MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA Katedra Anglistiky a Amerikanistiky
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MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA Katedra Anglistiky a Amerikanistiky Bakalářská diplomová práce Petra Fišerová Petra Fišerová 2012 PETRA FIŠEROVÁ 20 12 12 MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Petra Fišerová On the Japanese in American Cinema Bachelor‘s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2012 2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ................. Author’s signature 3 Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Dr. Mark Hollstein, whose courses at Kansai Gaidai inspired me to write this thesis. 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC AND METHODOLOGY . 6 CHAPTER 1: From the 1860s Onward: Orientalism . 8 CHAPTER 2: Before 1941: Yellow Peril . 12 CHAPTER 3: 1941 – 1945: The Racism of World War II . 14 CHAPTER 4: 1945 – the 1970s: Post-War Trends . 20 CHAPTER 5: the 1970s – the 1990s : The Rise of Postmodernity and Corporate Samurais . 28 CHAPTER 6: The Brink of Our Century: Japanese Cool . 36 CHAPTER 7: The Third Millenium: Post-Racial Discourse . 45 CONCLUSION: . 47 BIBLIOGRAPHY: . 49 ABSTRACT (English): . 54 RESUMÉ (Czech): . 55 5 INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC AND METHODOLOGY Why do Americans expect the Japanese to be treacherous yet honorable? How could the production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s allow Mickey Rooney‘s racist portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi? What are the current stereotypes associated with Japan and the Japanese in Hollywood? This and more will be clarified on the following pages. With a special focus on the latest generation, ―On the Japanese in American Cinema‖ will list and analyze Hollywood‘s trends in portraying Japan and the Japanese from the silent era till 2012 and perhaps a few years beyond. The result of the research will be a useful list of stereotypes, their origins and manifestations in individual films. Another objective of this thesis is to raise awareness about the common practice od stereotyping in Hollywood. The thesis will only research American production full-length films that had a theatre release. There is no space for made-for-TV films, animation, short features, or TV series. These will be mentioned only if their involvement with the film industry is impossible to disregard. The thesis is based on quantitative research, therefore common features in several films will be considered more essential than a deep analysis of one film. Each chapter will begin with an introduction into the cultural, social, economic, and foreign relations related conditions in which the film tropes and stereotypes were created. For the lack of space, the occurence of the same trends and tropes in literature, music and other media will be ignored unless the reference is necessary. After the stereotype is indicated on a number of examples, the effect it has had on American audiences will be discussed. Since some works contain multiple tropes and stereotypes, it is inevitable that some films will be mentioned more than once in various segments of the thesis. The chapter division of the thesis will follow a fairly loose definition of time periods. Stereotypes in American cinema take years to develop and often overlap. In order to map them in a well-arranged manner, they will be listed in the time period they influenced the most but their description may include development stages before the assigned time period 6 and resonances that would come after. This loose arrangement is why chapters 1 and 2 overlap almost completely, chapters 6 and 7 overlap in a significant portion, and chapters 4, 5 and 6 share a decade within their boundaries. The length of the chapters will be in favor of the latest American cinema development. The first five chapters can be even considered a mere reference sheet for putting chapters 6 and 7 into historical context. Unfortunately, there is no space in the thesis for comparing Japanese and American points of view or media stereotypes. What may seem like favoritism to Japan and the Japanese, especially in the chapters devoted to war-time and post-war development, is a simple analysis of the way American films portrayed facts and fiction. 7 CHAPTER 1: From the 1860s Onward: Orientalism From the first contact, Americans have been most fascinated and confused about Japan. Lumping them together with other ‗Oriental‘ nations at first, they expected the Japanese to be barbaric, mystical, sensual and somehow in direct contact with their ancient heritage - as was noted by Walt Whitman in 1860 in his ―Broadway Pageant‖ (383). However, Japan revealed itself to western eyes as a land of utmost contrasts. Heathen yet civilised, highly cultured, cleaner than most Americans and shockingly polite – the perplexing combination of Japanese qualities did not go unnoticed by Hollywood. It manifests in a Japanese character in the 1915 silent film The Cheat. ―Both brutal and cultivated, wealthy and base, cultured and barbaric, Tori embodies the contradictory qualities Americans associated with Japan‖ (Marchetti 19). The more Americans knew about Japan, the more baffled they were. To them, Japan became the land of paradox, where everything is topsy turvy and no matter how much they try, it would always be impossible to comprehend. Not for the lack of trying, however. Over the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, western fascination with Japanese culture produced a new artistic style: Japonisme. Imitating Japanese art became a fashionable hobby, even though it did not bring much enlightenment about the source material. ―East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet‖ became the motto of approaching Japanese culture and people1. This approach, taken by most westerners in the 19th century and continuously returning until today, can be called Orientalism as Edward Said defined it in all three of its meanings: Orientalism as a study of the Orient; Orientalism as a style of thought that divides the Orient and the Occident into contrasting 1 Nevermind that when Rudyard Kiplin wrote this verse, he concluded it with: ―But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth / When two strong men stand face to face, tho‘ they come from the ends of the earth‖ (141). 8 or opposing worlds; and Orientalism as a western style of dominating the Orient by creating and controlling the identity of the Orient2. Though seemingly innocent, Orientalism is a mild form of racism. After all, by assigning certain qualities to certain peoples, we create racial stereotypes. The first frequent Hollywood stereotypes about Japan and the Japanese are discussed below. 1.A The Exotic Seducer One of the highest paid film actors of the silent era and so far the only Asian American male romantic symbol in Hollywood, Sessue Hayakawa, appeared in over sixty silent movies between 1914 and 1921. Early Hollywood provided cheap low-brow entertainment for the working class, including thousands of immigrants, so a foreign lead actor possibly attracted the viewers‘ sympathy. Like many romantic leads of the silent era, for example the Italian Rudolph Valentino, Sessue Hayakawa needed to play a dark, often brutal man with a soft and masochistic side in order to deliver the desired taboos to the viewers. Foreign origin was the perfect excuse to create a character of an immoral seducer. Marchetti argues that because of his ethnicity, ―the effect of Hayakawa on American women was even more electric than Valentino‘s. It involved fiercer tones of masochism as well as a latent female urge to experience sex with a beautiful but savage man of another race‖ (25). Another Hayakawa‘s advantage was that before his characters revealed their savage urges for seduction, they offered ―a different type of masculinity (soft, effeminate, yielding, ‗Asian‘) that may displace the banal paternalism [of conventional American husbands]‖ (Marchetti 20). Sessue Hayakawa‘s stardom came at the only possible time pre-Second World War America could have embraced him. Hollywood atmosphere did not allow for another Japanese actor to become an object of female viewers‘ affection until Cold-War policies 2 See the Bibliography. 9 and later postmodernity changed the film industry. Nevertheless, these changes relate to only several individual films instead of a trend, and even Sessue Hayakawa‘s stardom tends to be forgotten by cultural historians such as Ian Littlewood who says that ―Sex and the oriental male have never added up to anything very romantic in western eyes‖ (181). 1.B: The Noble Savage The term ‗noble savage‘ refers to idealizing indigenous or less industrialized cultures for their apparent closer connection to the state of nature. A well-known and spread concept since the 18th century, it has been applied to many ethnicities and the Japanese are no exception. Hand in hand with the belief that noble savages are commendable yet doomed to extinction for their lack of technological progress, a desire to protect Japanese culture appeared. These tendencies, expressed for example by Rudyard Kipling, imagined Japan as an ornament that should be preserved in its current state, forever still like a skansen so that the modern world can develop without losing its ancient beauty. The noble savage stereotype would experience a strong comeback with post-war occupation and postmodernity. 1.C: First Interracial Love Stories Sessue Hayakawa‘s exotic lovers might have been a rare occurence in Hollywood history; however, Mary Pickford‘s portrayal of Cho Cho San in Madame Butterfly (1915) started a long tradition of love stories between an American man and a Japanese woman. Based on John Luther Long‘s 1898 short story of the same name and inspired by the success of Puccini‘s opera adaptation, Madame Butterfly is a silent film about a fifteen-year- old geisha‘s tragic marriage to an American officer who uses her and leaves her.