Criminalization/assimilation : Chinese/Americans and Chinatowns in classical Hollywood film / Philippa Gates.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gates, Philippa, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinatowns in motion pictures.

Chinese Americans in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 294 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Criminalization/Assimilation traces how Classical Hollywood films constructed America's image of Chinese Americans from their criminalization as unwanted immigrants to their eventual acceptance when assimilated citizens, exploiting both America's yellow peril fears about Chinese immigration and its fascination with Chinatowns. Philippa Gates examines Hollywood's responses to social issues in Chinatown communities, primarily immigration, racism, drug trafficking, and prostitution, as well as the impact of industry factors including the Production Code and star system on the treatment of those subjects. Looking at over 200 films, Gates reveals the variety of racial representations within American film in the first half of the twentieth century and brings to light not only lost and forgotten films but also the contributions of Asian American actors whose presence onscreen offered important alternatives to Hollywood's yellowface fabrications of Chinese identity and a resistance to Hollywood's Orientalist narratives.

Contents:

Frontmatter

v Contents

1. Introduction

2. Yellow Peril, Protest, and an Orientalist Gaze: Hollywood's Constructions of Chinese/Americans

3. Imperiled Imperialism: Tong Wars, Slave Girls, and Opium

4. The Whitening of Chinatown: Action Cops and Upstanding Criminals

5. The Perils of Proximity: White Downfall in the Chinatown Melodrama

6. Tainted Blood: White Fears of Yellow Miscegenation

7. Assimilation and Tourism: Chinese American Citizens and Chinatown Rebranded

8. Assimilating Heroism: The Chinese American as American Action Hero

9. Epilogue

Filmography

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-275), filmography and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780813589435

0813589436

9780813589442

0813589444

OCLC:

1100462949