A bit more on the stereotyping in EYES.

In response to Edward O'Neill's response to Dennis Bingham's response:

The typing of the Asian men plays into a Western vision of them as
emasculated. Support for that view: they are apparently dressing as women
with wigs and make-up; both grab at-or cover their genitals fearfully;
the object of their desire and seduction is an adolescent. All these cues
seemed to stereotype them as emasculated Asian men.


On Mon, 26 Jul 1999, Edward R. O'Neill wrote:

> Among his many interesting suggestions, Dennis P. Bingham
> made one ambivalent comment upon which I'd like to comment
> (ambivalently).
>
> That is:  I think parts of the comment are off-target, but
> I'm not upset about this.  Rather, I think looking at the
> question provides some insight into interesting aspects of
> the film.
>
> Bingham suggested that part of Kubrick's postmodernism
> involves a play with familiar "cultural signs and types."
> Amongst these "types" which he identifies as "troubling"
> are:  "a prostitute's Asian clients, a New York Jewish
> tailor (who looks a bit like Kubrick himself), an anxious
> gay man."
>
> All of these descriptions I find slightly off target, which
> I think underlines the fact that the types themselves may
> not be so fixed.
>
> [SPOILERS ALERT:  IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM STOP READING
> NOW.]
>
> Example one:  what Bingham identifies as "a prostitute's
> Asian clients."  The character is not yet a prostitute when
> we first meet them, and they're in drag and in their
> underwear (semi-drag? un-drag?).  Exactly which Asian
> stereotype is this?  It's all a bit too mixed up and
> perverse to be easily decipherable.
>
> Later when these two men appear, they do indeed seem to be
> the girl's clients (with her father's blessings).  At that
> point they're dressed in something closer to business
> attire, and then we might say they're stereotyped Asian
> businessmen--had we not already seen them in wigs and
> makeup.
>
> Example two:  why is the tailor "Jewish"--or "New York
> Jewish," to be more exact?  I read him as middle-eastern or
> Arab American.  Is he a type?  And he isn't really a
> tailor:  he rents costumes.  Does the tailor-ness make him
> closer to a type or narrow middle-eastern-ness to
> Jewishness?
>
> Third example:  the anxious gay man.  Are you thinking of
> the hotel clerk?  Considering he's describing a hotel patron
> with a bruise being rushed out of the hotel by two big
> thugs, he doesn't seem nearly anxious enough!  It's not
> really his anxiousness to me that codes him as gay, but
> rather the way he's so complicitous with the Tom Cruise
> character.
>
> The fact that the role is played by an actor I believe to be
> gay helps me code him that way.  It also seems like one of
> the few rational justifications one can come up with for why
> he would be so forthcoming with a total stranger--doctor or
> no.
>
> To me this is a delicious scene, because the actor just
> seems to want to eat Tom Cruise alive:  he's practically
> drooling, as I would be if I met Tom Cruise.
>
> This does also fit with the use of (Proppian) 'helper'
> characters in the film and helps lend it a fairy tale
> quality.  (This is also lifted from _North By Northwest_.)
> Everyone the hero meets seems to help him:  (a) because he's
> a doctor, (b) because he's charming as all getout, and (c)
> becaus otherwise the film couldn't happen.
>
> Try, just try, to find that many people to help you do
> *anything* in New York City.  (Kubrick's isolation from
> reality perhaps takes its toll here--unless you don't want
> the film to be about the New York we know but rather a fairy
> tale version, which actually makes a bit more sense.)
>
> Perhaps my point is the same as Bingham's:  one needs
> certain categories in order to read the film, but the film
> also refuses these categories to some extent.
>
> Sincerely,
> Edward R. O'Neill
>
> ----
> Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
> University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu
>

----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite