"Yellowface" in movies: a survey of American academic collections

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate if collection developers in American academic libraries have added predominantly "yellowface" movies to their collections, or have actively sought out movies created and acted by Asian and Asian Americans, to balance out their libraries' collections. Design/methodology/approach - In total, ten acknowledged "yellowface" movies and ten critically acclaimed Asian and Asian American movies were chosen. The collections of 157 academic libraries throughout the entire USA were then surveyed, including geographical areas that have had very few Asians or Asian Americans in their populations throughout their histories. Findings - The results show that neither "yellowface" movies nor Asian and Asian American movies are overtly dominant in the collections of American academic librarians, and one can conclude that the collection developers actively sought to find a balance between movies in both categories, no matter the geographical locations of their libraries. Social implications - No matter how unsavory is our racist past, representations of past bigotry and discrimination should be available for scholars of history, cultural studies, and sociology. However, interpretations of Asians defined with this jaundiced eye must be balanced with movies of Asians and Asian Americans defining themselves. Originality/value - The area of Asian and Asian American movies is rather small and arcane, yet the results of this survey show that there are no academic areas too small or narrow that do not demand the attention of a knowledgeable collection developer.

A jaundiced history

The early history of American movies made stars of dramatic and comedic performers. Popular on the silent, silver screen were such well-known people as Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. Yet few remember an actor named Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese actor who in the 1910s and 1920s was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, mostly for his roles as a romantic leading man. By the 1930s, he was forgotten as Asian men were no longer considered "proper" romantic leads. Asian women were also early leads in the movies. Chinese American Anna May Wong was a popular actress and "international fashion icon" in the 1920s, however, very quickly she was stereotyped as either the "evil Dragon lady" or the "demure, obedient daughter" and found few other positive roles.

As Asians began disappearing from movies in the 1930s, new "Asian" characters began appearing. The two most popular were Charlie Chan, a Chinese Detective who solved murder mysteries with "Oriental, Confucian wisdom" - a brilliant man who spoke of himself in the third person and who never mastered the use of English articles and pronouns. The other was Doctor Fu Manchu, an also brilliant, yet psychopathological villain bent on world domination. Charlie Chan was a creation of Earl Derr Biggers, and Doctor Fu Manchu, of Sax Rohmer. There have been over 50 major Charlie Chan movies and ten Doctor Fu Manchu movies created by major Hollywood studios, and the characters were never portrayed by Asians but were portrayed by Caucasians in "yellowface" makeup.

Many famous Hollywood stars played roles in "yellowface" including Myrna Loy, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Peter Lorrie, Paul Muni, Louise Rainer, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Alec Guiness, Jennifer Jones, Curt Jurgens, Marlon Brando, Ricardo Montalban, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Mickey Rooney, Tony Randall, Peter Sellers, John Gielgud, David Carradine, Max von Sydow, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce, and Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, Roland Winter, Ross Martin, Peter Ustinov as Charlie Chan, and Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Warner Oland as Doctor Fu Manchu[1] .

During the latter part of the twentieth century, blatant occurrences of "yellowface" are rare, however they are appearing in small roles as secondary characters. Actors Joel Grey, Rob Schneider, Christopher Walken, and Eddie Murphy have played Asians, mainly to self-parodying, comic effect[2] . A recent disturbing trend is the usurping of established comics or cartoons with Asian or Inuit people and creating live-action movies starring Caucasians in "yellowface." The most recent live-action movie with Caucasian actors portraying Asians and Inuits is The Last Airbender , previously titled Avatar: The Last Airbender , a Paramount/Nickelodeon cartoon.

The negative effects of "yellowface" in movies go beyond giving Caucasians acting roles that should be going to Asians. It goes beyond the taping of the eyes, the buckteeth prosthetics, and the phony sing-song accents, the broken English for comic or dramatic effect. "Yellowface," like the word "Oriental," signifies the creation of a human being or race of people out of the impressions of non-Asians. In Hollywood of the twentieth century, the majority of the writers, directors, and producers were Caucasians, and when movies were created, it was these people's ideas of what Asians were, what Asians looked like, how Asians spoke, what social roles Asians held, what were their beliefs, faults, that were portrayed on the screen. Whenever one group of people has the power to totally create another group of people, the portrayals were often not flattering, stereotypic, narrow and false.

New voices

The battle for civil rights was one of the most predominant American social movements in the 1960s. An effect of this movement was an emphasis in the performing arts, including movies, for people who had been underrepresented or falsely represented in the visual media of the past. They began writing, directing, acting, and creating their own movies, staking out their own territories and telling their own stories on the screen. Many film critics and historians believe this phase of Asian American movies began with the small art film Chan is Missing (1982) directed by Wayne Wang, and over the last 30 years, movies such as Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989) and the Joy Luck Club (1993) have slowly added to the growing list of movies by and about Asians and Asian America. So far, there have been very few Asian or Asian American actors who have established themselves as undeniable, bankable, Hollywood stars. Most of them appear as supporting characters in movies and television shows.

Literature review

Movies by and about ethnic minorities have been amply covered by academic presses. There are books and articles about African and African Americans in films ([10] Lee and Russell, 1988; [11] Leonard, 2006; [16] Schmidt, 1996; [19] Tcheuyap, 2011) and their film archives ([2] Beinart, 1984; [3] Chifamba, 1999; [8] Jackson-Brown, 1994; [20] Threatt, 1998), Asians and Asian Americans ([5] Higashi, 1998; [21] Tobias, 2006; [22] Vick, 1997) and their film archives ([24] Zimmerman, 2010), and Hispanic and Latino Americans ([1] Baugh, 2012; [9] Keller, 1997; [14] Ranucci and Feldman, 1998; [18] Shaw, 2003), and East Asian Indian ([13] Rajadhyaksha, 1999). However, these are mostly guides, encyclopedias, historical overviews, handbooks, and literary criticism with film bibliographies, and they do not directly address the needs of the academic collection managers on how to evaluate and build film collections on ethnic minorities. In the scholarly literature, there is a paucity of articles that directly aid the collection managers in their evaluations of ethnic cinema collections. There are no direct guides pertaining to Asians and Hispanics and Latinos. Guiding collection building articles on Africans and African Americans films fare a little better, but the amount is also paltry. Higgins ([6] Higgins, 2007) has written an article related to building and evaluating a cinema collection pertaining to Afro-Latinos, and Schomberg and Bergman ([17] Schomberg and Bergman, 2009) directs the collection manager on how to build a film collection on Sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this article is to add to the small amount of professional materials concerning collection development of Asian and Asian American cinema in particular and on ethnic minorities in general.

Design/methodology/approach

The purpose of this survey is to see if collection managers in American academic libraries are adding movies written, directed, produced, and created by Asians and Asian Americans in quantities equal to the "yellowface" movies of the past century. If the number and amount of "yellowface" movies outnumber the movies created, directed, and acted in by Asians and Asian Americans, these facts will make collection managers aware of an area that deserves their attention.

For this study, a movie is defined as a film telling a story over approximately 90 minutes, is completed at one showing, and is designed to be shown in a conventional movie theater. Two lists of ten movies each were created. The first list is comprised of acknowledged "yellowface" movies. The second list is comprised of ten movies by and about Asians and Asian Americans hailed by critics as positive additions to the field of American movies. Both lists were searched for their presence in 157 university libraries, and their numbers were compared for any discrepancies in number and amount.

Choosing the movies

The lists of "yellowface" movies were created by surveying various information sources that focuses on the "Orientalism" found in movies. Chosen as "yellowface" movie sources for this study were from [12] Racebending.com (2009), and articles authored by Philip W. Chung ([4] Chung, 2007), Yayoi Lena Winfrey ([23] Winfrey, 2011), and Robert B. Ito ([7] Ito, 1997).

The ten "yellowface" movies or movie series included in this survey are:

Charlie Chan movies (1931-1981).

Doctor Fu Manchu movies (1923-1969).

The Good Earth (1937).

Dragon Seed (1944).

The Conqueror (1956).

Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).

Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958).

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).

Passage to India (1984).

The Last Airbender (2010).

Three movies or movie series (The Doctor Fu Manchu movies, Dragon Seed and Inn of the Sixth Happiness ) were named by two sources; four movies or movie series (the Charlie Chan movies, The Good Earth , Breakfast at Tiffany's , and Teahouse of the August Moon ) were named by three sources; one movie (The Conqueror ) was named by all four sources. The movies Passage to India and the Last Airbender were added to this list as examples of recent incidences of "yellowface" in movies.

The presence of any of the many Charlie Chan movies and the Doctor Fu Manchu in a university collection has a count of one. Excluded in this count was any of the short movie series, which were created to appear sequentially over a period of time, and any movie created from the compiling of television shows.

Choosing ten Asian and Asian American movies that are representative of a post-"yellowface" Hollywood was more difficult. There was no "best of ... " list or web site that had this information. To help in the creation of such a list, criteria were established to choose ten movies or movie series.

- the movie has to be written or co-written by an Asian or Asian American; or

- the movie has to be directed and or produced by an Asian or Asian American; or

- the movie has to be acted by Asians or Asian Americans as fully-developed characters; and

- the movie had to attain a noted level of critical acknowledgement signified by being nominated or won awards, or was highly-rated by critics on the website "Rotten Tomatoes" ([15] Rotten Tomatoes, n.d.).

The ten Asian and Asian American movies included in this survey are:

Year of the Dragon (TV - Great Performances 1975). Written by Frank Chin. Starring George Takei and Pat Suzuki. No rating.

Chan is Missing (1982). Written by Issac Cronin and Wayne Wang. Directed by Wayne Wang. Inducted in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry 1995. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 100 percent.

Better Luck Tomorrow (1992). Written by Ernesto Foronda, Justin Li, and Fabian Marquez. Directed by Justin Li. Grand Jury Prize Nominee - Sundance Film Festival. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 80 percent.

The Wedding Banquet (1993). Written by Ang Lee, Neil Peng, and James Schamus. Directed by Ang Lee. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 94 percent.

Joy Luck Club (1993). Written by Amy Tan and Ross Bass. Directed by Wayne Wang. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 84 percent.

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Written by Ang Lee, James Schamus, Wang Hui-Ling. Directed by Ang Lee. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 94 percent.

I'm the One That I Want (2000). Film of one-woman show by Margaret Cho. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 59 percent.

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (2004). Starring John Cho and Kal Penn. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 75 percent.

The Motel (2005). Written and directed by Michael Kang. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating of 87 percent.

The Namesake (2006). Written by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sooni Tarapprevala. Directed by Mira Nair. Nominated for Gotham 2007 award and Independence Spirit award 2007. Rotten tomatoes critics rating of 85 percent.

Caveats of this methodology

The purpose of this survey is to give librarians, especially collection managers responsible for selecting films, cinema, and movies, an overview of their past and present decisions. However, certain caveats must be acknowledged, and the numbers revealed can be examined with consideration to these possible influences. Eight of the ten "yellowface" movie or movie series were released on or before 1981, allowing more time for them to be added to the collections of academic libraries. Many of these movies were financially successful and were widely-known to the public and the collection managers. "Yellowface" characters exists in many other Hollywood movies, however, due to the poor to mediocre financial performances of those movies, they have faded from the public view and have a lesser chance of being added to an academic library collection.

The ten Asian and Asian American movies have a similar bias. Except for the Year of the Dragon , first shown on American Public Television in 1975, all the movies were released since 1982 and only two (Joy Luck Club and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle ) can be considered financial successes, albeit with very moderate revenues compared to "Hollywood blockbusters" such as Titanic or Avatar . The other eight movies had limited releases, shorter runs, resulting in smaller net revenues. Such movies suffer from obscurity, can quickly fade from the view of the public, and go unnoticed by the academic collection manager and not added to their collections. This may result in a smaller acquisition rate than the ten movies or movie series previously stated with "yellowface" characters.

Choosing the university libraries

This study involves 157 American academic libraries. They are major United States universities offering advanced degrees and having at least a student population of ten thousand. A total of 37 are in the western USA, 36 are in the midwestern USA, 42 are in the eastern USA, and 42 are in the southern USA[3] . Public universities totaled 116 and private universities totaled 41. If a university has one major campus and several smaller, satellite campuses with their own libraries, all the libraries were searched as one university library. If a university system has many large campuses each, which offer advanced degrees and have student populations over 10,000, they were counted individually. Of the universities 35 have degree-granting Asian American Studies programs or degree-granting Asian American programs in other academic departments. Four-year colleges, two-year technical, junior and community colleges were excluded from this study due to their limited acquisitions budgets in comparison to major universities.

Findings

Statistical analysis of the following numbers would prove futile due to the subjective nature of how these 20 movies were chosen. These 20 movies are not a proper sampling of all "yellowface" movies or other Asian or Asian American movies, and other lists with different movies would produce different numbers. The value of this study is in showing if collection managers are adding movies created, directed, and acted by Asians and Asian Americans in rates equal or greater than librarians have added "yellowface" movies in the recent past.

An examination of the presence or absence of these 20 movies in the collections of 157 American academic libraries shows that there is not a significance amount of the movies in one category over the other. Movies of both types are adequately available for study by scholars.

Of the 157 university libraries surveyed, 35 of the universities have degree-granting Asian American Studies programs or degree-granting Asian American programs in other academic departments. The libraries of universities with established programs in Asian American Studies show a percentage increase in the amount of all twenty movies over the counts in all university libraries. This could be an indication that collection managers for movies or subject areas at these libraries are aware of the pedagogical nature of both "yellowface" movies and movies by Asian and Asian Americans, both for their historical and sociological natures. The results are shown in Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].

Collection Managers in different geographical regions in the USA, due to cultural or historical leanings, could show bias in their choices. Table II [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] breaks down the statistics into four major geographical areas of the USA.

Table II [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] shows that there are no geographical areas in the USA that have not actively collected "yellowface" movie in the past and Asian and Asian American-created movies in the present.

Conclusions

The days are fading when "yellowface" was not only accepted but expected in movies showing "Orientals." Rare are the incidences when an actor, well-known or otherwise, in the twenty-first century would tape their eyes and yellow tint their faces to seriously portray an Asian. As these "yellowface" movies become sparser, and movies written, created, and directed and acted by Asians and Asian Americans enter the world movie market in larger numbers, the number and amount of these Asian and Asian American movies will increase. This study indicates that collection managers both in the recent past and in the present are actively offering the university community rich and balanced collections.

AsianWeek

Received 27 July 2012Revised 5 October 2012Accepted 5 October 2012

Footnote

1. Myrna Loy as Fa Lo See in the Mask of Fu Manchu (1932); Edward G. Robinson as Wong Low Get and Loretta Young as Sun Toya San in The Hatchet Man (1932), Peter Lorrie as Kentaro Moto, a Japanese Detective, in the eight Mr Moto movies (1937-1939), Paul Muni as Wang Lung and Louise Rainer as O-Lan, Chinese peasants, in The Good Earth (1937), Katherine Hepburn as Jade Tan in Dragon Seed (1944), John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956), Anthony Quinn as Chen To in China Sky (1945) and Auda ibu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Alec Guiness as Koichi Asano in A Majority of One (1962) and Professor Godbole, Hindu Mystic, in Passage to India (1984), Jennifer Jones as Han Suyin in Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1955), Curt Jurgens in Chinese Colonel Lin in Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Marlon Brando as Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), Yul Brynner as King Mongkut of Siam and Rita Moreno as his daughter Tuptim in The King and I (1956), Ricardo Montalban as Nakamura, the Kabuki actor in Sayonara (1957), Tokura, a Japanese industrialist, in Hawaii Five-O's episode Samurai (1968), and as Khan Noonien Singh in the Star Trek episode Botany Bay (1967) and the movie Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan (1982), Mickey Rooney as Photographer Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Tony Randall as Dr Lao in 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964), Peter Sellers as Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party (1968), John Gielgud as Chang in Lost Horizons (1973), David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in the television series Kung Fu (1972-1975), Max von Sydow as Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980), Antonio Banderas as Ahmad ibn Fadlan in The 13^th Warrior (1997), Jonathan Pryce as Tran Van Dinh in the various stage productions of Miss Saigon . Warner Oland acted in 16 Charlie Chan movies, Sidney Toler in twenty-two Charlie Chan movies, Roland Winter acted in six Charlie Chan movies, and Ross Martin and Peter Ustinov acted in one Charlie Chan movie each. Boris Karloff acted in one Doctor Fu Manchu movie, Christopher Lee acted in five Doctor Fu Manchu movies, and Warner Oland acted in four Doctor Fu Manchu movies.

2. Joey Grey as Chiun in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), Rob Schneider as an unnamed Asian Minister in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2005), Christopher Walken as Feng in Balls of Fury (2007), Eddie Murphy as Mr Wong in Norbit (2007).

3. For this study, the following categories are used to include states in the United States into gross geographical units. The western states includes Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming. The midwestern states includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan. The eastern states includes Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine. The southern states includes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia.

References

1. Baugh, S.L. (2012), Latino American Cinema: An Encyclopedia of Movies, Stars, Concepts, and Trends, Greenwood, Santa Barbara, CA.

2. Beinart, W. (1984), "Films in the National Archives of Malawi: a preliminary report", MALA Bulletin, Vol. 4 No. 1.

3. Chifamba, S.E. (1999), "The National Archives of Zimbabwe's Audiovisual Archives Collection", IASA Journal, Vol. 12, January, pp. 52-7.

4. Chung, P.W. (2007), "The 25 most infamous yellow face film performances", , available at: www.asianweek.com/2007/11/28/the-25-most-infamous-yellow-face-film-performances-part-1/ (accessed 27 April 2012).

5. Higashi, F. (1998), "The library in Asian films: a film library and libraries in film", Toshokan Zasshi, Vol. 92 No. 2, pp. 100-1.

6. Higgins, S.M. (2007), "Afro-Latinos: an annotated guide for collection building", Reference & User Services Quarterly, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 10-15.

7. Ito, R.B. (1997), "A certain slant: a brief history of hollywood yellowface", Bright Lights Film Journal, Vol. 18, March, available at: www.brightlightsfilm.com/18/18_yellow.html (accessed 27 April 2012).

8. Jackson-Brown, G. (1994), "Indiana builds three African American special collections", College and Research Libraries News, Vol. 55 No. 2, p. 75.

9. Keller, G.D. (1997), A Biographical Handbook of Hispanics and United States Films, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, Tempe, AZ.

10. Lee, E. and Russell, J.C. (1988), "Faces in the crowd: a historical look at black films", Library Journal, Vol. 113, May 15, pp. 37-42.

11. Leonard, D.J. (2006), Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT.

12. Racebending.com: media consumers for entertainment equality (2009), "Yellow face: a story in pictures", 9 December, available at: www.racebending.com/v3/background/history-of-yellowface/ (accessed 27 April 2012).

13. Rajadhyaksha, A. (1999), Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

14. Ranucci, K. and Feldman, J. (1998), A Guide to Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino Made Film and Video, Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD.

15. Rotten Tomatoes (n.d.), "A movie ratings website that tabulates the scores of movies from professional movie critics", available at: www.rottentomatoes.com/ (accessed 28-30 April and 1-3 May 2012).

16. Schmidt, N.J. (1996), "The challenges of African film bibliography: content and audience", African Research and Documentation, Vol. 72, pp. 1-8.

17. Schomberg, J. and Bergman, B. (2009), "Building a Sub-Saharan African film collection", Collection Building, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 150-4.

18. Shaw, D. (2003), Contemporary Cinema of Latin America: Ten Key Films, Continnum, New York, NY.

19. Tcheuyap, A. (2011), Postnationalist African Cinema, Manchester University Press, Manchester.

20. Threatt, M.L. (1998), "The Black Film Center/Archive: preserving black film and related materials at Indiana University-Bloomington", Library Mosaics, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 18-19.

21. Tobias, V. (2006), "Women in Chinese television and film", Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 6-8.

22. Vick, T. (1997), Asian Cinema: A Field Guide, Collins, New York, NY.

23. Winfrey, Y.L. (2011), "Yellowface: Asians on white screens. Is Charlie Chan really dead?", IMDiversity, available at: www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/arts_culture_media/archives/winfrey_yellowface_asians_hollywood.asp (accessed 27 April 2012).

24. Zimmerman, P.R. (2010), "Asian Film Archive at 5", Afterimage, Vol. 37 No. 6, p. 3.

Appendix

About the author

Glenn Norio Masuchika is an Information Literacy Librarian. He received his Master's degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley. He has been employed at major research libraries, at a small private university library and at an information center of a multinational corporation. He has published widely in many professional library and information journals, including two peer-reviewed articles this year (2012) on Asian and Asian American Studies information resources, and he is also the author of over 130 book reviews. Glenn Norio Masuchika can be contacted at: [email protected]

  

Illustration

Table I: Percentages of the movies in university libraries and universities with Asian American studies programs

  

Table II: Percentages of the movies in the university libraries in the four geographical sections of the USA