South Pacific
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, with a book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan based on James Michener’s short story collection Tales of the South Pacific (1947) was generally thought to make a strong and progressive statement against racism. Two lead characters, the Navy nurse Nellie Forbush and Marine Lieutenant Joseph Cable, realize that their own prejudices are the main obstacles to true love, and ultimately reject these views. Cable’s second-act song, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” openly challenges American racism in its commentary on how children learn “to be afraid/ Of people whose eyes are oddly made/ And people whose skin is a different shade.”
However, the musical’s own presentation of the non-white peoples and Asian settlers in the Pacific Islands often used yellowface and brownface casting as well as displays of racial exaggeration. The comic musical number “Honey Bun” features a white man performing in a grass skirt and coconut-shell bra to the delight of other Seabees. The Tonkinese (Vietnamese) character Bloody Mary as well as her daughter Liat (the romantic interest of Cable) are one-dimensional roles that reinforce impressions of Asians as profiteering as well as primitive, or as sexual objects.
The role of Bloody Mary in the original Broadway production was played by Juanita Long Hall, an African American actress who won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress (a first for African American women). Hall would later play a Chinese American woman, Madame Liang, in a later Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song.
The King and I
The plot of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1951) was taken from Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam (1944), a novel which in turn was loosely based on the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, was hired as a governess to King Mongkut of Siam in the 1860s. The spectacular setting and exotic characterizations, however, are reminiscent of familiar stereotypes of the oriental despot with his harem of wives that circulated from the 15th century on in Western Europe’s response to the Ottoman Empire. Translations such as the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights, popular throughout Europe, Britain, and the U.S., told fantastical tales of fabulous wealth and absolute power in the hands of monarchs who demonstrated their difference from the enlightened cultures of the West not only through irrational and brutal political decisions but also through their oppressive treatment of women.
King Mongkut, the central character of The King and I, was first performed by Yul Brynner, an actor of Swiss, German, Russian, and Buryat descent who had previously played a Chinese character in the musical Lute Song (1946). Brynner played Mongkut with a characteristic swagger and a shaved head (darkened with makeup) that became one of his trademarks. Anna’s teaching of Mongkut’s wives urges several characters to rebel against their traditional roles; their punishments and Anna’s outrage reinforce impressions of oriental barbarism and racial difference. Nonethless, scenes showing Anna’s attraction to Mongkut, such as that which frames the musical’s beloved song “Shall We Dance,” suggest the continued erotic fascination with interracial relationships on the American stage.
