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Asian Stereotypes in Cinema Explored by Enlightening Expose
Unrated Running time: 89 minutes Studio: Deep Focus Productions
Film Review by Kam Williams Excellent (4 stars) Asians have been portrayed just as unfairly as blacks by filmmakers, and also right from the inception of the movie industry. While many might think of D.W. Griffith's ’The Birth of a Nation’ (1915) as the starting point of the dissemination of such racist images, the Chinese had by then already been smeared by an earlier silent picture entitled ’Massacre of the Christians by the Chinese’ (1900). Over the intervening years, Asians have been generally presented in a very limited fashion in accordance with several recognizable stereotypes popularized and perpetuated by Hollywood. The females tend to be very deferential and sexually available for white men, who they adore and place upon pedestals. Meanwhile, their males are shown to be either desexualized and submissive, or as dangerous and demonic, if they’re at all assertive.
He is assisted in this endeavor by both damning film footage and by the revealing reflections of luminaries like author Amy Tan, directors Ang Lee, Justin Lin and Wayne Wang, actors Nancy Kwan, James Hong and Joan Chen, and academic Stephen Gong. Mr. Going points out the movies are more than entertainment, for the have the potential to damage with the images they create. Others speak about growing up hating themselves because of the way they were marginalized by the media. It is important to note in this regard, that in the early days many of the most famous Asian roles, such as Fu Manchu, Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan, were played in ’yellow-face’ by whites. So, you had Caucasian thespians totally misrepresenting a culture by speaking in an insulting, monosyllabic, pidgin English dialect that suggested they were capable of no deeper reasoning than your average fortune cookie.
Related Links http://www.deepfocusproductions.com
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Hollywood
Chinese
The
history of systematic cinematic mistreatment of
yellow-skinned people is carefully recounted in Hollywood
Chinese, an enlightening, encyclopedic expose’ directed by
Arthur Dong. Carefully chronicling the screen
characterizations of Asians over the past century, decade by
decade, Dong shows how harmful and widespread the fallout
from these movies has been. 
The
problem is that when Hollywood was finally ready to hire
Asians to play themselves in lead roles, the industry still
demanded that they mimic the previously-established
prevailing archetypes. Thus, it is no surprise to hear one
actress recount here how she had to depend on an acting
coach to learn the unfamiliar mannerisms of the
one-dimensional, cinematic version of the Chinese, and how
to speak ’Chinglish.’
The
bulk of the interviewees regret that Asians, until
relatively recently, never had the opportunity to tell their
own stories. Consequently, they fear that they might never
be seen as complex human beings with a full range of fears,
feelings and emotions. Sadly, the simplistic message still
delivered by Hollywood is that the West is masculine, and
the Orient is feminine, almost as if the East wants to be
dominated. An eye-opening documentary delineating how motion
pictures have negatively impacted the Asian community, and
how they are like to continue to effect impressionable young
minds for generations to come.