Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-ethnic PerformanceTemple University Press, 2006 - 255 pages From silent films to television programs, Hollywood has employed actors of various ethnicities to represent Orientalcharacters, from Caucasian stars like Loretta Young made up in yellow-face to Korean American pioneer Philip Ahn, whose more than 200 screen performances included roles as sadistic Japanese military officers in World War II movies and a wronged Chinese merchant in the TV show "Bonanza." The first book-length study of Korean identities in American cinema and television, "Hollywood Asian" investigates the career of Ahn (1905-1978), a pioneering Asian American screen icon and son of celebrated Korean nationalist An Ch'ang-ho. In this groundbreaking scholarly study, Hye Seung Chung examines Ahn's career to suggest new theoretical paradigms for addressing cross-ethnic performance and Asian American spectatorship. Incorporating original material from a wide range of sources, including U.S. government and Hollywood screen archives, Chung's work offers a provocative and original contribution to cinema studies, cultural studies, and Asian American as well as Korean history. |
Contents
| 5 | |
| 35 | |
Oriental Genres 1930s to 1950s | 59 |
BETWEEN YELLOWPHILIA AND YELLOWPHOBIA Asian American Romance in Oriental Detective Films | 61 |
STATE INTERVENTION IN THE IMAGINING OF ORIENTALS IN CHINA FILMS OF THE 1930s AND 1940s | 89 |
HOLLYWOOD GOES TO KOREA War Melodrama and the Biopic Politics of Battle Hymn | 122 |
Becoming Father Becoming Asian American | 171 |
NOTES | 193 |
PHILIP AHN FILMOGRAPHY | 215 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 217 |
INDEX | 227 |
Other editions - View all
Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance Hye Seung Chung Limited preview - 2006 |
Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-ethnic Performance Hye Seung Chung No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
actress Ahn Family Ahn plays Ahn's American film Angeles Anna May Wong anti-Japanese Asian American Asian American actors audiences Battle Hymn biopic career cast censorship Charlie Chan China Sky Chinese American cinema communist critical cross-ethnic cultural Daughter of Shanghai Despite diasporic Died at Dawn director enemy episode ethnic father film's genre girl Hess Hess's Hollywood films Hong Ibid identity interview Japan Japanese Keye Luke Kim Lee King of Chinatown Korean American Korean War Korean War films Kung Fu Lan Ying Lu Wan mainstream male masquerade military Motion Picture movie Nanking narrative offscreen orphans Paramount Philip Ahn political POWs producers propaganda racial Robert Florey role romance scene screen script Seoul Sirk South Korean spectator spectatorship star Steel Helmet stereotypes story studio Syngman Rhee television tion Tosan Tosan An Ch'ang-ho United University Press wartime woman Wong's World York
Popular passages
Page 40 - Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it...
Page 41 - If the anatomy of the performer is already distinct from the gender of the performer, and both of those are distinct from the gender of the performance, then the performance suggests a dissonance not only between sex and performance, but sex and gender, and gender and performance. As much as drag creates a unified picture of "woman...
Page 41 - Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.
Page 41 - The effectivity of masquerade lies precisely in its potential to manufacture a distance from the image, to generate a problematic within which the image is manipulable, producible, and readable by the woman.
Page 40 - The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where I draw the line between genuine womanliness and the "masquerade." My suggestion is not, however, that there is any such difference; whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing.
Page 65 - Despite white actors' yellowface impersonations of Charlie Chan's exaggerated, yet stoic, pseudo-Confucian mannerisms, the Chinese detective hero, as Norman K. Denzin points out, "neutralized previous negative images of the Asian-American, and offered to Asian-Americans (and Americans) a particular Americanized version of who they were and who they should be
Page 41 - Above and beyond a simple adoption of the masculine position in relation to the cinematic sign. the female spectator is given two options: the masochism of over-identification or the narcissism entailed in becoming one's own object of desire. in assuming the image in the most radical way.
Page 205 - The American motion picture is one of our most effective media in informing and entertaining our citizens. The motion picture must remain free insofar as national security will permit. I want no censorship of the motion picture; I want no restrictions placed thereon which will impair the usefulness of the film other than those very necessary restrictions which the dictates of safety make imperative.
Page 193 - Richard R. Lingeman, Don't You Know There's a War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945 (New York...
Page 118 - Those of you in our homeland — Korea; those of you in Japan, and those of you in all Japanese-occupied territories in China, have sacred duties to perform. "You must blow up Japanese ammunition plants. "You must destroy railroads the Japanese use. "You must mine highways over which Japanese troops pass. "You must shoot and kill every armed Japanese by day and by night. "You must commit every act of sabotage and violence which will hinder, disrupt or destroy any part of the Japanese war effort....