Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 72
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Popular Culture Review
descry the necessity not so much to “validate the culture and state of which” Asian
American writers are “a part,” but to problematize the cultural, historical, social,
and political configuration of the state they are associated with.
Hollywood has been notorious in mis(sing)-representing Asian and Asian
American experience and cultures. From silent movies such as Chinese Rubber
necks (1903), The Yellow Peril (1908), and What Ho the Cook (1921), to the Charlie
Chan and Fu Manchu series, Hollywood’s portrayal of Asian Americans and the
Asian American community has always been driven by social and political condi
tions rather than by the desire for artistic and authentic representation. In the
“Introduction” to the anthology, Charlie Chan Is Dead, Filipino American author
and critic Jessica Hagedom recalls cinematic images which populated Hollywood
movies until the 1970s:
The slit-eyed, bucktooth Jap thrusting his bayonet, thirsty for blood.
The inscrutable, wily Chinese detective with his taped eyelids and
wispy mustache. The childlike, indolent Filipino houseboy. Al
ways giggling. Bowing and scraping. Eager to please, but un
trustworthy. The sexless, hairless Asian male. The servile, over
sexed Asian female. The Geisha. The sultry, sarong-clad. South
seas maiden. The serpentine, cunning Dragon Lady. Mysterious
and evil, eager to please, (xxii)
In recent years, the portrayal of the Asian American experience in film
has undergone some changes. Besides movies written, made, and produced by
Asian American writers and directors such as Eat a Bowl o f Tea, Dim Sum, and
Picture Bride, some mainstream movies such as Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story,
Golden Gate^ and Heaven and Earth^ have demonstrated their sensitivity to issues
related to Asian and Asian American cultures. There are, however, also images
which have now evolved into subtle stereotypes, as Jessica Hagedom observes:
There’s the greedy, c \ q \ qv Japanese Businessman, ready to buy up
New York City and all the Van Goghs in the world. There’s the
Ultimate Nerd, the model minority Asian American student, ex
celling in math and computer science, obsessed with work, work,
work....There’s The Lover, the pathetic Chinese millionaire boytoy completely dominated by his impoverished, adolescent, blondie
waif dominatrix in both Marguerite Duras’ popular novel and the
recent film version. (Charlie Chan Is Dead xxii-xxiii).