My Students Called This 'Racist' -- Your Response?

Well, I'm Asian and I watched this film in high school for my Film History class. I found it quite racist. Having a Caucasian shave his eyebrows a little and squint his eyes and the filmmakers think that that will convince the audience that he is Asian is very racist to me. Also the actions and the mannerisms, to me, are basically what I believe to be how Americans perceived Asians (eating tea and noodles and smoking from a long pipe).

"This is what happens when I get hungry, man become machine and machine becometh monkey."

I don't excuse the inherent racism of the movie, but you've got to put it in context. Not to mention, to dismiss outright as racist is to completly ignore the beauty and tragedy of the story, which in fact is brought about by the hateful racism of the characters. The two most innocent people suffer because of it, thus exposing it. I think it's an easy out for people who don't really want to take a closer look.

On that note-hello? The movie was filmed in 1919-not a lot of Asian actors to choose from, not to mention Hollywood wouldn't have hired them if there had been. Think of the mental state of most of the country towards foreigners-not too enlightened. Most leading men were totally All American. At first the studios didn't even want to cast Rudolph Valentino because he looked too foreign-good for them that someone came to their senses. And speaking of which-

Son Of The Sheik is fabulous. Of course, your female students will probably like it a lot more than the male ones.

It's certainly racist by today's standards. As a teacher myself, I would be uncertain of showing it to students without first having a long discussion about the film and its context. But it WAS 1919 and although the film does play for every single stereotype about Asians (and has a white man play an Asian character) I would not say the film is deliberately hateful...

On that note, how did your students react to some of the other "stereotyping" seen in the film? The character of "Battling Burrows", I think, plays into the stereotype of working class men being drunken and violent. The helpless Lucy is the stereotype of the weak female who needs to be rescued by the man. Did your students bring this up? If not, why? Are some stereotypes considered more worthy of outrage than others? You might want to introduce this into the conversation.

May I say, first, your own comments are intelligent and ... well, heck, you must be a very good teacher. Bravo.
Second, most of the other comments and replies are also intelligent.
Casting a Caucasian as a Chinese could work, I suppose, if the makeup were better, but I think of others, such as Edward G. Robinson, who were equally awkward as Chinese but given great praise.
On the other hand, perhaps we need a stronger suspension of disbelief when we watch movies like this.
No, the movie itself is not racist. That's become such a general and therefore meaningless word anyway. (Often it means nothing more than "how dare you disagree with me!")
If the movie were "racist," the Chinese character would not be so admirable, and he IS admirable.
I have seen this film many times over the years, once, at a FILMEX showing, with a live orchestra! And what an exciting experience that was! (I wish someone would remind me of who the conductor was. He was a brilliant and capable musician, so good at his job that when the projectionist got a reel out of order, he was able to keep the music correctly accompanying the action. An amazing, astounding feat of musicianship. The score, by the way, was by Louis F. Gottschalk, and I wondered why his original score wasn't used when TCM recently presented this film.)
In closing, let me call attention to this proof the film was in no way racist: The hero is going off to England to try to convert the natives ... a delicious slap at the self-righteousness of Western "Christians" who think missionarying goes only one way.
I do hope your students can think outside of the box that simplisticly labels such a work of art.
With such a great teacher, surely they will.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0009968/trivia
I believe it was gish's attitude, don't always blame griffith for this or that
didn't tarantino say, it's all the actings that matter??

Are you really from Florence? A dear friend of mine lives in Rome!

This thread theme is so ironic because Griffith chose BB partly to
exculpate himself from the (only too justified, I'm afraid) charge
that his Birth of a Nation was racist. Silent films are wonderful
but there are a lot of teeth-gritting racial stereotypes that make
us cringe today. Still, I don't approve of editing them out to
make them more palatable to audiences today; the sole exception being
films shown to young kids who might be embarrassed by caricatured
representation.

racist, racialized...yes. The portrayol of the Asians is very stereotypical. But not without its merits. I don't think it would be fair to have a discussion of this film without acknowledging how very different the attitudes towards race were in its day.

Two of the racist things that bugged me about the movie:

- Lucy couldn't be bothered to learn Cheng Huan's name, she called him *c h i n k y* even though he took care of her and asked nothing in return.

- Mr. Richard Barthelmess played Cheng Huan as a crouched over, slinking man. As if he had something to hide or was up to something. Kind of plays into the stereotype of Asians being deceitful.



>>Oh, well that's different. Nevermind!<<