Showing posts with label racial and sexual stereotypes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racial and sexual stereotypes. Show all posts

31 Jan 2018

Yellow Fever (Notes on the Politics of Asian Girl Fetish)

Bérénice Lim Marloe as Sévérine 

There's something about Asian girls. They're cute. They're smart. 
They have a kind of thing going on.


A friend asked who was my favourite Bond Girl ...

When I replied it was the character Sévérine, portrayed by the beautiful French actress Bérénice Marloe in the 2012 film Skyfall, she smiled and said that this exposed my Asian Girl Fetish (Marloe's father is of Cambodian and Chinese descent) and that this in turn indicated I had politically suspect views and subscribed to a number of pernicious racial and sexual stereotypes.

This may or may not be true, but it kind of made me wish I'd answered differently - although if, for example, I'd named Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), couldn't this be said to reveal my Nordic Girl Fetish and indicate subscription to an equal number of stereotypes, perhaps even more pernicious and politically suspect in character ...?          

However, happy to play along, I asked what she meant. And she explained that many men who identify as members of the so-called alt-right have a particular penchant for dating women of SE Asian origin, despite their fantasies of white supremacy and purity of blood.

Not surprisingly, this topic has caused heated debate on various white nationalist and neo-Nazi websites and demonstrates to many commentators that there's an amusing level of erotico-ideological confusion within the alt-right world. But, as Audrea Lim points out, there is, actually, no real contradiction in this Asian fetish when one realises how it arises at the intersection of two popular racial myths:

"First is the idea of the 'model minority,' in which Asian-Americans are painted as all hard-working, high-achieving and sufficiently well-behaved to assimilate. If Asians are the model minority [...] then perhaps that opens the door to acceptance from white supremacists.
      The second myth is that of the subservient, hypersexual Asian woman."

For many misogynysts, across the political spectrum, the sad fact is that most white women are - thanks to feminism - simply too much trouble; i.e., too unwilling to serve and to pleasure their menfolk. Asian girls, in contrast, are so much more amenable - and - whisper it - far more uninhibited in the bedroom. This idea - deeply ingrained within the pornographic imagination - has its roots in America's post-war experiences in the bars and brothels of Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Thus it is that the alt-right Asian fetish combines these ideas and "highlights a tension within the project of white supremacism as America grows more diverse [...] The new, ugly truth? Maintaining white power may require some compromises on white purity".

May require, indeed, sleeping with the enemy ...


See: Audrea Lim, 'The Alt-Right's Asian Fetish', New York Times (Jan 6, 2018): click here to read online.


5 Jul 2017

Hot Gypsy Girls 1: On the Racial and Sexual Stereotyping of Romani Women

I feel her, I see her, the sun caught in her raven hair 
is blazing in me out of all control!


It would not be unreasonable to argue that the pornographic imagination is founded upon, circulates, and sustains a wide range of racial and sexual stereotypes, including that of the Hot Gypsy Girl ...

With her dusky complexion, fiery dark eyes and loose black hair, wearing a low-waisted long skirt split to the thigh that she hitches up flamenco style to dance barefoot in public pieced with a low-cut, midriff-baring blouse that invites more than just navel-gazing, she is not only exotic in her sultry good looks and colourful appearance, but animal-like in her wild and overt sexuality.

Many men desire her, but most would be too scared to approach her. For like the true temptress, she spells trouble and threatens danger as well as offering the promise of unbridled passion; the Hot Gypsy Girl knows how to use a knife - and I don't mean in table-mannered conjunction with a fork.

This porno-romantic construction of free-spirited and strong-willed femininity that is found in much of the art, music, and literature of the 19th century, stands in direct opposition to the Victorian ideal of buttoned-up womanhood that held sway across Europe at the time; white-skinned, fair-haired, mild-mannered, kind-hearted, chaste and - above all - submissive to the male authority of their husbands and fathers.

Puritanical commentators who dislike stereotypes, will point out that there's very little empirical evidence to support this fantasy of the Hot Gypsy Girl. But, even if not based in actual fact, she's a real figure nonetheless with her own alluring truth and there are numerous examples to be found within modern popular culture.

Two names, however, immediately present themselves: Esmeralda and Carmen ... 


Notes

The image used above is of the Gypsy assassin Mejai, from the Franco-Belgian comic book series Le Scorpion, written by Stephen Desberg and illustrated by Enrico Marini. It's taken from the main page of the Hot Gypsy Woman entry on TV Tropes: click here

Those interested in reading further on this subject should see Ian Hancock, 'The "Gypsy" Stereotype and the Sexualization of Romani women', in Gypsies in Literature and Culture, ed. V. Glajar and D. Radulescu, (Palgrove-Macmillan, 2007), pp. 181-91. This essay can also be found on the RADOC site: click here.

To read part two of this post - Esmeralda: Trope Codifier and Fraud - click here

To read part three of this post - On Carmen and Her Seduction of a Famous German Philosopher - click here.