China and the Chinese in Popular Film

From Fu Manchu to Charlie Chan

By:

Jeffrey Richards

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Cinema and Society

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Description

There's a folk memory of China in which numberless yellow hordes pour out of the 'mysterious East' to overwhelm the vulnerable West, accompanied by a stereotype of the Chinese as cruel, cunning and depraved. Hollywood films played their part in perpetuating these myths and stereotypes that constituted 'The Yellow Peril'. Jeffrey Richards examines in detail how and why they did it. He shows how the negative image was embodied in recurrent cinematic depictions of opium dens, tong wars, sadistic dragon ladies and corrupt warlords and how, in the 1930s and 1940s, a countervailing positive image involved the heroic peasants of The Good Earth and Dragon Seed fighting against Japanese invasion in wartime tributes to the West's ally, Nationalist China. The cinema's split level response is also traced through the images of the ultimate Oriental villain, the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu and the timeless Chinese hero, the intelligent and benevolent detective Charlie Chan.Filling a longstanding gap in Cinema and Cultural History, the book is founded in fresh research into Hollywood's shifting representations of China and its people.

Author Biography:

Jeffrey Richards is Professor of Cultural History, Lancaster University. His many publications in cinema & its history include The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema & Society in Britain, 1930-39, Best of British: Cinema and Society, 1930-1970, the British Film Guide to A Night to Remember (all I.B. Tauris), and Mass Observation at the Movies. He is the General Editor of Tauris' Cinema and Society Series.

Release date Australia

November 9th, 2016

Author

Jeffrey Richards

Series

Cinema and Society

Pages

256

Audience

Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly

Illustrations

15 bw integrated

Dimensions

138x216x25

ISBN-13

9781784537203

Product ID

25736595

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