What do/did Asian look in Hollywood
In a multicultural society, race and identity are playing an important role that shows up the definition of ‘Diversity’. Different identities have their own characteristics, which should be respected. However, along the Hollywood movie history, the darkness as an asian identity always comes to talk.
International, top-class, best-casting, those are the keywords in describing Hollywood movies. Most of the blockbusters are called as Hollywood movie, such as Stars War, and other Marvel films, and enormous movie production costs is one of the features of Hollywood movie. In the industry, there is no nationality restriction for actors or actresses, and the directors or producers, no matter they are Asian or American or black people. However, there is a matter of nationality on the choices of casting. The reality of industry shows white people seems to have more opportunities in casting the Hollywood movies, and non-white people are unlikely to have an appropriate treat; but the casting standard are not based on people’s talents and abilities.
Hollywood Whitewashing
Whitewashing, is to describe the casting of white actors or actresses are playing the role of non-white characters, such as a white actor plays as a Kung Fu Master, which is an Asian character. The early of Hollywood films only letting the non-white actors to play those unobtrusive characters; thus asian actors would always play the role of servants, coolie or lanudry man, and more disrespectfully asian actresses would be the character of prostitutes and servants, which could be found in the movies of Son of King (1933), and San Fran-cisco (1936).
Whereas, the white celebrities were always playing the core film characters, and those non-white celebrities were just a decoration in the movie. The weird thing is that sometimes non-white celebrities were not playing the role that they should be with their identity, which was an unfair and unreasonable decision of the film characters. Just like the character Ancient One in Dr. Strange movie, it is a Tibetan monk who casted by an Enlgish actress, Tilda Swinton.
The Hollywood welcome of “Yellow Face”
What is “Yellow Face” ?
Socially, it is a word phase of racism towards Chinese people in America during the early 1980s. Symbolically in Hollywood films, “Yellow Face” is a term of defining an asian identity by a non-asian actor.
As mentioned ‘whitewashing’ above, the facial transformation from white actor to asian actor was using skin-darkening pigments and makeshift contraptions of tape and rubber bands. To reinforce the Chinese stereotypes on these actors, they would speak with exaggerated English accents, and make unnecessary hand gestures when talking. So that, the audience would associate the Chinese stereotype in Amercian society. From the movie of “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing”, Jennifer Jones, a white actress casted as a Eurasian doctor (Han Suyi) who originally from China, her dressing and make-up in film were matching with the ‘requirement’ of acting an asian character with her identity as a white people. Moreover, there are movies which are based on real-life stories, actors or actresses have to portray the behaviours, walking and standing poses, and especially the accent of the actual person in real-life. Therefore, the ugly fact tells that it should not be using external and additional set-up to form a movie character with any identity. From the perspective as an asian, I would say, “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it” because there is nothing as realistic as natural identity. To be more realistic to act, there are more to be aware.
Modern days of Hollywood
Following the booming up of asian countries over these years, the situation of ‘whitewashing’ in Hollywood is getting less-exaggerate as there are more hot and intelligent asian celebrities are invited to cast in Hollywood films. Still the flower died, but the stems of the flower are existed. In the 2017 movie “Ghost in the Shell”, it presents the new version of Hollywood ‘whitewashing’ which is not using heavy post-makeup to portray the asian character; it is rare to see white celebrities are painted ‘yellowly’ on their face. But, the credit of expanding the reputation of asian celebrities in Hollywood is the 2018 movie “Crazy Rich Asian”, and it received over 26 million from the ticket revenue.
“Crazy Rich Asian” is a full asian cast, asian-themed movie, which is the second Hollywood film with majority cast of asian celebrities. People would wonder why the “whitewashing” didn’t appear in this Asian movie? The answer is as simple as the director and author are Asian, and they wished to look for asian celebrities to participate, instead of finding white actors. By presenting asian theme and characteristic in this movie, it can be a model of asian-themed Hollywood film, it will be glad to see more asian-themed movie to be released in the future.
From all the way down, the Hollywood film industry is still containing with the issues of racism and unequal treat between white and non-white celebrities. From the concept of “whitewashing”, it shows the dark side of the industry, and the cruel fact is that a white celebrity cannot portray, and perform as “asianly” as an asian identity celebrity. It’s a shame that Hollywood would rather use makeup techniques to transform from white people to asian, than looking for asian celebrities to cast. Eventually, the credit of “Crazy Rich Asian” has changed the global perspective towards the asian stereotypes, and the situation of ‘whitewashing’ should be no-longer existed and gradually fade out from the movie scenes.
