Romance and the "yellow peril" : race, sex, and discursive strategies in Hollywood fiction / Gina Marchetti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marchetti, Gina.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Asians in motion pictures.

Race relations in motion pictures.

Sex in motion pictures.

Love in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History.

Motion pictures.

Asians in motion pictures--History--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 258 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c1993.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Hollywood films about Asians and interracial sexuality are the focus of Gina Marchetti's provocative new work. While miscegenation might seem an unlikely theme for Hollywood, Marchetti shows how fantasy-dramas of interracial rape, lynching, tragic love, and model marriage are powerfully evident in American cinema.The author begins with a discussion of D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms, then considers later films such as Shanghai Express, Madame Butterfly, and the recurring geisha movies. She also includes some fascinating "forgotten" films that have been overlooked by critics until now.Marchetti brings the theoretical perspective of recent writing on race, ethnicity, and gender to her analyses of film and television and argues persuasively that these media help to perpetuate social and racial inequality in America. Noting how social norms and taboos have been simultaneously set and broken by Hollywood filmmakers, she discusses the "orientalist" tensions underlying the construction of American cultural identity. Her book will be certain to interest readers in film, Asian, women's, and cultural studies.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-248) and index.

ISBN:

9780520914629

0520914627

9780585338774

0585338779

Publisher Number:

2027/heb02731 hdl