american Peril: imagining the foreign threat 2021
In 2018, 12G partnered with The Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF) and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) to present a series of 60+ original printed materials and other original artifacts, dating back from 20 to over 150 years. The exhibition connected four distinct periods of rampant anti-Asian racism: The mid-Nineteenth century Chinese Exclusion Era, Japanese Internment in World War II, the Auto Industry’s Japan Bashing in the 1970’s - 1980’s, and Post 9/11 Islamophobia, constructing a timeline of Anti-Asian Racism through magazine ads, posters, and miscellaneous Americana paraphernalia that directly juxtaposed the contemporary anti-Asian and anti-Muslim sanctions.
Spring 2021 marks a year of unsurpassed hate crimes against people of Asian origin, which have occurred in the name of White Supremacy and with the tacit consent of many high-ranking government officials. In this, yet another era of hate, rage, and fear that Asian Americans and BIPOC must face, American Peril becomes cuttingly pertinent once more.
2018 and 2021, Works come from the Collections of Rob Buscher and Cathy Matos, and Jamal J. Elias.
AH, SIN THROUGH THE WRINGER
The first Chinese character in American popular culture was introduced in a poem that Bret Harte wrote in 1870 titled “Plain Language by Truthful James” about a coolie laborer named Ah Sin who cheats at cards to beat two white laborers that were scheming to cheat him. Originally conceived as a satirical way of revealing the hypocrisy of white labor in their treatment of the Chinese, the general audience who read this poem found it to reinforce their anti-Chinese sentiments. The poem was retitled “The Heathen Chinee” by Harte’s publisher before being syndicated and run in newspapers nationwide. Its central character became so popular that Mark Twain adapted it into a stage play titled “Ah Sin” that toured major theaters throughout the East Coast in 1877. The lithograph image in the 1961 reprint of the play manuscript is one of the original images used to promote that production, which starred a white actor in yellow face makeup.
JIHAD CHIC
“Jihad Chic” T-shirt unknown manufacturer, circa 2015
Insinuating that the niqab (full face hijab) worn by some Gulf Arabs and other devout Muslims is a symbol of terrorism, this t-shirt reinforces suspicion of Muslim women in the US.
EMILIO AGUINALDO
“Smashed!” Puck Magazine, March 8, 1899
Philippines President Emilio Aguinaldo is pictured here in a diminutive stature riding a toy horse labeled “Dictatorship” as he is crushed by a US cavalryman’s glove. By infantilizing Aguinaldo as such, the image conveys that the Filipino fight for sovereignty is a childish pursuit.
HOLY TERROR
“Holy Terror” Graphic Novel by Frank Miller 2011
Comic book artist Frank Miller revived a historic East versus West narrative through his 1998 graphic novel 300 that was loosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae where Spartan Greeks made a last-stand defense of their homeland from Persian invaders. The novel was later adapted into a 2007 film by the same title and was criticized by many Middle Eastern American communities as exacerbating Islamophobic tensions. A more egregious example of Miller’s Islamophobia is the Holy Terror graphic novel, originally devised as a Batman story where he must defend Gotham from Al-Qaeda in the vein of Superman or Captain America fighting Nazis in WWII-era comics. After DC declined to publish the story, Miller introduced a new hero and published under Legendary Comics. Released on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this became the top-selling graphic novel of 2011.
LADY COLUMBIA: “THE CHINESE MUST GO”
Celluloid Collars & Cuffs Trade Card, 1882
Celluloid Cuffs & Collars were one of many companies that were related to the laundry industry who profiteered from anti-Chinese rhetoric in their advertising. Ranging from mildly offensive portrayals like the image of a Chinese coolie child smoking opium to more directly political in the case of the Chinese returning to China, the underlying message of the campaign was to buy their product instead of doing business with the Chinese laundry. At the peak of anti-Chinese racism in 1882, one trade card depicts Lady Columbia, the female personification of America, showing a Chinese coolie the writing on the wall as Brother Jonathan, an early precursor to Uncle Sam, looks on smugly.
Remember Pearl Harbor Postcard, circa 1942
A universal symbol of America personified, the image of Uncle Sam has often been coopted by propagandists to support US imperialism across Asia-Pacific region since the Philippine-American War. This WWII era postcard show Uncle Sam spanking an infantilized Japanese person, supporting the notion that committing violent acts against them is part of the essentialist white American archetype.
At face value these postcards appear comical, yet they serve the purpose of dehumanizing the Japanese. The physical stereotypes conveyed in these caricatures reflect earlier racialized propaganda that portray Asians as racially inferior to European descended white Americans. Images like these continued to impact the ways in which East Asians were depicted throughout much of the 20thcentury in popular media, which in turn affected public sentiment.
“Terrorist Attack Educational Cards” Piedmont Candy Company, 1987
Similar to the ways in which children were being indoctrinated with anti-Japanese propaganda during WWII, the anti-Muslim sentiment permeated into children’s entertainment amid Reagan era conservatism. Text from the back of this card reads, “Ayatollah Khomeini is the religious leader of millions of Shuite [sic] Muslims world-wide. He is also a dangerous, ignorant fanatic who has trained, supplied and led terrorist groups such as the Islamic Jihad.”
GENERAL TOJO THROUGH THE WRINGER
This 1942 Homefront Propaganda Postcard shows General Tojo being run through a laundry wringer and appears to directly reference the accompanied Empire Wringer Co and Peerless Wringer trade cards, which date from the Chinese Exclusion Era, circa 1880. Despite a sixty-year gap between their publication, the similar themes demonstrated in these pieces suggests the continuity of Anti-Asian racism throughout this period.
FACTORY FIRES HELP THE JAPS
“Factory Fires Help the Japs” Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot, circa 1944
While containing a practical message, this work poster explicitly dehumanizes the Japanese. It was recovered from a Philadelphia-based manufacturing facility upon its decommissioning, where it had been displayed on the factory floor nearly thirty years after the end of WWII.
JAP HUNTING LICENSE
“Donald Simpkins Jap Hunting License Card” circa 1942
Violence towards “Japs” became normalized through the explicitly racist “Slap-a-Jap Club Cards” and “Jap Hunting Licenses”, which accompanied some defense stamp campaigns. Note these propaganda pieces do not discern between Japanese and Japanese Americans. They also dehumanize an entire group of people who also reside peacefully in this country.
“Pearl Harbor II” T-shirt, circa 1980
Loosely affiliated with a Florida local chapter of United Auto Workers Union, the “Pearl Harbor II” campaign sought to scapegoat Japanese imports for the decline of the American Auto industry. Invoking Anti-Japanese sentiments similar to the WWII era “Remember Pearl Harbor” campaign, grassroots propaganda campaigns similar to this later 1990s campaign may have contributed toward the increase in racially motivated attacks on East Asians during the 1980s. Of particular note is the 1982 murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two unemployed autoworkers in Detroit who mistook him for being Japanese.
“Saddam Holy War” Michael G. Conrad, 1990
Suggesting the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had religious overtones, this poster reinforces the historic tensions between East and West in a way that references both the Crusades and extremist interpretation of jihad.
“Terrorist Body Bag” A. Ross Novelty Sack, 2002
By elevating Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the same level as Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in his culpability of terrorism, this “novelty” gift is an example of widespread public pressure that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similar object was recovered in 2016 from the home of white nationalist terrorist Ricky Chittum, Jr after his armed standoff with Virginia State Police.
Japan-bashing Car Stunt photograph, 1981
Several local union chapters in the rustbelt affiliated with the United Auto Workers staged protests that involved the willful destruction of Japanese made vehicles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In one photograph taken on March 3, 1981 United Autoworkers Local 588 of the Ford Motor Co. are shown smashing a Toyota Corolla during a rally against buying foreign made products.
“Arizona War Worker with Jap Skull” Life Magazine May 22, 1944
Depicting a woman with the skull of a Japanese soldier on her desk that was sent through the mail by her GI boyfriend, this photograph ran as a full page “photo of the week” in the May 22, 1944 issue of Life Magazine, at a time when Life was the most read periodical in the United States. As soldiers became desensitized to the omnipresence of anti-Japanese violence, some engaged in mutilation of Japanese corpses and “trophy-taking.” While the military did not condone these actions, they did little to discourage them either.
QUEEN LILIUOKALANI
“We Draw the Line at This” Judge Magazine, December 2, 1893
Known for its satirical political cartoons, Judge Magazine’s use of racial caricatures had a damaging effect on the ethnic minority populations being portrayed. This particular image shows Hawaiian Queen Liluokalani in a style of dress and pigmentation that both likens her to Native Americans and African Americans. Considering the widespread acceptance of anti-Blackness and settler-colonialism in the era of Manifest Destiny, associating Native Hawaiians with these two populations suggests US complacency in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom could be justified on basis of race.
SMOKE A CAMEL
“I’d Fly 10,000 Miles to Smoke a Camel… Jockey” T-shirt unknown manufacturer, circa 1990
Referencing a popular Camel Cigarette ad campaign, this t-shirt depicts an unflattering caricature of an Arab man with an Iraqi flag and describes him with a racial slur. Similar objects were abundant during the first Gulf War, contributing to the racialization of Iraqi forces in a manner that was dangerous to Middle Eastern Americans.
“Terrorist Target” Thompson Targets, 2005
The skeletal remains of a man with a long beard and Afghan style turban holding an AK-47 reinforces the stereotype that terrorists can be identified by their ethnic and religious backgrounds.