the lotus blossom

Anna May Wong

Toll of the Sea

There is a long history of Asian exoticism, not only of the supposed hypersexuality of Asian women but also of their demure and compliant nature. Arguably, the stereotype of the “Lotus Blossom” began with the character of Lotus Flower herself in Toll of the Sea. In her first starring role, Anna May Wong plays Lotus Flower, a young Chinese woman madly in love with Allen Carver, an American man she happened to save from drowning. After willingly offering her son to Allen’s wife, Lotus drowns herself in a tragic act of suicide. This film sits uncomfortably with me, as any story that revolves around an Asian woman loving a white man to the point of giving her child to him and killing herself would.

Besides sparking Anna’s long-lived career in Hollywood, Toll of the Sea also marked the beginning of a trend of killing off Asian women in films. Wong herself once bitterly commented that she “died a thousand deaths,” as she was dead by the end of every film she acted in. The trope of a subservient Asian woman willing to risk her life for an American man undoubtedly has troubling implications for Asian/American women. The binary between the lotus blossom and the dragon lady further confines the sexual possibilities for Asian/American women. Racist fantasies propagate the myth that Asian women are either naively submissive or insanely hypersexual. The truth is, Asian women are all and none of these things—the binary cannot contain the radical diversity of Asian/American female sexuality.

Popular American media clearly fails to represent the Asian/American female as complex racialized, gendered, and nationalized subjects. Instead, they present the Asian/American female body as a site for aesthetic fetishism to be devoured by voyeuristic American viewers. However, American viewers can only satisfy their fetishistic desires from a limited range of fantasies: Dragon Lady, Lotus Blossom, Geisha Girl, Madame Butterfly, and China Doll. Whether delicately or dangerously sexual, the Asian/American female body only becomes legible through their sexuality. Their sexuality and aesthetic fetishism are markers of difference that enchant viewers and cause the sexualized Asian/American female to become hyper-visible. And yet, the actual Asian/American female remains largely invisible from contemporary society in almost every realm—legal, academic, social, and professional. With the disciplinary stereotypes of Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom threatening to police their bodies, Asian/American females often find that their sexual narrative has already been written for them, but not by them.