Chapter 9 David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face in Postracial Times
In: Eastern and Western Synergies and Imaginations
Author:
Keith Appler
Keith Appler
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Abstract
In David Henry Hwang’s 2007 play Yellow Face, “Marcus,” a white character, succeeds in Asian roles, angering “DHH,” or Hwang himself. However, DHH eventually acknowledges that Marcus’s Asian personae may be as “authentic” as his own. Hwang registers a cultural change: while the white minstrel still abjects the persona he adopts, the Asian performer exploits his own Asianness in his bid for success. Both performances are commodified under “postracial” neoliberal multiculturalism, and hence lose authenticity. In Yellow Face, DHH finally recognizes that all ethnic claims to authenticity are now tainted by commodification.