Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film

308 Pages·2010·2.49 MB·English

by  Karla Rae Fuller

Hollywood Goes Oriental
contemporary approaches to film and television series
A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online
at wsupress.wayne.edu
General Editor
Barry Keith Grant
Brock University
Advisory Editors
Robert J. Burgoyne
Wayne State University
Caren J. Deming
University of Arizona
Patricia B. Erens
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Peter X. Feng
University of Delaware
Lucy Fischer
University of Pittsburgh
Frances Gateward
Ursinus College
Tom Gunning
University of Chicago
Thomas Leitch
University of Delaware
Anna McCarthy
New York University
Walter Metz
Southern Illinois University
Lisa Parks
University of California–Santa Barbara
CaucAsian Performance in American Film
Karla Rae Fuller
With a Foreword by Tom Gunning
wayne state university press detroit
© 2010 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fuller, Karla Rae, 1958–
Hollywood goes Oriental : CaucAsian performance in American film / Karla Rae Fuller ;
with a foreword by Tom Gunning.
p. cm. — (Contemporary approaches to film and television series)
Includes filmography.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8143-3467-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Asians in motion pictures. 2. Stereotypes (Social psychology) in motion pictures.
3. Ethnicity in motion pictures. 4. Minorities in the motion picture industry—United States.
5. Racism—United States—History—20th century. 6. Motion pictures—United States—
History—20th century. I. Title.
PN1995.9.A78F75 2010
791.43'652995—dc22
2010006422
Typeset by Alpha Design & Composition
Composed in Dante MT
To my daughter, Kelsie, and my mother, Gladys
No one is free until everyone is free.
This page intentionally left blank
contents
Foreword: Constructing the Alien in Hollywood’s Classical Era
tom gunning ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction: East Meets West: Performing the Oriental 1
1. Figures of the Imagination: Hollywood’s Orient/al 33
2. Masters of the Macabre: The Oriental Detective 71
3. Creatures of Evil: The Wartime Enemy 123
4. Comics and Lovers: Postwar Transitions and Interpretations 173
Conclusion: The Fading Oriental Guise? 231
Notes 247
Bibliography 259
Select Filmography 267
Extended Select Filmography 275
Index 277
This page intentionally left blank
foreword
Constructing the Alien in Hollywood’s Classical Era
In 1915 the U.S. Supreme Court in a case brought by the Mutual Film
Company against the Sate of Ohio decided that the movies as a com-
mercial business should not enjoy the First Amendment rights granted
print media and public speech. Film, the court declared, was a “business,
pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit,” not a means for
conveying information and ideas. Furthermore, film’s unique power
of visual presentation powerfully affected its audience, especially those
the court felt were most susceptible to undue influence: children,
women, and recent immigrants, all of whom attended the movies in
great numbers. Therefore, the court opined, film had a capability for
evil influence and deserved regulation. This ruling, which allowed film
censorship at least on the local level, stood until 1952, when the issue
was raised again over the banning in New York State of Roberto Ros-
sellini’s film The Miracle, which had been denounced by the Catholic
Church as blasphemous. I open this preface to Karla Fuller’s important
book with this bit of Hollywood history because the controversy over
the influence of the movies (and now, of course, television, the World
Wide Web, and the media in general) continues, both for contempo-
rary politicians and film historians. Do the movies influence people in
different ways than journalism, the novel, or theater? Is the medium
of moving pictures more powerful and, because it is more direct and
popular than the printed word, a dangerous influence? Certainly any-
thing as powerful as the movies has a possibility of being dangerous,
but the deeper question may still be to what degree do the visual and
dramatic representations that make up the movies create stereotypes
that we should struggle to overcome more intensely than other media?
And to what extent do we, as viewers, not only gather our images of