Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood

STOP THE PRESSES

Actors pretended to be somebody they aren't.

String them up!

[quote]Actors pretended to be somebody they aren't.

Only the white ones

Well, if that doesn't just Warner my Oland.

Asian guys are so hot. I don’t get why Hollywood didn’t want them

There is nothing better than Sidney Toler's Charlie Chan when he's paired up with Mantan Moreland's Birmingham Brown.

Feel better?

TCM has a series of Asian-themed films tonight including Daughter of the Dragon with Warner Oland.

Am I mentioned?

And still no documentary on “caneface”? From Shirley MacLaine in The Children’s Hour, to Cher in Silkwood, to Charlize Theron in Monster. Unlike “yellow-face”, this type of casting persists as one of the last acceptable forms of appropriation and cultural smudging.

You can pry Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s out of my cold dead hands.

How many white people have been in Asian films in the last 80 years?

R11 The correct analogy would be in those 80 years, how many of Asian movies did “whiteface”?

In Japan there was a famous stage version of Gone With The Wind, first done as a straight play, later adapted as a musical. With a Japanese cast. It may have played in London, as well. Is that "offensive"? I don't find it so. Maybe we should look at Hollywood's casting of Caucasians as Asians in the same way. If the production isn't mocking a race I don't see the problem. Dragon Seed, with Hepburn, was a pro-Chinese film, for ex.

R2 Exactly. When it’s the other way around and a white character is played by a black or Asian, all of a sudden it’s outrageous!”

Only in the last 15ish years has Hollywood stopped casting white people as people of color. It’s not like it was 50 years ago.

Angelina Jolie played a black woman not too long ago where she painted her face brown and wore a curly wig.

R13 Theres nothing wrong with adaptation. Did they paint their faces pink and wear wide contact lenses to do it?

“The Departed” is an Asian remake. I didn’t see Leonardo DiCaprio wearing orange makeup with tape to slant their eyes.

There’s a difference.

Robert Downey Jr in “Tropic Thunder” made fun of Hollywood by doing blackface in the movie.

That Angelina Jolie movie came out a year before!

Like the Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman story is not that far fetched. People think it’s ridiculous and they make the “white actor as Malcolm X” memes all over social media but people act like stuff like that wasn’t happening in Hollywood all the way into the 2000s.

Emma Stone in that “Aloha” movie too. She was Hawaiian.

It’s ok for whites to do it but the idea of black people or Asians being white is utterly ridiculous.

The double standard is stupid because it’s saying whites are default and universal and can play anything which is textbook white supremacy (yesss I said that term because that’s what it means).

There were actors throughout the decades who “passed”. Latinos like Jennifer Lopez had some white roles.

But that’s different from an actor having to paint their fucking face black or orange to be black or Asian.

Fuck that shit!!!

Also Ava Gardner. Played every biracial permutation under the sun.

[quote]Angelina Jolie played a black woman not too long ago where she painted her face brown and wore a curly wig.

Mariane Pearl is French of Afro-Cuban descent (mother) and Dutch Jewish (father).

Also, she had requested that Angelina play her in A MIGHTY HEART.

Don't forget Tilda Swinton as a bald, elderly Asian man.

R15 They played white and black people in the American south. With appropriate costumes, etc. I don't know what the makeup looked like. Is the makeup the main problem for you? The Departed was set in Boston not Hong Kong like Infernal Affairs, so your point escapes me.

R20 R21 These idea as so ingrained in people it's difficult to talk logically. But if a Eurasian person such as the role Jennifer Jones played in Love is a Many Splendored Thing is half Caucasian and half Asian, why must that person be played by an Asian? They are just as much Caucasian as Asian, so what's wrong with a Caucasian playing a mixed-race person? If Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian, same thing.

I would also add, in a movie like Dragon Seed, made during World War II. where was Hollywood going to find an all-Chinese cast to play in it? Not to mention, how were they going to sell that cast to a predominantly white audience?

[quote] Mariane Pearl is French of Afro-Cuban descent (mother) and Dutch Jewish (father). Also, she had requested that Angelina play her in A MIGHTY HEART.

Yeah, so brownface. Marianne Pearl is not an beauty, so it’s little wonder she wanted Angelina to portray her.

Cry me a river.

Don’t let blacks catch wind of this documentary. It’ll end in a shootout with the Asians.

Nothing but blatant racism can explain casting David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu when they could have gone with Bruce Lee.

Sometimes white actors playing black characters work. Steve Martin was excellent in the Jerk.

No yellowface was funny enough to play these roles!!

R28, I'm sure if this complaint were made about gay men, you might feel differently about it.

Whites have thick skin when it doesn’t involve them.

When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

But paint a white person in brown or orange makeup and switch their races and “what’s the big deal? Sensitive crybabies!!”

[quote] Marianne Pearl is not an beauty

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

[quote] But paint a white person in brown or orange makeup and switch their races and “what’s the big deal? Sensitive crybabies!!”

Did the black actress paint her face white to play Anne Boleyn? No.

R34, you are very much correct. Some people can't even abide if a light, fluffy period piece -- say, Bridgerton! -- has black actors. But they'll claim it's because of historical inaccuracy.

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

This never happened.

More Marxism at play.

Ava Gardner was of Melungeon descent so she had African and Native American heritage in addition to her European roots.

I watched the documentary last week. Informative and entertaining.

[quote]R40 Ava Gardner was of Melungeon descent

I believe that’s just modern speculation.

Meghan played white for years and nobody had a problem with it. And when the Queen gave her a black equerry she went full on white supremacist. It's a wonder she didn't burn a cross in front of Buckingham Palace. She could have led a KKK charge right out of Birth of a Nation.

[quote]Dragon Seed, with Hepburn

And the carra rirries in broom?

R44 = founder of Lululemon

R38 Right

R38 Right

Whites didn’t care

R37 They were upset there were black people in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings!

There’s TWO Star Wars actors - black and Asian, who suffered from mental health issues because of the backlash in their roles in Star Wars. Ahmed Best and Kelly Marie Tran.

White people even complain when there are black adaptations of stories. I know cause it’s on DL.

But whites are free to re-interpret or adapt anything they like.

R49 You mean like all those movies where white people played Martin Luther King and Paul Robeson, and stuff like that?

Inevitably, this thread has turned into black/white shit, as they always do. All other minorities be damned; your concerns don't matter.

Blacks and whites are the only real Americans.

Next up: A documentary on misogyny in Hollywood and how actresses had to suck dick to get roles.

Next up: A documentary on homophobia in Hollywood and how gays and lesbians were portrayed as degenerates in movies since the 1930s.

Next up: A documentary on dwarfphobia and how dwarfs were cast as freaks in movies like The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka.

Next up: A documentary on blonde women in Hollywood and how they were portrayed as hypersexual airheads for decades.

Did I forget any oppressed group?

R34 Blacks have thin skin when it doesn't involve them. Blacks playing white characters in movies today is OK and any criticism of that is racism but whites playing other races in movies from the past, now that was racist!

People are hypocrites.

This documentary blames Hollywood for promoting Japanese stereotypes during the war, with no acknowledgment that we were at war, and they wanted to destroy us. Woke means nothing when lives are at stake.

They also refuse to take into account that Asian actors were ignored for Asian roles, simply because producers didn’t think Asian actors were bankable enough to attract.audiences. It’s all about the money.

[quote] they

[quote] They

I understand.

But equity is equity and reparative quotas and casting favoritism in the present does not equalize anything.

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings

Like the Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman example these were real people well known to history. Race recast only as a matter of politics and diversity.

Katherine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Linda Hunt, DL fave Luise Rainer each played totally fictional characters. Besides I thought Linda Hunt was actually Asian the first time I saw that movie.

[quote]Woke means nothing

You said it Chicken Little. Put down the NYPost, delete your Facebook, and find yourself a new boogeyman. I hear immigrants are frightening.

I'm going to bump this and say that Lucille Bremer(I don't care if she was Arthur Freed's mistress I adore her) in yellow face and Irene Sharaff's yellow dress in Ziegfeld Follies is even more beautiful if that were even possible. Judy was jealous of her. 'Well I guess Pasadena just isn't her town.' Fred of course looks just silly.

The actress in the Calgon commercial was actually Japanese-American, not Chinese.

What am I? Chopped Chicken Chow Mein?

[R59]: You misquoted me by not including “when lives are at stake.”

The documentary indicates that the cinematic view of our Japanese enemies was stereotypically racist. But it doesn’t mention that these people were our sworn enemies, and believed we were beneath them, and deserved to be exterminated.

How woke is that?

How much of this sensitivity traces back to offensive characterizations like minstrel shows?

If the intent is not mockery, I don’t find it offensive.

[quote] The documentary indicates that the cinematic view of our Japanese enemies was stereotypically racist

In this time frame the Japanese view of Americans particularly and whites generally was far more racist. The Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was predicated on Yellow vs White race war.

The biographies of Japanese commanders who survived the war such as Tameichi Hara and iMitsuo Fuchida discussed this as a very natural matter.

Hawaii Five-0 was notorious for doing yellowface; the most egregious ones being Ricardo Montalban as a *Japanese* underworld kingpin, David Opatoshu, and Mark Lenard.

I have loved that show since I was 4-5 years old, and it holds up very well (unlike its 2010s reboot imo), but the yellowface is out of control. I mean, how difficult would it be to cast a fucking ASIAN in HAWAII?

R67 here. I mean, come ON!

R67:R68, de Kamikaze plane!

[quote] When Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were played by black actresses, they boycotted and sabotaged ratings and did what they could do to drag it down.

Because we’re constantly being told that it’s racist otherwise. It’s the hypocrisy that infuriates people. Had the races been reversed we would never had heard the end of it. Furthermore, the Greeks were the ones who were REALLY outraged.

He'll take away all your rice cakes!

He'll take away all your spice cakes!

Costumes Designed by SHARAFF, bitches!

Let’s not forget Scarlett Johansson in “Ghost in the Shell”. Hollywood is still embarrassing.

Believe it not , Busby Berkeley directed this.

For the BLMers, fuck off and make your own thread. Not every racist thing is about black people.

Has Tritia Toyota commented yet?

The Joy Luck cast included Japanese-Americans.

Didn't they make Erik Estrada of CHIPS fame Italian instead of Hispanic? Same goes for Rita Moreno. Of course, in all the old black &white movies the "Italian' guy was always fat, sweaty and in a t-shirt. The guys that run the entertainment biz have a deep down disdain for American viewers. Even today we get shitty, blow up crap, dynamite, comic book films with lots of CG- Not much intelligent or even mediocre content for grown-ups.

Rita usually played Asian or Mexican as a starlet