BY DINA ZINGARO

In print | Published March 18, 2010

Even in an age that values political correctness, issues of race, gender and representation in film and other media are often unnoticed or are simply accepted without question. As the 2010 guest speaker for the Genevieve Ching-Wen Lee ‘96 lecture, Dr. Elaine Kim will address the contemporary visual media representation of Asian women in her documentary “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded.” In honor of Swarthmore alumna Genevieve Ching-wen Lee, the memorial fund features an annual lecture by a distinguished scholar in the developing, multidisciplinary field of Asian American studies.
Recent cinema productions, such as “The Last Samurai” in 2003 and “Memoirs of a Geisha” in 2005, have fueled the stereotype of Asian women as being exotic, accepting and timid. Kim wrestles with such representations and advocates for the identification and consideration of such lurking stereotypes.
In her new documentary “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded,” Kim will be revisiting the issues addressed in Debora Gee’s original 1988 documentary “Slaying the Dragon: Asian Women in U.S. Film and Television.” Gee’s provocative documentary examines the different ways Asian women were depicted from the 1920s to the 1980s. Produced over 20 years ago, the documentary is still in heavy circulation.
Swarthmore professor Alexandra Gueydan exposed her students to Gee’s documentary in the directed reading on “Representation of Asia in Francophone Literature.” In using the documentary, she hoped to investigate ‘the gendered constructs and stereotypes of Asian women as sexual fantasies.” Eleanor Glewwe ’12, one of Gueydan’s students, said that the documentary depicted Asian women as either “dragon ladies,” which “suggest evil[ness] and deviousness … in an exotic manifestation” or “servile women pampering white men.” Gueydan believes that Kim’s new documentary will “be an eye-opening view of the renewal of cultural constructs and the marketing of falsified images in the more multicultural contemporary global era.”
The film will further investigate the role that the film industry has played in creating contemporary stereotypes. “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded” will also examine the cultural production within a political context.
“Hopefully, it would help [students] understand their connection among the representations and also the relationship between those representations and some kind of geopolitical picture,” Kim said. “My assistant co-editor who is not Asian didn’t really realize [the race representations] until we strung the clips together.”
Kim’s project began after she conducted an Internet survey for Asian American men and women mainly between the ages of 19 and 25. The participants were asked three questions including, ‘What kind of representation do you notice of Asian women in Hollywood?,’ ‘What do they think of these representations?,’ and ‘What kind of representations would you like to see?’ When the survey was issued in 2004 and 2005, actress Lucy Liu was quite popular and served as a focal point in many of the participants’ complaints.
Kim explained that the participants “[wanted] to see representations of protagonists that were fully human, not necessarily good, central and believable, and not stripped of their culture, but their culture was not the main point.” In addition to the survey, she collected the clips of Asian women in films that supported her point.
The non-profit organization Asian Women United of California sponsored both productions of the original 1988 “Slaying the Dragon” and of Kim’s current documentary. However, Kim was not granted a budget for the project. Rather than continue applying and waiting for funding, she decided to proceed with the documentary. Kim has fulfilled the role of director of her documentary on her own. “It was an adventure!” Kim said.
Kim started working on the project four years ago. The documentary is still a work in progress, but Kim expects to have it completed in time for the fall semester. “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded” will be intended for classroom use.
Following the screening of the rough cut of the documentary, Dr. Kim will hold a discussion in which she hopes to “kind of selfishly [use] the time” to gain feedback from students about how to better the video rough cut through editing.
“I would like to know how people would react … what they don’t understand, what they don’t find meaningful and to also have their suggestions about what should be included that’s not in there,” Kim said.
After having lived for a year in Ardmore, PA, she is not new to the Philadelphia area. “I kind of know [the area], but I’ve never been to Swarthmore and I’m really looking forward to it,” said Kim.
The Office of Development and Asian Studies is organizing the screening of “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded.” It is scheduled for Tuesday, March 23 at 4:30 p.m. in Science Center 101.

« RETURN TO LIVING & ARTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »