Portrayals of East Asians in American film and theatre has been a subject of controversy. These portrayals have frequently reflected an ethnocentric perception of East Asians rather than realistic and authentic depictions of East Asian cultures, colors, customs, and behaviors.
Yellowface, a form of theatrical makeup used by European-American performers to represent an East Asian person (similar to the practice of blackface used to represent African-American characters), continues to be used in film and theater. In the 21st century alone, Grindhouse (in a trailer parody of the Fu Manchu serials), Balls of Fury, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Crank: High Voltage, and Cloud Atlas all feature yellowface or non-East Asian actors as East Asian caricatures., by Vickie Rozel, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in the Works
American media portrayals of East Asians have reflected a dominant Americentric perception rather than realistic and authentic depictions of true cultures, customs and behaviors. Yellowface relies on stereotypes of East Asians in the United States.
Film Old Hollywood
Mr. Wu (1913) Mr. Wu was originally a stage play, written by Harold Owen and Harry M. Vernon. It was first staged in London in 1913, with Matheson Lang in the lead. He became so popular in the role that he starred in a 1919 film version. Lang continued to play Oriental roles (although not exclusively), and his autobiography was titled Mr. Wu Looks Back (1940). The first U.S. production opened in New York on October 14, 1914. The actor Frank Morgan was in the original Broadway cast, appearing under his original name Frank Wupperman.
Lon Chaney Sr. and Renée Adorée were cast in the 1927 film. Cheekbones and lips were built up with cotton and collodion, the ends of cigar holders were inserted into his nostrils, and the long fingernails were constructed from stripes of painted film stock. Chaney used fishskin to fashion an Oriental cast to his eyes and grey crepe hair was used to create the distinctive Fu Manchu moustache and goatee.
The Forbidden City (1918) The Forbidden City is a 1918 American silent drama film starring Norma Talmadge and Thomas Meighan and directed by Sidney Franklin. A copy of the film is in the Library of Congress and other film archives.The plot centers around an inter-racial romance between a Chinese princess (Norma Talmadge) and an American. When palace officials discover she has fallen pregnant she is sentenced to death. In the latter part of the film Talmadge plays the now adult daughter of the affair, seeking her father in the Philippines.
Broken Blossoms (1919)
The film Broken Blossoms is based on a short story, "The Chink and the Child", taken from the book Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke.www.tcm.com Spotlight: Broken Blossoms It was released in 1919, during a period of strong anti-Chinese feeling in the U.S., a fear known as the Yellow Peril. Griffith changed Burke's original story to promote a message of tolerance. In Burke's story, the Chinese protagonist is a sordid young Shanghai drifter pressed into naval service, who frequents opium dens and whorehouses; in the film, he becomes a Buddhist missionary whose initial goal is to spread the dharma of the Buddha and peace (although he is also shown frequenting opium dens when he is depressed). Even at his lowest point, he still prevents his gambling companions from fighting.
Dr. Fu Manchu
In 1929, the character Dr. Fu Manchu made his American film debut in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu played by the Swedish-American actor Warner Oland. Oland repeated the role in 1930s The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu and 1931's Daughter of the Dragon. Oland appeared in character in the 1931 musical Paramount on Parade, where the Devil Doctor was seen to murder both Philo Vance and Sherlock Holmes.
In 1932, Boris Karloff took over the character in the film The Mask of Fu Manchu. The film's tone has long been considered racist and offensive,Gregory William Mank, Hollywood Cauldron: 13 Horror Films from the Genres's Golden Age. McFarland, 2001 (pp. 53-89); Christopher Frayling, quoted in "Fu Manchu", in Newman, Kim (ed.), The BFI Companion to Horror. London, Cassell,1996, pp. 131-32; but that only added to its cult status alongside its humor and Grand Guignol sets and torture sequences. The film was suppressed for many years, but has since received critical re-evaluation and been released on DVD uncut.
Charlie Chan
In a series of films in the 1930s and 1940s, Chinese-Hawaiian-American detective Charlie Chan was played by white actors Warner Oland, Sidney Toler and Roland Winters. Swedish actor Warner Oland typecasted as Chinese, and according to his contemporaries, he did not use special makeup in the role. He also played East Asians in other films, including Shanghai Express, The Painted Veil, and Werewolf of London (decades later, Afro-European American TV actor Khigh Dhiegh, though of African and European descent, was generally cast as an East Asian because of his appearance, and he was often included on lists of East Asian actors).
An updated film version of Charlie Chan was planned in the 1990s by Miramax; this new Charlie Chan was to be "hip, slim, cerebral, sexy and ... a martial-arts master", but the film did not come to fruition.
The Good Earth
The Good Earth (1937) is a film about Chinese farmers who struggle to survive.www.asian-studies.org What's So Bad About "The Good Earth" by Charles W. Hayford. It was adapted by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West from the play by Donald Davis and Owen Davis, which was itself based on the 1931 novel The Good Earth by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. The film was directed by Sidney Franklin, Victor Fleming (uncredited) and Gustav Machatý (uncredited).
The film's budget was $2.8 million, relatively expensive for the time, and took three years to make. Although Pearl Buck intended the film to be cast with all Chinese or Chinese-American actors, the studio opted to use established American stars, tapping Europeans Paul Muni and Luise Rainer for the lead roles. Both had won Oscars the previous year: Rainer for her role in The Great Ziegfeld and Muni for the lead in The Story of Louis Pasteur. When questioned about his choice of the actors, producer Irving Thalberg responded by saying, "I'm in the business of creating illusions."
Anna May Wong had been considered a top contender for the role of O-Lan, the Chinese heroine of the novel. However, because Paul Muni was a white man, the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules required the actress who played his wife to be a white woman. So, MGM gave the role of O-Lan to a European actress and offered Wong the role of Lotus, the story's villain. Wong refused to be the only Chinese-American, playing the only negative character, stating: "I won't play the part. If you let me play O-Lan, I'll be very glad. But you're asking me—with Chinese blood—to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters."www.asiaarts.ucla.edu Profile of Anna May Wong: Remembering The Silent Star by Kenneth Quan MGM's refusal to consider Wong for this most high-profile of Chinese characters in U.S. film is remembered today as "one of the most notorious cases of casting discrimination in the 1930s".
The Good Earth was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Direction (Sidney Franklin), Best Cinematography (Karl Freund), and Best Film Editing (Basil Wrangell). In addition to the Best Actress award (Luise Rainer), the film won for Best Cinematography.tcm.com Spotlight: The Good Earth The year The Good Earth came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl."Corliss, Richard. Anna May Wong Did It Right, Time magazine, January 29, 2005, accessed May 22, 2018 Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger.
Tea House of the August Moon (1956) The original story of this film was from a novel written by Vern Sneider in 1952. The Tea House of the August Moon film was adapted in 1956 from the play version in 1953, written by John Patrick. This American comedy film is directed by Daniel Mann. The plot concerns the concept of the United States military government trying to establish power and influence over Japan, specifically in Okinawa, during wartime. Although the cast does include Japanese actors and actresses for the roles of the Japanese characters in the film, such as Machiko Kyō, Jun Negami, Nijiko Kiyokawa, and Mitsuko Sawamura, the main character, Sakini, is played by a white American actor, Marlon Brando.
New Hollywood
Flower Drum Song (1961) Flower Drum Song is a 1961 film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway play of the same title. This adaptation tells the story of a Chinese woman emigrating to the U.S. and her subsequent arranged marriage. This movie featured the first majority Asian cast in Hollywood cinema, setting a precedent for the following The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians to have a majority Asian casting. It became the first major Hollywood feature film to have a majority Asian cast in a contemporary Asian-American story.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's has been criticized for its portrayal of the character Mr. Yunioshi, Holly's bucktoothed, stereotyped Japanese neighbor. Mickey Rooney wore makeup to change his features to a caricatured approximation of a Japanese person. In the 45th-anniversary-edition DVD release, producer Richard Shepherd repeatedly apologizes, saying, "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie".Breakfast at Tiffany's: The Making of a Classic Director Blake Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it ... and I would give anything to be able to recast it, but it's there, and onward and upward". In a 2008 interview about the film, 87-year-old Rooney said he was heartbroken about the criticism and that he had never received any complaints about his portrayal of the character.
Sixteen Candles The 1984 American film Sixteen Candles has been criticized for the character of Long Duk Dong. This Asian character became an "Asian American stereotype for a new generation". Long Duk Dong displayed a variety of stereotypes in the film such being socially awkward and difficult to understand, and the "lecherous but sexually inept loser". The idea of Asians being more feminine and therefore "weaker" is further exemplified through Long Duk Dong's romantic relationship with one of the characters in the film. He assumes the more feminine role while the American girl becomes the more masculine of two in the relationship.
2000s
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)