Yes, this article combined with the video yesterday…it appears I’m on something of an ethnic kick. Ideas just come to me sometimes. So let’s talk about Hollywood!
As I may have mentioned once or twice in these pages, I am something of a cinephile—from the early feeling out process of the silent era to the overblown crapfests we’re given today by Hollywood, I adore cinema as a form of art.
However, being a “person of color” (According to the one drop rule, anyway), there is always that nagging elephant in the room about the allegedly horrible racial stereotyping in Hollywood that gave the white devils stereotypes to use against the noble POC for generations and, of course, desexualized [insert ethnic group of your choice] and turned them into sexless buffoons and goofs, the effects of which are still felt to this day!!
As I have argued repeatedly, the rise of social justice amongst various racial groups modern America largely revolves around sexual frustration rather than any legitimate problems—I mean, if the most you have to complain about is meaningless pop culture flotsam, that would seem to suggest that as of right now you have it pretty good.
With that being said, yes, stereotyping and racism certainly did exist in Hollywood and American media on the whole for decades—I am certainly not disputing that. What I am disputing, however, is the idea that these stereotypes were such evil and powerful misdeeds that they ruined the *cough*sexual*cough* opportunities for minorities until, like, yesterday. The main reason I am disputing this is because (for some racial groups more than others, admittedly), there were almost as many, if not just as many, [relatively] positive depictions of them in media as there were negative and stereotypical depictions.
Let us look at my people first and judge the stereotyping of them in popular media on the whole (since that’s about 90% of what they bloviate about):
Sure, yellowface is offensive, and was often used for cheap laughs—and by my reckoning, whenever an Asian SJW talks, it’ll probably be 10 minutes or less before they start whining about Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And why not? By some accounts “The Mickster” himself seemed to be somewhat embarrassed by his role in his later years, so I don’t blame people for being offended by it.
But in some cases portrayals of Asians could be far more “progressive” (in the proper sense of the word) then the grievance mongers would have you believe. Are you aware, for example, that one of the earliest interracial romances ever filmed (in ANY country) was between an Asian man and a white woman?
Yes, that is THE D.W. Griffith in the byline. As in Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith. Comparing Griffith’s two films here is the first instance I’ll point out of a very common phenomenon in American culture; namely, that racism is not doled out evenly, some groups got it worse than others. While America has certainly discriminated against Asian people in the past, it was never (no matter what the Asian SJWs will tell you) anywhere near as bad as the way black people were treated—laws were passed in California protecting Chinese owned businesses from discrimination as early as the 1880s and school segregation between whites and Asians (Again, at least in California) was outlawed as early as 1906, as the picture below will indicate.
(Then again considering that Griffith was an almost stereotypically WASPy Southern Gentleman, it’s not so surprising that he was far more tolerant of Asians than he was of blacks—that seems to be a recurring trend with the Southrons, as the surprisingly egalitarian example of Chang and Eng the Siamese Twins would suggest)
Not to be outdone by founding-stock Americans, the Italian-Born Frank Capra also portrayed a relationship between a Chinese man and a white woman positively, and did so explicitly aiming to tear down stereotypes
(As a side note, isn’t it kind of odd how immigrants back then ie: Frank Capra, Irving Berlin, etc. produced media that showed their love for the USA, and yet nowadays so many immigrant celebrities seem to hate their newfound country?)
And I’m just going to say it right now: anybody who says Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu are negative stereotypes that hurt Asian men today needs to shut the hell up.
Much like Bitter Tea listed above, the Charlie Chan character was created specifically to present a positive portrayal of a Chinese person, and was also interestingly based on a real guy, who has gone on record as enjoying his fictional counterpart. But hey, maybe I’m just too whitewashed to understand why a brilliant and dapperly dressed detective who is explicitly shown in at least one film to completely outclass and make a fool out of the white inspector he’s working with and is also explicitly shown via his multiple children to have an active and healthy sex life is some sort of negative stereotype.
And as for the “Sinister Chinaman” Fu Manchu? I again fail to understand how a powerful, sophisticated, and charismatic villain who holds three doctorates and essentially never loses is bad. And if you want to take about “muh desexualization”, I would actually argue that there’s a very predatory and malicious sort of sexual undercurrent in the character—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Considering the [masturbatory] popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey and similar dreck amongst women today, I have a sneaking suspicion that if Fu Manchu movies were being made now, women would be doing the “two finger fillet” to him.
Now of course in all of those cases the Asian man was portrayed by a white man in make-up: I am not saying that the situation was perfect, just that there were efforts—bullheaded and cloddish though they may have been—to positively portray ethnic/racial minorities purely out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of a never-ending maelstrom of white evil.
On a vaguely similar note, movies like Tabu, White Shadows in the South Seas, and The Pagan—all silent films made in 1932 at the latest—take a pretty clear stand against colonialism in Polynesia, which is some food for thought for anybody who thinks that white people spent all their time running around screaming about how much they luuuuuurved murdering shitskins up until, like, three weeks ago. In the three cases I cited, these films do admittedly take a somewhat stereotypical and patronizing view of “POCs”, but it is clear that efforts are clearly being made to portray them positively.
One could argue that blacks and American Indians were portrayed the most negatively and the most stereotypically in cinema over the years, but even in those cases you had some positive portrayals here and there—the “Race films“, made by blacks for black audiences criticizing various aspects of white supremacy, would seem to indicate that there was at least some audience for them. And even as early as 1916 there were at least some attempts to portray American Indians relatively positively
As a related side note, the lukewarm bath of shame and guilt America has been in for the last 50 years has, ironically, led to almost a complete dearth of film roles for American Indian actors! I don’t know about you, but I find it hilarious that SJWs spent decades whining about the stereotyped Wild West view of American Indians, and then provided nothing to replace it.
And Hispanics? By the 1950s you had portrayals of white women being married and having kids with Hispanic men and nobody was batting a damn eye—that’s all I need to say about that, really. And again, I’m quite aware that the Latin Lover is itself a stereotype, but c’mon.
As if all this wasn’t surprising enough, there is one specific case where you can point to portrayals of a certain ethnic group being, on the whole, more positively in the past then they are currently—Arabs/Southwest Asians!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: people from the Middle East have almost always been considered more or less “White” in America…up until the Current Year when they realize being white is a disadvantage and are now fighting tooth and nail to not be white (and if you don’t believe me, look at how in the past, light-skinned black people trying to “pass” as something other than black would often say they were…drumroll please…Middle Eastern!)
As early as the silent era and as late as the 1970s, there were countless swashbuckling films of derring-do set in the hoary orient with Arabian protagonists—again, stereotyped and cliched to be sure, but not negative by any means. You’ll notice that whenever Southwest Asian chatterers whine about their portrayal in media, it’s always fairly recent portrayals they whine about. Could that possibly be because they look exotic and cool from a distance and far less so when they’re next door?
All in all, as a “POC” and a cinephile, it seems to me that while racism and stereotyping have certainly existed in the media, there have been just as many “goodwhites” going out of their way to debunk the stereotypes over the years. And yet the poor benighted POCs still whine about these general well meaning portrayals. So I’ll say to them what I always say: Either make your own goddamn movies or consume what you’re given.