Diana Son orchestrated a love story between two women in Stop Kiss, rewriting her self-identity while crossing the boundaries of sex, gender, sexuality and ethnicity. On the one hand, the two heroines in the play are the victims of homophobia due to the tragic violence that befalls them. On the other hand, the tender, innocent and genuine kiss between them, which is delayed to the last scene, represents their courage in facing their difference in the public and rebelling against the old views of a hetero-patriarchal world in which a woman identifies her role in relation to the man that she serves. Regardless of the man-specified responsibilities of staying at home, bearing babies and serving their husbands, the heroines gradually transform their identities from being heterosexuals to the ambiguous lesbians. Instead of focusing on the sex/gender binary in heterosexual dualism, the author reassesses the identities of the heroines based on diversity and plurality. Furthermore, Diana Son apparently sees no value in emphasizing her ethnicity as an Asian American writer, as the label of ethnicity narrows the potential world views of both the writer and the audience. Accordingly, the “kiss” in the play comes as a cataclysmic leap of self-awareness, trust and commitment, not solely as a statement of race and sexuality. It not only exposes the violence, bias and inequality of society, but also surpasses the writer’s self-identity as a heterosexual Asian American woman and rewrites her identity within the fulfillment of humanity without superiorities of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality.
Since the first performance at Joseph Papp Public Theater of New York City in November 1998, Diana Son’s most popular play,
Diana Son was born in 1965 in Philadelphia and grew up in Dover, Delaware. Since becoming an adult, she has increasingly noticed the gap between the world she lives in and her own personal world. Son once admitted, “I am Korean and that’s inescapable” (Byrne, 2000, p. S09). Owing to her visible identities, Son involves her ethnic, sex and gender identity in her earlier plays
As a matter of fact, there are two kisses in the play. The first one is only uncovered in a report and investigation of the criminal case, and the second one, which represents the commitment of love and the confirmation of identity, is delayed to the end of the play. In the first kiss, both of the heroines still feel confused and hesitant about their relationship, thus the off-stage kiss is invisible and makes the lesbian identity ambiguous. When asked the meaning of the title in an interview, Son explained “I mean it to go both ways-a command, as in ‘Stop kissing,’ but also, ‘let’s stop playing games and just kiss.’ Or, ‘Let’s stop pretending we’re not attracted to each other and kiss’” (Tanaka, 1999, p. 27). Son believes that kissing, romanticism or homosexuality is only part of the context, but not the focal point. For her, the play is a love story about two people who experience a “whole web of emotions that they’re alternating giving into and fighting against” (Tanaka, 1999, p. 27). In addition, not wishing to entangle her ethnical identity in the issue, Son purposefully orchestrated a realistic love story between two white women to explore identity in a multicultural world and improved her views in the original performance of 1999.
Social identities are precisely related to meanings associated with various social group memberships, such as ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, and socioeconomic status, and expand the meaning of identity beyond the individual by representing “categorizations of the self into more inclusive social units that depersonalize the self concept” (Brewer, 1999, p. 174). Rather than searching for her own social identities, Son pays close attention to how to present an individual identity which is personal and special. Consequently, the play addresses Son’s interest in the “conflict between how other people identify you and the more complex way you know yourself” (Tanaka, 1999, p. 27). Instead of narrowing the discussion on the social identities of Asian American women from the perspectives of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and etc., in
Beyond the Identity as a Heterosexual Woman
Reviewing the Seattle Repertory production for talkinbroadway. com, Jonathan Franks wrote: “instead of the big ‘themes’ that usually make up gay drama, it’s actually a disservice to label
In their early relations with men, both women act the roles of being dependent, obedient and domestic. Callie obtained an apartment and job in New York City indirectly from her ex-boyfriend, Tom; while Sara had lived with her parents and ex-boyfriend, Peter, about seven years and never lived away from them before she arrived in New York. Before their meeting, the two women’s behaviors are usual and normal because they just act in accordance with men’s imaginations about women as depicted the Biblical Book of Genesis, in which God takes a rib from Adam to make a woman in order to provide a helpmate for Adam, thus beginning the stereotypes of unequal relations between man and woman. Simone de Beauvoir established the concept of the Self and the Other in her revolutionary book
Obviously, this dichotomy between man (the Self) and woman (the Other) implies a complex set of negative characteristics that are attributed to the woman. A woman is subordinate, dependent, and herself a negative entity, while man is dominant, autonomous, and exists as positive force in the universe. Accordingly, women as a group are powerless subordinates of men, as an individual is not an autonomous being (Brown, 1979, p. 13). In the patriarchal world, women have always been defined by men and in relation to men.
In effect, recent explorations into the issue of women’s writings, feminism, and realism in literary studies associate “realism and an identity politics” (Dolan, 1988, p. 24) of diversified female subjects. In the self-discovery of the female writers, “search for identity…as a dominant motif, exemplified in the construction of a model of gendered subjectivity combined with a self-conscious appeal to a notion of oppositional community” (Dolan, 1988, p. 16). Although
In Beauvoir’s view, women need to look upon themselves as a positive force, transcending the Other and taking the Self as the central position from which to identify the female human being. Accordingly, woman is relative to herself but not dependent upon an identification related in any way to man. This concept of relating the female existence to other females is known as the woman-identified woman (Natalle, 1985, pp. 59-60). Elizabeth J. Natalle, the radical feminist, further claimed: “Only women can give each other a new sense of self. That identity we have to develop with reference to ourselves, and not in relation to men” (Natalle, 1985, p. 60). According to her aggressive anti-patriarchal ideology, the female identity needs women’s own affirmation beyond the simple binary identification as man and woman based on the physiological sex, sexual orientation and social status in the patriarchal world. In the bold action of kissing, Callie and Sara voice their own words with the new identities crossing the specified gender, heterosexuality and social responsibilities. In lieu of being Other, the heroines in the play transfer their roles from physiological sex to ambivalent gender, heterosexuals to ambiguous lesbians, the weak to the strong.
Undoubtedly,
Furthermore,
On the other hand, Hearn believed that the reason for men’s violence to women was that men always regarded the violence as a demonstration of masculinity and sex difference. In the research field of feminist psychoanalysis, Jessica Benjamin pointed out that violence is derived from the development of men’s “rigid ego” and the denial of dependences on women (Hearn, 1998, p. 22). Therefore, the violence is the expression of male identity as well as being the explanation for it. The assault in
Nevertheless, the final violence and the homosexual orientation do not restrict the interpretation of female identity in
It is apparent that Detective Cole has discovered that the case does partly have relation to homosexual and homophobia though Callie denies that it is related in any way to their kiss or their being romantically interested in each other. In Scene 8, Callie’s boyfriend George rushes into Callie’s apartment madly after getting the news report.
It is not only George who tries to get the answer from Callie, but Peter, Sara’s ex-boyfriend, asks for the truth of the event directly as well.
Actually, what George and Peter want to know is not only the truth of the violence, but the truth of the “kiss,” as well as the sexual orientation of the two heroines. As the men of the two heroines, George and Peter are upset and angry at the probable homosexual love between the two women that symbolizes the loss of “their” heterosexual women and their male center and authority. Callie definitely knows the public reaction on this event, but she pretends to be calm and ignores all the reports relating to homophobia. She is also confused about the letters from the lesbians that connect Sara’s beating to the hate crime in which they are victims. Callie does not fear violence, but the reaction of society. The two women hesitate to form their relationship because they worry what others will think of them. It is hard for them to admit their lesbian inclination and commitment of love for they know the prejudice against the gay women in the society.
However, despite repeated examinations by detective, reports from mass media and worries of families and friends, Callie and Sara do not submit to the social pressure and abandon the choice of their true love and identity, but decide to contest the world of man and express the self-identity of woman in their own words. In Scene 22, encouraged by the nurse who is a woman as well, Callie decides to bathe Sara. She undoes Sara’s gown and puts her bra on tenderly. These simple actions full of love not only prove Callie and Sara’s decision to fulfill their commitment of love, but also inspire the audience to ponder the significance of naive love and truth of humanity. At the end of the play, Callie puts her arms around Sara’s waist and pulls her toward her.
It is significant that the true kiss happens on stage in the last scene to represent the innocence in humanity. Compared with the heterosexual chaos, the kiss between the two women is more natural and sincere. In the play, Callie and her current boyfriend, George, have been off and on for years, as casual sex partners who will probably get married when they get tired of dating and sleeping with others. Reminding themselves of their first kiss, Callie and George find that neither of them can remember it, while Sara finds that she is shackled in a long relation with Peter which is defined by patriarchy as family life. In contrast, the relationship between the two women manifests nothing but the true love that conquers the world. Seattle writer-director Steven Dietz once praised the play: “I admire Diana’s elegant writing and her deft touch with a subject that could easily be polemical. She captures a lot of humanity and humor quickly and easily” (Berson, 2000, p. G26). Consequently, Son not only implies the transformation of sexual and gender identity of the heroines, but also reconstructs a new female identity beyond the restrictions to women. Son received the GLAAD Media Award for
Beyond the Identity as an Asian American
Diana Son’s parents were from Korea but met in Philadelphia. After her brother Grant was born, they had to leave America for a year because of their visas. When her mother was pregnant again, her parents immediately came back to Philadelphia to make sure Son would be American born. Though her parents wanted Son to grow up to be “very American”, Son still believed that she could not escape from her visible identity as an Asian American. When living in New York City, Son is relentlessly asked where she is from because something about her-her face, her speech and her manners proves that she is not a local resident. She said: “I’ve lived in New York for eleven years but I know no matter how long I end up staying here, I’ll never be
As a matter of fact, as a leading global city, New York is always regarded as the center of international commerce, finance, media, culture, art, fashion, research, education, and entertainment. It is not only the symbol of freedom, equality, democracy and hybridity of multi-cultures, but also the representation of success in self-identification. Thus, working, living and merging in the city are the dreams of all young Americans. As a beautiful, modern, and diversified metropolitan area, New York is often regarded as a place where the American dream can be realized. However, the darkness of poverty, inequality, discrimination and moral bankruptcy still characterize the city.
In
The contradiction in the international metropolis unfolds the loneliness, coldness of human relations, the crisis of belief and the absurdity of existence in modern society. In living in this meaningless chaos, the two heroines are only nobodies who are lost in the imaginary Garden of Eden. Actually, the loss of self-identity is not only the problem of the two protagonists, but also of all American dreamers. Diana Son finds that such a feeling derives from the racial and ethnical identity of her Asian roots, and her experience as an outsider in New York relates to American history, experience and spiritual crisis on the other hand. Accordingly, when she wrote the play, Son purposefully left aside her typical Asian ethnicity and employed as characters two white individuals who, as outsiders in New York, the mainstream culture, still failed to find a way to belong to the commonplace of Americans. Similar to the characters in Arthur Miller’s
No doubt, what Son forwards in
For this reason, Son has continuously been reinterpreting and reconstructing the self-identity in the productions of
Furthermore, Son sees no value in identifying the ethnicity of a writer or to highlight that
As a contemporary Asian American playwright, Diana Son is conscious of a changing trend among writers.
“I’ve noticed that younger Asian American writers do not write about Asian Themes. In the sixties and seventies, there were all these ethnic-branded theatre groups ….But I think theater artists have to grow away from that. Our generation falls in between: there are those who choose to do that and those of us who find it unnatural” (Greene, 2006, pp. 123-124).
Actually, it was not until the 1970s that Asian American literature was recognized as American literature, though Asian-Americans had been here for seven generations (Chin, 1974, p. ix). Nevertheless, it did not mean the Asian-Americans had got rid of the dilemma and the rejection by both Asia and White America proved “we were neither one nor the other, nor were we half and half or more one than the other” (Chin, 1974, p. viii). Frank Chin argued that the identity of an Asian American was that of a “linguistic orphan” (Chin, 1981, p. xvii). He claimed in an interview:
For us American-born, both the Asian languages and the English language are foreign. We are a people without a native tongue. To whites, we’re all foreigners, still learning English (Chin, 1976, p. 56).
Accordingly, Asian American writers keep questing for an authentic self-identity. In the self-identification, the ethnical identity is always the focus of discussion in Asian American literature. Nowadays, Asian American writers have emphasized their artistic freedom as individuals who do not necessarily identify with or stand for an imagined community, be it Asian American or otherwise. In other words, many Asian American authors, tired of being weighed down with the burden of representation and representativeness, have stopped favoring the communal (being the spokesperson for a certain community) and have instead turned to the individual. Thus, current Asian American literary works should be regarded simply as “world literature” written by individual authors beyond boundaries and constraints, and beyond expectations on the part of the readers. Apparently, Asian American theater has started moving away from the purely naturalized (American white) and national (Asian American) concerns, “while at the same time shifting towards an increasingly transnational (Asian diasporic) perspectives” (Simal & Marino, 2004, p. 13), which indicate the free choices of the individual identity relating to both Asian and American cultures or others.
No doubt, Asian American writers still hope to induce a prefiguration of the different cultural regulating code so that their works can be viewed in a way that is more universalized and comprehensive. Loy Arcenas, both director and set designer for the San Francisco production of
As an Asian American female writer, Diana Son cannot escape from her multi-identities including race, ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality in her writing. However, similar to other young Asian American playwrights, she rewrites her self-identity in
Donna Haraway argued that while early second-wave feminists criticized the nature/culture dualism, they hesitated to extend their criticism fully to the derivative sex/gender distinction (Haraway, 1991, p. 134); thus the research of human identity relied on heterosexual dualism, or, in other words, male and female got their gender identities on the basis of their biological and physiological differences: sex. Recently, the deconstruction of sex/gender binary has been the core of identity studies. The post-structural ideas of Michel Foucault have influenced many areas, including feminism, queer theory, and antiracist and postcolonial studies, promoting the reassessment of female identity, gender, patriarchy, femininity and women’s experience, emphasizing diversity and plurality. Poststructuralists have focused on the inextricable links between power and knowledge and on how individuals are constituted as subjects and given unified identities (Petersen, 2003, p. 55). Therefore, in the research of identity based on ideologies, whiteness, sexuality, sex and gender “are no longer seen as intrinsic and fixed aspects of the person, but rather understood as discursive constructions or inventions” (Petersen, 2003, p. 55). As physiological women, Callie and Sara’s gender identities have been affirmed before their self-choices in the context of patriarchal society. When they behave in a way that contradicts these pre-affirmed identities, the violence that happens to them not only represents the opposition of man, but also “the oppositional views of gender between psychological reductionism and sociological reductionism” (Epstein, 1987, pp. 28-29). The kiss between the two heroines and their final choice, non-confirming to their physiological identity, are challenges against the stereotype of female identity due to their being emotionally and economically, physically and psychologically independent. This is especially evident in the gay and lesbian literature, where there is a familiar tension between a view that identity is something that is always present (but has been repressed) and that which has never been socially permitted (but remains to be created or achieved), and this tension has often led to the reduction of the political to the personal, and the limitation of political activity to self-discovery and personal transformation (Fuss, 1989, pp. 99-101). Although the theme of homosexual love is not explicitly confirmed in the text, Son brings stable identities based on stereotypes of sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and economical status in the stereotype under suspicion, thus subverting the hetero-patriarchal orientation world.
As a matter of fact, Son tries to reconstruct her self-identity as an Asian American woman in