GEFFEN/WARNER^BROS./KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCKW
hatever happened to john lone?
Curtained by mystique since his days as a
youth member of the Peking Opera, Lone
has left behind few hints. Though he
receded from the public eye after appear-
ing in Philip G. Atwell’s Wa r (2007), he
did not formally announce his retirement, nor did he provide any
personal or professional reasons for vanishing. (Chinese news out-
lets and fan-operated social-
media accounts report that
he has moved to Canada.)
But the actor had never
revealed much about him-
self from the start, at times
denying even his age and
refusing to disclose where he
lived. These fastidious
efforts to maintain his pri-
vacy extended to a vehement
refusal of any racial cate-
gories projected upon him
as an Asian performer,
whether Charlie Chan or Fu
Manchu, Chinese-American
(he asked in 1987, “Does
anyone call Meryl Streep...
an English-American
actress?”) or Chinese.
Lone’s insistence that he
does not play racist arche-
types appears incongruous
when one notes how often
his characters were posi-
tioned as agents of Yellow
Peril or decorated with the
trimmings of Orientalism.
The development of Lone’s
curious persona was grad-
ual, a response to both the
Hollywood racism and the
identity politics of the
Asian-American theater
scene that Lone encountered
after leaving Hong Kong at- Early television and film
parts (including a person
named “Chinese” in 1979’s
Americathon) reduced him to a blur of the Orient. Within Holly-
wood, Lone’s flirtations with racist archetypes, such as in Michael
Cimino’s Year of the Dragon (1985),crossed a dangerous threshold.
At once, he could be a fearful prop for Hollywood xenophobia and
still exude a dignified charisma that belied the political wrongness
latent in the narratives in which he partook. Year of the Dragon’s
character Joey Tai, for instance, suggests that all supposedly Asian
features, whether positive or negative, are false constructs that may
be manipulated for self-advancement. Swarmed by a storm of jour-
nalists, Joey Tai declares that it is they who have chained him to a
“sinister Charlie Chan image.” On the contrary, he’d rather claim to
be a model minority, though even this is another deception. Lone’s
process of inverting racist stereotypes resembles what historian
Arif Dirlik defines as “self-orientalism,” wherein the Asian partici-
pates in the construction of Orientalism. For Lone, however, self-
orientalism was also a gamble of indeterminable risk: to what
degree could the Asian subject voluntarily wear the stereotype
imposed upon him without losing ownership of his autonomy?
Through his work with the theater organization East West Play-
ers, Lone became a key per-
former in the plays of David
Henry Hwang. In these,
Lone took on the roles of
men whose racial identities
were in flux, though even
then he held onto his signa-
ture haughtiness—as in
his portrayal of Steve in
Hwang’s FOB (1980), a
“fresh-off-the-boat” immi-
grant who attracts the vitriol
of Dale, an assimilated Chi-
nese-American who resents
Chineseness. After collabo-
rating on numerous plays—
such as 1981’s The Dance
and the Railroad,which
Lone had directed—Hwang
and Lone’s professional rela-
tionship abruptly dissolved.
By then, Lone had already
gained sizeable attention for
his role as an Inuit caveman
in Fred Schepisi’s Iceman
(1984), and he soon exited
the stage for the screen.L
one’s masks are
further multiplied
in David Cronen-
berg’s M. Butterfly
(1993), adapted from
Hwang’s play. Lone, who’d
rejected the role from
Hwang when it went to
Broadway, plays Song Lil-
ing, an opera singer and
spy who disguises himself
as a woman to seduce the French diplomat René Gallimard
(Jeremy Irons). Inspired by the espionage trials of Bernard
Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, Hwang’s play expands upon the
events’ oddities with acidic sarcasm. Cronenberg trims these
excesses, retaining little else but the pair’s coded encounters.
Song plants the seed of René’s fantasy when she sings a musi-
cal number from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. The opera, in
which a Japanese woman ends her life because an American
officer abandons her, sinks its teeth into René’s heart. Offstage,
Song disparages the story. René, only recently stationed in
China as an embassy accountant, stammers—he’d found it18 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019FINEST HOUR One actor, one performance
Mask in Place
John Lone confronts a pained enigma of identity in
David Cronenberg’s maligned M. ButterflyBY KELLEY DONG