Mainstream American cinema has long visualized women through a patriarchal lens, presenting female characters primarily as objects for male pleasure or narrative ornamentation. Laura Mulvey’s foundational essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema exposed this dynamic, showing how classical Hollywood constructs women as passive spectacles organized around scopophilic desire (Mulvey 6–18). While Mulvey’s insights remain essential to feminist film studies, her analysis largely centers white femininity and overlooks how race shapes the structures of “looking”. As bell hooks emphasizes, women of color are not simply “women”; their representation is inseparable from histories of empire, colonialism, and orientalist fantasy (hooks 45).
Asian and Asian American women, in particular, have been hypersexualized in U.S. media, their images shaped by a racialized gaze that combines erotic desire with imperial narratives. From nineteenth century depictions of exotic concubines to contemporary films and musicals, these stereotypes persist, presenting Asian women as both sexually available and morally subordinate. The musical Miss Saigon (1989) exemplifies this dynamic, portraying Vietnamese women through a binary of hypersexualized prostitutes and passive, submissive heroines. Drawing on Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Linda Trinh Võ, this essay examines how the cinematic gaze functions not only through gender but also through race, producing harmful stereotypes with material consequences. Drawing on feminist film theory, Asian American studies, and critiques of U.S. imperialism, this essay argues that the cinematic gaze operates through both gender and race, positioning Asian and Asian American women as hypersexualized objects whose suffering is rendered inevitable and romanticized. Through an analysis of Miss Saigon, this essay demonstrates how white male innocence is preserved by individualizing responsibility and obscuring imperial violence, arguinh for a decolonized, intersectional gaze that centers Asian American women as complex, historically situated subjects rather than orientalist fantasy.
Rethinking Mulvey Through Race
Mulvey’s theory remains critical for revealing how classical cinema organizes visual pleasure around male desire, positioning women as objects rather than agents of narrative action (Mulvey 7). However, Mulvey assumes a universal female object and a universal male gaze, leaving race largely unexamined. For Asian American women, the gaze is not only sexual but racialized. Shimizu argues that Asian women are interpellated through “a fiction of hypersexuality linked to a particular raced and gendered ontology” (Bind of Representation 248). Unlike the fetishization of white women, which often centers erotic novelty, the hypersexualization of Asian women is historically constructed through U.S. imperial expansion, militarization, and orientalist discourse.
U.S. military presence in Asia, particularly during the Vietnam War, established patterns of sexualized domination that extended beyond the battlefield and into cultural representation. Asian women were repeatedly imagined as submissive, innocent figures or as dangerous, sexually available “Dragon Ladies” (Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race 2). These archetypes are not simply narrative conventions but mechanisms through which racial hierarchy and imperial power are reinforced. Cinema becomes a site where erotic pleasure is inseparable from conquest and control.
Critics such as hooks and Shimizu extend Mulvey’s framework by insisting that the gaze is shaped by race, class, and historical context. Hooks critiques the erasure of Black women from feminist film theory, arguing that their representation cannot be separated from racism and colonial history (hooks 46). Shimizu similarly describes a “bind of representation” in which Asian American women experience visibility as both pleasurable and harmful, a tension that structures how images are consumed and internalized (Bind 252). Expanding Mulvey through race reveals that cinematic looking operates alongside fantasies of empire and exoticism, not apart from them.
Miss Saigon and the Racial Gendered Gaze
Few works illustrate the racialized sexual gaze more clearly than Miss Saigon. A retelling of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly set during the Vietnam War, the musical portrays Vietnamese women almost exclusively through prostitution. Women in the opening brothel scenes are presented as “hypersexualized Dragon Ladies in string bikinis,” while Kim appears as the singular “Lotus Blossom,” defined by her virginity, passivity, and moral purity (Shimizu 247–248). This binary reduces Asian women to objects of male fantasy, reinforcing orientalist traditions that associate Asian femininity with danger, submission, or sexual availability.
Kim’s storyline exemplifies the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope. Although the narrative attempts to humanize her through sacrifice and devotion, her value remains tethered to her relationship with a white American man. Community responses to Miss Saigon reveal the tension between Western fascination and Asian American discomfort. Critics and audiences have described the musical as perpetuating orientalist fantasies that fetishize Asian women while denying them agency (University of Wisconsin Asian American Studies). Yoko Yoshikawa’s reaction to the brothel sequence, feeling simultaneously “pulled in” and “sickened and alienated,” captures what Shimizu identifies as the bind of representation, where pleasure and harm coexist (qtd. in Shimizu, Bind 250).
Chris’s Innocence and Imperial Romance
Chris’s role in Miss Saigon cannot be separated from the political context that makes his presence in Vietnam possible. As an American GI stationed in Saigon, Chris embodies U.S. military intervention during the Vietnam War, yet the musical consistently frames him as an individual romantic subject rather than as an agent of imperial power. This narrative choice allows the violence of war and occupation to fade into the background, replaced by a personal love story that recenters white American innocence. The musical’s opening brothel sequence establishes this dynamic immediately: American soldiers celebrate their access to Vietnamese women as a wartime privilege, while Chris’s discomfort positions him as morally distinct from the other GIs. However, this distinction does not challenge the imperial system itself; instead, it individualizes responsibility and absolves the American presence from critique.
Chris’s refusal to “buy” Kim in the brothel is often read as evidence of his respect for her, but within the context of U.S. military occupation, it functions as a narrative sleight of hand. The American military presence creates the conditions under which Vietnamese women are displaced, impoverished, and pushed into sexual labor. Chris benefits from this system regardless of whether money changes hands. When he removes Kim from the brothel and sleeps with her, the musical reframes an act enabled by imperial power as romantic choice. Desire becomes detached from violence, allowing Chris to appear compassionate while remaining structurally dominant. His love is positioned as an alternative to exploitation, even though it relies on the same unequal relations produced by war.
The musical further reinforces U.S. imperial innocence through Chris’s emotional arc during the Fall of Saigon. As the Americans evacuate, chaos erupts, yet the narrative centers Chris’s confusion and heartbreak rather than Vietnamese loss. His separation from Kim is framed as tragic misunderstanding, not as the predictable consequence of U.S. abandonment. The evacuation scene underscores this imbalance: Chris escapes with the Americans, while Kim is left behind, rendered stateless and vulnerable. The musical treats his departure as unavoidable, reinforcing the idea that American withdrawal is a personal tragedy rather than a political failure with devastating consequences for Vietnamese civilians.
Years later, Chris’s life in the United States further reveals how imperial violence is displaced onto Asian female suffering. His guilt manifests as trauma and nightmares, but these emotional consequences never require material accountability. Kim, by contrast, bears the long-term costs of war alone, raising their child in poverty, waiting for rescue, and ultimately sacrificing herself. The musical uses Kim’s devotion to resolve Chris’s moral conflict, transforming her death into a means of restoring his domestic stability with his American wife. In this way, Asian female sacrifice becomes the mechanism through which U.S. imperial guilt is emotionally processed and narratively resolved.
By centering Chris’s feelings while marginalizing Vietnamese subjectivity, Miss Saigon reproduces a familiar imperial narrative: the United States may make mistakes, but it remains morally redeemable through individual acts of love. The musical invites audiences to sympathize with Chris as a tragic figure caught in an impossible situation, rather than as a participant in an unjust war. His romance with Kim thus functions as a cultural alibi for U.S. intervention, recasting imperial domination as personal loss and ensuring that American desire remains legible as human, while Vietnamese suffering becomes inevitable and sacrificial.
Off the Stage/Screen
The representational logic of Miss Saigon extends beyond the stage into everyday life. Shimizu recounts being misrecognized as a sex worker in public, a moment she describes as a visceral reminder of how Asian femininity is culturally coded (Hypersexuality 1). This misrecognition demonstrates how cinematic fantasies circulate beyond the screen, shaping perception and interaction.
Linda Trinh Võ situates these images within global systems of labor, militarism, and capitalism. Asian women have historically been commodified as exoticized and eroticized bodies, their sexuality rendered consumable through colonial economies, prostitution systems, and sex tourism (Võ 3). Media representations reinforce this commodification by naturalizing Asian women’s sexual and emotional labor. Representation thus functions as cultural infrastructure that supports material exploitation. Shimizu complicates feminist responses by emphasizing that agency can exist within constraint. Asian American performers may strategically engage hypersexualized imagery as critique, confronting the gaze rather than passively accepting it (Hypersexuality 6). However, this agency does not erase the structural forces that produce hypersexualization. It reveals the uneven terrain Asian American women must navigate, where pleasure and harm are tightly bound.
Material Consequences and the Need for a Decolonized Gaze
The racialized gaze has tangible consequences. Asian American women face heightened levels of harassment, fetishization, and psychological distress linked to sexualized stereotypes (Forbes et al.). Events such as the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings illustrate how racial fantasy and misogyny can escalate into violence. These acts emerge from long standing narratives that eroticize and dehumanize Asian women. Addressing these harms requires more than increased representation. A decolonized, intersectional gaze must center Asian American women as authors, theorists, and complex subjects rather than as symbols through which imperial guilt is processed. This gaze rejects moral binaries that value Asian women only when they appear pure or sacrificial and recognizes that sexuality and critique can coexist without reproducing domination.
Conclusion
Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze remains foundational to feminist film analysis, but it is insufficient without attention to race and imperial history. Asian and Asian American women occupy a distinct position within the cinematic gaze, one shaped by orientalist fantasy, U.S. militarism, and global exploitation. A close reading of Miss Saigon reveals how romance functions as a cultural alibi for empire, preserving white American innocence while rendering Asian female suffering inevitable.
Shimizu’s concept of the bind of representation explains why such images remain both compelling and damaging, offering visibility while reinforcing misrecognition and vulnerability. Media does not merely reflect social attitudes but actively participates in producing racialized and gendered hierarchies. A decolonized, intersectional gaze demands a fundamental shift in authorship, narrative framing, and historical awareness. By integrating race, empire, and structural power into feminist film theory, this framework expands Mulvey’s insights and opens the possibility for representations that no longer depend on the eroticization of Asian women’s suffering.
Works Cited
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