Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from World War II to the Present: The Orientalist Buddy Film [Hardcover]

Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from WWII to the Present charts how the dominant white and black binary of American racial discourse influences Hollywood s representation of the Asian. The Orientalist buddy film draws a scenario in which two buddies, one white and one black, transcend an initial hatred for one another by joining forces against a foreign Asian menace. Alongside an analysis of multiple genres of film, Brian Locke argues that this triangulated rendering of race ameliorates the longstanding historical contradiction between U.S. democratic ideals and white America s persistent domination over blacks.Introduction: Two's Company: Flash Gordon (1980) and Lethal Weapon (1987, 1989, 1992, 1998) Strange Fruit: Bataan (1943) White and Black to the Brink: China Gate (1957), Pork Chop Hill (1959), All the Young Men (1960) The Blaxploitation Buddy Film: Three the Hard Way (1974), Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975), Brotherhood of Death (1976) The Orientalist Buddy Film and the 'New Niggers': Blade Runner (1982, 1992, 2007) Ghosts of Los Angeles: Rising Sun (1993) 'Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto': The Matrix (1999) and the Virtual Asian Pearl Harbor Eclipsed?: The Last Samurai (2003), Crash (2004)

Locke grabs the reader with an intensity that is personal. This book will be easier for less experienced readers to digest than broader historical treatments. . .It is 100 percent solid, 0 percent sermonistic. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. - CHOICE

Not merely an overview of anti-Asian portrayals in mainstream cinema, Locke cogently argues that Asian villainy in popular film enables a national fantasy, the disavowal of institutional discrimination via the spectacle of reconciliation between white and black. This book explodes the myth of progressive Hollywood by revealing the ways in which racial inclusion comes at a cost - in this case, to Asian Americans. Refreshingly accessiblel“2