Sunday, April 24, 2005
The cold continues. In between sleeping, I read from Fresh Men, a new gay fiction anthology which is very, very good so far. And Patrick and I watched The Jade Mask on DVD. I had never seen a Charlie Chan film before—so strange. Later I read up about the controversy over its stereotyping of male Asian characters and that Charlie Chan—a ficitonal character of Chinese-Hawaiian descent—was never played by a Chinese or Chinese-Hawaiian man in the films. Instead, Caucasian men whose faces were made up to look Asian played Charlie Chan in all but 2 of the films. It was very strange to watch, but I agree with Leonard Maltin that it doesn't help to ban these films for that reason. As long as no one is promoting those films as how we should make films today, Maltin is right that these films serve an important historical record of the values of Americans at a certain time in history and that they should be continually reexamined in the context and discussion of what makes us feel differently about this film than people did in 1944 or 1994 or 2044. This "concern" is identical to the controversy which surrounded a particular poster at the swank Asian restaurant called Obachine in Seattle when I lived there in the 1990s. Some historically accurate poster artfully depicted something that offended some Asians who then accused the restaurant of furthering Asian stereotypes. I can't remember exactly what the poster depicted, but it was a beautiful piece of art, and it did indeed fit with the restaurant's luxurious decor. And I do remember wondering, why all the fuss? The restaurant didn't hire all Asian waitstaff and force them to wear coolie hats. I saw no reinforcement of Asian sterotypes at all. Somewhere in my college education I recall some student complaining about how there are no minorities depicted in Hans Christian Andersen tales. I consider myself liberal-minded, but that's just going too far. Think before you speak and act, okay, people?