Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film

Introduction: East Meets West: Performing the Oriental

Introduction East Meets West Performing the Oriental The audience is watching a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made into a symbol for the whole Orient. . . . The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances , not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original. —Edward W. Said, Orientalism The most well known Oriental figures on the Hollywood screen were almost always non-Asian actors made up to look Asian. From the film industry’s earliest days, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians have been impersonated by performers of other ethnic groups. Notably, the Asian depictions have produced wellknown iconic figures still familiar to the present day such as Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan. Still, distinctions between portrayals of Asian roles by Caucasian actors and by Asian actors are frequently collapsed by scholars , critics, and viewers in order to create a generalized Asian typology. Implicit in the practice of Asian impersonation by Caucasian actors in Hollywood is the assumption that the Caucasian face provides the introduction 2 physically normative standard onto which an ethnic inscription can take place. The Oriental performance by the non-Asian actor is of particular usefulness to film scholars focusing on ethnic representation because it keenly exposes the artificial foundations in Hollywood’s depiction of race. Through the act of physical embodiment the Caucasian actor displays patently artificial and theatrical features and also offers a site for the projection of displaced desires and fears. Like any masquerade its artificiality is apparent, and yet this performance practice operates with a high degree of complexity, promoting certain qualities while effacing others. Edward Said states in the opening quote that the West has created “highly artificial” enactments of an Orient but notably asserts that a more useful approach in any critique of these fabrications lies in their deconstruction rather than their denunciation. Taking Said’s analysis further, author Robert Young suggests that the practice of Orientalism provides a vital function in the construction of a Western identity: Orientalism did not just misrepresent the Orient, but also articulated an internal dislocation within Western culture, a culture which consistently fantasizes itself as constituting some kind of integral totality, at the same time as endlessly deploring its own impending dissolution. . . . The Orient, we might say, operates as both poison and cure.1 The Orient as a Western construct has meant Asia, the Far East, the Middle East, Arabia, China, Japan, and India, among other nations, depending on the historical moment or the nation conceiving it.2 Hollywood’s Oriental exists as an ethnic classification (though loosely based on Asian culture) that supersedes national or racial identity and thus allows for shifts, transformations, and reconfigurations over time due to its flexible boundaries. It is precisely this versatile capacity to re-create and reformulate that makes “Oriental” the term of choice for this study (as opposed to Asian, or Japanese, Chinese, etc.), for it reminds us of the fictional origins and status of Hollywood’s Asian characterizations.3 This examination of cinematic Oriental archetypes in selected films from the 1930s to the 1960s will attempt to reveal a systematized approach in the depiction of race working within the classical Hollywood introduction 3 studio era.4 Utilizing a range of Hollywood products such as animated images, B films, and blockbusters, this work primarily focuses on representations by Caucasian actors and yet also includes examples of performances by non-Caucasian actors as well. However, rather than propose a strictly formulaic system of representation, this study instead offers a schema of performance styles by tracing specific cosmetic devices, physical gestures, dramatic cues, and narrative conventions. Baring the device of the Oriental masquerade in this way establishes the concept of racial difference as far more than biologically based. Rather, it considers this device as a complicated textual construct (as opposed to an inert or static stereotype) that functions with classical consistencies and redundancies. The controversy surrounding the 1991 Broadway production of Miss Saigon provided additional inspiration for this topic of study.5 In brief, the debate focused on the casting of British actor Jonathan Pryce in the role of a Eurasian character—“The Engineer”—that he originated in the play’s London production. The central conflict involved the rarely openly challenged performance practice of a Caucasian actor depicting an Asian role when...