Sanitizing Yellow Peril

How Asian Pornotroping Erects White Saviorism

Abstract

This essay extends Black feminist theorist Hortense Spillers’s (1987) concept of pornotroping to an Asian context, examining how cinematic tropes perpetuate Asian fetishization. Focusing on the hypersexualized portrayals, namely the Lotus Blossom and the Dragon Lady, as manifestations of Asian pornotroping, it explores how these depictions construct abject female Asian subjectivities. Through an analysis of the hypersexualized tropes in Madama Butterfly (1904), Miss Saigon (1989), and The World of Suzie Wong (1960), I argue that Asian pornotroping emerges as a legacy of Woan’s (2008) concept of White sexual imperialism. This legacy not only incites and justifies White Saviorism but also imposes a destitution/sexuality matrix onto Asian subjectivities, signaled through physical features or cultural markers. Ultimately, Asian pornotroping obscures the colonial violence inflicted by the West on the Asia-Pacific in the 20th century, reinforcing a colonial narrative of a progressive, humane Occident contrasted against an underdeveloped, backward Orient.