The Yellow Peril
American films have a long history of portraying minorities in troubling ways, from Hispanics, to African Americans and Native Americans. But the group whose screen portrayals are particularly interesting are Asians. In broad terms the males have been typically portrayed as intelligent, but sneaky and untrustworthy. And the women are usually treated as exotic, desirable and attractive but equally difficult to trust.
This template goes back to the early days of cinema when the movie serials were the big success story of the time and Pearl White was perhaps the first Queen of the Screen. Her popular serial The New Exploits of Elaine featured an Asian master villain, Wu Fang, who was notable for being dressed in ‘traditional’ oriental attire. Wu Fang continued to re-appear in Pearl White serials until 1919, often rising from the grave to do so, and audiences continued loving to hate him.
It might seem counter-intuitive but it was also Madame Butterfly which helped set the tone for Asian female portrayals in film. While the 1898 short story, the 1904 Puccini opera and the 1915 film starring Mary Pickford all the tell the story of a young Japanese woman repeatedly wronged until she suicides, at its core is a Western fascination with the Geisha and the Japanese woman as exotic fantasy.
This was something Anna May Wong experienced first hand. Though internationally known by 1924, she was limited to stereotypical film roles and fled Hollywood for Europe in 1928. She fared little better on the continent appearing in Piccadilly (1929) as an exotic dancer who has powerful men smitten. She even appears on the movie’s posters topless.
The other layer laid over Asian representation in film was the changing political climate. In the early 20th Century the world was fascinated with Asia, and with Japan in particular. From the late 19th Century Japan was heavily involved in international diplomacy and engagement. During the First World War they fought with the British against the Germans but also invaded China having already taken control of Korea in 1910. These expansionist ambitions would be even more evident with the onset of the Second World War.
Those events go some way to explaining onscreen portrayals of Asian men as smart but sneaky as well as their subsequent evolution into outright evil megalomaniacs intent on world domination. It also explains why certain characters seemed to change nationalities.
Kato, Britt Reid’s sidekick in the The Green Hornet radio and movie serials, started out as Japanese before becoming Korean and later Phillipino. Keye Luke, the actor who played Kato in the movie serial, was actually Taiwanese while Bruce Lee who played Kato in the short lived TV series was a Hong Kong-American.
Given all the ambiguity and confusion that Hollywood created, they are at least partly responsible for some people’s inability to distinguish between Asian nationalities.
When it comes to real influence, you have to bring an audience back over and over again. While a single film like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) or The Room (2003) can inspire people to repeatedly return to the cinema, as well as to build a sub-culture around them, serials, series and franchises more commonly achieve this kind of influence. Trekkies, Star Wars Obsessives and Marvel Cinematic Universe Devotees speak a language I don’t understand (and don’t really want to) and appear to subscribe to an alternate world view…. to each his own.
And while its a smaller cohort, the same could be said of those devoted to movie series (the pre-cursor to the franchises). One of the longest running series was the one that featured Dr. Fu Manchu, an Asian supervillain who first featured in the novels of English author Sax Rohmer. Beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years his stories were translated to the cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 100 years. Fu Manchu became an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, also spawning the Fu Manchu moustache, a favourite of many other villains.
Dr Fu Manchu first appeared on the big screen in a series of 15 short silent British films all running about 20 minutes each. They starred Harry Agar Lyons, beginning with The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu (1923) series, with Lyons returning the following year for eight more short films in The Further Mysteries of Dr Fu Manchu series.
Fu Manchu’s American film debut came in the early Paramount talkie The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) starring Swedish-American actor Warner Oland. Oland would soon be better known for his portrayal of Charlie Chan, though he returned for the aptly named The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930) and Daughter of the Dragon (1931) which featured Anna May Wong. Dr Fu Manchu also appeared in the omnibus film Paramount on Parade in which he confronts well known detectives Philo Vance and Sherlock Holmes.
The film series’ move to MGM would lead to the most controversial installment… The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Boris Karloff took on the central role, ably supported by Myrna Loy who at the time had been typecast in exotic roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent.
The film’s controversies included:
Fu Manchu’s control over hordes of Asians who he plans to lead into battle against the West
Commands like ‘Conquer and Breed! Kill the White Man and take his Women!’
Suggestions that Fu Manchu’s had an incestuous relationship with his equally evil daughter Fao Lo See (Myrna Loy)
Fao Lo See’s frenzied cheering as she watches a white man being whipped, and her subsequent attempts to take sexual advantage of him as he lies unconscious
At the time of its release the Chinese government complained about its racist and offensive content.
In 1940 Republic made a 15 episode serial titled Drums of Fu Manchu.
A few years later the Mexican film industry picked up the series, making six films featuring Fu Manchu. In the 1960s the British put Christopher Lee to work as the evil Dr in between his gigs as Dracula, and Peter Sellars put a comic spin on the character in The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu in 1980.
And finally, the great popular culture aggregator Quentin Tarantino found a place for Fu Manchu (Nicholas Cage) in Grindhouse (2007).
Given the current international tension with China, it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw Fu Manchu return. But I seriously hope he doesn’t.