Essay

Representation of East Asians in Hollywood Cinema:
Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) and Ghost in the Shell (2017)

August 20th 2018 is a date that sticks in my memory. A huge debate was going on the Doctor Who fan community online, Twitter especially, concerning whether the 1977 episode The Talons of Weng-Chiang was racist. This particular episode of Doctor Who features The Doctor fighting a gang of Chinese criminals, lead by Li H’sen Chang, who are working for Magnus Greel, a war criminal from the far future. Li H’sen Chang is played by caucasian actor John Bennett who is adopting a Chinese accent and wears a prosthetic mask which gives him epicanthic folds and yellow skin. This is a process called “yellowface”. Whilst discussion concerning the stories more problematic elements is nothing new, in my eyes, it definitely created a divide amongst the fanbase. It did, however, make me more interested in the history of the portrayal of East Asians in the media.

 

The use of yellowface to depict East Asians predates recorded media (Moon, 2005). Before mass immigration into the United States from Asia, theatre actors would don elaborate costumes to caricature portrayals of people from the east such as was used in Voltaire’s 1753 play The Orphan of China. This practice was continued throughout the following hundred years before the advent of film. Yellowface was used in the theatre productions of Madame Butterfly and The Mikado. Early cinema featured two significant stereotypes of Asian men. The “yellow peril” was personified by the evil Fu Manchu who became “absorbed into American consciousness as the archetypal East Asian villain (Wu, 1982)” and represented the pan-Asian feat of the time (Wu, 1982). This character, as well as pre-existing stereotypes of the Chinese in Britain, is what directly inspired Li H’sen Chang in Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

The other was Charlie Chan who was created to be the antithesis of Fu Manchu. The “good Asian (Wu, 1982)”. Both characters were almost always portrayed by white actors wearing yellowface. At one time, both characters were played on screen by Warner Oland, an actor with no Asian ancestry who specialised in yellowface performances (Huang, 2010).

 

East Asian representation improved, somewhat, to the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Flower Drum Song was released in 1961 and became Hollywood’s first major production with a majority Asian cast. It was nominated for 5 academy awards and set the mark for Asian-American cinema for the years that followed. However, anti-Asian sentiments, Japanese in particular, still resonated in the American zeitgeist, partly due to the conflict between the United States and Japan during World War II (Moon, 2005). Hollywood had spent the war producing propaganda that demeaned the Japanese who were presented as oriental other. The stereotyped image of Japanese people, from this propaganda, was of a slanted-eyed man with huge buckteeth. A film character whose portrayal was directly inspired by the World War II stereotype (Phruksachart, 2017) was Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

 

Breakfast At Tiffany’s was released in 1961; the same year as Flower Drum Song. It was directed by Blake Edwards and was adapted from the novel of the same name by Truman Capote. It is a film famous for Audrey Hepburn’s oscar-nominated performance, however, it has received a negative reputation in the last few years due to the character of Mr. I. Y. Yunioshi. Yunioshi appears in Capote’s novella as a minor character who is a photographer who lives in the same apartment building as the main character Holly. He is portrayed as a Japanese citizen who has assimilated into American culture and can speak English with ease (Phruksachart, 2017). In the film, he is still a photographer and is now also Holly’s landlord. He is portrayed by white comedic actor Mickey Rooney wearing yellowface make-up and oversized fake teeth. This appearance is directly taken from the archetypes of the Japanese from World War II propaganda (Phruksachart, 2017). Unlike the well-spoken character of the book, Rooney’s accent is extremely exaggerated to the point where most of his dialogue is nonsensical.

 

We are introduced to Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast At Tiffany’s opening scene. The film begins with Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn, stepping out of a taxi and into her apartment building. As she cannot find the keys to her apartment, she rings a bell to alert her landlord. The scene then cuts to her landlord, Mr Yunioshi’s bedroom. Yunioshi is sleeping on a futon bed and his disturbance from the sound of the doorbell causes him to hit his head on the tōrō above his bed. In a scene of physical comedy, Holly’s continuing ringing of the bell causes the shortsighted Yunioshi to pick up a bonsai plant and accidentally take a photo of himself before bumping into his camera equipment. When he eventually finds his glasses, he shouts at Holly, and her date from the night before. He berates her for losing her key and waking him up early in the morning. When he threatens to call the police on her, Holly offers Yunioshi the chance to “take pictures of me”. He immediately lets her off as he is excited by this prospect.

 

There’s a lot that we can tell about Yunioshi in his introductory scene and how he is presented as different from the rest of the characters. The three main possessions in Yunioshi’s room that the scene dwells on are: his futon bed, his tōrō lamp, and a bonsai plant. These three items are all common in Japanese homes. In America, especially in 1961, these items are seen as foreign or exotic to the viewer. By placing emphasis on these Japanese possessions in Yuinioshi’s home, the film tells the viewer “this person is not from here”. This causes the viewer to see the character as separate from the norm and as an “other” when compared to the rest of the characters.

 

In this scene, Yunioshi is seen stumbling around his room as he is shortsighted and cannot see without the help of his glasses. Part of this is because his physical appearance is based on how American propaganda portrayed Emperor Hirohito during World War II. Hirohito, similar to how Hitler was to Nazi Germany, was treated as the personification of Imperial Japan in wartime materials. Hirohito’s caricature would be the sole image of a Japanese person that a typical American would be exposed to. The most obvious physical trait of Hirohito, in these images, are his large glasses. Hirohito did wear glasses in real life but they are greatly exaggerated for the propaganda. Hirohito being used to represent Japan, and in effect, the majority of East Asia, lead to the western perception that the Japanese were shortsighted (Phruksachart, 2017). The assumption that Asian people are unable to see comes from depictions of their eyes (Lowe, 1996). The majority of people of East Asian descent have epicanthic fold on their eyes. Many artists would, particularly during the propaganda years of World War II, mock their eyes and describe them as “slanty” (Lowe, 1996). The yellowface make-up used to transform Mickey Rooney into Yunioshi purposely restricted his vision with the intention of turning him into a man who resembles the WW2 caricature of Hirohito. Rooney was also given a large pair of prosthetic teeth identical to those depicted in the bucktoothed appearance of Japanese people in war imagery.

 

Yunioshi is a character obsessed with authority. In every scene that he appears in, he is threatening someone, usually Holly, with getting someone who works in authority to punish them for disturbing his peace. In the first scene, he threatens to report Holly to the police. Later on, he claims he will call the fire department and the New York Housing commission to complain about the noise. It should be noted that Mr Yunioshi is the landlord of the building where Holly lives. He has the power and authority to punish her but instead insists on someone else doing so for him. It is possible that this trait is caused by Yunioshi being a Japanese man in America; the country who beat them the Second World War. Even though he has some status in his new home, he feels less powerful than a citizen who was born in the country. The film is presenting a character to represent a defeated enemy and, in effect, America’s superiority. The film wants the submissive Yunioshi to rely on American authoritarianism. It is interesting that Yunioshi constantly wants to “rat out” his tenants as there are many works from WW2 that portray the Japanese as rats or other vermin.

 

Holly deflates Yunioshi’s protests by mentioning that she is willing for him to “take pictures of her”. Yunioshi is clearly aroused by this suggestive concept. This is playing to the stereotype that men from Asia are a sexual threat to white women (Orman, 2013). In New York and London, the number of men emigrating from the East was vastly larger than the number of women during the 19th and 20th centuries (Orman, 2013). The fear of Asian men sleeping with white women added to the existing “yellow peril” (Orman, 2013). This fear continued into the advent of cinema. The 1915 film Broken Blossoms features a good-natured immigrant from China who falls in love with a white woman. Broken Blossoms uses yellowface to portray its lead character. The women’s alcoholic father is not happy with her relationship with the Chinese man and attempts to kill him. The actions taken by the woman’s father in the film are representative of the fears that Americans had over the Chinese at that point in history (Moon, 2005). Also during the silent era, Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa became a well known figure in Hollywood. His “broodingly handsome” good looks made him a sex symbol with female moviegoers at the time. He became typecast as villains who pose a sexual threat to white women. When the Hays Code became imposed in Hollywood, he struggled to escape this typecasting due to its anti-miscegenation laws as well as growing anti-Japanese sentiments at the time (Moon, 2005). In Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Yunioshi’s perverted nature, particularly when around a young white woman, is reaffirming an existing stereotype concerning Asian people that is older than cinema itself.

 

Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Yunioshi has been criticised since the film’s release. Even in 1961, reviewers described Rooney’s performance as “offensive” and “incongruous” (Phruksachart, 2017). Truman Capote, who wrote the novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s from which the film is adapted from, was not pleased with many of the changes the film made from his book (Phruksachart, 2017). Capote slated the racist depiction of Yunioshi and said “Well, indeed

I had a Japanese photographer in the book, but he certainly wasn’t Mickey Rooney.” (Phruksachart, 2017). Blake Edwards, the film’s director, has said that he regrets the casting of Rooney (Phruksachart, 2017). The DVD release of Breakfast At Tiffany’s included a supplementary feature discussing Yunioshi’s place in cinema history and the development of Asian-American actors in film.

 

Although the use of Yellowface has died out in the film industry, things are not necessarily better for Asian actors. According to the UCLA’s 2018 report of Hollywood Diversity, just 3.1% of the top film roles went to Asian actors in 2016. The results aren’t much better in Television, with only 5% of acting roles in scripted shows of the 2015-16 broadcasting season going to Asians. In recent years, people have been accusing Hollywood of the act of “Whitewashing”. Whitewashing is when a role that is intended to be non-white is cast with a white actor. The casting of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese man is an example of this. A recent film that has been accused of Whitewashing is 2015’s Aloha. Aloha was set in Hawaii and starred an all-white cast included Emma Stone as a character that is said to be of Hawaiin and Chinese descent. Emma Stone has stated her regret in taking the role even shouting “I’m sorry” when it was brought up during a joke at the Golden Globes. In 2019, white British actor Ed Skrein was cast in the reboot of Hellboy as the character of Ben Daimio. Daimio, in the Hellboy comics made by Dark Horse Comics, is depicted as being Japanese-American. When Skrein discovered this he resigned from the role with the hope that it would be recast with an Asian actor. The role of Daimio was eventually played by the Korean-American Daniel Dae Kim.

 

A recent film that received many accusations of Whitewashing was 2017’s Ghost in the Shell. Ghost in the Shell is a live-action Hollywood remake of the 1995 Japanese animated film of the same name which is, in turn, adapted from a manga. The film follows a cybernetically-enhanced super soldier named Major Mira Killian, called Motoko Kusanagi in the anime and manga, who is dispatched by a shady organisation to prevent crime whilst also looking for answers to her mysterious past. The film version was controversial for having a majority white cast in roles that have a Japanese origin. Many of the character names are changed to sound less Japanese when they are cast with a non-Japanese actor.

 

The film carries the cyberpunk aesthetic from the anime which is a part of how it can be accused of Whitewashing. Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science-fiction cinema that is characterised by futuristic technological advances. An early user of cyberpunk’s aesthetic was the writer William Gibson. Gibson said that the city skyline of Tokyo was an inspiration for cyberpunk even going to say “modern Japan simply was cyberpunk.”. The 1982 film Blade Runner’s setting is also directly inspired by the skylines of early-1980s Tokyo, as well as Hong Kong. Blade Runner also boasts a sizable cast of Asian actors in supporting roles. The imagery of Blade Runner would be used as reference for the 1982 manga Akira and its 1988 anime adaptation. Akira itself would pave the way for more Japanese animated films within the cyberpunk subgenre, including Ghost in the Shell, and is considered to have been the film that set the pace for modern anime. Because of its history, cyberpunk works are expected to have strong Asian elements. Whilst the 2017 version of Ghost in the Shell shares the anime’s setting of non-specific Japanese metropolis in the not too distant future. The 2017’s version is less effective, however, as its relatively small Asian supporting cast are not given enough screen time to mesh with their environment. Instead, we are shown white actors partaking in action in an environment that feels unnatural. In Blade Runner, to compare, the white characters are seen as visitors – “the other” – in the cyberpunk world as opposed to the natives.

 

The main source of whitewashing accusation to the live-action version of Ghost in the Shell was with the casting of non-Asian actors in a work based on Japanese material. Whilst some Asian actors are present, they are given less development than the non-Asian actors do. Particular criticism was aimed at the casting of Scarlett Johansson as the film’s lead Major Motoko Kusanagi; renamed Mira Killian due to her obviously non-Japanese features. A reason given for Johansson’s casting was a supposed lack of A-list stars who are Asian and can lead a major Hollywood production. This reasoning was also used back in 1915 for the casting of Richard Barthelmess in Broken Blossoms. This means that studios have to cast an established big name to attract cinema goers and make their film a box office success. In his article in The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Film (2018, pp. 209), Sean O’Reilly says that “big” is a codeword for “white” when talking about actors. He also accuses Hollywood of creating a “hiring freeze” for less well-known Asian actors as they are given the chance to have a breakthrough role. O’Reilly also points out how, because of the film industry’s increasing globalisation, substandard Asian films are being released with famous Hollywood leads in the hopes of making a profit. He notes The Great Wall, a Chinese production that starred Matt Damon in the lead role, as an example. He finished by saying that the lackluster box office returns of films like Ghost in the Shell and The Great Wall may cause Hollywood to rethink its strategy of casting A-listers.

 

The live-action Ghost in the Shell has an ending that is different from its source material. Johansson’s Mira Killian discovers her true identity as a Japanese teenager Motoko Kusanagi; the character’s name in the anime. Kusanagi was kidnapped by the film’s evil cybernetics corporation and had her brain inserted into a cyborg body that has the appearance of Scarlett Johansson. When Kusangi wakes up, she has been given new memories and her new name of Mira Killian. This means that, throughout the film, Scarlett Johannson isn’t just playing a role that could have potentially gone to an Asian actress, she is playing an Asian women inside a white body. The character’s “shell” is white but her “soul” or “ghost” is Asian. Since this twist does not appear in either the manga or anime versions of Ghost in the Shell, and is exclusive to the live-action remake, it feels like an excuse to justify the casting of Johansson. Instead, the viewer is told that a Japanese girl can be cybernetically “improved” but to do so must have the appearance that fits the Western beauty standards (Traffaut-Wong, 2017).

 

It could seem that representation of East Asians in cinema will never improve since it’s barely changed in the last 60 years. However, as I am writing this essay, a Korean director has just won the Golden Globe for Best International film, and the Best Actress award was won by a Chinese-American actress for a film about the Chinese-American experience. Outside of cinema, Sandra Oh has become a household name for her TV work and bands from Japan and Korea are breaking music records and are capable of selling out arenas. From this, we can hope that, as appreciation for Asian culture grows, Hollywood will improve their understanding of Asian people and portray them for respectively in their films.

 

Bibliography:

Chan, F. (2019) ‘Cosmopolitan Pleasures and Affects; or Why Are We Still Talking about Yellowface in Twenty-First-Century Cinema?’ Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and Global Culture. 9, pp. 246-268.

Hall, S. (1997) 'The Spectacle of the 'Other'' in Hall, S. (ed.) Representation: cultural representation and signifying practices. Glasgow: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 223-290.

Harmes, M.A. et al. (2015) 'The old ‘white actor playing a Chinese man’ trick: Get Smart and race', Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. 1(4), pp. 43-52.

Huang, Y. (2010) Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Gibson, W. (2001) The Future Perfect. Available at: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1956774,00.html (Accessed: 12th January 2019)

Lowe, L. (1996) Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Moon, K. (2005) Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

O’Reilly, S. (2018) The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films. 1st UK edn. Edited by Jimenez Murguía, S. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Orman, K. (2013) '"One of us is yellow": Doctor Fu Manchu and The Talons of Weng-Chiang' in Orthia, L. (ed.) Doctor Who and Race. Bristol: Intellect, pp. 54-67.

Phruksachart, M. (2017) ‘The Many Lives of Mr. Yunioshi: Yellowface and the Queer Buzz of Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, Camera Obscura, 32(3), pp. 92-119.

Ricordeau, G. (2018) The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Films. 1st UK edn. Edited by Jimenez Murguía, S. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Traffaut-Wong, O. (2017) The 'Ghost In The Shell' Twist Addresses Whitewashing Claims In A Disturbing Way. . Available at: https://www.bustle.com/p/the-ghost-in-the-shell-twist-addresses-whitewashing-claims-in-a-disturbing-way-47138 (Accessed: 11th January 2019)

(2018) Hollywood Diversity Report 2018: Five Years of Progress and Missed Opportunities. UCLA College Social Studies. Available at: https://socialsciences.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/UCLA-Hollywood-Diversity-Report-2018-2-27-18.pdf (Accessed: 11th January 2019)

Wu, W.F. (1983) 'The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction 1850-1940', MELUS. 3(10), pp.np.