Charlie Chan film festival is off of FOX movie channel!

Cafe Society
21

The casting of a white guy to play a Chinese man was racist, no doubt. But was the character himself racist? On the down side, he had a thick stereotypical accent and made reference to simple homilies from China. He was always the smartest character in the movie, a senior inspector from, IIRC, the Hawaiian police department brought in to solve a case too tough for the local authorities. He is treated with respect, sometimes even deference, by most characters other than the bad guys. On balance, more positive than negative.

But there is almost always another Asian character in the movie, a son, usually highly accomplished in some professional field (doctor, scientist, etc.) who is played by an Asian man and without an accent. The sons are usually smart, earnest, and a bit naive, and in many ways a lot like the other supporting characters–in other words, ordinary Americans.

So yes, there is a somewhat stereotypical, though overall positive, portrayal of Chan himself, but this is usually balanced by a second Asian character, also portrayed positively, who is shown more or less as a regular guy.

22

When’s the last time the Flash Gordon serial was on TV? I dunno. Is there much of a market for the old serials these days? Too bad if such a fun serial gets lost because of ridiculous “yellow peril” PC bullshit. The 1980 Flash Gordon movie was on the air within the last month or so, and the Republic endured.

It seems that the objections to Charlie Chan come down to two: it is “racist” for a non-Asian actor to play an Asian character; and the character itself exhibits stereotypical traits in speech and mannerisms.

To the first objection, it’s nonsense through and through. What’s racist is the assumption that a character of a particular race must only be played by a member of that race. I already posted some examples of cross-race portrayals that the PC Police would apparently banish (although no one decrying Chan movies has commented on them except to point out that Hoffman was actually playing a white character). There are others. By that logic, as has already been noted, the Marx Brothers movies should be banished because of Chico’s portrayal of a stereotypical Italian when he wasn’t Italian. For that matter, every movie containing a performance by a Jewish actor playing a non-Jew should be banished.

As to the second, the other Charlie Chan thread has an illuminating quote from an Asian actor who played in many of the Chan movies alongside Oland, praising Oland effusively for his sensitive and nuanced portrayal which included learning the Chinese he spoke. My take on it is that someone who was actually there is a more reliable source than the PC Police. Isn;t Chan supposed to be a first-generation immigrant from China in the series? How many first-generation immigrants from non-English speaking countries do you know who speak in perfectly unaccented English?

Does anyone seriously think for an instant that in 2003 anyone’s sensibilities about Asians are going to be formed entirely, or even substantially, on the basis of a few movies from the 30s and 40s?

23

Otto – you don’t really strike me as a bad guy. But DAG, son.

Most people’s opinions about differing ethnic groups are formed – yes, substantially – by their portrayals in television, books and movies. ESPECIALLY if they have limited personal experiences with those same groups, and especially if those portrayals mirror expectations and beliefs expressed in larger society. The year could be 2003, 1903, 2093: people are really not that evolved.

Chan himself was created by a white man, Earl Derr Biggers, based on the newspaper exploits of Chinese detectives Chang Apana and Lee Fook in Honolulu, while Biggers was vacationing there. Harvard educated, Mid-western born and bred, Biggers was albeit a sympathetic writer whose aim, in part, was to create an antithesis to all the Yellow Peril stories that were in the media at the time. It was an enthusiastic success and his books were optioned by Hollywood.

(Biggers’ intentions aside, I do wonder about his books’ authenticity, since I’ve never read them: whether Chan in the novels comes off as authentically Chinese detective or a filter of what a Ivy League liberal thinks Chinese are, like fictional black detective Alex Cross in the James Patterson books.)

The Chan films were produced in an industry at a time where racism and prejudice against ethnic minorities was flagrant, rampant, virulent and insidious. This has been going on for six decades. According to my search on the Internet Movie Database there have been 45 movies and TV series made about Chan: not ONE of them was played by a Chinese actor or an actor of Asian descent– even the ones done as late as the 70s and 80s. (Even in the detective spoof, MURDER BY DEATH (1976), the Chan analogue is played by Peter Sellers, rather than, say, KUNG FU’s Philip Ahn (Master Kan) or even Noriyuka “Pat” Morita.)

The only Chan series that made some effort to cast Asian actors in the character parts of the voices of the Chan family in Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Charlie Chan and The Chan Clan (1972). While I do recall seeing a few episodes of these as a child, I don’t remember them well enough to comment on their quality.

I applaud the Organization for Chinese Americans for going after FOX and kicking the film festival off the air. That “Wait until your value is noticed and white people in charge will reward you” crap embodied by Booker T. Washington and other assimilationists will give you the stick every time.

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It isn’t that having a member of one ethnic group portraying a member of another is automatically racist. I don’t think anyone can reasonably object to Jennifer Lopez playing an Italian in Out of Sight or Jews playing non-Jews and vice-versa. As for your other examples, well Eddie Murphy is black, and he was playing a black man in Coming to America. I haven’t seen the other two movies so I can’t render an informed opinion.

The racism comes from the practice at the time of systematic exclusion of non-minorities from all important roles in movies, and the casting of white men who didn’t look the least bit Chinese to play a Chinese man is a symptom of that system. Were there really no Asian actors capable of playing Chan? They never seemed to have any problem findin Asian men to play his sons.

For the most part, I agree with Otto that it would be ridiculous to impose a monolithic standard that says only people of a particular ethnic group should be allowed to play characters of that ethnic group. Objections to Korean actess Linda Park playing a Japanese woman on Enterprise strike me as silly. But to have a white woman playing the part in yellow-tinged makeup and with artificial eye-folds would be equally silly. There has to be a reasonable middle ground.

25

I’m sorry, I simply don’t agree with you that Oland’s portrayal of Chan from 60 years ago is going to inform very many people’s perceptions of Asians in the 21st Century.

Which would seem to argue in favor of viewing those performances by Asian actors in supporting roles which by all accounts were not presented in stereotypical fashion.

Which makes perfect sense, really, since the movie was a spoof of the detective genre which included white actors playing Charlie Chan. I wonder if we should also be upset that American James Coco was cast as the Belgian detective. Surely there must have been a Belgian actor out there somewhere who could have played the part?

Murphy played, among other characters, an elderly white barber IIRC. Substitute Whoopi Goldberg in that movie where she played not only white but male.

I agree with you 100% that there were undoubtedly Asian actors in the 30s and 40s capable of playing Chan. I’m sorry that the institutionalized racism of Hollywood prevented them from having that chance. That movie executives in the 30s and 40s were racist bastards does not strike me as being a good reason not to view the films. Thos same racist bastards made every other film from that era too; should we jettison all of the studio films from that era based on racism? Why then should we single out the Chan films, thus suppressing the work of those Asians who were cast in the supporting roles?

26

Otto…

I have rarely thought about watching a movie to OVERLOOK the star, and instead concentrate on the performances of the other actors who have the fewest lines, are portrayed less capably and heroically, who have the smallest importance to the plot and the least amount of screen time, who aren’t even in the fucking NAME of the flick. Yet you urge me to do so regularly in order to keep these creaky, slow-moving, moldy, inaccurate, half-century icons-to-racist-Hollywood-treatment from being ‘surpressed’ by contemporary Asian audiences. Wow. Great googly moogly. My God. What a concept. Like asking me to enjoy Al Jolson movies for the tap-dancers and waiters in the background.

Definitely time to unsubscribe to this thread. I need an antidote to this contorted thinking, quick. Where’re my Amy Tan novels? I need my P.E. Turn up, “Burn, Hollywood, burn!”

27

Oh, like the Number One Son roles? Yeah, we never heard much of a peep out of him, did we?

Wow, completely and willfully miss the point much? If watching the product of racist movie studios is so damn evil, then I expect that you will refuse to watch any movie made by said racist studios. Unless you actually support racism against every other ethnic and racial minority by continuing to watch films made by racists which don’t feature them…

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My father is a big fan of Mr Chan, so while I have never seen any single movie, I have still seen a lot of Charile Chan, and outside of the accent, I really don’t remember their being any negative stereotypes.

There was more than once where there was a dumb black porter character that was pretty offensive. But nuttin about asians.

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That’ Mantan Moreland.

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Here is the response of the organization

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Oh come on. Charlie Chan movies are “a further reminder of the miscegenation laws that prevented interracial interaction even on screen”? There wasn’t a damn thing in any miscegenation law that said actors of different races couldn’t act together. Hauling that into the discussion really smacks of desperation, of looking for any excuse to shore up a weak position.

32

Otto, I agree that statement was too broad. By ‘interracial interaction’ they probably meant romantic and sexual racial interraction. And they probably also meant interracial social equality, too – rarely were members of minorities shown as capable, pragmatic social equals of whites. They were usually waiters, maids, butlers, houseboys, night club musicians, singers, dancers, slaves, migrant workers, etc. – or else criminals or unemployed. And while it wasn’t “law” the 1930s The Hays Code prevented miscegenation (interracial interaction of a sexual or romantic nature, if you prefer) from being depicted onscreen, with only a few notable exceptions – “Imitation of Life” (1934) being one.

This applies mostly to California producation codes. Local standards of what was acceptable differed widely from place to place. My father grew up in rural West Tennesee and once told me he never saw “Our Gang” and “Little Rascals” shorts when he was a boy going to the movies because de white folk there didn’t want to see dey precious chirren playing wit pickaninnies like Farina, Buckwheat and Stymie.

Right. So that’s it. No more coming back to this topic.

33

Thought about it – recant the ‘social equal’ part of my argument. Those were merely the social conventions of the time as opposed to any code-enforced rule. Obvious, really.

I’m definitely not coming back.

34

This brings back memories…wasn’t “Number one son” (played by the late Keye Luke) always spouting off “but Pop. Pop”!?