Heartstrings Comic & Anti-Asianness
Alright, I’ve waited long enough (since ~Feb) for @bevsi to respond to my ask about how/if she has studied Japanese culture enough to imbue Ro, a Japanese-Italian character, with cultural substance.
I shall interpret the nearly 2 month long radio silence as you not caring enough and having nothing to show for it, and so I shall proceed accordingly with my critique.
@bevsi ‘s Heartstrings comic is just one in many pieces of media created by non-Asians, that indulges in the use of Asian bodies and aesthetics without bothering to learn about the cultures, the stereotypes and racism we combat on the daily, and addressing anti-Asianness within the broader context of their worlds.
No matter how much “depth” this creator writes of Ro’s anti-cultural personality and backstory, the character is devoid of roots and intergenerational precedence.
Let me be clear about who Ro is.
Ro takes on the mould that many white authors give to Asians, especially masc, or hypermasculinised Asians. Because yes, Asians get both hyperfeminising and hypermasculinising treatments at the whims of non-Asians.
Ro is an idealised Asian caricature for the white queer’s gaze. She has Japanese heritage in name and appearance mostly, and this threadbare superficial connection is underpinned by the whiteness (emptiness) of Ro’s portrayal. Not dissimilar to applying a filter and a caption “Japan” to anything to transform it into something illustriously exotic.
She does not speak the language, she does not have anything especially Japanese that she has a core connection to (other than tattoos, how imaginative), and she has never been to her ancestral homeland of Japan except “on tour”. Her connection to Japanese values are rarely there—if ever made explicit. Her experience of Japanese diasporic struggles within Latin America is also not explored.
If Asians aren’t submissive, then they are the unfriendly cold emotionally-underdeveloped type. That is as Bevsi describes her: Unapologetic, obsessive, arrogant (but with good intentions), mysterious and volatile.
She is a chronic substance-abuser, utterly enamoured with the main character to the point of self-destruction and relapsing into her addictions, before they are dating again and she is (superficially), OK.
And apparently this is romantic or sensational, when there is a history of:
Non-Asian creators portraying Asians as so deeply codependent on, and “possessed” mind/soul/heart by non-Asian main characters—that the Asian spirals into self destruction without them [see Madama Butterfly & Miss Saigon, and no these aren’t different just because they’re straight. The racial dynamics are still present.]
Self-medicating Asian migrants and diasporic persons, correlated to the systemic harms we face often without other healthy outlets and a place of belonging in our residing regions.
There is no talk about Ro in the larger context of the Latin American social fabric, where there is EAsian racism and xenophobia prevalent throughout colonised regions, just like anywhere else in the world. Not to mention the history of Japanese migrants within Latin America as cheap labour, anti-Asian migrant policies, the Japanese Internment Camps (as a global issue under Eurocolonial rule), and the Nikkei’s Intergenerational traumatic burden. This includes:
Anti-Japanese discrimination by Peruvians since 1940 Saqueo riots. [source]
Deportation of Japanese in Latin America to colonies’ internment camps during WWII, especially prompted due to rising anti-Japanese violence and protests.
Antichinismo (Sinophobia) and Orientalism in Mexico and El Salvador to built Mestizo hegemony [source]
Sonora Expulsions (1929–1931)*
*Ik the last two are Chinese, but I don’t doubt this also impacted Japanese peoples in general. This is NOT an exhaustive list.
Asian characters end up white-washed, with our cultures and our pains and thus our joys connected to our heritage, scooped out of their bodies.
This type of portrayal further perpetuates the myths of our proximity to whiteness, “model minority myth”, and the allure of the Asian body arrives on your screens absent of every attribute that may bore, disgust, challenge, or be unrelatable to non-Asian viewers.
Our implicit body language and nuances in self-expression are unreadable to the non-Asian, and so instead they are converted and magnified into self-destructive, “socially-abnormal” character “flaws” with no grounding basis in anything other than the fault of either the character alone, or their Asian lineage. And so the story plays out with this in the foreground against a white context, with the Asian being this gritty person with a lack in healthy autonomy, healthy boundaries and relative humanity.
It creates an idealised Asian, either an Asian caricature that satisfies white viewers, or, a white person wearing Asian skin. Easier to project into, easier to connect with, our Asianness is made convenient for viewership.
At what point does this count as pure Asian fetishism and yellow fever via the objectification of the deculturalised [or the exoticised and Orientalised] Asian?
And before anyone even dares burden me with their insipid “but this is PROGRESSIVE because the Asian person isn’t submissive AND they are QUEER AND this is COMPLEX!”
Is it “progressive”, or are you woefully uninformed and behind on how racist rhetoric evolves over time and varies with its gendered and racialised subjects?
Is it “complex”, or are you mixing up the poorly understood invisibilised manifestation of Asian struggles generalisable to many Asian queers’ coping mechanisms, with the caricature of a “flawed POC”?
Non-Asians will look at an Asian person slowly self-destructing with self-harming coping mechanisms from systemic marginalisation, suffering from intergenerational trauma, and go “Wow you’re so hot and mysterious and psychosocially-maladapted, I’m gonna put this in my rom-fic ♡~”, cut me a fucking break.
Because this same caricature of the Asian person has dominated any queer media involving an Asian masc. I have already spoken about @butch-yaoi’s representation of the Vietnamese butch Phan here, but I have also seen this caricature present in Caitlyn Kiramman from Arcane (some EAsian heritage), and in Shane from Heated Rivalry (EAsian heritage).
Most of these characters are WASIAN, and I find that most of the time this is out of sheer convenience to have them have greater proximity to whiteness, while indemnifying their keeping their Asianness in the background.
All the while these creators and their non-Asian viewers often pat themselves on the back for being “inclusive” in “POC representation”, and it is a comically unimpressive job at best.
It stems from ignorance and a lack of research (and no learning EA languages, eating their foods or watching anime is not research). And it also stems from the normalised anti-Asianness in the West—alongside many Asian media that unfortunately panders to the West and thus adopts a white gaze.
What I am witnessing here is a pattern of portrayal in Asian masculinity, involving the Orientalising, Yellow Peril, anti-Asian, Sinophobic, Sinomisandrist and Sinotransandrophobia that has pervaded Western and European media since the 19th century.
The Asian masculinity has always been one associated with:
vice (substance abuse, gambling, crime)
emotional and mental instability and underdevelopment
“conservative politics” (even though Asian fems are statistically more politically conservative than Asian mascs)
This often shows up in the way that Westerners speak about Asian masculinity and Asian mascs. It shows up in how the media portrays us, and the promotion of anti-Asian violence often because people believe there is no consequence and Asians are too passive on the whole to stand up to defend ourselves.
The only thing that has “changed”, is that instead of this applying to cisheterosexual masc Asians, it is applied to queer masc Asians.
And if you are a queer masc Asian who salutes these portrayals, it might be time to ask why you are settling for a molecule of attention from people who would not accept you WHOLE enough to portray even a crumb of your culture. They had to DILUTE and FLATTEN us to do that.
Is it better than Asian mascs never being at the forefront or even a love interest? Personally as an Asian masc, No. I’m not going to accept caricaturising and erasure and white-washing just so that we get some visibility.
Sincerely and unsympathetically, if you want to write Asian characters, commit to it and portray us with what the majority of ASIANS would consider depth, NOT your white sensibilities or that of your non-Asian audiences. Don’t just halfass it and portray a white person dolled up in the name of Asian exoticism.
