Abstract

This essay attempts to reframe the discussion around which scholars have typically investigated the oriental detective genre. Rather than focusing on the question of whether or not Charlie Chan and his various spin-offs are racist caricatures or else heroic defenders of justice, this essay argues that the oriental detective genre be seen as an iteration of a discourse devoted to positing Asian aesthetics and philosophy as a seemingly more therapeutic and creative way of living within the accelerating cultures of mechanization and mechanical reproduction. By following the appearance of the "Chinese parrot" as it makes its way through a discursive convergence of machine culture, corporate aesthetics, and ethnic and racial stereotyping, this essay shows that the supposedly "oriental" philosophy of Charlie Chan and his iterations was consistently promoted as a means of undoing the dangerous intrusion of technology into modern life, and that, as such, the oriental detective genre was itself presented as a happily self-reflexive product of mechanical reproduction.

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