erik lundegaard

Monday May 30, 2022

Movie Review: Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood (2019)

WARNING: SPOILERS

The American title is the long thing above. The French title is “L’ennemi japonais a Hollywood.” And therein lies the problem.

Halfway through, this French-made documentary turns away from the history of white actors playing Asians (which is why I was watching) and focuses on U.S. government propaganda against the Japanese during World War II—along with the internment of Japanese-Americans (a whole other topic). If you don’t know much about either, I guess this can serve as your primer. But if you wanted a deep dive into the history of yellowface, you’re going to be disappointed.

The dive is shallow: Muni and Rainer in “The Good Earth,” one of the Charlie Chans, one of the Fu Manchus (Hammer, not Hollywood), Hepburn in “Dragon Seed,” Brando in “Teahouse of the August Moon,” John Wayne in “The Conqueror,” and of course Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Then 2010s whitewashing: Tilda Swinton in “Doctor Strange” and Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell.” Thanks for coming.

The doc raises Anna May Wong to dismiss her. It mentions the popularity of Sessue Hayakawa in “The Cheat” from 1915 but not his long and winding career, which reached its apogee, you could say, with an Oscar nomination for playing Col. Saito in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” in 1957.

I would’ve delved into the why of things. Where did Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan come from? Why did Caucasian actors play Chan while his son was invariably played by Chinese-American actors like Keye Luke? How did Chinese-American actors feel about playing Japanese, and vice-versa? Who broke through? Who survived? How?

Get into the gender politics of it. Asian men are depicted as rapacious or comic foils; Asian women as subservient or dragon ladies. Mention how, as bad as Hollywood did with race, other aspects of the culture were often worse.

The filmmakers are French sisters, Clara and Julia Kuperberg, who make about two movie-related documentaries a year, and they skimp a bit on examples of yellowface. Here’s a few off the top of my head: Peter Lorre and Loretta Young in “Hatchet Man,” Charles Boyer in “Shanghai,” Gale Sondergaard in “The Letter,” Gene Tierney in “China Girl.” There are so many, it’s probably easier to enumerate which Hollywood stars didn’t go yellowface rather than which did. And they really missed out by not including Philip Ahn’s great speech in “Something to Sing About” about how his character tried to make a living as an actor in Hollywood and never got the chance. It’s from a Poverty Row studio, but it indicates that people knew. Even in 1937, people knew.

We also don’t get much from the 1960s to today. No “Kung Fu,” for example. Nothing on how Jackie Chan was an international superstar and when he came to Hollywood they made him a Japanese race-car driver and had him fight on sand.

This subject still deserves a better documentary.

Posted at 10:57 AM on Monday May 30, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 2019  
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