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Criminalization/Assimilation
Chinese/Americans and Chinatowns in Classical Hollywood Film
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Book Presentation:
Criminalization/Assimilation traces how Classical Hollywood films constructed America’s image of Chinese Americans from their criminalization as unwanted immigrants to their eventual acceptance when assimilated citizens, exploiting both America’s yellow peril fears about Chinese immigration and its fascination with Chinatowns. Philippa Gates examines Hollywood’s responses to social issues in Chinatown communities, primarily immigration, racism, drug trafficking, and prostitution, as well as the impact of industry factors including the Production Code and star system on the treatment of those subjects. Looking at over 200 films, Gates reveals the variety of racial representations within American film in the first half of the twentieth century and brings to light not only lost and forgotten films but also the contributions of Asian American actors whose presence onscreen offered important alternatives to Hollywood’s yellowface fabrications of Chinese identity and a resistance to Hollywood’s Orientalist narratives.
About the Author:
PHILIPPA GATES is a professor of film studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. She is the author of several books, including Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas.
Press Reviews:
"Philippa Gates takes us on an engrossing journey through the Chinatown streets of Hollywood’s imagination in her comprehensive study of the ambivalent depiction of Chinese people and places on American screens. Her superlative book provides essential reading for scholars, students, and concerned readers who need to understand this history fully to critique the images and ideas that continue to shape today’s cultural landscape."
— Gina Marchetti
"Meticulously researched and laudably comprehensive, Criminalization/Assimilation explores Chinatown’s place in the lexicon of early Hollywood films. This is a unique and important contribution to film studies and Asian American studies—a highly satisfying read!"
— Karla Rae Fuller
"A most informative analysis…. The main strength of Criminalization/Assimilation may be its detailed outline of the various shifts in representations that occurred over a fifty-year period, that certainly complexifies a strictly axiological appreciation of Chinatown films as either racist or non-racist."
— Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press
> From the same author:
Resetting the Scene (2021)
Classical Hollywood Revisited
Dir. Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring
Subject: Countries > United States
Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas (2015)
The Reel Asian Exchange
Dir. Philippa Gates and Lisa Funnell
Detecting Women (2011)
Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film
Detecting Men (2006)
Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film
> On a related topic:
Whitewashing the Movies (2021)
Asian Erasure and White Subjectivity in U.S. Film Culture
by David C. Oh
Subject: Sociology
Chinatown Film Culture (2020)
The Appearance of Cinema in San Francisco's Chinese Neighborhood
Subject: Sociology
Indian Accents (2013)
Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film
Subject: Sociology
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