Dragon Lady is usually astereotype of certain East Asian and occasionallySoutheast Asian women as strong, deceitful, domineering, mysterious, and often sexually alluring.[1][2] Inspired by the characters played by actressAnna May Wong,[3] the term comes from thefemale villain in thecomic stripTerry and the Pirates.[1][3] It has since been applied to powerful women from certain regions ofAsia, as well as a number of Asian andAsian American film actresses. The stereotype has generated a large quantity of sociological literature. "Dragon Lady" is sometimes applied to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s. "Dragon Lady" is one of two main stereotypes used to describe women, the other being "Lotus Blossoms" also known as "China Doll".[4] Lotus Blossoms tend to be the opposite of the Dragon Lady stereotype, having their character being hyper-sexualized and submissive. Dragon Lady is also used to refer to any powerful but prickly woman, usually in a derogatory fashion.[1]
Although sources such as theOxford English Dictionary[5] list uses of "dragon" and even "dragoness" from the 18th and 19th centuries to indicate a fierce and aggressive woman, there does not appear to be any use in English of "Dragon Lady" before its introduction byMilton Caniff in hiscomic stripTerry and the Pirates. The character first appeared on December 16, 1934, and the "Dragon Lady" appellation was first used on January 6, 1935.[6] The term does not appear in earlier "Yellow Peril" fiction such as theFu Manchu series bySax Rohmer or in the works ofMatthew Phipps Shiel such asThe Yellow Danger (1898) orThe Dragon (1913). However, a 1931 film based on Rohmer’sThe Daughter of Fu Manchu, titledDaughter of the Dragon, is thought to have been partly the inspiration for the Caniff cartoon name.[3] Wong plays Princess Ling Moy, a version of Fu Manchu's daughterFah Lo Suee.[7]
Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonistMilton Caniff.Joseph Patterson, editor for theChicago Tribune New York Daily News Syndicate, hired Caniff to create the new strip, providing Caniff with the idea of setting the strip in the Orient. A profile of Caniff inTime recounts the episode:
Patterson... asked: "Ever do anything on the Orient?" Caniff hadn't. "You know," Joe Patterson mused, "adventure can still happen out there. There could be a beautiful lady pirate, the kind men fall for." In a few days Caniff was back with samples and 50 proposed titles; Patterson circledTerry and scribbled beside itand the Pirates.[8]
Caniff's biographerR. C. Harvey suggests[6] that Patterson had been reading about women pirates in one of two books (or both) published a short time earlier:I Sailed with Chinese Pirates byAleko Lilius[9] andVampires of the Chinese Coast by Bok[10] (pseudonym for unknown). Women pirates in theSouth China Sea figure in both books, especially the one by Lilius, a portion of which is dedicated to the mysterious and real-life "queen of the pirates" (Lilius’ phrase), namedLai Choi San (Chinese:來財山). "Lai Choi San" is a transliteration fromCantonese, the native language of the woman, herself—thus, the way she pronounced her own name. Caniff appropriated the Chinese name, Lai Choi San, as the "real name" of his Dragon Lady, a fact that led both Lilius and Bok to protest.[11] Patterson pointed out that both books claimed to be non-fiction and that the name belonged to a real person; thus, neither the fact of a woman pirate nor her name could be copyrighted. (Neither Bok nor Lilius had used the actual term "Dragon Lady".) Sources are not clear on whether it was Patterson or Caniff who coined that actual term, though it was almost certainly one of the two.
Since the 1930s, when "Dragon Lady" became fixed in the English language, the term has been applied countless times to powerful East, Southeast and South Asian women[citation needed], such asSoong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek,Madame Nhu of Vietnam,Devika Rani ofIndia, and to any number of Asian or Asian American film actresses. That stereotype—as is the case with other racial caricatures—has generated a large quantity of sociological literature.
Today, "Dragon Lady" is often applied anachronistically to refer to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s. For example, one finds the term in recent works about the "Dragon Lady"Empress DowagerCixi (Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi;Chinese:慈禧太后;pinyin:Cíxī Tàihòu;Wade–Giles:Tz'u2-hsi1 T'ai4-hou4), who was alive at the turn of the 20th century,[12] or references to Chinese-American actressAnna May Wong as having started her career in the 1920s and early 1930s in "Dragon Lady" roles.[13] In both these cases, however, articles written in the early 1900s about the Empress Dowager or reviews of Wong’s early films such asThe Thief of Bagdad (1924) orDaughter of the Dragon (1931)—reviews written when the films appeared—make no use of the term "Dragon Lady".[14] (One writer, however, did refer to the Empress Dowager as "a little lady Bismarck.")[15] Today’s anachronistic use of "Dragon Lady" in such cases may lead the modern reader to assume that the term was in earlier use than appears to be the case.
Anna May Wong was the contemporary actress to assume the Dragon Lady role in American Cinema[16] in the movieDaughter of the Dragon, which premiered in 1931.[17]Josef von Sternberg's 1941The Shanghai Gesture contains a performance byOna Munson as 'Mother' Gin Sling, the proprietor of a gambling house, that bears mention within presentations of the genre. Other American or British films in which Asian women are hyper-sexualized includeThe Thief of Baghdad,The Good Woman of Bangkok, and101 Asian Debutantes, where Asian women are portrayed as prostitutes.Miss Saigon is an American musical with examples of this as well.[18]
Contemporary actresses such asMichelle Yeoh inTomorrow Never Dies (1997) may be constrained by the stereotype even when playing upstanding characters.[16] These actresses portrayed characters whose actions are more masculine, sexually promiscuous, and violent.[16]Lucy Liu is a 20th and 21st century example of theHollywood use of the Dragon Lady image, becoming well known for her roles inCharlie's Angels (2000),Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) andits sequel (2004), andPayback (1999) playing spy- and assassin-type characters.
Dragon Lady characters are visually defined by their emphasis on "otherness" and sexual promiscuity. An example of headwear for Dragon Lady costumes is theHakka hat or other headdresses with eastern inspiration.[19] For body wear, traditionally Dragon Ladies have been put in sexualized renditions of thecheongsam orkimono. Examples of this inThe World of Suzie Wong includeNancy Kwan's character in cheongsam that accentuates her hips and breasts.[19]
For modern-day Dragon Lady characters, much of costuming is closely linked to their archetypal characteristics and features.Bond girl Michelle Yeoh inTomorrow Never Dies and Lucy Liu inCharlie's Angels both frequently wear tight-fitting black outfits in accordance with their characters' roles. InKill Bill, Liu dons a kimono, harkening back to Dragon Ladies of past.[19]
The "Dragon Lady" stereotype is most commonly presented in conjunction with, and in contrast to, that of the "Lotus Blossom", in portrayals, differentiated primarily through the moral codes of their characters. However, both tropes strongly emphasize the "otherness" of these characters in juxtaposition to their white counterparts, and their sexual relationships with white men in particular.[20] The "Lotus Blossom" serves as afoil to the Dragon Lady, demure and submissive to her domineering and powerful. Both tropes are largely defined by their racial implications of sexuality,[21] and desirability to the American audience.[22]
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The Dragon Lady stereotype has evoked significant conversation from critics and academics for its hyper-sexualization of Asian women and the impact on modern day stereotypes and social issues. For example, one way the "Dragon Lady" and "Lotus Blossom" tropes have seen modern day influence on the sexuality of Asian women is through pornography, where they are seen as more "submissive" and unlikely to take agency.[22] Activists have called for a reclaiming of the sexual portrayal of Asian women,[18] and point to the origins of these stereotypes and their desired effects to be rooted in anti-immigration and anti-miscegenation attitudes from the era ofChinese exclusion andthe Page Act of 1875.[23]
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