A couple months ago, I got the chance to see the piece Frosted Yellow Willows (or Anna May Wong) triptych by Hank-Willis Thomas at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles. Immediately, I appreciated the retroreflective material, thematic connections to Andy Warhol, and Pop imagery. However, even more compelling was the contrast between Marilyn Monroe—the subject of the original Andy Warhol print—and the subject of this triptych, Anna May Wong.
Willis-Thomas uses this visual contrast—Marilyn as white versus Wong as Chinese-American— to bely contextual contrast. He references the white artistic narratives of both Monroe and Warhol to make a powerful statement on the successful yet partially unrealized career of Anna May Wong, and more broadly, on the exploitation/discrimination against Asian artists.
In 1905, Anna May Wong was born in Los Angeles to a Chinese-American laundryman, Wong Sam Sing. As young as the age of nine, she was obsessed with the Hollywood media industry, begging for roles at local studios like Nickelodeon; she even earned the nickname C.C.C, or “curious Chinese child” (Hodges 21). Eventually, her many efforts were fruitful and she earned a role as an extra in the film The Red Lantern, and continued with credits in Bits for Life, The Toll of the Sea, and Drifting. Her first big role was a Mongol slave in The Thief of Baghdad in 1924, and it grossed two million dollars, introducing Anna May Wong to moviegoers around the world.
She continued to star in movies and gain recognition for her acting, even though many of her roles were typecast as “exotic”: Tiger Lily in Peter Pan, an Inuit in The Alaskan, a gangster’s daughter in Old San Francisco, the list goes on. In all of these roles, Wong was shackled by the Asian stereotypes running amok in the film industry, one of them being the Dragon lady: “aggressive, sensual… posed first as a challenge to Western power, but is quickly brought to submission to ensure White dominance” (Lee 3). For example, Wong played an archetypical dragon lady character in The Daughter of the Dragon. Princess Ling Moy is a “scheming, murderous, otherworldly beauty who killed cold and mercilessly” (Wang).
In an interview, Wong expressed disappointment with these familiar, discriminatory roles: “I was so tired of these parts I had to play… Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain—murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass!” (Leong 83). And yet, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to get any roles otherwise. Most studios would never cast a Chinese-American actress as a leading role— at most, a supporting role that was typecast as exotic and distinctly dragon lady-like. In addition, there were anti-miscegenation laws during the early 20th century, prohibiting interracial couples and therefore prohibiting an Asian actress kissing a white man on film. This, in addition to the discrimination inherent in the film industry, prevented Asian actresses from acquiring leading actress/female love interest roles. So, though Wong enjoyed a long and fruitful career for an Asian-American actress of that time, she was never able to reach her full potential in the film industry and play less stereotypical roles.
Anna Many Wong’s troubled career and the discrimination against Asian actors in general are both highlighted in Hank Willis-Thomas’ Frosted Yellow Willows (or Anna May Wong) triptych through the obvious visual reference to Marilyn Monroe diptych by Andy Warhol. Warhol’s silkscreen painting features blonde, white Marilyn Monroe, emblematic of the women that Anna May Wong would have competed with for roles. But in this triptych, Anna May Wong is featured as a Hollywood pop icon worthy of being portrayed by Warhol himself. The visual repetition inherent to triptychs emphasizes and reemphasizes Wong’s face, forcing a visual comparison to Monroe and therefore, an acknowledgement from the viewer that actresses such as Wong got less recognition and less screentime than their white counterparts.
Also relevant is the comparison between the two artists: by so closely emulating Warhol’s work, Willis-Thomas creates an additional point of comparison between himself and Warhol. Just like Monroe and Wong, one artist—Warhol— is white, and the other—Willis-Thomas— is a minority (Black). However, this particular comparison is a little more hopeful than Monroe versus Wong. In the early twentieth century, socio-cultural norms created legislation that made it almost illegal for Asian-American artists like Wong to make advances in the entertainment industry. Though she found an incredible amount of success considering the time period, it was despite the time period and prejudices of industry leaders.
On the other hand, Willis-Thomas has enjoyed an already-illustrious career exploring constructions of race. Using images from advertising—and other popular iconography such as the Marilyn diptych— he scrutinizes the perspective from which we view ourself and others through the lens of media. He has already exhibited across the the world, and recently put on a solo exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong. Today, Willis-Thomas is able to use explorations of race and stereotypes in a constructive way, to catalyze progress and provoke critical thought about identity in the contemporary climate. While Wong was constrained by her race, Willis-Thomas is able to use it as a driving factor for his work.
The title of this piece comes from an 2007 documentary titled Frosted Yellow Windows: Anna May Wong’s Life, Times, and Legend. Watch for yourself if you get the chance: see Anna May Wong’s legacy on the screen, and understand the impact of the roles she played on Hollywood’s media industry, as well as Asian actors and how they are portrayed on screen.
Works Cited:
Baby Picture of Anna May Wong: Photograph. Wisconsin Historical Society. (2003, December 1). http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM97549.
Hodges, Graham Russell Gao (2012) [2004]. Anna May Wong : from laundryman's daughter to Hollywood legend (2nd ed.). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, HKU. ISBN 978-9882208902. OCLC 797815107.
Kayne Griffin. (n.d.). Hank Willis Thomas. Kayne Griffin. https://www.kaynegriffin.com/artists/hank-willis-thomas/bio.
Lee, Joey. 2018. "East Asian "China Doll" or "Dragon Lady"?." Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections 3, (1). http://scholars.wlu.ca/bridges_contemporary_connections/vol3/iss1/2
Leong, Karen J. (2005). The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-24422-2..
Marion, F. (1922). Toll of the sea. United States; Metro Pictures.
Parish, James; Leonard, William (1976). Anna May Wong. Hollywood Players: The Thirties. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers. pp. 532–538. ISBN 0-87000-365-8.
Wang, Hanying. “Portrayals of Chinese Women’s Images in Hollywood Mainstream Films – An Analysis of Four Representative Films of Different Periods.” China Media Research 9, no. 1 (2013): 75-79. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.wlu.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=936a 156d-dda3-4bc9-80c6-7d69d532baaa%40sessionmgr103.
Willis-Thomas, H. (2021, January 13). 1 Minute 1 Work: Hank Willis Thomas. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/artbasel/videos/vb.57053467740/446884526331462/?type=2&theater.
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