Sexploitation and stereotypes : Anna May Wong and Li Li-hua

Is Anna May Wong a symbol of Chinese womanhood? To those in the west, perhaps. Her genius lay in her creation of a persona so stunningly original that she's stiill the defining icon of exotic beauty. Strikingly photogenic, she commanded the camera into submission. Modern supermodels look good because fashion stylists and photographers work on them. Anna May Wong was her own stylist, her art was her own image.  She has become an object of identity for many who look Chinese but whose connections with Chinese culture are minimal. In any environment where you're a minority, relating to others who might be like yourself is sensible human instinct.

Anna May Wong's persona was so compelling that the image has become self-fulfilling. Looks are a mirror on which other people project their own fantasies. instinctively channelling western fantasies. Instinctively, she knew her market, fuelling western stereotypes about the Orient. She was successful because in many ways she was more American than Chinese. She embodied the side of Grant Street where tourists thrill to the "Chinese experiece". Better that than being totally insular.  But looks are a mirror on which other people project what they want to see, not necessarily what's really inside.  Therein lies the danger.  Icons can replace reality, and sometimes that iconography can be poison.

Because she usually played herself in different costumes, Anna May Wong wasn't a great actress. Only occasionally do we get a glimpse of real feelings, such as when she flashes a look of contempt at actresses in yellowface who got better billing than she did. But that's what the public wanted, an inscrutable ouitsider. The word "alien" has sinister connotations.  Her roles rarely varied beyond fashinn-plate stylization: those eyes at once alluring and pointedly opaque. When she moved, she writhed like a snake, playing to the stereotype of Orientals (of hybrid type) whose temptations led to doom. In Piccadilly (1928), perhaps her most famous film, she plays an exotic dancer who hynoptises nightclub audiences but can't integrate into "civilized" society. The villain, of course, isn't society but an inscrutable Chinaman. In The Cheat (1915) Sessue Hayakawa played a sophisticate less dishonest than those around him, but paid the price for not being white. Read my piece on The Cheat HERE.  

Piccadilly gets admired because it features an oriental in a central role, rather bthan a bit part, but it reinforces unpleasant negative stereotypes. Thus it's more offensive than The Cheat or DW Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919) where white people play Chinese but the message is radically anti-racist. Read my piece on Broken Blossoms HERE. There were more Asians in Hollywood than most realize, but Anna May Wong's movies were a step backward, not forward.

And Asian cinema was full of Asians. Movies were made in China from around 1909. Shanghai, then the biggest city in the world, supported a huge film industry serving a mass audience. Because art was an integral part of modernization and education, Chinese movies usually carried social comment, many of a quality equal to anything in the west.  Chinese cinema featured women of all types, heroines and victims, and ordinary women living normal lives (as far as film can be normal).   


Below a clip from Colourful  万紫千红 (1943. The director was Fang Peilin. The star was the then 18 year old  Li Li Hua (李麗華) later a megastar for Shaw Brothers Studio. Here she plays a starstruck young girl, so desperate for the good life that she gets drawn into the world of Shanghai nightlife. There are many Chinese movies which satirize and reverse cultural stereotypes, including fantasies with exotic dancing femmes fatales, like Anna May Wong played. The photo above is a still from Colourful, showing a high kicking chorus line, the women dressed in traditional Chinese robes. Also a still from the same movie where the chorus girls are dressed as Mickey Mouse. 

 But this is enough for now.  Please explore the label "Chinese movies" in the list on the right - this site is one of the main sites in English about Chinese film. 

Broken Blossoms, racist reversal? Chinese stereotypes in western film

Broken Blossoms, D W Griffith's 1919 hit movie starred Lilian Gish. She plays a beautiful, doll-like waif who's horrifically abused.  One of the most famous scenes is the one where the abusive father shouts at the child,  "Can't you ever stop being miserable". So the girl, who has never learned how to smile, uses her fingers to hold up the corners of her mouth in a pathetic parody of a smile. It's so horrifying that I hope at least some audiences would have been shocked enough to do something about child abuse and the appalling social conditions in London slums.

Significantly though the film is titled "Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and The Girl". The Yellow Man was played by a white man, of course, Richard Barthelmess, made up to look like a cross between a caricature of a Chinese and Nosferatu. The audiences didn't know any real Chinese and were primed to believe in The Yellow Peril, poised to engulf the civilized world in opium, decadence and evil.  In that sense, Broken Blossoms is as racist as anything else D W Griffith made, such as Intolerance where blacks are treated like apes. Of course racism was an inescapable fact of life. Although all involved were American, the film had to be set in Limehouse London, not, say, San Francisco, which would have been explosive. Audiences could pretend racism was something that happened in foreign places.

But there are curious twists in the plot. The Yellow Man was once an idealistic upper class scholar, who saw how the West had damaged China.  Opium, for example, was introduced by the British who used it as an excuse to wage several wars on China and grab concessions. The Yellow Man decided  to travel to the West to tell them about Buddhist values. Complete reversal of the Missionary thing, where western religion was yet another weapon through which the West could bully China. Quite amazing, this lone Chinaman, daring to leave home for the unknown. to "bring the message of peace to the barbarous Anglo-Saxons, sons of turmoil and strife". How many in the audience got the irony? How many spat indignant at the very presumption?

Anyway, Yellow Man ends up poor, isolated and defeated, but runs some kind of Jap For Po (miscellaneous goods) shop in Limehouse. One day Lilian Gish runs into his shop after being brutalized yet again. Yellow man looks after her reverently, calling her White Blossom though he doesn't actually speak. Bullying father kills girl and attacks Yellow Man with axe. Yellow Man shoots father (also a caricature) and carries dead girl back to his humble room, where he commits suicide, Meanwhile in China, a monk bangs a drum, and in London the police casually discuss casualties in the First World War.

Broken Blossoms is culturally hard to read because the image of the Yellow Man is so offensive and the scenes seem deliberately shot to make him look non-human.  Because Gish is made to look about ten years old, there's the kinky frisson of "lustful" Chinaman. What did audiences think? Were they appalled or repelled? Did they feel sorry for the Chinaman or did it reinforce their prejudices? Even well meaning liberals had ideas about keeping the Chinese In Their Place. Missionaries  wouldn't take kindly to the idea of a Buddhist reversing their role. How did Chinese audiences react?

Oddly, there were many Chinese stereotypes in western film,  pro, con and neutral. The most famous is probably Piccadilly (1928) where Anna May Wong is the drop dead gorgeous dancer who is dropped dead for crossing race boundaries. In a sense, that's positive because it shows up  racist attitudes,. But it also ultimately reinforces the idea that Chinese are fundamentally dangerous killers with no sense of decency. Ironically, a Southern Baptist like D W Griffith dared to go further, challenging racism, not confirming stereotype.  Racist attitudes kept shifting. It was possible for Sessue Hayakawa to play "orientals" with dignity, even though he was often a mysterious villain. Much more on him one day when I have time.  And because he was successful, he could avoid really offensive parts and move to Europe just before WWII when he would no doubt have been interned as an "enemy alien" in concentration camps for Nisei.

Lon Chaney senior made a speciality of playing both monster madmen and "oriental" villains, some more offensive than others.  In one particularly awful film, Mr Wu (1927), Anna May Wong plays the servant. Thankfully, her eyes glare with contempt. The other ethnic Chinese actress (who appeared in numerous bit parts) simply averts her eyes and thinks of the paycheck.  As for Richard Barthelmess who also shot to fame in Broken Blossoms? He starred in The Show of Shows, but not in the "Chinese fantasy". The following year he went on to make Son of the Gods (1930) where he plays a very handsome Chinese Man whom a white girl falls for. She thinks he's white so horsewhips him when she learns he's not. But she's so ashamed, she wants to die, and begs his forgiveness. Then it turns out he's actually white and was just adopted Chinese. Ludicrous, but that was a way to get around the Miscegenation laws at the time that prevented whites and yellows from blending. It's actually quite a sensitive movie despite the corny ending.

Subsequently, I've found out that the movie was banned in Hong Kong and shown in Shanghai with the shooting scene cut, and for only a week. (At the time Shanghai was divided between western rulers). That would explain why, when it was at last screened in 1970 none of the older generation had heard of it, though they knew Lilian Gish. In contrast, my father and his friends were all devotees of Charlie Chan movies, and China-made adaptations. Not so much for Charlie himself but his sidekick, played by a real Chinese, (ABC) Keye Luke, who continued to be a huge star in Hollywood. NHollywoord movies were big then : when Valentino died, some Chinese gilrs committed suicide too. Big scandal. There's plenty on this site about Chinese movies, cross cultural mixes, Eurasians, Chinese culture etc, please search. Some full downloads as well.

Anna May Wong Piccadilly - cultural critique

A reader asked, "What's your take on Piccadilly, Anna May Wong's 1929 film?" Anna May Wong (pictured left) is so dazzling that she mesmerizes. It's almost impossible to see the movie without being hypnotized by her powerful presence. But there's more to the film, and you really have to be fully bi-cultrural to connect to the deeper cultural clues.

The film starts off as routine 1920's glamour. In the Piccadilly nightclub, posh patrons carouse, spending money while watching a dancer, all furs, feather and fluff. Downstairs, in the scullery, the staff are distracted by a girl who dances while washing dishes. Note, it's white working women who love her for what she is, regardless of her race and beauty.

Her name is Shosho, which isn't Chinese, but this was a movie made for audiences who didn't know any difference. When she's not working Shosho wears standard flapper outfits, cloche hats, striped tops etc. just like any other British girl (if they look like supermodels). She eats steak and mash in a typical London greasy spoon, (like the retro Quality Chop House on Farringdon Road, only the real 1920's version). Boyfriend, called Jim, is Chinese but also acculturates white, as many did even then. He wears a western cloth cap and could be any working-class Londoner.

Nightclub boss hires Shosho to dance in the nightclub. She drives a hard bargain. She has artistic control! "expensive costume or I don't dance". They head off to a seamy dive in the slums that sells "oriental", but it's a howler if you know oriental. Not Chinese at all, but fake samurai outfits and Japanese celluloid statues. Lots of other clues, easily missed, like Anna May Wong's messy, unpracticed handwriting when she writes Chinese.. Then the Total Cultural Mayhem of her dance. Apparently she designed this scene herself, based on drawings of Thai dancers, completely different to Chinese dancers. Nudity, moreover, is a western concept, completely unacceptable to Chinese sensibilities in those days.

Poor Jim has to dress up like a tourist souvenir and play a Japanese samisen, seated between two candles, which in Chinese symbolize funerals. Maybe, just maybe, all this kitsch is intentional, the implication being that all orientals look the same to whites.
Shosho takes nightclub owner to a lowlife pub. "This is MY Piccadilly", she says. In the club are all races, having fun until someone objects to a drunk white woman (very well acted) dancing with a black guy.

Shosho is a huge success in the nightclub, grabs headlines in the newspapers and snares the boss. They go to her home, which is approached again through slum alleys but opens out to a huge, opulent art deco palace, cluttered with "oriental antiques". Non-Chinese audiences would think "Wow!". Chinese audiences would be appalled. To Chinese, seeing Buddhas in this ludicrous context is like Catholics seeing Madonnas and crucifixes tarted up in a tacky brothel. It's not unlike the white dancer's house, which is also ultra kitsch, but without "cultural sins", only sins of taste. Shosho happens to have a dagger on the wall for decoration (again a Japanese thing, very un-Chinese). After all, "orientals" are dangerous - look at Shosho's nails, trimmed to a sharp point.

Shosho is seen to attack the white dancer, who turns up in this den, but she's shot dead herself. Nightclub owner is put on trial. But of course he's innocent and the white dancer, too. The killer is Jim, the "Chinaman".What do you expect from "Asiatics", the film seems to imply.

Piccadilly (1929) has been re-released by the BFI, because it is an important film, and extremely well made. It does annoy real Chinese audiences because it depicts all "orientals" as being the same, which they are not, and plays up the "inscrutable" caricature. The killer "has" to be Chinese, for example.  Indeed, when I first saw the film, I wasn't sure whether it was pro or anti Chinese, racist or anti-racist. But in 1929, the film makers didn't have much choice. At least Piccadilly manages to expose racial prejudice, even if it does end up playing along with stereotypes.  Anything more direct would have been dangerous. Yet on the other hand, it's a fine line between exposing stereotype and reinforcing it.

But still, I see this film as a China Chinese, so can't help but wince with distaste.  To me and my friends, AMW was quite unknown until we came to the west. Subsequently, I've been rerading up on her reception when she visited Shanghai in the 30's.The Chinese film industry even then was huge, vibrant and progressive but AMW didn't fit in (she was miles taller than anyone else). The industry had many American-borns involved, as directors and producers as well as actors, so it's not true that she was rejected for being fundamentally foreign. Ruan Lingyu (a Cantonese whose Mandarin was lousy) was compared to Marlene Dietrich. So why did AMW, who worked with Dietrich, fail in China? Perhaps she was too closely identified with "inscrutable stereotypes". Fundamentally she was more foreign than Chinese, which is perhaps why she's easier to accept from a non-Chinese perspective. In contrast, Warner Oland, who waqs white, was loved in China because his Charlie Chan depicted Chinese in a funny, but non-racist way.

Please see my earlier post Piccadilly Revisted, about Anna May Wong as an icon for modern overseas Chinese.  That's understandable as for many, they've grown up in western culture and need an image of a Chinese to admire. In practice, though, there are many, many more iconic Chinese role models. Indeed, Chinese cinema is extrremely important in that it was part of Chinese modernization and 20th Century culture.  So I hope that Chinese raised outside Chinese culture, and non Chinese too   for that matter, will strive to learn more about Chinese cinema and the way it shaped modern Chinese values. Unfortunately, there's not much written in English about Chinese film to explain the symbolism and context. So on this blog, I try to write about Chinese film. Even if you don't speak Chinese, I try and do enough that films can be underrstood, a bit.  Please look under the label "Chinese movies" for more. 

Even in Hollywod, there were Chinese and Japanese (Sessue Hayakawa) who bucked prevalent racism and didn't sell out. Or Keye Luke, an American who found his Chinese roots. Lots of Chinese cinematographers, like James Wong Howe. Lots of interaction between Chineser movie people in China and in the US. It's a huge field, which reflects the diaspora. Eventually all the world will be multi culture, so we need to understand.

There is a FULL DOWNLOAD of AMW first silent movie, which is far less racially compromised, despite being so early. See short clip HERE which links to full download. I've also written lots on film and cross cultural issues.

Piccadilly Revisited - Anna May Wong

Tonight and tomorrow at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House there's Piccadilly Revisited, a "film, dance, music and drama celebration" of the life of Anna May Wong (1905-61). AMW was the first Chinese woman to become a star (of sorts) in Hollywood, playing  with Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Marlene Dietrich.  Her finest film, though, is Piccadilly (1929), filmed in London.(cheaper on amazon than ebay) The film's wonderfully shot, atmospheric angles and mysterious scenes of 1920's Limehouse, and uses several very good Chinese actors, besides AMW herself. Many Hollywood films used whites like Walter Oland  made up to look Chinese.

Although it depicts Chinese as inscrutable stereotypes, it deals with race relationships, and in a much less airbrushed sentimental way than Hollywood.  AMW must die because she breaks the rules, but at least the movie acknowledges that such things happen and that there's prejudice. Until the late1920's interracial marriage was illegal in some parts of the US.  Mass deportations in Mexico, no civic rights in Canada, and even China was under extraterritorial control until 1943. That's the background.

Anna May Wong was third generation ABC (American born Chinese) not FOB (fresh off boat), ethnically Chinese (although extremely tall) but acculturated American. There were quite a number of Chinese in the California film industry even then (before Keye Luke, James Wong Howe etc) In fact, the very first Chinese-American movie was made by a woman, Marion Wong (no relation)  in 1916, self financed, and using her family as actors.  The first Chinese movie was made in Hong Kong in 1909, but Chinese and American movie circles were completely separate worlds. Could be different planets. In fact, more Chinese movies than western, just as Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood..

Nowadays, there are tens of thousands of Chinese who've known only the west. There's a rude term, "bananas" (peel off the yellow skin, white inside) but that trivializes a very genuine need for these new generations to redefine their unique identity. That's why Anna May Wong fascinates modern  ABC's and BBC's (British born Chinese). She's the pioneer, who faced these challenges long ago. She's also drop dead gorgeous.  Hence the AMW cult, lots of  books, films, and "celebrations" of what she means to a whole new generation of Chinese who've grown up in the west.

To Chinese born and raised in China, though, she's strangely western and alien. That's not Chinese dancing at all in the clip, from a Chinese perspective it's an obscene travesty. That's why the "Chinaman" in the clip looks embarrassed. You can almost hear Chinese people scream that she's letting the side down with this undignified playing to caricature. When AMW visited China in 1936 there were plenty of Chinese "New Women" of many kinds, not only actresses but writers, artists, teachers and businesswomen, much more sophisticated than AMW. She wasn't relevant to the Chinese identity, indeed, she represented a kind of colonialism, since the locals were pretty good at doing modern themselves without outside help.  Plenty of Chinese icons. AMW didn't fit in, and went back to the US, her destiny to be "white" but not quite.

There always will be more Chinese Chinese than hybrids,  Eurasians and westernized Chinese. But cultural adaption is an issue and needs to be understood. So alien as AMW may seem to Chinese Chinese, she's relevant there too. Ultimately, though,. we need to appreciate just how innovative and "modern" China really was in those days, despite the wars and sufferings.  ABC's and others should be studying China, and Chinese moderns, not AMW. The South China mentality is enterprising, innovative, adaptive but misunderstood because the North dominates. They key to the future I think, is understanding this most vibrant region (which is where most "bananas" ancestors come from): Read  Hong Kong in Chinese History for starters..

Below is a rare clip from Toll of the Sea, a very early film starring Anna May Wong (1922) made before the Thief of Bagdad (1924) made her famous. The director was one of AMW's boyfriends, which is why it shows a Chinese woman in a sympathetic light : far less racist than Madama Butterfly. There were hundreds of real life situations like this, and many were genuine relationships, not scams like the one Puccini depicted. (though he didn't know). There are lots of other early Chinese and Chinese-American films, which I might post as and when I can, look at labels on right and please keep coming back. Watch the full movie  download on this site of Street Angel and read the analysis.. In the long term Zhou Xuan is a much better icon of the modern Chinese woman than AMW.(though she ended up insane).  Please see my other post on  Anna May Wong Piccadilly HERE  Later I'll be doing a lot more on Li lili a "real" Chinese icon..