"One of us is yellow."

[seeingred]

Right: I want to talk about Chinese characters in Doctor Who. This will take more than one posting!

To start with, I want to talk about "yellowface" - that is, casting White actors in Asian roles, using makeup and prostheses to make them look the part, generally with a resounding lack of success. It's an issue Who fans have to face squarely; there

Comments

[dalekboy]

I'd never heard the one about there being no Chinese actors suitable for the part. That may well have been true, but it smells like bullshit to me

[arjuna_lj]

I will agree with the fact that white actors in yellowface was a common enough practice in the UK at the time. Whenever I see it done in shows from that period I just accept that that's how it was done back then.

There are some notable exceptions, though - see the contemporary programme Gangsters, series 2 (1978) for example - several recurring Actual Chinese Actors (caveat: theme being some rather daft/2D Triad stuff, although the whole absurdist tone of s2 probably accounts for that to some degree, given s1' less "typed" approach to a multiracial cast/characters)... perhaps also The Chinese Detective, although admittedly that was made a little later (1981) and (given the premise) really couldn't have got away with the practice.

[jblum]

I seem to recall an interview comment (possibly from David Maloney, though I'm not sure) on the subject of Holmes and Asians, which put his racial attitudes in the "tacky old grandpa" bracket rather than the "actively malicious" one. It probably came from the same sort of wellspring of unexamined assumptions as the howlingly awful Mexican bandito in "War Games", as written by Terrance Dicks and Mac Hulke (whose general lefty liberalism is pretty unquestionable)...

[wwhyte]

Off topic, but: Hulke was a Communist, as far as I know, but I always thought Dicks was a bit of an old Tory. Am I wrong?

[hiraethin]

By all the small gods, I do like The Talons of Weng-Chiang ;)

I will however poke at your argument a little.

Anyway, here we see the two problems with yellowface: firstly, it makes fun of Asian people. That's obviously not the intention with Talons, but it's still the effect: Chang is just another rather silly-looking monster played by a man in a rubber mask.

"Makes fun of". Really? A poorly executed imitation, done without intent to mock, constitutes mockery?

I would submit that it constitutes prejudice on the basis of favoritism for White actors over Asian actors, and demonstrates a shabbily provincial point of view with regard to a rich foreign culture.

There are far too many examples of yellowface in Western media where the mockery, the condescension, is teeth-grindingly evident. It's not necessary to invent it where it does not exist. Neither should it be ignored where it does exist; the banality of racism is, for example, all too evident in E.R. Burroughs' The Lost World, to my dismay on the bus this morning

[pbristow]

On the casting issue, a major factor to take into account is the "rep company" (or to be less kind, "jobs for the boys") approach that was normal practice at the time: Directors chose their own casts, and tended to pick from within a pool of people they'd worked with before and got along well with, unless some requirement forced them to look outside. Just looking within Who, notice how often Bernard Horsefall's appearance on screen coincides with a director's credit for David Maloney, for example

[seeingred]

I think that's a good point - the infotext on the DVD notes the previous occasions on which the director had worked with some of the cast. Given that apparently no-one thought the yellowface was a problem, it may not even have occurred to Maloney to consider a fresh face (one which didn't need rubber glued to it).

[jblum]

There are a couple of other yellowface examples in Who, actually -- "Marco Polo", "Celestial Toymaker", and "Abominable Snowmen" come to mind! Though it's harder to see the makeup in black and white, I guess. I wonder if they would have made up Michael Gough again for "Nightmare Fair"...?

As for the "adapt the part to be an Englishman" idea, that probably wouldn't be practical -- the plot depends on Chang actually worshipping Weng-Chiang, which would be rather odd for a Brit. It would require more than a few dialogue tweaks to make that work -- and given how insanely last-minute the script was (Holmes finished the last part a couple of days before they started shooting), I can see why that wouldn't exactly cross his mind!

[jblum]

Oh, and Kevin Lindsay as Cho-Je!

[kateorman]

Oh, der, of course there are others - can't believe I forgot about Cho Je! When I make my next posting it'll be about Asian characters outside of Talons, plus some research on Asian actors in the UK.

[almostwitty]

Shout if you want current examples ;)

Will be interesting to see your take on Chipo Chung in Utopia/Turn Left...

[xavienne]

That's some seriously bad makeup. John Wu in aging makeup would have been a much better choice.
Considering it was 1976 I'm sure they could have found a suitable Asian actor somewhere if they had looked. It isn't as if Europe and China had no communication with each other whatsoever.
*sigh*
It bothers me beyond belief that in this day & age we still have remarkably little diversity on screen. It might be because I live in a city with several universities and a large number of students who come from other countries, but when I walk down the street I see more than one or two cultures represented, and I see them represented in a huge array of different people -- students, parents with small children, businessmen. Why can't the media reflect this?

[alawston]

It isn't as if Europe and China had no communication with each other whatsoever.

Well they didn't have much communication. Little thing called the Cultural Revolution kind of messed up the channels a bit.

[xavienne]

I keep thinking of Bruce Lee; then again he was born in the States so his parents obviously traveled and were exposed to more cultural differences than the average citizen of the US or Hong Kong.