History

Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star and the first Chinese American actress to gain international stardom. Wong made her first appearance in a major Hollywood film in 1922 at the age of seventeen.³ Despite her talents as an actress, Wong was diminished as an “Oriental beauty” and limited to supporting roles as the demure Lotus Blossom or calculating and cruel Dragon Lady. Hollywood deemed Wong’s race unfitting for a leading lady and she was passed over numerous times for leading Asian roles that were instead played by white actresses using yellowface. Wong’s first film was titled Toll of the Sea in which she plays a meek Chinese woman named Lotus Flower who is hopelessly devoted to her American husband. Lotus Flower never fails to wear elaborate Chinese gowns and is ultimately abandoned by her husband for a white woman, subsequently drowning herself in the sea following her husband’s departure with their child.⁴ The character of Lotus Flower embodies its eponymous trope and creates a narrative of an Asian woman who is timid, oriental, pathologically devoted, and meaningless without a white “savior” in her life. Among Wong’s most notable films was Daughter of the Dragon (1931), where she plays a scheming, murderous, beauty who kills without mercy.This character lures in a white male with her exotic features and attempts to ruthlessly murder him as he falls for her tricks and beauty, perpetuating the narratives of the dangers of the Orient. Anna May Wong was subjected to playing demeaning characters throughout her career that embodied the false Western narratives of the evil and sexual East. The characters she played and the tropes they embodied and created would continue to persist within Hollywood and shift to fit the societal narratives of their time. 

Philip Ahn was a Korean American actor who successfully launched his Hollywood career in the 1930s and continued to star in movies and television until the 70s. Throughout this time, Ahn was given little leading roles, often playing supporting roles as oriental archetypes such as the sympathetic Chinese hero or sidekick in Oriental detective films and China epics. In King of Chinatown, Ahn partnered with Anna May Wong to portray an ideal Oriental that emphasized homogeneity and compatibility. This was not only an elimination of miscegenation threats to white America, but also showcased assimilated Asian Americans that imitated the white, middle-class, heterosexual union and would be important for the later creation of the “model minority” ideal. During World War II, Ahn shifted his screen persona and began to play evil and menacing Japanese villains in response to the absence of Japanese American actors due to internment and a growing demand for cross-ethnic performers to play the Japanese “heavies” that white actors refused to play. The Korean War began a short five years after Japanese surrender and the identity of “yellow peril” enemies modified to include Chinese and North Korean communists, once again altering Ahn’s on-screen persona. With Ahn’s portrayal of various Asian caricatures came confusion about his ethnicity where he ultimately received harassment and portrayals for his villian roles as filmgoers confused them with his true identity. Ahn ultimately became the face of the quintessential Oriental to those that recognized him from film, and Hollywood seized this opportunity to orientalize him further through the use of aging makeup, traditional costumes, and a forced accent, tactics that maintain a “forever foreigner” ideology despite complete American background of the Asian actors. Philip Ahn is indicative of not only the few caricatures Asian Americans were subjected to play, but how historical events and societal perspective can alter the portrayals within Hollywood cinema.⁵ 

Fu Manchu was a creation of Sax Rohmer, who perceived the Chinese and Chinatown as a “faceless, exotic and mysterious evil”⁶, a traditional Western prejudice that was reinforced by the Boxer Rebellion. Hollywood took hold of the character of Fu Manchu and portrayed him for the first time in 1929 in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu starring Warner Oland. The character of Dr. Fu Manchu became increasingly popular as it reaffirmed the imagined threat that Asians and Eastern nations posed to the Western world order; the character also became linked to the actual historical figure of Genghis Khan and created a balance between a menacing creature of mythic proportions and a real menace to society.⁷ The character of Fu Manchu operated within the white homeland, primarily in the grimy enclaves of Chinatown, and carried and deep hatred and envy of the west. The character itself battled white counterparts, creating a narrative of the Asian challenge and threat to whiteness. The white hero would inevitably come out on top to attest to white supremacy and European superiority. One of the key features of this character was the villian’s ability to be a master of disguise, furthering a prejudice that no matter how much Asian Americans would claim to be integrated into society, they would never truly accept Western ways and would always pose as a deviant, ready to commit criminal behavior. Alongside the character Fu Manchu was his daughter who was presented as cunning and equally slimy with a taste for white men. This furthered a villian trope that crossed gender boundaries and presented Asians as not only a physical, but a sexual threat to Western society.⁸ Although Yellow Peril rhetoric began to subside as the United States and China became allies in the 1930s, the overall structure of the character would remain in films and make frequent appearances or see likenesses as the United states found conflict with other Asian nations. 

In 1919, author Earl Derr Biggers was inspired to write about a Chinese detective while in Hawaii and realized his first Charlie Chan novel in 1925. This novel and subsequent others were a relative success, but Hollywood was hesitant to portray an Asian character that was the good guy rather than the villian, sidekick, or sexual object. In 1931, the portrayal of the sympathetic Charlie Chan became popular with the release of Charlie Chan Carries On starring Warner Oland. This success created the Oriental detective that negotiated a complex set of traits, finding a balance between the evil Orient and the hero of the Western world. The character came with elements that could be potentially sinister such as the master-of-disguise ability that was possessed by the character of Dr. Fu Manchu. This was balanced with accomplishments and intelligence with the character often spewing wise statements beginning with the problematic phrasing of “Confucious say…”⁹ Although this character portrayed Asians in a more positive light, the Oriental nature persisted and created a new stereotype of an Asian man who was inferior to his white counterparts with minimal masculinity, a passive nature, and a broken English speech pattern. Another hallmark of the character was his explicit association with the United States and/or Europe. This distinguished Charlie Chan from the villainous Asians and created an ideology that the institutions of Western authority could create a heroic character that non-Western nations were incapable of creating.¹⁰ 

Yellowface refers to a non-Asian actor portraying an Asian character with the use of makeup, prosthetics, and costumes to give them “Asian features” that would often include exaggerated stereotypes, such as extremely slanted eyes, large buck teeth, and flat noses. White actors would wear overly “Oriental” costumes that made them easily identifiable as Asian characters and were made to look as sinister or as buffoonish as possible. This practice is clearly racist and problematic, but was employed in Hollywood for years with little push back from individuals outside of the Asian American community. Yellowface was common in part because interracial contact and romantic relationships were barred by legal government action and casting white actors were better-known and more relatable to audiences, generating greater revenue. Characters such as Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu were largely played by Caucasian actors in yellowface, actors such as Sidney Toler, Roland Winters, Peter Ustinov, Ross Martin, Boris Karloff, and Warner Oland. The characteristics embodied through yellowface were founded upon features that merely opposed Western qualities and values, and was often a tactic to belittle Asians. These portrayals reproduced the stereotypes that were existent in society and reinforced nativism and xenophobia. When yellowface was found to be increasingly problematic, Hollywood instead employed the tactic of whitewashing, which involves the complete replacement of an Asian character with a white one or simply a white actor under an Asian name (examples include Ghost in the Shell and Aloha).¹¹