Analysis Of The Wash Gotanda - 1851 Words

In The Wash Gotanda proves his ability to understand both the external symptoms of racial oppression and the internal impacts of racism, and how it deeply affects each member of the family. Furthermore, he criticizes the Asian Americans for their roles in deepening the impacts of racism by enduring it without any resistance. He says: Internalized racism is a fact of life. If you live in America, you have been infected by it. By internal I mean how we buy into racism, how we participate in it, and how we engage in a kind of dance of allowing ourselves to be victimized. (Fish Head Soup and Other Play, Intro xxiii) The other issue in which he persists to move beyond the box of ethnicity is speaking openly about older character s sexuality. It is an eye-opening and moving to explore the allegedly stoic Japanese Americans (Xing 134). Gotanda s treatment particularly focuses on the Nisei characters. Kaplan sees that the portrait of sexual behaviour in older characters isn t satirized as ugly at worst or inappropriate at best in American popular culture, which typically reserves depictions of erotic desire for the young accompanying with their physical beauty (77). Nobu Mccarthy – the actress who performed the role of Masi in this play and later in The Wash film- comments on this point saying: Japanese Americans have a stereotyped image that we don t touch each other†¦so we re looked at as asexual, particularly older people†¦But we do have feelings†¦, and