Going into this project, we expected to see a sharp contrast between the films, with the one made for his native audience portraying no stereotypes and all of the internationally-made movies portraying the American stereotypes of the Chinese. However, the opposite happened, with the Hong Kong movies showing dominant Chinese stereotypes, and the international movies, while making fun of stereotypical situations with comedy, generally had less blatantly racist moments. Yuan Shu hit on this in the article From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, stating that “Chan sometimes creates his sense of humor at the expense of women and other racial minorities”, citing several examples in the American film “Rush Hour” (Shu 9).
In the films made for his native country, racism was rampant. In one scene in “Operation Condor”, a middle-eastern man is seen selling two women as slaves, talking with one of the most stereotypical accents that I have witnessed, all while auctioning with the currency of camels. Later, another middle easterner parted with a small machine gun for a scant couple of dollars, claiming that it was a “very good deal” and running away happily with the money. It portrayed the middle-easterners as poor savages that are not fit for an international existence.
The camel auction scene starts at 2:30 in this movie.
No race was spared as well, with African-American being portrayed as 'thugs' and thieves within Rumble in the Bronx. Throughout this movie, a black person is rarely seen, and one the most memorable scenes shows them doing drugs in a trailer town. This is only second to earlier, when it shows a black male in a crowd of white citizens running away from the police with stolen goods under his arm.
White people are the villain in every one of his movies, usually in the form of a British government official residing in Hong Kong. All of them usually look intimidating in some manner and are purely evil, stealing the heritage of the Chinese people for personal profit. Corruption is a main theme throughout his movie for any white person, sometimes intentionally, many times as an inadvertent action.
A blogger by the pen name of Atlasien had a very interesting post about the legacy of the white actor David Carradine in the context stereotypes that he create for the genre. In his breakout role as the star of the TV
show Kung Fu, Carradine played an Asian character, disregarding his actual race. This role went on for many years, creating a lot of the stereotypes that we know today for the kung fu genre.
The blogger, Atlasien, is a person of Asian descent, offering that information up quite readily as they talked about how insulting Carradine's portrayal of another race was. This is expanded to the other ventures that Carradine has undertaken, from Kill Bill, to Yellow Book commercials.
One very interesting point that is brought up within this blog is the idea that Carradine was portraying a race as a whole without the obligation to stand up for it. If one looks at actors such as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, they had an obligation to their heritage to show it equitably and create a good reputation for it. Carradine did not and Atlasien points this out, saying that “he had an important and highly visible role in a vicious feedback loop”, one that was readily ignored. This is a strong point of contention that I would agree with, as racism is the most easily pushed in the form of stereotypes portrayed by 'native' actors or actresses, people who seem like they have some sort of authority on the topic, and as Carradine played an Asian character kung fu role for almost five years within the US.
Shu, Yuan "From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan." Journal of Popular Film & Television 31.2 (2003): 50-59. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2009.
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