Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from World War II to the Present

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Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from World War II to the Present

The Orientalist Buddy Film

Brian Locke

RACIAL STIGMA ON THE HOLLYWOOD SCREEN FROM WORLD WAR II TO THE PRESENT

Copyright © Brian Locke, 2009.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2009 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN®in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Locke, Brian. Racial stigma on the Hollywood screen from WWII to the present :

the Orientalist buddy film / Brian Locke. p. cm.

1. Minorities in motion pictures. 2. Race relations in motionpictures. 3. African Americans in motion pictures. 4. Asians in motionpictures. 5. Male friendship in motion pictures. 6. Motionpictures—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.

PN1995.9.M56L63 2009791.43�6529—dc22 2009010765

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: December 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61882-4

ISBN 978-1-349-38153-1 ISBN 978-0-230-10167-8 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230101678

ISBN 978-1-349-38153-1 (alk. paper)

For

my parents, Diane Sumiye Locke and James Han Locke,

my grandmothers, Bessie Kazuye Okada (1919–2004) and Wanda Chin Locke (1921–2005), and

my great grandmother, Yayoi Inouye (1900–1988).

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Contents

List of Figures ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction—Three’s a Crowd: Crash (2005) 1

1 Strange Fruit: Bataan (1943) 15

2 White and Black to the Brink: China Gate (1957), Pork Chop Hill (1959), All the Young Men (1960) 37

3 The Blaxploitation Buddy Film 59

4 The Orientalist Buddy Film in the 1980s and 1990s: Flash Gordon (1980), Lethal Weapon (1987–1998), Rising Sun (1993) 75

5 The Orientalist Buddy Film and the “New Niggers”: Blade Runner (1982, 1992, and 2007) 101

6 “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto”: The Matrix (1999) and the Virtual Asian 129

Epilogue—Pearl Harbor Eclipsed? The Last Samurai (2003) 155

Notes 159

Selected Bibliography 181

Film Index 191

General Index 195

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Figures

0.1 Christine (Thandie Newman) and 2Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) embrace in Crash

1.1 Bataan’s Sergeant Bill Dane (Robert Taylor) 18addresses his combat team

2.1 Goldie (Nat “King” Cole) and Sergeant 44Brock (Gene Barry) in China Gate

3.1 Tamara Dobson in Cleopatra Jones and 61the Casino of Gold

4.1 Emperor Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) 76in Flash Gordon

5.1 Spaceship and “geisha” screen in 118Blade Runner’s cityscape

5.2 Blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) 120with chopsticks

6.1 The Matrix’s computer-generated agents in 146formation

All reproductions courtesy of Photofest

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Acknowledgments

This is going to be an embarrassingly long list. It’s an embarrassment of riches, now that I think about it. First, I want to recognize a num-ber of people who have been incredibly generous to me and have pro-vided invaluable support during the writing of this book, which, aside from my personality, has been my longest-running project to date: Leslie Bow, the late Gillian Brown, Johnnella Butler, Lewis Gordon, Howard Horwitz, Christina Klein, Rudy Locke, Claude-R. Malary, Stacey Margolis, Ellen Rooney, and Carlo Rotella.

I am grateful to Nicole Aljoe, Chris Amirault, anonymous readers, Nancy Armstrong, Matthew Bacon, Michael Bacon, D’ana Baptiste, Holly Bays, Charles Berger, Rochelle Blanco, John Boylan, Laura Briggs, the late Bernard Bruce, Tyler Chin, Denise Davis, Thérèse De Raedt, Alex Des Forges, Maria D’Onofrio, Maran Elancheran and the rest of the team at Newgen Imaging Systems, Mary Ellerbe, Eric Espenhorst, Joan Fanning, Yvette Fields, Andy Franta, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Diane Griffiths, Gema Guevara, Natalie Gummer, Carla Hansen, Corrinne Harol, Ed Hayslip, Renea Henry, Shannon Holt, Ni Hui, Jennifer Jang, Shawn L. Johnson, Sandra Katz, Stacey Katz, Tamara Ketabjian, Marie-Chantal Killeen, Helen Kjolby, Amanda Lashaw, Kim Lau, Bob Lee, Sharon Lee, Nettie Legters, Kristy Lilas at Palgrave Macmillan, Hubert Locke, Jason Locke, Wesley Locke, Joan Lusk, Kim Lynn, Ron Mallon, Martin Manalansan, Ron Mandelbaum at Photofest, Gina Marchetti, Cei Maslen, Alice Maurice, Barbara Maxwell, Sybil Mazor, Victor Mendoza, Erin Menut, Joe Metz, Elijah Millgram, Scott Moore, Haruko Moriyasu, James Morone, Fatima Mujcinovic, Ilia M. Rodriguez Nazario, Lee Norton at Palgrave Macmillan, Kent Ono, Yoon Pak, Crystal Parikh, Dana Patterson, Anna Pegler-Gordon, Patty Picha, John Reed, Todd Reeser, David Roediger, Monique Roelofs, Wilfred Samuels, Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz, David F. Schmitz, Brigitte Shull at Palgrave Macmillan, Susan Smulyan, Rachel Starbuck, Edward “Ted” Stein, Judy Stein, Kathryn Stockton, Stephen L. Thompson, Jennifer Ting,

xii Acknowledgments

Sasha Torres, Kim Warren, John Watrous, Shawn Wong, Yutian Wong, Mari Yoshihara, Daniel Youd, and Natasha Zaretsky for shar-ing with me one or some combination of the following: constructive criticism of my research or my teaching or both, food, friendship, love, professional advice, professional opportunities, research mate-rial, and yoga instruction.

I thank the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for granting me a year-long research fellowship and the American Civilization Department at Brown University for giving me the freedom to roam across the curriculum and design my own program of study.