| As American as chop suey |
| Flower Drum Song first appeared on stage in 1958 and was made into a film in 1961. The better-known film version launched the careers of the first generation of Asian American stars--Miyoshi Umeki, Jack Soo, James Shigeta, and Nancy Kwan. It was a time when there were few Asian American images of any kind, let alone an entire movie about Asian Americans. The movie was also unusual for featuring an all-Asian American cast for the Asian American roles. Consider that 1961 was also the year that Mickey Rooney did his infamous yellowface routine in Breakfast at Tiffany's. But Flower Drum Song isn't an easy show to like. Though it was the first mainstream musical to show Asians who could be Americans, critics have hammered the it for perpetuating stereotypes about passive women, exploiting the exotic oddities of Chinese people in America, and presenting assimilation as an either/or situation. Hwang acknowledges that Flower Drum Song is loaded with a good deal of politically incorrect baggage. For instance, one of the show's characters, May-Li, acts out the stereotype of a dutiful, patient Asian daughter. "She seems to reflect outdated ways of looking at obedient Asian women. It isn't true now. As far as I can tell it never really was true," Hwang says. Indeed, what is almost more striking than the original script's dated thinking on race is its dated thinking on gender. "I think a lot of white women who were offended that we were redoing Flower Drum Song really had bad memories of 'I Enjoy Being a Girl,'" Hwang says. With lyrics like "I'm strictly a female female / And my future I hope will be / In the home of a brave and free male / Who'll enjoy being a guy having a girl like me," it isn't hard to see why women who were influenced by Betty Friedan and fought to get women out of the home would consider Flower Drum Song a step back. Hwang insists his version retains the song-and-dance fun of the original, but also keeps the more offensive parts in check. Although the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate usually lays down strict, preservationist rules about revivals, Hwang was given an unusually free rein. With input from director and choreographer Robert Longbottom and musical director David Chase, Hwang has completely rewritten the musical. In fact, outside of the songs, there is not a single line left from the original script. The essentials of the plot--young, American-born Chinese clashing with their elders in San Francisco's Chinatown--remain the same. But the setting has been shifted forward fifty years to Chinatown after Tianamen Square. And this time, the clash of generations is depicted not just as a question of cheongsam versus varsity-letter jacket, or snake meat versus hamburgers. Hwang rewrites it as a clash of theatrical styles: The patriarch, a Chinese opera master, runs a failing theater in San Francisco; the hip son wants to turn the family business into a nightclub. Hwang's new setting for the musical heightens its staginess, which not only allows him to play up the showy, jazzy numbers from the movie, but also introduces a camp factor that makes it okay to use stereotypes while laughing at how artificial they are. As Susan Sontag wrote in her famous essay "Notes on Camp", "Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes the usual indignation, sponsors playfulness." It may be that Flower Drum Song has not aged well, but it is just these very recognizable liver spots that make it possible to enjoy Flower Drum Song today. As for "I Enjoy Being a Girl," Hwang has planted the offensive number in a completely new context, he says. Part of it happens as an on-stage nightclub number, and part of it happens off-stage as an "Amy Tan number." So while the first part of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" is exaggerated to defuse the tension, it eventually turns into a more vulnerable heart-to-heart on what it means to be a "female female" in America today, a la The Joy Luck Club. "The idea is of an American-born girl saying to someone who's just arrived here that cultural mores are different here," Hwang says. "What it means to be female is different here in the West than in a traditional culture, in terms of foot-binding, tossing daughters down the well, and that sort of thing. In contrast, she wants to say that it's possible to find a way to have a more enjoyable experience as a female." He pauses. "At least in L.A. people seemed to buy that." Hwang hopes that he hasn't trivialized the ethnic content of Flower Drum Song in his eagerness to make it playful. "The accomplishment of the L.A. version, I think, is that it's true to what I consider multicultural values, but it's also a heck of a lot of fun," he says. "Fun and multiculturalism are not two words you usually associate with each other. You can adhere to these new values without being dour and a drag all the time." But he acknowledges that musical theater can be a limited genre when dealing with issues that have been historically very touchy. After all, musical theater trades on typed characters, comic relief, and lightheartedness. "There are lots of experiences in the African American experience that can be in a musical, but slavery probably ain't one of them," Hwang admits. "You can do Fiddler on the Roof, but Springtime for Hitler is in horribly bad taste." But now it seems taste is coming around. Just as it is now okay to like Paul Colin's offensively cartoonish prints of Josephine Baker, it seems okay to like Flower Drum Song nowadays--that is, if it is put in context. The 1961 movie was actually a hit with audiences at this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, where it was featured as the Centerpiece Presentation. "The audience really loved it," says festival director Chi-Hui Yang. "People were finally able to enjoy Flower Drum Song. They could say to each other, 'Listen, we know this has a history, but let's enjoy this film for what it has accomplished, and not dwell on what issues we had with it in the past.'" The film's actors even received a standing ovation when they joined Hwang on-stage before the screening. "It was great because it was the first time the actors really got recognition for their parts. Before, everyone was really worried about stereotypes," says Bernice Yeung, who watched Flower Drum Song for the first time at the film festival. Yeung says that she can understand the past wariness toward the film. Even so, she liked watching it: Its unmistakable "retro" quality, she says, made it easier to forgive the stereotypes. Time, it seems, can turn chop suey into a delicacy. Of course, time has also brought a lot of progress, which has changed the stakes of the game. "How many images of Asian Americans were available in the sixties?" asks Yang. "Very few. So Flower Drum Song came to bear the unwilling burden of representing the entire community. There weren't enough images out there." Stepping to the beat of a different drummer As American as chop suey 'We can put Chow Yun-Fat in that' |