Discourses of Asian American masculinity: emasculation and remasculinization in Flower Drum Song and The Chickencoop Chinaman.

• Main Author: Nurul Hayati Abdul Rahman.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50138
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Through Rodgers and Hammerstein’s film adaptation and David Henry Hwang’s new play versions of Flower Drum Song and Frank Chin’s play The Chickencoop Chinaman, this paper will analyze the ways in which Asian American men have been emasculated through popular culture and the performance industry in the 1970s. Such discourses will show how the juxtaposition of Asian and Western cultures play an important role in perpetuating the emasculation of Asian American men. There is a constant binary between the East and West, of inferiority and superiority, feminine and masculine, rich and poor. As a counter argument, this article will also expound on the issue of self-emasculation, in which the Asian American man himself has contributed to such a derogatory image through the inherent need for assimilation and to be accepted by the Western world. On the other extreme, such overt rejection of assimilation and strong traditional values that are in conflict with the Western ideals also denigrates the Asian man. This analysis will also attempt to present how the different forms of emasculation only serve to strengthen the stereotypes of the Asian American man, and explore ways in which the Asian American masculinity can be restored.