Autumn, 1998, Vol. 5, No. 1

Who Am I?: Issues of Identity for an Asian Gay Male in America
Lisa C. Klein: 2nd Year Administration
Jody Michael: 2nd Year Clinical

    The way in which we understand who and what we are - our identity - is shaped by our environment. Our identity is part inherited, part self-created and in part, thrust upon us. These different elements can work in harmony, one enhancing the other, or they can be in conflict. For Wei-Tung, the central character of the film The Wedding Banquet, these elements are in conflict. However, throughout the film we see Wei-Tung come to terms with his conflicted identity. We have chosen to use a film character to explore the identity issues facing an Asian gay male as films offer a discriminating lens through which one can focus on a representational figure.

    Wei-Tung is a naturalized American citizen coming from a success-oriented, traditional Chinese family. He is a precious, only child from a culture which considers only the males as permanent members of a family and where everything that a person does in life is done in the context of the entire family group, including all the person's ancestors and descendents. Whatever choices Wei-Tung makes in his life will reflect on his family, bringing shame or pride to all generations who came before him and to all who will succeed him (McGoldrick, 1988).

    He is a young man, approaching middle adulthood, living a dual identity. In America, Wei-Tung is an up-and-coming real estate entrepreneur, a gay male, a long-time partner in a significant relationship with a Caucasian man, and a person hiding from his culture, its demands and his perceived obligations to his parents in Taiwan. To the superficial observer, Wei-Tung has developed into a mature, self-sufficient, loving adult with an acceptance of his homosexuality. He appears to revere his parents, carefully storing even the most insignificant items sent to him from his family in Taiwan. He maintains a charade of heterosexuality to protect them and possibly to preserve their "face" while he participates in a loving, stable homosexual relationship. But by protecting his parents from the knowledge of his homosexuality, has Wei-Tung really failed to come to terms with his own identity? According to Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman (1994) a "...gay person with a heterosexual facade is burdened with pretending to be someone he or she is not. Such pretense can violate individual dignity and freedom" (p. 543). Wei-Tung maintains a fiction of heterosexuality for his parents, in a manner that is by turns humorous and almost tragic.

    Wei-Tung lives with two identities. On the one hand, he has attempted wholesale assimilation into the guppie [sic] western culture. He is a real estate entrepreneur who drives a Mercedes-Benz, reads World Trade, Fortune and The Advocate, works out at a trendy gym, and owns an expensive Manhattan brownstone in a heterosexual or at least mixed neighborhood. On the other hand, however much Wei-Tung loves and reveres his parents and keeps all of their tokens and gifts, he keeps them hidden away, much like he keeps hidden from them his sexual identity.

    Since many cultures have had, and unfortunately continue to have, an overwhelmingly homophobic view, it is not surprising that Wei-Tung grew up with this secret identity, afraid of his parents' reaction and the familial ramifications that his "coming out" would bring. For Wei-Tung, there is tremendous pressure to carry on the family line; therefore, by admitting to his parents that he is a homosexual, Wei-Tung carries the additional burden of letting down his ancestors and the future descendents that will never be.

    "So heavy !" Wei-Tung exclaims early in The Wedding Banquet, as we watch him walk, weighted down by the "heavy baggage" of his parents' gifts. In this poignant scene, we become acutely aware of how lying, silence, hiding, and compartmentalization burden his psyche. He suffers fragmentation of identity and role confusion (how can he be the good son while also being at peace with being gay?). Such conflict is identified by Erikson as resulting when a person is unable to integrate their conflicting roles. A major variable related to Wei-Tung's overall difficulty of adjustment may be the goodness or poorness of fit between the individual and the environment To a great extent, environmental fit relates to expectations. Wei-Tung's family expects much from him, and expects it rigidly. Furthermore, these expectations cause him interpersonal conflicts; hence "coming out" becomes Wei-Tung's most difficult developmental challenge. (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 1994).

    Minton and MacDonald conceptualize "coming out" as a "life-spanning developmental process that eventually leads to personal acceptance of a positive gay self-image and a coherent personal identity" (Laird, 1993, p. 304). It is Wei-Tung's inability to share with his family who he is and whom he loves that impedes his self-actualization and personal growth. How did Wei-Tung's silence originate? Perhaps the essence of this silence is shame (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996). The experience of shame, of being exposed as someone inferior or despicable, is a very powerful negative emotion. In American culture it is virtually impossible to be different and not somehow feel deficient for that difference. Therefore, in examining the gay experience we are brought face to face with shame because the two experiences have been fused across cultures and centuries. In this context Wei-Tung's response of hiding and lying is natural.

    Historical and cultural shame about homosexuality runs deep. Until quite recently, it has resulted in a group of people without a recorded or recognized history, without a visible presence as a cultural group and without the traditions, language, and customs of a valued culture (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996). Against this backdrop, it is easy to understand Wei-Tung's fear of discovery by his family and heterosexual friends. He feared ridicule and shame, but also feared that he would bring shame on his parents.

    The emotion of "shame is deeply rooted in self-esteem, identity, and intimacy" (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996, p.7). Shame is most likely central to the development of identity for all people, gay and non-gay alike. Unexamined shame on the individual level becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle to the realization of inner wholeness and true connection with others, because shame threatens to reveal us all as worthless, or at least inferior (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996). People like Wei-Tung - men who love men - often "become people haunted by shame, not because of particular actions but, more profoundly, because of who they are" (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996, p.7).

    "Shame divides us from ourselves, just as it divides us from others" (Kaufman & Raphael, 1996, p.7). When we feel shame, we feel deeply disconnected and we long to embrace ourselves once more. In Wei-Tung's pivotal "coming out" conversation with his mother, he takes a monumental step toward wholeness. For the first time, he openly embraces all facets of his being. Having faced his greatest fear he is freer to redirect his energies to cope with his other identity conflict. Although he can hide his sexual orientation, he cannot hide his ethnic identity as an Asian man in a Caucasian world. And while Wei-Tung represses, perhaps even disdains, his Asian heritage, he is a fusion of both Eastern and Western cultures; he models both collectivist and individualist perspectives and behaviors, although he consciously aspires to total assimilation of the American culture (Longres, 1995).

    Wei-Tung's mode of adaptation is that of a conformist, quickly embracing America's commonly prescribed values of competition, success, achievement, and perfection. Successfully embodying these cultural values allows him to experience the rewards of social acceptance, accomplishment, power, and personal satisfaction. Repeatedly, Wei-Tung demonstrates an exceptionally fluid identity with an ability to navigate a duality of worlds - that of homosexual and heterosexual; Asian and American. He goes through with a marriage to a young Chinese woman, and in a moment of drunken revelry, they conceive a child. In creating a dynamic "new family," Wei-Tung must completely shift paradigms to come to terms with having not only a male as his true spouse but accepting his female "spouse" and an expected child as his nuclear family. Having faced his greatest fear, "coming out," Wei-Tung goes on to create a new constellation of family allowing him to fulfill his familial responsibility of carrying on the Gao name. Wei-Tung's marriage, although a sham, provided a mechanism to reintegrate him into the mainstream Chinese culture.

 

    At the beginning of The Wedding Banquet, we see Wei-Tung as a somewhat thoughtless, selfish young man who has attempted to assimilate Western culture. By the conclusion, we are able to see the transformation of Wei-Tung into a more mature adult, ready to accept real responsibility in a committed homosexual relationship. We see a man who has made peace with his identity as a gay man from a traditional Chinese culture, as a loving and respectful son who accepts his familial obligations and shapes them to fit within the context of his avowed way of life. Certainly Wei-Tung will face other conflicts. But for the moment, he has gained some self-awareness, has deepened his intimacy with the people he loves, and has shed his burden of deception. He has begun to integrate his identity.

 

References
Kaufman, G., & Raphael, L. (1996). Coming out of shame: transforming gay and lesbian lives. New York: Main Street Books.

Laird, J. (1993). Lesbian and gay families. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Normal family processes (pp. 282-328). New York: The Guilford Press.

Longres, J. (1995). Human behavior in the social environment. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.

McGoldrick, M. (1988). Ethnicity and the family life cycle. In B. Carter, & M. McGoldrick (Eds.), The changing family life cycle: A framework for family therapy (pp. 69-76). New York: Gardner Press.

Swidler, A. (1987). Love and adulthood in American culture. In R. Bellah (Ed.), Individualism and commitment in American life (pp.107-125). New York: Harper & Row.

Zastrow, C., & Kirst-Ashman, K. (1994). Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment (3rd ed., pp. 122; 281-287; 533-543). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

 

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