Carl Kruse Miami

Fishing, Fetishization, and Whitewashing: A Discourse on Anti-Asian Racism

 

by Hazel Anna Rogers for this Carl Kruse Blog

 

I enjoy many aspects of East Asian culture. Broadly, ‘East Asian’ refers to the cultural sphere of Japan, Greater China, Korea, and Vietnam.

I am not entirely comfortable verbalising my appreciation of these cultures with the vagueness of the term ‘East Asian’. Though they might have some inherent similarities due to their proximity to one another and their historic interactions, just as countries in the west have certain similarities with one another, the cultural evolution and histories of east Asian countries are, in many ways, completely separate. It is a fault of Western media and its generalisation of these cultures that East Asian countries are commonly lumped together under such a nebulous title. 

That is not to say that the term is itself problematic, however, as a white European heteronormative woman, I feel somewhat uncomfortable being so general about my appreciation for the very different cultures of Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam.

 

 

I grew up watching studio Ghibli films and anime, reading Manga, and had Japanese babysitters who came to stay with my family while they studied at my father’s English language school. My cousins are half-Japanese, and my uncle’s recently wed wife is Chinese (Hong Kong). I studied the Korean blockbuster while pursuing my studies in French and Japanese at the University of Leeds. I have loved the works of Murakami since I was sixteen and I am fascinated by the poetry of Li Po and Hanshan. I am working towards a greater understanding of Japanese Zen Buddhism and have recently been enjoying learning about Japanese Noh Theatre and Tadashi Suzuki’s method. I practice Qigong daily. As a child, I was heavily influenced by Kawaii culture. As an adult, I am oftentimes inspired by traditional Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese cuisine in my own cooking, and, with regard to my approach to the care of my home, I am inspired by the concept of ‘Ma’, an aspect of Japanese minimalism which can be described as: “a holder within which things can exist, stand out and have meaning. MA is the emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled.” (Wawaza.com)

These practices and interests enrich my life. They enable me to gain a more rounded perspective on life. There is a great disparity between the traditional western outlook on the human’s relationship with his surroundings and his own lived experience, and a more eastern outlook, which might consider the animus to be present in the world and the human (I speak of the animus with regard to its Latin origins as referring to the rational soul, mind, desire, and life as opposed to its nineteenth century incarnation as a term denoting hostility and anger). In an aesthetic sense, I am drawn to the work of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. In the foreword to Tanizaki’s 1933 text ‘In Praise of Shadows’, famed American architect Charles Moore details the significance of the material world in giving our embodied human experience meaning and comfort:

‘One of the basic human requirements is the need to dwell, and one of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong. This is not, especially in the tumultuous present, an easy act (as is attested by the uninhabited and uninhabitable no-places in cities everywhere), and it requires help: we need allies in inhabitation. Fortunately, we have at hand many allies, if only we call on them; other upright objects, from towers to chimneys to columns, stand in for us in sympathetic imitation of our own upright stance. Flowers and gardens serve as testimonials to our own care, and breezes loosely captured can connect us with the very edge of the infinite. But in the West our most powerful ally is light. “The sun never knew how wonderful it was,” the architect Louis Kahn said, “until it fell on the wall of a building,” And for us the act of inhabitation is mostly performed in cahoots with the sun, our staunchest ally, bathing our world or flickering through it, helping give it

light.’

 

Moore suggests that Tanizaki’s exposure of the beauty of darkness and shadows ‘illuminates for us a culture very different from our own; but at the same time it helps us to look deep into ourselves to our own inhabitation of our world’. I wholeheartedly agree. This perspective enables me to go beyond the simplistic discussion of capitalist and consumerist versus communist and ethical or anti-consumerist. Having the ability to notice and appreciate the beauty that can be found in the inevitable proliferation of the material subverts the ugliness or mundanity that we have been taught in the west to see in the non-human.

 

By reading and appreciating and even implementing the ideas that Tanazaki details in his book in my own life, I am committing no crime. I am not appropriating a culture by doing these things. What might reverse this innocent interest is if I were to take Tanizaki’s discussion and monetise it, or claim that I indeed was the first to promulgate such ideas. In doing this, I would be dismissing the history behind Tanizaki’s work, in essence erasing the Japanese-ness of this aesthetic. I would be using my born privilege to my advantage, negating the centuries-long suffering of the Japanese people at the hand of Westerners.

 

I do not have TikTok, nor do I plan on ever having an account on the site. Perhaps this will change. Part of the reason why I have not downloaded the app, apart from the obvious – more social media is never going to be a positive thing for me – is the discussion surrounding its ability to accelerate trends at a more rapid pace than has ever been seen before. These trends are not limited to the material – clothing, aesthetics, and general material goods – but also encompass physical appearance with regard to facial features and body types. One of the most recent ‘trends’ on TikTok has been the fetishizing of Asian physical features and styles. A note on this: enjoying doing makeup to change the way you look, or being inspired by different cultures in your own style, is not what has been deemed problematic. The issue is when one makes oneself appear racially ambiguous in order to profit off of the aesthetic of one culture without the consequences of actually being a part of said culture. Asian women have been fetishized, racially stereotyped and abused, and even killed for their facial and verbal characteristics. Take, for example, Papillon Soo’s infamous line from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’, where she played a Vietnamese prostitute: ‘Me love you long time.’ Papillon, to clarify, is not Vietnamese. She is of French-Chinese heritage, and was born in England. Her stereotyping as a passive, sexualised Vietnamese woman is racist. Soo’s words in Kubrick’s award-winning film have been used in further films, tv, and other cultural mediums. As a note to you, the reader: using this line is not funny. It never has been, and it never will be. It is the result of the demonisation and reduction by the west of Asian culture, and that will never, ever be ‘funny’.

 

‘Asian-fishing’ is defined by theboar.org as ‘a term used to describe people who try to pass as east-Asian. This is seen mostly through makeup or photo editing, where the eyes in particular are intentionally made to look slanted or as having monolids. This is not a question of whether winged eyeliner is now off-limits or of gate-keeping Asian fashion styles, but of non-east Asians intentionally altering the way they look for their own aesthetic purposes.’ The problem comes when a white woman uses east Asian feature and harmful stereotypes to further their own careers, such as Ariana Grande, who was accused of Asian-fishing after posting photos from a fashion shoot depicting her characteristically tanned skin (which she has also come under fire for) as snow-white, and her eyes artificially altered (either cosmetically or with the use of makeup) to create a characteristically east-Asian eye shape. Globaltime.cn details that ‘In the photo, [Ariana] can be seen wearing an oversized men's jacket, which is an emerging trend in South Korean streetwear, and the white bow in her hair is similar to Japanese 'servant girl' cosplay costumes.’ While there is nothing wrong with a pop star following popular aesthetic and musical trends, there is something wrong with an artist choosing not to acknowledge the painful history behind the trends that they choose to put on and take off as easily as lipstick. I cannot imagine how it must feel for a person of colour to see their features suddenly become ‘fashionable’, the same features which they might have been discriminated against for their entire lives.

 

I have used the examples of fashion to iterate the racism and whitewashing which prevails in western society (though it is certainly not limited to it). Whitewashing is described by health.com in film, television, and other media as ‘the elimination or replacement of people of color with white characters…(also) when people of color are displaced in a story to put the focus on white characters…(and it) may also involve a white person pretending to be a person of color […] creating entire worlds where people of color simply don't exist […] erasing people of color from times and places where they would be […] or giving all the major/most complex roles of a film to white actors’. I was to be clear that this is not a small issue. Even in my own life, I have witnessed people using racist slurs against and about Asian people. I have heard a friend discuss his discovery that his own girlfriend had a seeming ‘fetish’ for Asian men. I heard a (now no longer) friend describe an Asian-owned shop using disgustingly racist language. How are these occurrences a daily reality for people of colour? How can we ignore how short-lived a ‘trend’ the Black Lives Matter movement really was? #StopAAPIHate (AAPI = Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) didn’t seem to catch on in the social media sphere, did it? We all enjoyed Squid Game, didn’t we? How many of you voted Republican in 2016? How many of you actually condemned Trump, whether in personal circles, in public, or on social media, for referring to Covid-19 as “China virus,” "Wuhan virus" and “kung flu” (PRWeek)? How many of you know that, in 2021, there was an increase of 339 percent in reported Asian hate crimes in the US (nbcnews.com)?

 

I am a white, heteronormative British-French person with no real expertise on the issue of race, so…why should my opinion within this discourse be important? I am not perfect – far from it. But the fact is, the voice of a white, heteronormative person on certain topics (such as, but not limited to, racism) is far more ‘palatable’ to the public at large. These same words spoken from the mouth of a person who has experienced injustices due to their race, skin colour, or otherwise would potentially not ‘land’ on the ears of those who themselves hold racist and/or xenophobic views. It might even be dangerous for some people of colour to express themselves in particular situations. This is not to say that people of colour should not be involved in the discussion – ABSOLUTELY not. But, as someone trying to be an ally to people of colour, I feel that I should use my privilege to elevate and promote the voices of those who weren’t born with the same privileges that I was. I am happy to be called out for my mistakes. I am happy to read a comment under this article telling me that I should not have addressed this topic at all, that it was not my place. This is not about me, and I sincerely hope that that comes across in my words.

 

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Other articles in this blog include: What Does It Mean To Be Wealthy,  Rescuing The Blog.
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