The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene

by Celine Parreñas Shimizu

In The Hypersexuality of Race , Celine Parreñas Shimizu urges a shift in thinking about sexualized depictions of Asian/American women in film, video, and theatrical productions. Shimizu advocates moving beyond denunciations of sexualized representations of Asian/American women as necessarily demeaning or negative. Arguing for a more nuanced approach to the mysterious mix of pleasure, pain, and power in performances of sexuality, she advances a theory of “productive perversity,” a theory which allows Asian/American women—and by extension other women of color—to lay claim to their own sexuality and desires as actors, producers, critics, and spectators. Shimizu combines theoretical and textual analysis and interviews with artists involved in various productions. She complicates understandings of the controversial portrayals of Asian female sexuality in the popular Broadway musical Miss Saigon by drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with some of the actresses in it. She looks at how three Hollywood Asian/American femme fatales—Anna May Wong, Nancy Kwan, and Lucy Liu—negotiate representations of their sexuality; analyzes 1920s and 1930s stag films in which white women perform as sexualized Asian characters; and considers Asian/American women’s performances in films ranging from the stag pornography of the 1940s to the Internet and video porn of the 1990s. She also reflects on two documentaries depicting Southeast Asian prostitutes and sex tourism, The Good Woman of Bangkok and 101 Asian Debutantes . In her examination of films and videos made by Asian/American feminists, Shimizu describes how female characters in their works reject normative definitions of race, gender, and sexuality, thereby expanding our definitions of racialized sexualities in representation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Feminism, Academic, Art, Politics, Sexuality

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2007

About the author

Celine Parreñas Shimizu is Director of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. She is the author of The Hypersexuality of Race (2007), Straitjacket Sexualities (2012) and co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness, a special issue of Asian Diasporas and Visual Cultures of the Americas (2018). Her films include The Celine Archive (2019), The Fact of Asian Women (2004) and Birthright: Mothering Across Difference (2009). She has written numerous peer-reviewed articles in the top journals in the fields of cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies and transnational popular culture in Asia and Asian America including Cinema Journal, Concentric, Film Quarterly, Frontiers, Journal of Asian American Studies, positions, Sexualities, Signs, Theater Journal, and Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

Reviews

[Jean Marc · Rating 1 out of 5]

:

Shimuzu's book, The Hypersexuality of Race, with regard to chapter 6 "Little Brown Fxxxxxx Machines" is offensive, inaccurate, and potentially libelous. Without fact checking, or investigation, in a complete disregard for the tradition of scholarship, she defames and misinforms readers on the motivations of myself, the creator of 101 Asian Débutantes, as well as the award winning filmmaker and creator of The Good Women of Bangkok. Shimizu's need to bend the unchecked "facts" towards her personal agenda have resulted in her branding myself, a completely non white male that comes from a matriarchal, non European, traditional society and culture, as a white male misogynist. This epithet is the antithesis of everything I believe in, and the opposite of my code of conduct. I found it ironic that , out of the hundreds and thousands of Asian "porn" films available to her which more suit her biased needs, Shimizu choose works by two men who are in personality, the exact opposite of the stereotype that she has tried to perpetuate. My academic adviser in Anthropology at Columbia was non less than Margaret Meade who's adviser was the father of Anthropology in the U.S., Franz Boas. I hold graduate degrees in the fields of interest that led me to do my research and work. It should also be noted that I have collaborated with Asian women in every step of my process of creation from the initial idea to the finished works. Shimizu and her academic mentors at Stanford and other schools, have made a inexcusable and unconscionable choice to disregard the rigors of the scholarly tradition, in order to portray through bad scholarship, a biased and ultimately wrong and libelous account of the scope and motivation of the work of myself and the other gentleman discussed in chapter 6. Her somewhat perverse fascination with explicit sexuality, while feigning academic interest and a prudish shock in witnessing it all, makes it clear that her career is more based on the economic and political exploitation of the subject matter as than the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and truth. In the presentation of this faux research for serious consideration, using obfuscatory, pretentious, and convoluted prose, The Hypersexuality of Race is revealed to be an exercise in self indulgent perversity. Indeed it is a strange academic act of public masturbation, and as such exposes the complicated and troubled morality and sexuality of the author, as well as bringing forward the need to publish for profit, and academic position. It thus, fails as scholarly insight into the premise of the book . Truth be damned and not even cared about, Shimizu proves that maintaining tenure, book and lecture benefits are more important than keeping true to the traditions of academic excellence and the scholarly tradition. I can only ask, if she gets chapter six completely wrong, if she has manipulated the chapter to fit her fantasies, how can anyone seriously see her work and professorship as deserving intellectual consideration as a whole, and under what light does this cast all her previous academic work?

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, nuanced analysis considering the politics of pleasure and productive perversities. Shimizu asks us to confront the murky contours of our desires, which includes the ways in which we even might take pleasure in our own subjection. A fierce and brave book that looks moralit squarely in the eye.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped edit this book and written by my boss in Santa Barbara. Confirmed all citations and footnotes. My name's in it and everything. Therefore, it's awesome.

:)

[Amanda Chiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and one of the only works I’ve encountered that really interrogates the portrayal of Asian women in North America historically and contemporarily. Significant in filling the gap in discourse surrounding Asian-American feminism and and a great read for anyone wanting to understand the relationship between the media and racial and sexual violence.

[Susan]

I need to present on this for class

[Reema · Rating 4 out of 5]

on a re-read, this is still provocative and insightful and useful--why, maybe, on a first read, i was so unsettled.