In which musicforwolves gets all cross about the Beatles.
To recap:
- A flow chart has been made about female character types. It was created by a purported feminist to argue that female characters are often two-dimensional.
- Argument immediately ensued about how feminist this flow chart was, and whether it destroyed the concept of 'strong female characters' entirely. One comment was made, reproduced in part here:
"“Yoko Ono” has become shorthand for a woman whose romantic relationship with a person causes conflict amongst friends. Hell, it might just be shorthand for that situation in general whether or not it’s a woman causing the issue.
This is an established phrase based on an actual person who actually caused conflict amongst an actual group of people. It has absolutely nothing to do with her race. Had Yoko Ono been any other race, she still would have the same stigma attached to her, whether or not you think that’s fair is an entirely different matter.
Should only white people be able to become symbolic of archetypes? Wouldn’t excluding people of minorities from that simply because of their race be, oh I don’t know, kind of racist? At the very least it is patronizing to people of minorities, as it excludes them from something for the absurd reason that using a person from a minority as a negative symbol might be construed as racist."
- Someone on a flist of flist-er picked that comment and responded to it in a post of their own, referring to the comment as "a casserole of internalized misogyny, racism and victim-blaming".
This whole issue is a difficult one to understand fully, because the comment the excerpt itself was written in response to has been deleted. I will never be able to determine what the issue at stake was. But taking the comment by itself, I have to agree with most of its points: 'Yoko Ono' has indeed become shorthand for someone who enters into a group and causes conflict. It doesn't just refer to women, and doesn't just refer to romance. I have several people who in my head fit the description of 'the 'Yoko'' without it being related to any of those issues. The phrase is established, does refer to a real person (although I would point out that the flow chart is dealing with a character archetype, which a narrow perception of Yoko Ono has now become), and does have nothing to do with her race. The stigma is related to what the popular mind believes Yoko Ono did to the Beatles.
I glean from the tone of the comment that the thing it was posted in response to was somehow suggesting that the phrase 'Yoko Ono' being the result of answering 'no' to the question 'Do others like her?' is an extremely racist statement.
Now I'm turning to the third bulletpoint: the 'casserole' response to the comment. If the original comment cried 'racism!', and the second one said that it had nothing to do with race, this third comment is returning to the question of race. This comment suggests that it was not Yoko's relationship with John Lennon that caused conflict amongst the Beatles; rather it was the fact that Paul McCartney had an issue with a Japanese woman (words underlined separately for a reason) coming and making comments about his work. Now, I agree that it wasn't the relationship that caused the issues. Neither do I believe that it was an internalized sexism or racism that was the problem. What was partially responsible for the conflicts within the Beatles was a collapse of two spheres: an unavoidable conflation that had disastrous consequences. John Lennon had shifted into a place in his artistic career where he was moving into a more experimental sound. (You can hear it at work from The Beatles (or The White Album, if you prefer) onward.) He encountered a kindred spirit in Yoko Ono, a wonderful woman who was very interested in experimental art. They were such kindred spirits, in fact, that there were sessions on The Beatles where John wouldn't attend unless Yoko could attend with him. John had immediately started conflating the two spheres: the pop music on one hand and his experimental work on the other.
In one sense, it was perfectly fine for Yoko to be there: John was half the major songwriting duo, and arguably the most important factor in crafting the lyrical output of the band. In another sense, though, (and if I get attacked for this, it'll be here) she had no right to be making unsolicited suggestions. This wasn't her band. She now came as part of the package deal with John, perhaps with a certain amount of displeasure among the other band members, but they hadn't asked for her to be there, and it's understandable to have a certain amount of possessiveness over your own work. Personally, I can attest to this: five years ago, I asked my significant other to take scripting notes during rehearsals for a show I was writing. After a few weeks, the actors expressed displeasure with this: the rehearsal was a very private space, and having a stranger arrive unannounced, and with a huge amount of perceived sway over my opinions (although, like Ono and John, we were just on a different wavelength to the actors), was intolerable. This was not an inward homophobia, nor would it be racism if my lover were black. In the same way, the 'problem with Yoko' was not that she was Japanese, nor a woman: it's that John had invited her in without the others having a say over it, and was offering opinions in a space where not everybody was prepared to accept them readily.
In 1964, in a hotel five blocks away from where I sit typing this, Ringo Starr gave an interview where he stated that he didn't know what he could do if the Beatles ever split. It's somewhat interesting, then, that he was the first member to informally quit the band. He returned to his drum kit a week or so later, but it had nothing to do with a Japanese woman coming and bossing people around: it was that John and Paul were no longer the team they once were. John was becoming someone else, sick of the 'grandma music' that Paul was writing. The introduction of Yoko was latched onto by people eager to believe that the Beatles couldn't have just combusted, the same people that fall into the 'correlation = causality' camp.
The piece this essay is in response to ends by saying:
"...the commenter wants to know if only white women should have the honor of being vilified for not knowing their place, the honor of having their names used as code words for uppity bitches who interfere in male relationships and man-business by insisting on being treated as equals. Surely women of color deserve a chance to be so honored." (Emphasis in original)
Okay, so let's say that the flow chart is referring to the actual Yoko Ono, the real, nuanced person (which it explicitly isn't, although this sequence seems to assume it is). Let's assume that the conflict was caused by Yoko Ono "not knowing [her] place" (which I'm arguing wasn't the case). The question becomes, should Asian women be allowed to be the trope namer, so to speak? Well, why not? I'm guessing that nobody has a problem when you call an Asian man the greatest martial artist ever to walk the earth, but to vilify an Asian woman is horrible. I would agree, if that's what was happening here. But it's not. 'Yoko Ono' is a term used to describe someone who enters the scene and causes disharmony. It's an actual trope namer over at tvtropes.org, with this kind of definition. It's related to Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend.
If people believe that Yoko Ono was actually like this, they need to read more about her. But the name has transcended that, now. It's become synonymous in pop culture with that kind of person. It stands in peoples' memories as the foremost example of someone breaking up a good thing by elbowing their way in. To call the trope a 'Yoko Ono' isn't being racist, any more than calling Bruce Lee the greatest martial artist is sexist. There are thousands of amazing female martial artists, but they're not the ones first to mind, just like I don't think of a white guy when I think of the trope under discussion. I think of white guys for plenty of negative archetypes, but not this one. It seems that if you call Yoko Ono to mind when discussing a negative archetype, you're being racist. If you suggest that it's racist to do this, and a white person should be used instead to avoid being racist, that's racist. Because Ono's name is the first thing to spring to mind, because that's the way popular culture works, that's racist. Because the name has been conflated with the image, that's racist.
The actual flowchart under discussion, though, using a term that's both in popular discourse and not a true reflection of the person that it refers to, sidesteps all these issues. Because it has nothing to do with Yoko Ono, and everything to do (funnily enough) with how characters are created.