Screening Asian Americans.

Peter X Feng, ed.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002

Screening Asian Americans is a collection of critical essays that its editor, Peter X Feng, describes as an anthology "that serves to constitute Asian American cinematic representation as a coherent object of inquiry..." This volume sets as its goal the broad and ambitious project of providing a much needed historical context to Asian American cinema. Pointing to a general lack of knowledge among many consumers and young producers about the history and artistic tradition this cinema, the book approaches its project from two interrelated perspectives: It provides an examination of how Asian Americans are "screened"--literally and figuratively--in Hollywood films by critically and historically analyzing how this cinema represents and constructs Asian American "Otherness." And, in conjunction with this analysis, the book proposes to "screen" a canon of Asian American films that present, in varying degrees, alternative and at times counter visions from the ones deployed in the stereotype-laden mainstream cinema.

One of the touted strengths of this anthology is that it is does not pretend to present a complete totalizing description/definition of its subject. Rather, it readily acknowledges the intrinsic complexity and dispersed nature of its object of inquiry and proposes instead a Benjamin-like critical framework consisting of "a number of partial and competing accounts that construct a contrasting constellation of Asian American film/videomaking."

The book therefore consists of a heterogeneous group of essays that explore films about and by Asian Americans from a mixture of historical, personal and critical perspectives. These essays are organized into three segments: The first part of the book is entitled "Asian American Bodies" and consists of three articles that historically and critically explore the construction of Asian American stereotypes in mainstream cinema from the turn of the century until today. The second part looks at the production of Asian American cinema from a historical perspective. The third part consists of essays that provide an in-depth analysis of individual Asian American films ranging from experimental videos to mainstream Hollywood films.

Most of the articles are interesting, and in combination they offer a series of insightful and contrasting perspectives. In this sense, I believe that the book successfully accomplishes its stated goals of providing a basic historical and critical context to the Asian American cinematic tradition. But, ironically, in achieving its goal of constituting Asian American cinema as an object of inquiry, the book undermines its own strategy of dispersal, and instead seems to fall into the much criticized binary framework that defines Asian American cinema as an object through its opposition to mainstream cinema. By fixing these "Asian American" filmmakers in this opposition, this anthology blurs the differences between them and legitimizes the otherwise socially constructed label of "Asian American" as a naturally given and homogenous ethnic category. And while some of the essays do problematize the very notion of an "Asian American" cinema, the overall point of view of this volume never explicitly does. Instead of focusing on the Otherness of Asian American cinema, Screening Asia Americans should perhaps have emphasized and celebrated the radical positions of Asian American film and video artists.