March 7, 2010 – NY Times
A Charlie Chan Film Stirs an Old Controversy
By PRADNYA JOSHI
The revival of a 42-year-old documentary on the fictional Chinese detective Charlie Chan has reignited the controversy surrounding that character specifically and, more generally, the portrayal of Asian-Americans in Hollywood.
The documentary, “The Great Charlie Chan,” made in 1968, was all but forgotten. But Harvey Chertok, who was vice president for advertising, promotion and publicity at Warner Brothers-Seven Arts when it was created, said he discovered it recently while cleaning out old files. The New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the group that organizes the New York Emmy Awards, held a screening in February and another is scheduled at the National Arts Club in Manhattan on March 16.
A book, “Quotations From Charlie Chan,” was published as a companion to the documentary. It contains many of the kitschy sayings the character used when talking to his “No. 1 Son.”
For many activists, Charlie Chan remains a symbol of Hollywood’s failure to accurately portray Asians and Asian-Americans. The character was usually played by white actors who were made up to seem Asian and who spoke English with an exaggerated accent. The portrayals also frequently perpetuated the cliché of Asian-Americans as inscrutable.
A screening of such films “indicates the level of disenfranchisement and disregard they hold for Asian Pacific Islanders,” said Ken Choy, a producer and community organizer in Los Angeles.
Bill Chu, a 71-year-old New York City resident, says that when he was growing up in Los Angeles and Philadelphia in the 1950s, he and his younger brother were subjected to racial taunts inspired by the fake Confucian quotations of Chan.
“The Hollywood characterizations — Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan and other stereotypes — didn’t necessarily put us in a favorable light,” Mr. Chu said.
Screenings of Charlie Chan films have drawn objections before. In 2003, the Fox Movie Channel reached a compromise to show some of the films after it also agreed to broadcast a panel discussion on racial issues to accompany the movies.
Mr. Chertok said that during the screening in February, no one in the audience raised the issue of stereotypes, although he said he made note of the Fox controversy during his remarks.
But some Asian-Americans say that although Charlie Chan was an amalgam of stereotypes, he should be looked at in a broader context 80 years after he was created.
“The fortune-cookie aphorisms tend to be funny” today, said Stephen Gong, executive director of the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco. “His children very much represent a generational shift.”
PRADNYA JOSHI
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