Yellowface

Turner Classic Movies is running a series this month on Asian Images in Film, specifically Hollywood film. They'll be doing one night of the Asian detectives (Chan, Moto, Wong, all played by Caucasian actors), and they're also running THE GOOD EARTH and DRAGON SEED, which I've never been able to bring myself to watch because of what I think of as the painfully dignifed "yellowface" of the leads, even though DRAGON SEED has some excellent actors: Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston, Aline MacMahon, and Henry Travers.

But the most interesting films of the batch have been the silents and early sound films which were on last week. I watched two films with Sessue Hayakawa (pictured at left). A silent film called THE DRAGON PAINTER was OK, but more interesting was DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, a rarely seen Fu Manchu film from 1931. It's not a particularly good movie (though there is some stylish cinematography here and there), but in the last half, a romance develops between Anna May Wong (Fu's daughter) and Sessue Hayakawa as an Chinese detective (though the actor was actually Japanese!). I realized it was almost startling to see two Asian actors in leading roles in an early Hollywood film, and it made me a little sad that this kind of casting did not become accepted. I used to think that the studios were somewhat justified in using Caucasian actors as Asians as there were no Asian stars at the time to guarantee box office. But both Wong and Hayakawa were quite popular in their day--Hayakawa was apparently almost as popular as Valentino back in the 20's--and they are both fine in the film; I've always found Wong to be a bit wooden, but Hayawaka is very good. This seems like proof that the studios could have churned out some reliable Asian stars from their "factories," but just didn't care enough to do so.

A documentary called The Slanted Screen made it clear that the situation isn't that much different today. Though Asian cinema is quite popular worldwide, Asian actors have made little headway in Hollywood, except in indie films. The point is made in the documentary that one group of stereotypes (Asians as servants or laundry workers or exotic "other" sex objects) has just been replaced by another (martial arts masters, nerds, and still, exotic "other" sex objects). Even though I'm a gay, liberal, mostly PC kind of guy, I had never really given much thought to the folks who were protesting the running of the restored Charlie Chan movies on Fox Movie Channel a few years ago. I feel like I've had my consciousness raised a bit on the subject of "yellowface"; I own 4 Chan DVD boxed sets (with non-Asians Warner Oland and Sidney Toler) 2 Mr. Moto boxed sets (non-Asian Peter Lorre), and a Mr. Wong boxed set (Boris Karloff, though at least one of the films stars genuine Chinese actor Keye Luke), and I'll still watch these films and enjoy them, but I'll also feel sad that the opportunity to develop a pool of Asian stars in Hollywood was missed, and I'll believe it was more than just benign neglect behind it.