the Male Hero

The World of Suzie Wong, directed by Richard Quine, depicts a intercultural romance between a Caucasian male, Robert Lomax, and an Asian female, Suzie Wong. Though it serves as a way to reconcile the racial barrier between America and Asia in order to address America’s liberal attitude toward race, the relationship between Robert and Suzie is somehow “unequal”, that built upon the inferior of famine and the superior of western patriarchal power.

Suzie is sexual arousing and exotic, but pure in the inner side. She grew up without love, and she can’t read or write. The harsh environment in Hong Kong at that time forced Suzie to be a prostitute to make a living. She is sexual arousing and exotic, but pure in the inner side. She serves as the “weaker sex” waiting for a male hero to rescue. Robert, an artist seeking for himself in Hong Kong, presents the western masculine power that ready to save the inferior one. Robert, does not care Suzie’s inferior job and the fact that she had an illegitimate baby, protected her from the sailor and the drunk Ben. The relationship is bound as the salvation by Robert is succeed, both physically and morally. However, when Suzie is trying to help Robert with her own savings, which seriously threatened Robert’s the dominant western male position. In addition to this, Robert brutally stripped off Suzie’s clothes when Suzie appearing in a western clothing. Suzie’s attempts to assimilate to the western world represents her potential independence, which is unacceptable by Robert.
  
As Robert represents the American superior role during the Cold War period, Suzie stands for the passive Asian female. The World of Suzie Wong revolves around a trance-racial romance, but it delivers the idea that the western world, especially America, has the supremacy to save the “weaker.”