6th J662: Paper November 29, 2007 Race... The Final Frontier Nobody would argue that the histories of African, Asian, Native, and Hispanic American in this country have been resoundingly similar, other than that they've all been held down by whitey. How odd then that their depictions in film have followed such a uniform pattern, albeit at different times for different minorities. This pattern of progression is one of demystification; a move from a group being seen entirely as outsiders, to one of two seemingly inevitable outcomes, either they assimilate into mainstream culture, or mainstream culture assimilates theirs. It's no real surprise, American culture is built on the concept of assimilation. It's why we affectionately refer to our society as a "melting pot"1, because we live in a society dominated by an immigrant culture, where even the indigenous peoples are an oppressed minority. There exists what we like to call "the immigrant experience", despite the fact that immigration can come from a dizzying array of sources, from forced enslavement, to voluntary, legal, immigration, to illegal immigration, to maybe you didn't really immigrate, you were here all along but we stopped noticing after we took your land. The "immigrant experience" seems to vary greatly depending on what kind of immigrant you might be. Film, however, has historically had a consistently white perspective. Invented by the American pinnacle of "white guys with too much time on their hands" himself, Thomas Edison, film as a medium was predominately a "by whites, for whites" medium for its first quarter century. Furthermore, film's take on diversity closely mirrored the
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Because to call ourselves "fondue" would be overly glorifying the French.
chromatic capacity of a newspaper; black and white... and red all over. Both Birth of a Nation and Stagecoach, our two earliest pieces, portray African and Native Americans in a sense of "tamed" and "untamed" mystique, respectively. These demographics are depicted more like forces of nature than groups of individuals. Like bees, they swarm the nearest seat of government or caravan of wagons, and swoop in to cause trouble for the white man. They may not be the bad guys, but they're definitely not the good guys. At this point, enter the Asians. Hailing from a more "civilized" heritage than the previous minorities, Asians in film do not command a savage mystique, but instead, a character weakness that seems to stem from a culture too steeped in archaic tradition to be effective; their English broken from having an overly-complex-sounding-to-theCaucasian-ear tongue as a primary language. Additionally, this minority was the first major demographic of voluntary immigrants2. As such, Asians entered the stereotype progression a step later than African Americans, as domestic workers and supporting characters. At this point in the cycle of stereotype, there is an evolution; just not a very big one. While still being made predominately by whites and for whites, film becomes slightly more insightful into minority culture, but only slightly. Rather than basing minority image on totally contrived stereotypes which may or may not have any base in truth, minorities take on a more complex set of stereotypes that are at least based in a slightly deeper understanding of their culture, if not a truer one. This is where the "ethnic mystique" plays in. Suddenly, all Asians are expected to posses expert knowledge of fortune, luck3, and complex yet beautiful martial arts, while all Native Americans seem to
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Excluding the Irish, but they don't count cause they look just like regular white people. As in the Charlie Chan excerpt
know how to commune with nature and divine the future from natural signs 4. While still a gross overgeneralization, these stereotypes are more custom-tailored to the particular minority and some aspect of its cultural values. Then comes the defining moment, will minority culture assimilate into mainstream, or will mainstream integrate minority as-is? The answer varies among minority aspects, anywhere from complete assimilation, to complete integration, to something in between; a hypothesis best supported by three of the clips in the video. At first glance, Charlie Chan seems like a landmark hero in the representation of Asians as more than just a cultural stereotype. At its core, though, it may be the strongest example of a subversive pro-assimilation message in the bunch. At the outset, we see Charlie; a well5 dressed, eloquent, educated, intelligent Chinese man who is smarter than the police, and often takes down white bad guys. He seems to know little about Chinese culture, often regarding it as cryptically as his white contemporaries do, spending much of his time with his Chinese butler making fun of the man's name (the Butler, as well as other Asians on the show seem to have picked up all the extra stereotypes that Chan dropped). It's considering all this that I realized Chan is not really Asian. I mean sure, the actor isn't Asian, but I mean Chan isn't really Asian. Having sublimated any cultural heritage or camaraderie to embrace a stereotypical "white ideal", Chan is really has nothing more in common with Asians than skin color, by and that logic, Homer Simpson would be Asian. Chan is what's now know as a "Twinkie"6; he has completely assimilated, and seemed thrived because of it.
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As in the sweat lodge scene in Natural Born Killers, unless that was just the cameraman tripping on peyote... 5 read: western 6 "yellow on the outside, white on the inside"
Perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum lies a movie whose impact is second only to its capacity to be overlooked. Much like on the surface, Charlie Chan seemed to be a progressive step against Asian stereotyping, The Karate Kid seemed to uphold the status quo. Featuring a martial arts literate, thickly accented Japanese man in a supporting role for a white kid seemed pretty par for the course. What kids today don't seem to realize is, before the 80's, Americans recognized two styles of fighting; boxing and boxing. The revolutionary message of this movie seemed to be that, whereas previously, karate was something flashy to the point of being silly that only Asian people did; now white people could learn it to. Apparently ridiculing of martial arts by whites stemmed from jealousy, and once invited, the majority swarmed to it. Suddenly everyone and their mother was taking karate lessons, and then a thousand other martial arts, turning a cultural art form into a mainstream phenomenon. Without a doubt, the epitome of balance between assimilation and integration lies in Sanford and Son. One of many sitcoms in a landmark era, it was one of a new breed of shows targeted more at black audiences, which was based enough in reality to elicit a familiar feel among black audiences. At the same time, whites enjoyed a familiar feel to the show, whose protagonist was modeled after the iconic white character, Archie Bunker. Whites at first would find amusement in the idea that a minority figure could be as bigoted as a white man, but would then come to see it as a common ground they didn't know they shared. The final step on the path from complete stereotype to demystification seems to be the "Stickin' it to The Man" movie. Movies like Resurrection Blvd. and Smoke Signals are made, like Sanford and Son, true enough to reality to be appreciated by the minorities
they portray, but also with a clear, comfortable message to the white majority, "We just act the stereotype to fool the white man, when nobody's looking, we're just like you". In Welcome Back Kotter, that message may be even more blatant, because differences in race are made secondary to differences in generation when it comes to "stickin' it to the Man". The topic of racial stereotyping is a sensitive one which I have admittedly approached with all the subtlety and delicateness of a whack-a-mole game. It is sensitive because behind each stereotype is a group of people who want to simply be seen as individuals, and are less impressed with the progress we've made in breaking down stereotypes, than bothered by how far we have left to go; and perhaps rightly so. So in searching for my own outside movies, I tried to think of the "ideal minority". The ideal minority (for this situation) is a group that has been portrayed as nothing but stereotypes, been featured in this country's media for a good long time, and 7 completely fictitious. Naturally, I jumped right to Aliens. You may laugh, but if you look closely, our portrayal of space aliens in mainstream media follows a very similar path of stereotyping to racial minorities 8. We begin with War of the Worlds, a story of aliens who sweep in like a force of nature, causing terror in civilized society, offending our way of life, and eventually being defeated by diseases we long ago became immune to. Sound familiar? They might as well have just called the movie Dances with Tripods. Then, in the 60s, a man named Gene Roddenberry came up with a revolutionary show, one that would change the way
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To avoid pissing them off by callously throwing around stereotypes about them, albeit with a somewhat more convoluted chronology, owing to a lack of pro-Alien advocacy
we look at aliens9 forever; He called it Star Trek. For the first time, Aliens were our allies as well as our enemies. They were all, however, still (like minorities at various times) played by white men in costumes who looked and talked like people. Enter the veritable Thelma and Louise of Aliens in film, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Between Star Wars and E.T., the dynamic duo set the standards by which all sci-fi would be measured. And the verdict was in; they don't all look humanoid, they don't all speak English, some are good, some are evil; Aliens are people too. As silly and arbitrary as comparing Aliens to racial minorities might seem, it is highly indicative of the true feelings of society about stereotyping by showing how a society employs stereotyping when there's no one around to actually be offended by it. On the whole, we initially regard things that are different with a certain mystique. Then, we slowly distill the truer aspects that are most different from us into more solid stereotypes. Eventually, stereotypes erode and dissolve through demonstrations that, through assimilation or integration, either they're just like us, or we're just like them.
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and 30-year-old men still living in their mom's basement