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Abjection, masculinity, and violence in Brian Roley's American Son and Han Ong's Fixer Chao
MELUS, Spring, 2004 by Eleanor Ty
Globalism is not an abstraction but a concrete activity whose mode of being has its effect on the local body.
--Dana Polan, "Globalism's Localisms."
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Half a century after its independence from the United States, the Philippines is still very much in a neo-colonial stage. (1) Propelled by dire economic conditions in the Philippines and fed by the American dream of wealth and success, Filipinos migrate in large numbers and have become what Rhacel Parrenas calls "servants of globalization." By globalization, I refer to the movement of people, goods, culture in the new global capitalism which entails, as Arif Dirlik writes, the "transnationalization of production, [...] the decentering of capitalism nationally," the increasing importance of the transnational corporation, and the "fragmentation of the production process into subnational regions and localities" (30). Filipinos are a transnational subaltern, used in many countries as cheap and temporary labor: the "'warm body export' of Filipino workers to the Middle East; Filipinas as 'mail-order brides,' ubiquitous prostitutes around enclaves formerly occupied by U.S. military bases; and 'hospitality girls' in Tokyo, Bangkok, Okinawa, and Taipei" (San Juan 79). Negative effects of this migration and globalization include the separation of family members, perpetual states of exile and displacement, and self-hatred that results from the neo-colonial mentality of seeing oneself as other. What faces Filipino immigrants in their adopted countries is often not a life of ease, but difficulties due to prejudice, racism, and alienation.
Two recent novels by Filipino American writers, Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son (2001) and Han Ong's Fixer Chao (2001), document these problems and reveal the ways in which global capitalism takes its toll on the young. (2) Roley's and Ong's novels are told from the perspective of children or young adults whose familial and social lives have been changed by transnational migration, and who see themselves as failures because their lives do not match the high expectations of the American dream. Fuelled by Hollywood ideals of glamour and power, various characters in these novels suffer, and, consequently, lash out against others when they fall short of capitalist notions of success. These novels show the impact of global American culture on Filipino immigrants, problems in the construction of Filipino American subjectivity, and the violent effects of racial abjection on the body.
In general, these novels reveal a number of common negative effects of globalization on children. First is the over-valorization and desire for wealth, First World products, and material goods. In these narratives, the children compensate for their lack of familial bonds and/or dysfunctional family situation by coveting, buying, or stealing goods. Transnational production does not affect only people's work conditions, but also libidinal desire. The second negative effect consists of overdetermined and unattainable ideals based on Hollywood models of masculinity and beauty since "the global distribution of power still tends to make the First World countries cultural 'transmitters' and to reduce most Third World countries to the status of 'receivers'" (Shohat and Stam 147). When Filipino American men find themselves unable to live up to the seductive or forceful celebrity images they see in films and on television, they frequently resort to violence or aggression.
The third negative effect of globalization on children is emotional and psychic transnationalism. Diane L. Wolf argues that "second generation Filipino youth experience emotional transnationalism which situates them between different generational and locational points of reference--their parents,' sometime also their grandparents,' and their own--both the real and imagined" (459). Children of first-generation Filipino immigrants and Filipino American children belonging to the 1.5 generation are brought up "accepting patriarchal family dynamics and the predominance of parental wishes over children's voices, resulting in internal struggles and an inability to approach parents openly for fear of sanctions. Part of the struggle seems to stem from living and coping with multiple pressures and with the profound gap between family ideology and family practices" (Wolf 473). While this phenomenon is common to many immigrant children, it is particularly acute for those youths who feel the pressures not only from their family in the adopted country, but are also burdened with accountability to their relatives and friends "back home."
In their novels, Roley and Ong explore these various effects of globalization on young Filipino American men growing up in urban America. The authors show the emotional and psychic struggles of the protagonists as they negotiate between the values of capitalist America and the self-sacrificing and self-abnegating attitudes of Filipino immigrants. Through the perspectives of the young men, we see the damaging effects of small but repeated acts of racism and we witness the ways their masculine subjectivity has been interpellated by Hollywood representations. The protagonists reveal how they become abject others of the dominant culture that invites them to be part of the nation yet refuses to accord them the same privileges as white Americans. Through very different stories of growing up, Roley and Ong illustrate the complex ways in which cultural and racial marginalization, as well as a sense of failure from being unable to live up to their own and their parents' ideals, lead young Filipino Americans to aggression and criminal behavior.
