For June 2008, Turner Classic Movies has been featuring films and discussion about Asian Images in Film. To that end, last week they showed a bunch of Charlie Chan films and preceded the showings with discussions between TCM host Robert Osborne and film studies professor Peter Feng.
But Feng’s memory of the films seemed to leave him at times. For example, during the discussion of Charlie Chan at the Circus, Dr. Feng complained that at one point the dialogue has Charlie Chan attribute some common American saying as if it were an ancient Chinese proverb. As Feng put it, why not just have him say the phrase — why did the writers have to have him attribute it to a Chinese proverb when the audience clearly knows it is not.
The only problem is when that part of the film came up, Chan didn’t attribute the phrase to any Chinese proverb. He simply repeated the American phrase in stilted English. I hate when that happens — it makes me wonder about the other claims Dr. Feng made.
Also, Feng argued that Chan is extremely submissive to the whites in the movie, especially to the white police detectives. That is certainly true, but clearly the white authority figures are also made to look more than a bit bumbling and quickly take credit for ideas that Chan himself figured out. At one point Chan mocks a white police detective who finally gets Chan’s point by saying something to the effect that the detective’s mind works like lightning (though the detective clearly doesn’t get that he is being mocked).
Which is not to argue that there isn’t a racist subtext in the Charlie Chan films — the lead is played by a white guy for Christ’s sake, and Feng did a good job in his intros of highlighting other parts of racial stereotypes that the Chan films exemplify. But the racism seem far more subtle even in these films than is, say, the treatment of African Americans in the Chan films which is often so over-the-top as to be unwatchable.
Ultimately, I am a fan of the Charlie Chan movies and enjoy watching them, but they are also in many ways tragic in that you have to wonder what sort of amazing films we’d have if Hollywood had let some of these obviously talented Asian and African American actors, writers, directors, etc. make straightforward films instead of constantly pigeonholing them into these caricatures and stereotypes.