Stealing Time FATHERHOOD, THE ‘THIRD SPACE’ AND SAM VOUTAS’ KING OF PEKING

In the last century, movement across national and cultural lines has led to an increasing intertwining of cultural narratives. Within the arts industries, these layered, multicultural experiences prompt the question: where does one draw the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Or perhaps: how do we tell another’s story? Can we create cross-cultural art that is both nuanced and sensitive – and what would that art look like?

For the majority of the twentieth century, our cultural myths and narratives were told by an elite few, and this lack of diversity in the screen industries led to drastically skewed narratives. In terms of the representation of East Asians within Hollywood, acts of yellowface, racial stereotypes and whitewashing were often perpetrated, and still persist today. Mickey Rooney’s now-infamous Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961) is only one example of Hollywood’s refusal to allow an Asian actor to play its own – albeit orientalist – construction of that racialised identity. Due to anti-miscegenation laws, Asian-American actors were refused roles as romantic counterparts to white characters; as a result, we saw Russian-born Yul Brynner play King Mongkut of Siam in The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956), and Romanian-Russian-American Sylvia Sidney as Cho-Cho San in Madame Butterfly (Marion Gering, 1932). Even after these laws were