Katie Chun, Kita Douglas, Alisha Gaines, Keith Jones, Madhumita Lahiri, Sheila Malone, Kathleen McClancy, Derek Mong, Chris Ramos, Gwyneth Shanks, Nik Sparks, Anna Wu, Tong Xiang, and Katherine Zhang.
Audiences at the New School, Northwestern University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Hawaii, Wesleyan University, and Yale University have heard different pieces of this scholarly project as it was being written. Other individuals who circulate in (and, in some cases, outside of) the academic fields with which I am associated have been very helpful in the development of this book. Thanks to Leslie Bow, Joseph Bristow, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Sylvia Chong, Harry Elam, Peter Feng, Lisa Freeman, Grace Hong, Daphne Lei, Karen Leong, Karen Lipker, Lisa Lowe, Sean Mannion (whose editorial touch I will always appreciate), Gina Marchetti, Tavia Nyong o, Eve Oishi, Jane Park, Joseph Roach, Emily Roxworthy, Shane Vogel, Yiman Wang, Ron West, and Harvey Young.
Various grants at Duke provided the bulk of funding for my research travel. The Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in North American Society and Culture at Concordia University gave me additional time to draft material, particularly what became the epilogue. I thank Maurice Charland, Bina Freiwald, Greg Robinson, and Thomas Waugh for hosting me in Montreal.
The archival labor for this project was facilitated by the staffs of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; the Hampden-Booth Theatre Library of the Players Foundation for Theatre Research; the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco; the New York Library for the Performing Arts; the New York Public Library; and the Wisconsin Historical Society. I could not have done a project like this without highly skilled librarians.
Primary funding for publication costs was provided by the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Theater, Film, and Television. Many thanks to my department chair, Michael Hackett, and Dean Teri Schwartz. I also wish to acknowledge the Brooks McNamara Publishing Subvention of the American Society for Theatre Research for help with paying for permission to use some of the images.
Earlier iterations of two chapters have appeared elsewhere. An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as Charles Parsloe s Chinese Fetish: An Example of Yellowface Performance in Nineteenth-Century American Melodram