From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda: Images of China in American Film

Chapter 3 Questions of Otherness: From Opium Pipes to Apple Pie

50 The shift of the pendulum governing images of China has often come with astonishing speed. Still, nowhere does it take place more rapidly than in a late silent film, Mr. Wu (1927), directed by William Nigh. Like Shadows, Mr. Wu stars Lon Chaney: once again, the “man of a thousand faces” appears in yellowface. This time, Chaney assumes two roles: he plays both the ancient patriarch of the House of Wu as well as the patriarch’s grandson. In a kind of prologue , he first appears as the ancient patriarch. Compassionate and cultured, he is the very symbol of China seen as an ancient and wise civilization. Before long, the film jumps ahead: now Chaney appears as the patriarch’s grown-up grandson , Mr. Wu. At first, he, like his grandfather, symbolizes a superior civilization. A highly cultivated scholar, he is a man given to beauty and the arts, in particular , poetry and music. But by the end of the film, he has taken us from one end point of the pendulum swing to the other, from one archetype to its dramatic opposite. Before the film has come to a close, this cultivated mandarin has been transformed into a diabolical torturer (see fig. 3.1). The transformation that takes place in Mr. Wu is sparked by the tragic fate that befalls his only offspring—a much beloved daughter. Like Madama Butterfly , the naive young woman is seduced by a handsome young Westerner who falsely promises fidelity and marriage. Once Mr. Wu learns of his daughter’s disgrace, he believes that custom and honor demand that he murder his daughter for having dishonored the House of Wu. Accordingly, he performs this terrible deed. Once he does so, he is consumed by the desire to take vengeance on his daughter’s faithless lover and the lover’s family. To this end, he captures his daughter’s seducer together with the young man’s sister and mother. After placing brother and sister in separate rooms—each equipped with a peephole that allows their mother to watch—he gives their mother a terrible choice. Does she prefer that one of Mr. Wu’s servants murder her son or, instead, defile her daughter ? In the face of this impossible choice, the mother—distraught and hysterical— manages to stab Mr. Wu. Although dying, Mr. Wu commands his servants to C H A P T E R 3 Questions of Otherness From Opium Pipes to Apple Pie Questions of Otherness 51 proceed with his plan. He desists only when the ghost of his daughter appears and pleads with him to show mercy. Touched by her words, Mr. Wu has a change of heart and his captives are untouched. As he dies, his spirit leaves his body and goes off with that of his daughter. The single character of Mr. Wu clearly bears witness to diametrically opposed archetypes of the Chinese that have long inhabited the Western imagination . Initially the most aristocratic and cosmopolitan of Chinese gentlemen, he ultimately embodies one of the most long-lived of Chinese stereotypes: that is, he reveals a taste and talent for torture that might rival that displayed by Fu Manchu. Indeed, it is perhaps no coincidence that Mr. Wu was made just around the time when Fu Manchu began what would be a long career in films. True, Mr. Wu is not as guilty as the evil doctor; nor is he the only guilty character in the film. After all, it is the hedonistic behavior of the young Westerner that sparks the film’s tragic events. In fact, both the 1914 play that inspired the film (Mr. Wu by Harry M. Vernon and Harold Owen) and a 1918 novel on the same theme (Mr. Wu by Louise Jordan Miln) clearly blame the Westerners for the tragedy Figure 3.1. Mr. Wu: From loving father to diabolical torturer 52 Chapter 3 that befalls the House of Wu. Turning Mr. Wu into the victim of the piece, they also leave no doubt that the Chinese civilization embodied in Mr. Wu is far superior to the English world of the young seducer’s family.1 But this is hardly true of the film, where moral categories are far more schematic and absolute. After witnessing Mr. Wu behead his daughter, it is the rare viewer who doubts that Mr. Wu is fundamentally, irretrievably, guilty. The contrast between the two faces of Mr...