Charlie Chan

From Hey Kids Comics

Charlie Chan is a fictional U.S. Chinese Detective created by Earl Derr Biggers. Loosely basing Chan on Honolulu detective Chang Apana, Biggers conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu. Chan is a detective for the Honolulu police, though many stories feature Chan traveling the world as he investigates mysteries and solves crimes.

Chan first appeared in Biggers' novels, then was featured in a number of media. Over four dozen films featuring Charlie Chan were made, beginning in 1926. The character was first portrayed by East Asian actors, and the films met with little success. In 1931, the Fox Film Corporation cast Swedish actor Warner Oland as Chan in Charlie Chan Carries On; the film became popular, and Fox went on to produce fifteen more Chan films with Oland in the title role. After Oland's death, U.S. actor Sidney Toler was cast as Chan; Toler made twenty-two Chan films, first for Fox and then for Monogram Studios. After Toler's death, six films were made, starring Roland Winters.

Interpretations of Chan by twenty-first century critics are split, especially regarding his ethnicity. Positive assessors of Chan argue that he is portrayed as intelligent, heroic, benevolent and honorable — in contrast to the adverse depictions of evil or conniving Chinese people then current in print and on screen. Others state that Chan, despite his good qualities, reinforces certain East Asian stereotypes, such as an alleged incapacity to speak fluent English and the possession of an overly tradition-bound and subservient nature. The Chan films of the 1930s and 1940s were shown successfully in China, where the character was popular and respected and not in the least seen as sinophobic.

More recent film adaptations in the 1990s have been poorly received. The character has been featured in several radio programs, two television shows, and comics.

Books[edit | edit source]

For the complete article see Wikipedia. The original article was at Charlie Chan.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Hey Kids Comics, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Film, radio, and television adaptations[edit | edit source]

For the complete article see Wikipedia. The original article was at Charlie Chan.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Hey Kids Comics, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Comics and games[edit | edit source]

File:Charliechan060640.jpg
Alfred Andriola's Charlie Chan (June 6, 1940)

A Charlie Chan comic strip, drawn by Alfred Andriola, was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate beginning October 24, 1938.[1] Andriola was chosen by Biggers to draw the character.[2] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the strip was dropped in May 1942.[3]

Over decades, other Charlie Chan comic books have been published: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Prize Comics' Charlie Chan (1948) which ran for five issues. It was followed by a Charlton Comics title (four issues, 1955). DC Comics published The New Adventures of Charlie Chan,[4] a 1958 tie-in with the TV series; the DC series lasted for six issues. Dell Comics did the title for two issues in 1965. In the 1970s, Gold Key Comics published a short-lived series of Chan comics based on the Hanna-Barbera animated series.

In addition, a board game, The Great Charlie Chan Detective Mystery Game (1937),[5] and a Charlie Chan Card Game (1939), have been released.

Modern interpretations and criticism[edit | edit source]

The character of Charlie Chan has been the subject of controversy. Some find the character to be a positive role model, while others argue that Chan is an offensive stereotype. Critic John Soister argues that Charlie Chan is both; when Biggers created the character, he offered a unique alternative to stereotypical evil Chinamen, a man who was at the same time "sufficiently accommodating in personality... unthreatening in demeanor... and removed from his Asian homeland... to quell any underlying xenophobia."[6]

Critic Michael Brodhead argues that "Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Charlie Chan novels convinces the reader that the author consciously and forthrightly spoke out for the Chinese - a people to be not only accepted but admired. Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Chinese reflected and contributed to the greater acceptance of Chinese-Americans in the first third of [the twentieth] century."[7] S. T. Karnick writes in the National Review that Chan is "a brilliant detective with understandably limited facility in the English language [whose] powers of observation, logic, and personal rectitude and humility made him an exemplary, entirely honorable character."[8] Ellery Queen called Biggers's characterization of Charlie Chan "a service to humanity and to inter-racial relations. Dave Kehr of The New York Times said Chan "might have been a stereotype, but he was a stereotype on the side of the angels."[9] Luke agreed; when asked if he thought that the character was demeaning to the race, he responded, "Demeaning to the race? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!"[10] and "[W]e were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood."[11][12]

Other critics, such as Yen Le Espiratu and Huang Guiyou, argue that Chan, while portrayed positively in some ways, is not on a par with white characters, but a "benevolent Other"[13] who is "one-dimensional."[14] The films' use of white actors to portray East Asian characters indicates the character's "absolute Oriental Otherness;"[15] the films were only successful as "the domain of white actors who impersonated slant-eyed, heavily-accented masters of murder mysteries as well as purveyors of cryptic proverbs in what Eugene Wong calls a 'racist cosmetology.'"[16] Chan's character "embodies the stereotypes and stigmas of Chinese Americans, particularly of males: smart, subservient, effeminate."[17] Chan is representative of a model minority, the good stereotype that counters a bad stereotype: "Each stereotypical image is filled with contradictions: the bloodthirsty Indian is tempered with the image of the noble savage; the bandido exists along with the loyal sidekick; and Fu Manchu is offset by Charlie Chan."[18] However, Fu Manchu's evil qualities are presented as inherently Chinese, while Charlie Chan's good qualities are exceptional; "Fu represents his race; his counterpart stands away from the other Asian Hawaiians."[2]

Some argue that the character's popularity is dependent on its contrast with stereotypes of the Yellow Peril or Japanese people in particular. U.S. opinion of China and Chinese U.S. citizens grew more positive in the 1920s and 30s in contrast to the Japanese, who were increasingly viewed with suspicion. Sheng-mei Ma argues that the character is a psychological over-compensation to "rampant paranoia over the racial other."[19]

In June, 2003, the Fox Movie Channel cancelled a planned Charlie Chan Festival, soon after beginning restoration for cablecasting, after a special-interest group protested. Fox reversed its decision two months later, and on September thirteenth, 2003, the first film in the festival was aired on Fox. The films, when broadcast on the Fox Movie Channel, were followed by round-table discussions by prominent East Asians in the U.S. entertainment industry, led by George Takei, most of whom were against the films. Collections such as Frank Chin's Aiiieeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Jessica Hagedorn's Charlie Chan is Dead are put forth as alternatives to the Charlie Chan stereotype and "[articulate] cultural anger and exclusion as their animating force."[20] Fox released the restored versions on D.V.D. in 2006;[8] as of mid-2008, Fox has released all of the extant Warner Oland titles and has begun issuing the Sidney Toler series. The first six Monogram productions, all starring Sidney Toler, were released by MGM in 2004.

Some modern critics, particularly U.S. East Asians, dismiss the Charlie Chan character as "bovine" and "asexual",[21] allowing "white America ... [to be] securely indifferent about us as men."[22] Charlie Chan's good qualities are the product of what Frank Chin and Jeffery Chan call "racist love", arguing that Chan is a model minority and "kissass".[23] Fletcher Chan, however, argues that the Chan of Biggers's novels is not subservient to white characters, citing The Chinese Parrot as an example; in this novel, Chan's eyes blaze with anger at racist remarks and in the end, after exposing the murderer, Chan remarks "Perhaps listening to a 'Chinaman' is no disgrace."[24] In the films, both Charlie Chan in London (1934) and Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) "contain scenes in which Chan coolly and wittily dispatches other characters' racist remarks."[9]

Bibliography[edit | edit source]

For the complete article see Wikipedia. The original article was at Charlie Chan.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Hey Kids Comics, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Filmography[edit | edit source]

For the complete article see Wikipedia. The original article was at Charlie Chan.
The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Hey Kids Comics, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. Young (2007), 128. Ma (2000), 13 gives the dates as 1935 to 1938; however, Young's obituary in The New York Times states that the strip began in 1938.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Ma (2000), 13.
  3. Young (2007), 128.
  4. Anderson and Eury (2005), 1923.
  5. Rinker (1988), 312.
  6. Soister (), 67.
  7. Michael Brodhead, quoted in Chan (2001), 56.
  8. 8.0 8.1 Karnick (2006).
  9. 9.0 9.1 Kehr, Dave (June 20, 2006). "New DVD's: Charlie Chan". The New York Times. 
  10. Quoted in Hanke (2004), xv.
  11. Lepore, Jill. "CHAN, THE MAN'" The New Yorker, 9 August 2010.
  12. Quoted in Hanke (2004), xiii.
  13. Kato (2007), 138.
  14. Le Espiritu (1996), 99.
  15. Dave (2005), xiii.
  16. Dave (2005), 161.
  17. Huang (2006), 211.
  18. Michael Omi, quoted in Chan (2001), 51.
  19. Ma (2000), 4.
  20. Dave (2005), 339.
  21. Kim (1982), 179.
  22. Frank Chin and Jeffery Chan, quoted in Kim (1982), 179.
  23. Chin and Chan, quoted in Kim (1982), 179.
  24. The Chinese Parrot, quoted in Chan (2007).

See also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  • "Alfred Andriola (obituary)". The New York Times. 30 March 2009. pp. A28. 
  • Anderson, Murphy; Michael Eury (2005). The Justice League Companion: A Historical and Speculative Overview of the Silver Age Justice League of America. TwoMorrows Publishing. ISBN 1-893905-48-9. 
  • Balio, Tino (1995). Grand design: Hollywood as a modern business enterprise, 1930-1939. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20334-8. 
  • Chan, Fletcher (26 March 2007). "Charlie Chan: A Hero of Sorts". California Literary Review. Retrieved 20 May 2009. 
  • Chan, Jachinson (2001). Chinese American masculinities: from Fu Manchu to Bruce Lee. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-8153-4029-X. 
  • "Charlie Chan in China". The Chinese Mirror: A Journal of Chinese Film History. May 2008. Retrieved 21 May 2009. 
  • "Creating Charlie Chan" (22 March 1931). In Popular Culture (1975). Ed. by David Manning White. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 0-405-06649-X.
  • Cox, Jim (2002). Radio Crime Fighters: Over 300 Programs from the Golden Age. McFarland Publishing. ISBN 0-7864-1390-5. 
  • Cullen, Frank; Florence Hackman; Donald McNeilly (2007). Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93853-8. 
  • Dave, Shilpa; LeiLani Nishime; Tasha G. Oren (2005). East Main Street: Asian American popular culture. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-1963-5. 
  • Gevinson, Alan (1997). Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20964-8. 
  • Hanke, Ken (1989). Charlie Chan at the Movies. McFarland Publishing. ISBN 0-7864-1921-0. 
  • Hardy, Phil (1997). The BFI companion to crime. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-304-33215-1. 
  • Hawley, Sandra M. (1991). "The Importance of Being Charlie Chan." In America views China: American images of China then and now. Ed. by Jonathan Goldstein, Jerry Israel, and Hilary Conroy. Lehigh University Press. ISBN 0-934223-13-0.
  • Huang, Guiyou (2006). The Columbia guide to Asian American literature since 1945. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12620-4. 
  • Karnick, S. T. (25 July 2006). "The Business End of Ethnic Politics". National Review Online. Retrieved 19 May 2009. 
  • Kato, M.T. (2007). From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, revolution, and popular culture. SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-6991-3. 
  • Kim, Elaine H. (1982). Asian American Literature, an introduction to the writings and their social context. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-260-6. 
  • Le Espiritu, Yen (1996). Asian American Women and Men. Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 0-8039-7255-5. 
  • Littlejohn, Janice Rhoshalle (14 January 2008). "Lucy Liu returns to television". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 25 August 2009. [dead link]
  • Ma, Sheng-mei (2000). The deathly embrace: orientalism and Asian American identity. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-3711-3. 
  • Mitchell, Charles P. (1999). A Guide to Charlie Chan Films. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30985-X. 
  • Odo, Franklin (2002). The Columbia documentary history of the Asian American experience. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11030-8. 
  • Pitts, Michael R (1991). Famous movie detectives II. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8108-2345-4. 
  • Queen, Ellery (1969). In the Queens' Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editors' Notebook. Biblio & Tannen. ISBN 0-8196-0238-8. 
  • Rinker, Harry L. (1988). Warman's Americana and Collectibles. Warman Publishing. ISBN 0-911594-12-4. 
  • Sengupta, Somini (5 January 1997). "Charlie Chan, Retooled for the 90's". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 May 2009. 
  • Soister, John (2004). Up from the vault: rare thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s. McFarland Publishing. ISBN 0-7864-1745-5. 
  • Sommer, Doris (2003). Bilingual games: some literary investigations. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-6012-7. 
  • Struss, Karl; Scott Eyman (1987). Five American cinematographers: interviews with Karl Struss, Joseph Ruttenberg, James Wong Howe, Linwood Dunn, and William H. Clothier. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8108-1974-0. 
  • Willis, Donald C. (1972). Horror and Science Fiction Films: A Checklist. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-0508-1. 
  • Yang, Jie (30 January 2009). "Lucy Liu, Kung Fu actress". CCTV International. Retrieved 25 August 2009. 
  • Young, William H (2007). The Great Depression in America: a cultural encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-33521-4. 

Further reading[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]