Mechanics of Yellow Fever

I’ve seen only a few parts of Sex and the City. Every time I saw it, I got bored in a matter of minutes. I understand why it’s interesting for some people but it was just way too shallow for me. It wasn’t because of the subject matter; it was a lack of something else.

Today, I got an email from “Tight Banana” up in Calgary, Canada. She suggested that I read her blog. As I read her amusing and enlightening stories of her sexual exploits, it occured to me that this is what Sex and the City badly needed; the element that could add more intellectual twists to the whole theme.

For many people, race is a major factor in sex. Each race comes with a number of stereotypes that feed into our fantasies. For instance, in one of her posts, Tight Banana mentions that when White men refer to Asian women, they always call them “Asian girls”, never “Asian women”. This reveals a part of the mechanics of so-called “Yellow Fever”. There is a degree of pedophilia in it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging or condemning anyone here. (Note: In Japan, a mild form of pedophilia is widely accepted in the mainstream culture.)

Reading her blog, it is clear how significantly race influences the rules of the mating game. It’s as if she is playing a completely different game. Imagine if Sex and the City had 4 characters of different races, and if they introduced us to the different games they play. Each time the 4 characters got together, they would be able to put their own experiences in much wider perspective. What each of us take for granted about our own experiences in life would be brought to light and questioned. It would be much more intellectually stimulating, without losing the fun, gossipy aspects of the show. The producers shouldn’t infuse the show with some moral messages about race and racism; that would ruin it.

Sex and race are both controversial and loaded topics on their own, so when you combine them together, it becomes a potentially explosive topic. Perhaps we are not ready to see that on TV, but the role that race plays in sex is something that affect many of us in a fundamental way. The fact that we do not talk openly about it is probably fueling the fetishistic view of race in sex. Once the sense of being taboo is gone, race would no longer work well as an object of fetish, fantasy, or perversion. Is that good or bad? I can’t say, but a human relationship is more meaningful when we don’t use a real person as a physical placeholder for our imaginary character.