WOMAN
Coming to this country
A big sacrifice
Don’t forget
You must be survivor
Must be what again?
SON:
Survivor
The mother goes on to push the significance of her advice. To be a survivor means specifically to be a success. This is the peculiarity of the story of the Asian immigrant class of America. Expectations have been engendered among themselves that to survive in American society, assimilation is not nearly enough. This represents a major divergence from the expectations of immigrants from other parts of the world. The expectations place upon themselves are directly derived from the expectations placed them from others, of course. Or so it seems. There certainly is an argument to be made that by this point in history, Asian immigrants are viewed as more likely to attain economic success than other ethnic groups. It places undue pressure among young Asians that it almost certainly not fully understood or appreciated by most native-born Americans possessing a xenophobic kneejerk response to immigration.
YOUNG MAN
The Man
he stands small
against the looming mall
The devastated part of the building
the food court
is surrounded
by wailing ambulances
fire engines
cranes—
What is success in America? More precisely: what is the ultimate symbol of success in America in the latter half of the twentieth century? Answer: the shopping mall. Starting in the 1970’s the indoor mall populated by the stores emblazoned with instantly recognized symbols of the pinnacle of economic success in America—Sears, WaldenBooks, Foot Locker, Radio Shack, Sam Goody’s—became the dominant metaphor of reaching the top of your field. “The Man” being referenced here is an architect and “Wonderland” is the name of the megamall he has designed and built.
But the construction is defective and the building collapses, resulting in the deaths of sixteen people which haunts the man even as he will later desperately try to convince the audience (and himself?) that he doesn’t really think about those “sixteen innocents I killed buried in the mall” at all. The typographical oddity of this quote is also more reflective of the overall structure of the play which is directly presented as being a ‘nonmusical musical.” The mall as a symbol of success, the subsequent fate of the mall and the victims of its collapse and the effect is has on the family becomes a kind of musical leitmotif which hangs over the narrative like a specter as it proceeds forward.
SON
Scene from A Place in the Sun
With your favorite actress
Elizabeth Taylor—
WOMAN
Right
And where are we?—
SON
We’re at the balcony
And there’s a party inside the house—
WOMAN
So who are you?—
SON
Montgomery Clift
Before the car accident—
WOMAN
So still good-looking right?—
This little patch of script territory is a textbook example of how so much can be said beneath the words. If one understands the multiple allusions going on here, this conversation becomes so much more than it seems. The mother’s favorite actress is Elizabeth Taylor and that very fact speaks to the level of immersion and assimilation in American society. Montgomery Clift was one of the biggest romantic heartthrobs in Hollywood history whose has since his death become one of the biggest homosexual icons. His character in A Place in the Sun is not even merely coded as a mama’s boy, it becomes an essential part of the explicit chemistry in his romance with the Taylor character. The son in Wonderland at this point is a closet homosexual. Everything comes together behind the seeming meaningless diversion of playacting a famous scene from a famous movie.
