Ah, Wikipedia. It always seems to be the night I’m scrambling to finish some other writing that I come across a subject that grips me, sending me down a rabbit hole of Googling and complete focus derailment.
Which is how I came to learn about Anna May Wong, a second-generation Chinese-American actress with Taishan roots. She started in silents but transitioned into talkies, but was forgotten for many a year as many a Hollywood star ends up. She was friends with Marlene Dietrich, her co-star in Shanghai Express (still below), and Leni Riefenstahl (isn’t that some terrible irony?) and for a while seemed to be headed for superstardom.
But Wong’s career hit an intersection of bad politics and yellow peril. It forced her into insulting stereotypical roles as evil dragon ladies, temptresses, or China dolls, which Wong was critical of. California’s anti-miscegenation laws (repealed in 1948) prevented fraternization, on or offscreen, between Asians and whites. It prevented her from landing lead roles, where she would have had to star opposite white men. In a famous case of yellowface, she was passed over for the heroine role in Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth,” which is about Chinese peasants, in favour of Luise Rainer.
Oh, and then because she chose the dishonourable career of acting, the Chinese people hated her for being a lascivious embarrassment to her people. Even so, she left for China, hoping to to discover a troupe of fellow Chinese actors that would enable them all to create their own opportunities. She also sent diary newsreels back to Hollywood, allowing theatergoers to explore China in a non-racist way. (I joke a lot about how Taishan people speak in the “hick” Chinese dialect, but in all seriousness, Wong sounds like a very smart, resourceful woman.)
The anti-miscegenation laws probably had some part in her never marrying, too. The above clip of jazz staple “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),” here performed by Ella Fitzgerald in 1957, was co-written by Eric Maschwitz, a Brit with whom Wong had a lasting but obviously impossible romantic connection. A true torch song.
I always get obsessed with these injustices done toward women (and the Chinese, for obvious reasons… Rape of Nanjing, anyone?) — but this one runs a little deeper, since Wong seemed to be boxed in despite her best efforts. This one gets my feminist gas face.
Quick thought about the new Love covers
Quick blog post this afternoon, as my CMS at work is down and thus have been handed a free extended lunch break.
So, have you seen this?
Well, this, 8x.
Love Magazine (y’know, the one that put the outsized, in girth and personality, Beth Ditto on its cover for its first-ever issue) is putting eight naked supermodels on its “Fashion Icons” issue, due Feb. 8.
On its own, it’s not much of a crime. Fashion editorials in which clothes are out of frame are pretty par for the course, so there’s not much to be offended by at this point. (Though I still contend there should be — replacing fashion’s primary concerns with aesthetics, form, art with that of the human body, etc. etc.)
But then Katie Grand had to open her big fat yap and try to explain what was a mostly innocuous, kinda cool cover concept:
Oh, okay. So you’re taking the eight most beautiful, genetically blessed women in the world, whose jobs are to fit sample size clothing (and thus, more or less have identical bodies), and comparing the minutiae of their forms? Yeah man, Kate Moss’s legs are stumps (or is that only because she’s a mere 5′ 6″ compared to her giantess peers?). Or maybe that youth is so fleeting that Moss — who was discovered TWENTY-TWO years ago — scarcely looks like a decade has passed, or that Naomi Campbell — who was discovered 25 years ago — looks better than my not-yet-24-year-old self. If you want to bring out the sociological hand-wringing, yeah, it’s problematic because readers could see this as some distorted signal that average resides somewhere between the two-inch difference in Moss’s and Lara Stone’s hip measurements.
Mostly, though, it’s just proof that PR spin has either reached a new low, more proof that journalists can’t do PR, or both.