Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies

Asian America

by Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Depictions of Asian American men as effeminate or asexual pervade popular movies. Hollywood has made clear that Asian American men lack the qualities inherent to the heroic heterosexual male. This restricting, circumscribed vision of masculinity―a straitjacketing, according to author Celine Parreñas Shimizu―aggravates Asian American male sexual problems both on and off screen. Straitjacket Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies looks to cinematic history to reveal the dynamic ways Asian American men, from Bruce Lee to Long Duk Dong, create and claim a variety of masculinities. Representations of love, romance, desire, and lovemaking show how Asian American men fashion manhoods that negotiate the dynamics of self and other, expanding our ideas of sexuality. The unique ways in which Asian American men express intimacy is powerfully represented onscreen, offering distinct portraits of individuals struggling with group identities. Rejecting "macho" men, these movies stake Asian American manhood on the notion of caring for, rather than dominating, others. Straitjacket Sexualities identifies a number of moments in the movies wherein masculinity is figured anew. By looking at intimate relations on screen, power as sexual prowess and brute masculinity is redefined, giving primacy to the diverse ways Asian American men experience complex, ambiguous, and ambivalent genders and sexualities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Asian American, Asian Literature

296 pages, Hardcover

First published May 9, 2012

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.