Face Value Essay Example For Students

Face Value Essay The least interesting issue in M. Butterfly is How do they have sex? And certainly the least interesting issue in this play is How do I feel about Miss Saigon? I dont really care about Miss Saigon. I think there are bigger issues at stake. David Henry Hwang is trying to push discussion of his new play, Face Value, away from controversies past toward controversies to come. Lounging on a sofa in his Boston hotel room on a bitterly cold day-after-opening-night, Hwangs rapid-fire delivery is framed by philosophical questions and interspersed with giggles. Thats much the effect that Hwang is aiming for with Face Value, a farce about race being directed by Jerry Zaks. And though the play stumbled during its tryout in Boston (Boston Globe critic Kevin Kelly described it as having too much stir-fry in the farce), Hwang is no stranger to tryout troubles: his last Broadway play also received numerous pans during its pre-New York run. Once on Broadway, of course, M. Butterfly had more than a little success. Whats worrying Hwang right now, though, about Face Values reception is that audiences with get sidetrackedand in a curious repetition of the Miss Saigon controversy, theyll think about Broadway when they could be thinking about race. When you consider the conceit of Face Value, such concerns are understandable. Two Asiansone a struggling actresssneak into the opening of a horrid musical called The Real Manchu. The eponymous star is played by a white actor, Bernard Sugarmann (Mark Linn Baker), who dons sci-fi Oriented-gear, yellowface, and an assortment of Asian mannerisms to realize his character. The activists plan to disrupt the show by standing at a strategic moment and yelling, We are not gooks! We are human beings! The parallels to Miss Saigon are obvious; Hwang, of course, was highly visible in the fracas surrounding the musical, and he still speaks passionately about it. But what concerns him now is the way the casting controversythe brouhaha over the casting of Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian Engineerobscured the other issues raised at the time of protesters. Namely, the stereotyped images of Asians on stage and in society: I find the stereotyping to be an even more cogent and important issue than the casting. One of the things that always bothered meI understand it, but I cant reconcile the contradiction intellectuallyis the idea of people conceding that this is a racist show, but if I got a job in it Id do it. So Hwang wants Face Values audience to forget about Miss Saigon, the casting controversy, and recall Miss Saigon, the racist musical. For Hwang, The Real Manchu makes explicit what was implicit in Miss Saigon. The Jonathan Pryce character, the Engineer, is such an evil guy, and hes so anxious to come to the West. Its as if, at the end of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevyes going to go to America, and were all saying, Oh my god! That awful guy is coming here. He just embodies this wholeand here Hwang breaks into a song from The Real ManchuHes inscrutable, hes greedy and brown,/Hes inscrutable, and hes bound for your town. Thats dead-on Engineer stuff, I think. Some will disagree with Hwangs take on Miss Saigon. To underline the apparently less-than-obvious racism in that musical, hes translated the Engineer into a caricatureFu Manchuso stereotypical that only an extraordinary bigot could fail to recognize its racist character. And therein lies one of the issues with which Face Value grapples: Can one fight stereotypes by employing them? Outline1 Mistaken identities  2 Tear away the mask  3 At all costs avoid honesty   Mistaken identities   I think, says Hwang, that the combination of having Mark Linn-Baker onstage dressed as an Asian doing this horrible accent, alongside actual Asians onstage talking like actual Asians, creates a contradiction which is constructive. But I dont know. Does an extended riff on the idea that Asians cant distinguish between rs and ls extend stereotypes, or explode them? .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .postImageUrl , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:hover , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:visited , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:active { border:0!important; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:active , .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29 .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u487955d51346800f98b77adbb03bfa29:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World EssayTo stack the deck, Hwang has added a subplot to Face Value involving a white supremacist and his sidekick. Unbeknownst to the Asian activists, the white supremacists have also planned to disrupt the opening of The Real Manchu. Their complaint? The musical is propaganda for an insidious yellow invasion. For the supremacists, Sugarmanns outrageous caricature is a match for their image of an Asian. When they, and not the Asian activists, succeed in disrupting the musical by kidnapping Sugarmann, Face Value spins away from its critique of Miss Saigon and becomes a farce on the theme of mistaken identities. The lead supremacist (Jeff Weiss), a shaggy-dog creature who claims he was fired from his university for arguing that Martin Luther King gained acclaim because of his race, refuses to see that, beneath his yellowface, Sugarmann is white. And one of the Asian activists (Mia Korn), still wearing whiteface and also kidnapped by the supremacists during the bedlam following the disruption of the musical, cant convince her captors that shes Asian. Hilarity, as they say, ensues. Tear away the mask   In leaving Miss Saigon behind, Face Value moves into heretofore uncharted territory for Hwang: the notion that race, perhaps, does not exist. Throughout the play, characters misperceive one another because of their racial masks. Tear away the mask, and as one character suggests, I gotta face facts. Race just doesnt exist in this world. Sure, we can all agree on the same crazy fantasy. But is that real? Once I stopped believing in childish things, thats when I foundI do have a family after all. And now I can go to the Pyramids or the Great Wall or the Leaning Tower of Pisaand feel damn proud of my heritage. The ending of the play, in which three interracial couples stand on stage in their skivvies embracing, suggests that our notions of race are illusionssuperficial face values. Once these illusions are discarded, were free to draw on ourhuman heritage. Pure Broadway schmaltz? Hwang prefers to see the ending as a version of what Maxine Hong Kingston called a myth of peace: The ending of this play is kind of utopian and mythological and fairy-tale like, but I dont think thats such a bad thing right now. Right now translates as the age of nationalism, domestic and international, and Hwang is fully aware of the implications of his new line of questioning. I guess Ive always just tended to contradict whatever the conventional wisdom is. In the 80s I think my work was somewhat more nationalistic; at least this piece is not. The thing is, I really feel that nationalism is important and necessary, but I also think that you cant stay there. Face Value throws down the gauntlet to multiculturalism, suggesting that in our justified eagerness to overthrow racism, weve become prisoners of race. The play presents a negative version of race, Hwang admits, sidestepping, at least for now, the notion that our racial heritages, complex as they may be, are sources of strength as well as discord. At all costs avoid honesty   But even in Face Value the intractability if not the desirability of our need to cast ourselves in our racial images remains. In a moment (the beginning of Act 2) that even the characters refer to as Pirandellian, race disrupts the play as actors break character to question the stereotyped roles theyve been assigned. That momentplayed in the vocabulary of the moment, with references to PC, reverse racism and histories of oppression ends with one character exclaiming, If youre looking for understanding between the races, at all costs avoid honesty!, and others sheepishly returning to the farce at hand. Hwang calls the scene sort of the way things really tend to work out. And the play is a dreamy fantasy of how they could work out. .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .postImageUrl , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:hover , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:visited , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:active { border:0!important; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:active , .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u1c102fc4dfdcc3a0c4e1caa4d4798d7a:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Not just a cabaret EssayCan Hwangs dreamy fantasy work? First it has to get people laughing. Early returns suggest that it does so only in fits and starts. That might be, as the Globe critic offered, because Hwang just isnt very funny. Or it might be because everybodys really pissed off, as Hwang says, when it comes to the issue of race. Have we expended too much energy establishing our identities to follow Hwangs suggestion that we get beyond ourselves a little? For all his effort, early reviews of Face Value focused on Miss Saigons casting controversy, eliding the racism of the musical. That suggests that we have a ways to go in recognizing the dignity of our racial selv es, before we undertake the task of dismantling them.