EXAMPLE OF A REASONABLE ANSWER

. All of the questions ask you to DISCUSS in big bold letters. This means don’t just state things but juxtapose statements, add to them and be critical about what has been said by others. What appears below are points that could have been raised in essay 1 on the final exam and gives some indication of how the other questions should have been handled.

Question 1.

The three groups under discussion are women, ethnic minorities and sexual minorities. The three share in common questions about the limited images that appear for these three groups. Women have a far wider range of roles in pre code days. Women were more overtly sexy, had children out of wedlock ran companies and so on. After the code that stopped and women’s roles were more restrictive. One might argue that the same was true for men. Pre code men could father children out of wedlock, but rarely were depicted as being house husbands but were always dominant. Homosexuality between men and women was more overt in pre code Hollywood, but ended for both in the time of the code.

Ethnic and especially racial minorities also were concerned about their depiction, but there is a different dimension in that there is a physical appearance which has to be considered. Asians, on the panel led by George Takei maintain that Asians are physically different from Caucasians and hence make up is needed to make Caucasians appear Asian. This is called “Yellow Face” and parallels the attempts to make Caucasions look “Black” (called “Blackface” a kind of hold over from minstral shows. In this the “racial” minorities – those that in general look physically different – are not like women. Women are not concerned by men playing women in films, but more about the lack of range of female types in the films. Asians and African Americans typically were concerned by their inability to get work. Since the character they played would be by and large immediately identifiable as someone from a different racial background, there would have to be a reason to hire and person who appeared to be from one of those groups. Hence Asians traditionally played only characters that were required to be Asian (although there are certainly some minor exceptions to this as in the Dr. Kildare series). As a result, there is a certain animosity towards hiring non-Asians to play Asians since they get so little work anyway. Leading Asian parts (like Charlie Chan) almost always went to non Asian performers even when Asian actors were available.

Although it was often argued that an Asian actor wouldn’t be a big draw for an audience, it is hard to know since it was not tried and neither Sydney Toler, Roland Winters, or Warner Oland, who all played Charlie Chan were particularly famous enough to be “draws” either.

There is a problem whoever in that Warner Oland had a Mongolian grandmother, raising the question of how Asian do you have to be? Is blood quantum a factor here? Or do you just have to look more like the stereotype?

One actor on the panel said he always wondered how this Caucasion Charlie Chan managed to have so many Chinese kids. So apparently looks matter. Yet current positions are aiming for “color blind casting” where it is perfectly reasonable to have exactly that situation.

Additional problems arise with interpretation of events. One member of the panel says that the real Chinese talk with a kind of American slang and are the comic relief. This is interpreted as “Asians who attempt to pass as Americans are funny”. Is it possible to assert that “Asians who try to lose their culture” are seen to be funny. Do people see in these things what they want to see? Do their statements tell us more about them than they do about the characters they depict.

Comments were made about behavior as well and that Sydney Toler fakes his Chinese if he tries it at all. In fact in some films he makes a stab at it. He is also criticized for bowing. Is bowing something Chinese do?

The fact that Asians don’t seem to mind Asians from other Asian cultures playing them, does this imply a bias on their part or at least a “victory” of “race” over “ethnicity”. Japanese play Chinese, Chinese play Japanese and no one complains. Scots play Americans, Germans play English and so on. IS this an argument that physical appearance is all important not behavior. Some people looking at Hispanics in films have pointed out that some Mexican stars like Ricardo Montalban were not allowed to show they were Mexican but often played parts outside of Hispanics! So being locked into an ethnicity is bad, and playing outside of it is bad. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.

Sexual minorities on the other hand have other problems. In many cases except in their sexual behavior, people from sexual minorities show no overt signs of what that sexual orientation might be. Hence it is possible for many actors who are gay or straight to play all kinds of sexual orientation. Because of the stigma generally attached to gays, many performers preferred not to play those parts for fear of the character’s sexuality being confused with the performer’s – the performer not wanted to be so identified (rightly or wrongly).

For the gay community, it would appear that the depiction of people in films as gay is more the issue. This they share with women, and less with the ethnic or racial minorities. Sexual minorities other than gay are virtually ignored in films and when they appear it is without any problem about their negativity – child molesters are not defended nor are rapists, sado masochists, people into bestiality or necrophilia. On the rare occasions when these do appear, they are generally not treated sympathetically. The decision as to whether or not a behavior is to be tolerated or not is an open question. How shifts in toleration will be impacting the films is also quite open.

One other thing of interest to note might be while the panel held that there were Asians who enjoyed Charlie Chan, no such representative voice appears on the panel. This is an example of how the selection of who what are seen can bias the material presented.

In conclusion one can indicate that there are three major interacting issues involved:

(a) Can people from one racial or background play people from another?

(b) The image of the three groups as they are portrayed in film is of concern to all of them.