by ANNA CHEN
VIDEO/Warner Bros. Entertainment/Youtube
West in a hot, fast and insulting u-turn on any positive popular culture portrayals of Chinese
In the half-century since Bruce Lee’s early death in July 1973, the image of Chinese in Western culture and business has come full circle with an added twist of spite.
Prior to the martial arts deity’s explosion on to cinema screens in the 1960s, Chinese men were barely seen except as anonymous hordes reminiscent of the wave warfare that kept America at bay in Korea.
Their ultimate sacrifice was presented in the West as an ant-like lack of humanity rather than the collective courage we recognize from the Allied storming of Normandy beaches.
Chinese characters who emerged from this human soup were instantly vilified as Yellow Peril, with every hateful human trait attributed to them. This malicious template returns periodically as Fu Manchu, Dr No, Emperor Ming the Merciless and other evil Chinese who step out of line.
It was “balanced” by lovable creatures like Charlie Chan (played by Swedish actor Warner Oland in eye tape); The Pink Panther‘s comical Kato (Burt Kwouk, an actual East Asian) as a sidekick even more useless than his boss Inspector Clouseau, the most useless man on the planet; and also another Kato, sidekick this time to The Green Hornet in the TV series, played by an underused Bruce Lee. So much for American original thought and innovation.
The cycle for Chinese cultural representation through the geopolitical eras goes something like this: Opium Wars – bad; gold mining in California – weak; building the Central Pacific Railroad for low wages – good; going on strike for better wages and conditions on the CPRR – bad!; 1870s economic downturn in the US – really bad; 1882 Exclusion Act – GTFOH!; from the Boxer Revolution to the Republic of China – Yellow Peril; Warlord Thirties – well, ding, dong, Anna May Wong!; World War II – welcome, bro; 1949 – Wut?; Cold War Korea – here comes that ant wave; 1960s – the Blessed Bruce be upon us.
The swinging sixties was a great decade in which to be alive if you were a member of the postwar (preferably white) working and middle class in America, Britain or parts of Western Europe. Not so great if you were living in China and trying to rebuild your wrecked country while staring down the barrel of foreign embargoes and a messy Cultural Revolution.
Bruce Lee was born and raised in San Francisco. He was beautiful and graceful with a body sculpted like Roman marble but, most impressively, instead of submissiveness to the master race he exuded pride in his Chinese origins. And, true to the cultural aspirations of the time, he stuck up for the little people rather than sticking it to them.
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