Charlie Chan: A Stereotype and a Hero

New York Times ^ | August 10, 2010 | CHARLES McGRATH

[nickcarraway]

To many Asian-Americans, Charlie Chan is an offensive stereotype, another sort of Uncle Tom. Chan, the hero of six detective novels by Earl Derr Biggers and 47 Hollywood movies between 1926 and 1949, not to mention a 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, is pudgy, slant-eyed and inscrutable, and he speaks in singsong fortune-cookie English, saying things like, “If befriend donkey, expect to be kicked.” The California-born author and playwright Frank Chin, who has written essays denouncing Chan, would like to see him disappear altogether.

But Yunte Huang, who was born and grew up in China, can’t get enough of Chan and has written a book about his obsession: “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History.” The book, which comes out from Norton next week, is part memoir, part history, part cultural-studies essay and part grab bag of odd and little-known details.

Biggers, who overlapped at Harvard with T. S. Eliot but did not exactly share his literary taste, said he got the idea for Chan while sitting in the New York Public Library in 1924 and reading about a real-life Honolulu detective named Chang Apana. Mr. Huang suggests that Biggers may have misremembered the details, but there is no doubt that Apana was the model for Chan, and Mr. Huang gives a full account of a life that was in many ways more interesting than the fictional version: born in Hawaii to Chinese parents, Apana moved to China and then back to Hawaii, where despite being virtually illiterate, he rose in the detective ranks of the Honolulu police. He wore a cowboy hat, carried a bullwhip and was said to leap from rooftop to rooftop like a human fly.

[End Times Sentinel]

Yeah, whatever. Someone looking for something to feel umbrage over will find it no matter what.

I'm in the middle of a Charlie Chan Netflix run and I found it pretty amazing that at that time, the Chan brothers and sisters were so westernized.

FWIW, the guy who played Jimmy Chan in the post WWII era films (Reno, Dead Men) later became the legendary Hop Sing on Bonanza.

Awesome.

[ReneeLynn]

I love the Charlie Chan films and have almost all of them. But the story of the real Chan is interesting too. Why don’t some of these guys get a script together about the real guy instead of b*tching and moaning?

[Nachum]

I smell a script being sold to Hollywood.

[ReneeLynn]

And for all the complaining those films gave a lot of Asian actors work. They weren’t stereotypes.

[hoosierham]

Wasn't Charlie Chan the HERO in these stories?

As in made the other people,such as "white" criminals look stupid in the end?

[a fool in paradise]

To many Asian-Americans, Charlie Chan is an offensive stereotype, another sort of Uncle Tom.

Charlie Chan was just doing the work for "the man" who couldn't solve crimes for himself?

[Rodamala]

One that doesn't know any better has to read ALL THE WAY to the FOURTH paragraph to read:

Mr. Huang gives an equally full account of Chan’s movie history and of the actor with whom he was most memorably associated: a Swede named Warner Oland...

I am surprised that the NYT (mis)used the term "Uncle Tom" and failed to invoke the name of Al Jolson and directly use the term "Blackface" (though "yellowface" is used in the last paragraph).

I had a mystery writing class as a senior in college. Charlie Chan films were one of the featured classics studied... and I heard ZERO protest from any of the students in a very ethnicly diverse class (Engineering School).

[rolling_stone]

I believe Charlie Chan was a swede...

[longfellow]

I will buy it, sounds velly intelesting.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

Sign posted outside Chinese laundry: "Two Wongs will make it white"....

[a fool in paradise]

Hadn’t heard of Frank Chin

So I look into his wikipedia entry, born in Berkely,CA... writes stories that contain asian stereotypes... has worked with Japanese-Americans who resisted the draft in the US in WWII...

Sounds a bit left of center.

[a fool in paradise]

there is no doubt that Apana was the model for Chan, and Mr. Huang gives a full account of a life that was in many ways more interesting than the fictional version: born in Hawaii to Chinese parents, Apana moved to China and then back to Hawaii, where despite being virtually illiterate, he rose in the detective ranks of the Honolulu police. He wore a cowboy hat, carried a bullwhip and was said to leap from rooftop to rooftop like a human fly.

+ +

=

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Sounds a bit left of center."

Born in Berkely Ca. should have given you that clue... : )

[a fool in paradise]

Said he moved away but he moved back to the bay area and then attended Berkley for school.

[a fool in paradise]

San Fransicko has first generation Chinese immigrants protesting against Communism and US born asian and white liberal college kids protesting FOR Communism.

[MrEdd]

I love those old detective stories so much better than the modern ones.

[ReneeLynn]

Warner Oland was a Swede, I think. Sydney Toler, I don’t know. I may have that backwards.

[ReneeLynn]

Nevermind, just saw the bit from the article.

[ReneeLynn]

Whenever I read complaints like this I think, ‘Look at the Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, Gilligan, W.C. Fields and look to, if you know Asian Martial Arts cinema to the way whites are portrayed there. We’re always the bad guys or the stupid missionaries.’ The Asians have noting to brag about when it comes to fair portrayal of whites. But, at least Charlie Chan has better writing.