2 racist movies
I recently watched two old American movies set in post-war Japan. In hindsight, they are horrendously awful, overflowing with boilerplate humour - and racist as hell! The worst racist portrayals of Japanese in American films (excluding wartime propaganda films), are probably Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in the 1961 modern classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s (starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, directed by Blake Edwards), and Marlon Brando as Sakini in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956, directed by Daniel Mann). That film was a satire of the U.S. occupation and Americanization of Okinawa after the Second World War. And, I never cared for the Blake Edwards comedy classic because the character of Holly Golightly just seemed so ridiculous and useless on the one hand. George Peppard’s character just normalized male prostitution on the other hand, which I didn’t think was right. I never understood why it was so highly regarded. I felt the same way about Truman Capote after I read his two most famous books, Tiffany and In Cold Blood. For his part, Mickey Rooney always lamented the bad press his performance received, consistently claiming that it was nothing but good-natured comedy and that complaints about the role were exaggerated, mis-directed and mis-construed.
There were also the Charlie Chan Chinese-American detective movies - total of 49 films between 1926 and 1981. The Chan character was played by nine different actors, including Caucasians like Peter Ustinov, Sidney Toler and others. I’ve watched a couple Charlie Chan movies and I cringe. Cringe with excruciating cringiness!!
Personally, I liked the Joe Butterfly character, and I liked Meredith’s performance. He reminded me of some Japanese characters I have known and mannerisms I have witnessed. What I didn’t like was the band of clumsy, buffoonish American journalists. I didn’t like how the so recently fierce Japanese enemy instantly became a quaint curiosity for patronizing Americans.
Interestingly, the Joe Butterfly character doesn’t strike me as a major figure of the story. He’s an important marginal character who pops up at convenient times for plot and story continuity. But he unwittingly guides the journalists to their story.
Doug McClure plays Naval Hospital Corpsman “Doc” Willoughby stationed aboard a ship docked at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan (south of Tokyo, a real place). Right away, none of the Caucasian actors pronounces the word “Yokosuka” properly, which I didn’t appreciate. Willoughby is a gregarious, fun-loving, clever goof-off who succeeds in the navy more by inertia and perseverance than genuine skill or patriotic devotion. He’s a self-serving, smart-alecky schemer. Anyway, Willoughby falls in love with a woman he thinks is Japanese (he meets her in a Japanese shop where she is trying on a kimono), but who turns out to be a nisei (second generation Japanese-American) navy nurse also stationed at Yokosuka. The nurse just happens to be betrothed to her Japanese cousin - a traditional arranged marriage. As a modern American woman, she’s not into it, but the stage is set for a preening, competitive masculine faceoff between Doc Willoughby and the Japanese cousin Toshi O’Hara (James Shigeta). The rivalry is settled comically, and everyone lives happily ever after.