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Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961
In the years following World War II, American writers and artists produced a steady stream of popular stories about Americans living, working, and traveling in Asia and the Pacific. Meanwhile the U.S., competing with the Soviet Union for global power, extended its reach into Asia to an unprecedented degree. This book reveals that these trends―the proliferation of Orientalist culture and the expansion of U.S. power―were linked in complex and surprising ways. While most cultural historians of the Cold War have focused on the culture of containment, Christina Klein reads the postwar period as one of international economic and political integration―a distinct chapter in the process of U.S.-led globalization.
Through her analysis of a wide range of texts and cultural phenomena―including Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The King and I, James Michener's travel essays and novel Hawaii, and Eisenhower's People-to-People Program―Klein shows how U.S. policy makers, together with middlebrow artists, writers, and intellectuals, created a culture of global integration that represented the growth of U.S. power in Asia as the forging of emotionally satisfying bonds between Americans and Asians. Her book enlarges Edward Said's notion of Orientalism in order to bring to light a cultural narrative about both domestic and international integration that still resonates today.
Through her analysis of a wide range of texts and cultural phenomena―including Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The King and I, James Michener's travel essays and novel Hawaii, and Eisenhower's People-to-People Program―Klein shows how U.S. policy makers, together with middlebrow artists, writers, and intellectuals, created a culture of global integration that represented the growth of U.S. power in Asia as the forging of emotionally satisfying bonds between Americans and Asians. Her book enlarges Edward Said's notion of Orientalism in order to bring to light a cultural narrative about both domestic and international integration that still resonates today.
332 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 27, 2011
Klein refigures Said's "orientalism" to apply it to representations of Asian Americans set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Her close readings of musicals (and I confess - I only read the half of the book dealing with musicals and literature) are spot on, her interdisciplinary approach makes this a widely relevant work, and her prose is pleasantly jargon-free and accessible (a must for interdisciplinary works, though that's not often the case).
Even though this isn't my research area, I'd love to go back and read the rest of this book if I have the time.
Even though this isn't my research area, I'd love to go back and read the rest of this book if I have the time.
January 22, 2019
textbook for class... a very interesting look at Asia in the American imagination during the Cold War and the influence of people outside the government in shaping American opinion.
May 26, 2023
High four. Lots of really good essays and great case studies. Recommend to anyone interested in the Cold War, Asian American history, and foreign policy
April 30, 2012
Klein presents a very compelling framing of Cold War culture, one which extends beyond the previous containment-based lens initially posited by Elaine Tyler May. To May’s containment frame Klein attaches one of her own, integration, extending analysis of Cold War popular texts into a bifocal range.
Klein’s juxtaposition of two major film genres, the Western and the musical, was particularly enlightening. It is through a her contrast of containment-heavy films such as The Magnificent Seven with those highlighting integration, particularly The King and I, Klein offers the clearest collocation of these two frames. Klein rightly identifies the Western as the cultural repository of Frontier Thesis, a “bearer of ideology about U.S. expansion, national identity, and the idea of progress.” She compares Brynner’s squad of renegade, gunfighting cowboys to Green Berets, each operating beyond the borders of the United States. Klein’s foil for the Western is the musical, and her foil for Brynner’s cowboy is a schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens. Entwining modernization theory with the cultural mode of sentimentalism, which she develops earlier in her book, Klein claims the musical to be an ideological genre on par with, but radically different from ... the Western.” Klein further underscores her point by citing film critic’s Thomas Schatz’s analysis of the two genres. Schatz identifies the Western as “genre of order” with a focus on an individual hero, while the musical is a “genre of integration” with a collective focus, either on a couple or a community. One could rightly argue, though Klein does not, preferring instead to highlight the violence of the Western, that both genres employ sentimentalism in the presentation of their umwelt and its attendant ideology, though in different ways and to different effect. Rather mystifyingly, Klein does not once account for or mention that The Magnificent Seven was an American reimagining of Akria Kurosawa’s monumental Seven Samurai, filmed in 1954.
Given the films share a star actor, Yul Brynner, it is rather easy to understand Klein’s decision to contrast The Magnificent Seven with The King and I. While the film was not produced until seven years after the termination of Klein’s scope analysis, the reader is left wondering how Klein’s containment-integration binary plays out in a film such as The Green Berets. Klein states that the American middlebrow cultural focus on Asia “perhaps ironically” wanes with the uptempo acceleration of the Vietnam War.
This does not seem to entirely be the case, however. John Wayne’s film adaptation of Robin Moore’s book of the same name evokes many of the trappings of the staple “cowboys and Indians” Western – the “frontier,” the frontier fort, “good” Indians and “bad” Indians, and so on – yet concludes with a message of integration – albeit one which is patronizing and paternalist – in the final scene. In its flawed way, The Green Berets may transcend the boundaries Klein identifies between Western and musical. Klein suggests that “[t]he Western’s ideological power derives from the way it imagines violence: who can use it, against whom, and in the defense of what.” Conversely, “[t]he musical’s ideological power ... resides in the way it imagines community: the differences among people that can be transcended, the kinds of bonds that can be forged, and the nature of the communities that can be created.” The adoption of Hamchuck, a Vietnamese boy “orphaned” by the death of his protector, Lieutenant Jamison, is “adopted” by Wayne’s Colonel Kirby as the two stand on the shore, looking out at the sun setting (in the east!) on the South China Sea. Hamchuck asks, tears running down his cheeks, “What will happen to me now?” Kirby, having placed Jamison’s Green Beret on his head, replies, “You let me worry about that, Green Beret. You’re what this is all about.” Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Beret” begins to play in the background, “Put silver wings on my son’s chest, make him one of America’s best./He’ll be a man they test one day;/have him win the green beret.” The message, sentimental and ideological, couldn’t be clearer; it would have been interesting to see Klein address this or other Cold War instances of convergence between these two ideological powers.
Klein’s juxtaposition of two major film genres, the Western and the musical, was particularly enlightening. It is through a her contrast of containment-heavy films such as The Magnificent Seven with those highlighting integration, particularly The King and I, Klein offers the clearest collocation of these two frames. Klein rightly identifies the Western as the cultural repository of Frontier Thesis, a “bearer of ideology about U.S. expansion, national identity, and the idea of progress.” She compares Brynner’s squad of renegade, gunfighting cowboys to Green Berets, each operating beyond the borders of the United States. Klein’s foil for the Western is the musical, and her foil for Brynner’s cowboy is a schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens. Entwining modernization theory with the cultural mode of sentimentalism, which she develops earlier in her book, Klein claims the musical to be an ideological genre on par with, but radically different from ... the Western.” Klein further underscores her point by citing film critic’s Thomas Schatz’s analysis of the two genres. Schatz identifies the Western as “genre of order” with a focus on an individual hero, while the musical is a “genre of integration” with a collective focus, either on a couple or a community. One could rightly argue, though Klein does not, preferring instead to highlight the violence of the Western, that both genres employ sentimentalism in the presentation of their umwelt and its attendant ideology, though in different ways and to different effect. Rather mystifyingly, Klein does not once account for or mention that The Magnificent Seven was an American reimagining of Akria Kurosawa’s monumental Seven Samurai, filmed in 1954.
Given the films share a star actor, Yul Brynner, it is rather easy to understand Klein’s decision to contrast The Magnificent Seven with The King and I. While the film was not produced until seven years after the termination of Klein’s scope analysis, the reader is left wondering how Klein’s containment-integration binary plays out in a film such as The Green Berets. Klein states that the American middlebrow cultural focus on Asia “perhaps ironically” wanes with the uptempo acceleration of the Vietnam War.
This does not seem to entirely be the case, however. John Wayne’s film adaptation of Robin Moore’s book of the same name evokes many of the trappings of the staple “cowboys and Indians” Western – the “frontier,” the frontier fort, “good” Indians and “bad” Indians, and so on – yet concludes with a message of integration – albeit one which is patronizing and paternalist – in the final scene. In its flawed way, The Green Berets may transcend the boundaries Klein identifies between Western and musical. Klein suggests that “[t]he Western’s ideological power derives from the way it imagines violence: who can use it, against whom, and in the defense of what.” Conversely, “[t]he musical’s ideological power ... resides in the way it imagines community: the differences among people that can be transcended, the kinds of bonds that can be forged, and the nature of the communities that can be created.” The adoption of Hamchuck, a Vietnamese boy “orphaned” by the death of his protector, Lieutenant Jamison, is “adopted” by Wayne’s Colonel Kirby as the two stand on the shore, looking out at the sun setting (in the east!) on the South China Sea. Hamchuck asks, tears running down his cheeks, “What will happen to me now?” Kirby, having placed Jamison’s Green Beret on his head, replies, “You let me worry about that, Green Beret. You’re what this is all about.” Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Beret” begins to play in the background, “Put silver wings on my son’s chest, make him one of America’s best./He’ll be a man they test one day;/have him win the green beret.” The message, sentimental and ideological, couldn’t be clearer; it would have been interesting to see Klein address this or other Cold War instances of convergence between these two ideological powers.
January 16, 2009
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants some genuine insight into the history of America's involvement in postcolonial societies. Klein makes a solid argument that America's best intentions of aid and international bridge-building were always just one side of a coin. The other, darker side was America's militaristic containment policies.
May 21, 2017
I'm using this for a paper on Orientalism in American entertainment. Christina Klein is hired.
August 6, 2014
Interesting book tying middlebrow media to the Cold War. Makes you think about what movies and books are REALLY about.
July 12, 2015
Loved this book!
January 17, 2016
A fascinating exploration of how America reimagined Asia during the Cold War. Although, I'm not as into musicals as Klein is.
February 7, 2016
Solid review of cold war-era film and literature featuring Asia as relates to political and social events of the period.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews