american studies
Orgies of Feeling
Soundtracks of Asian America
Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
Navigating Race through Musical Performance
elisabeth r . anker
gr ace wang
“Anyone who thinks that melodrama is inherently politically progressive
“Soundtracks of Asian America is smart and informed, capacious and beauti-
is advised to read this book, the first to systematically apply the role
fully written. Arguing that the racialized imagination works similarly across
of the American melodramatic mode to the politics of American heroic
musical genres, Grace Wang explores senses of Asian and Asian American
sovereignty. Perhaps the boldest part of Elisabeth R. Anker’s thesis is not
belonging across the worlds of classical and popular music. From young
simply the general argument that Americans often cast their politics into
classical musicians’ parents as key sites of ideology formation to the
narratives of victimization and vengeance, but the historical argument that
‘reverse migration’ of young Asian Americans to East Asian popular music
a new kind of melodrama has emerged ‘with a vengeance’ after the end of
markets, her case studies are inspired and telling.”—DEBORAH WONG ,
the Cold War and especially after 9/11. I am in awe at this book’s boldness
author of Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music
and acuity.”—LINDA WILLIAMS , author of On The Wire
In Soundtracks of Asian America, Grace Wang explores how Asian Melodrama is not just a film or literary
orgies of feeling
melodrama and the politics of freedom
elisabeth r. anker
Americans use music to construct narratives of self, race, class, and
genre but a powerful political
belonging in national and transnational spaces. She highlights how they
discourse that galvanizes national
navigate racialization in different genres by considering the experiences
sentiment to legitimate state violence.
of Asians and Asian Americans in Western classical music, U.S. popular
Finding virtue in national suffering
music, and Mandopop (Mandarin-language popular music). Her study
and heroism in sovereign action,
encompasses the perceptions and motivations of middle-class Chinese
melodramatic political discourses
and Korean immigrant parents intensely involved in their children’s clas-
cast war and surveillance as moral
sical music training, and of Asian and Asian American classical musicians
imperatives for eradicating villainy
whose prominence in their chosen profession is celebrated by some and
and upholding freedom. In Orgies
undermined by others. Wang interviews young Asian American singer-
of Feeling, Elisabeth R. Anker boldly
songwriters using YouTube to contest the limitations of a racialized U.S.
reframes political theories of sover-
media landscape, and investigates the transnational modes of belonging
eignty, freedom, and power by
forged by Asian American pop stars pursuing recording contracts and
analyzing the work of melodrama
fame in East Asia. Foregrounding musical spaces where Asian Americans
and affect in contemporary politics. Arguing that melodrama animates
are particularly visible, Wang examines how race matters and operates
desires for unconstrained power, Anker examines melodramatic dis-
in the practices and institutions of music making.
courses in the War on Terror, neoliberal politics, anticommunist rhetoric,
Grace Wang is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis.
Hollywood film, and post-Marxist critical theory. Building on Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of “orgies of feeling,” in which overwhelming emotions displace commonplace experiences of vulnerability and powerlessness onto a dramatic story of injured freedom, Anker contends that the recent upsurge in melodrama in the United States is an indication of public discontent. Yet the discontent that melodrama reflects is ultimately an expression of the public’s inability to overcome systemic exploitation and inequality rather than an alarmist response to inflated threats to the nation.
Elisabeth R. Anker is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Political Science at George Washington University.
A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S/ P O L I T I C A L T H E O R Y
A S I A N A M E R I C A N S T U D I E S/ M U S I C
August 344 pages, 14 illustrations
January 288 pages, 4 photographs
paper, 978–0–8223–5697–4, $25.95/£16.99
paper, 978–0–8223–5784–1, $23.95/£15.99
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