Works featuring "ethnic stereotype" (26)

That Chink At Golden Gulch

Who could pass up a title like that? After all, over a century later ESPN was still relying on chink power to grab eyeballs with its “Chink in the Armor” headline for a Jeremy Lin story. Here, reknown Massa of ethnology D.W. Griffith spins a tale of a Noble Pagan who “though a saffron-skinned Pagan, his soul is white and real red blood pulsates his heart” the Moving Picture World synopsis tells us. The Moving Picture World review however was a bit less sentimental: “Perhaps if everyone could see such heroic self-sacrifice in a Chinaman as this one displayed, the aversion which most men feel toward them would disappear. It is doubtful, however, if such unselfishness and generosity abide in more than an occasional individual. The picture is not up to the Biograph standard...” - which already sets the bar quite low.

Making An American Citizen

While this is usually described as an immigrant's lessons in American treatment of women, it should also be described as an immigrant's lessons in American treatment of immigrants, as he becomes a target for bullying on the streets, in his home, and on his farm, before finally being hauled away and shackled into slavery: "Completely Americanized!". Of even greater concern than the film and its authoritarian message is how rarely this disturbing aspect of the film is noted in modern reviews - which raises the question: over 100 years later, is assimilation by violent force, humiliation, and degradation still the accepted method of "Making An American Citizen"?

Rastus Among The Zulus

Surprise - no actors in blackface here! When Rastus falls asleep, racial violence lurks as a trio armed with sticks sneak up on him. Then Rastus does the Atlantic slave trade in rewind: he is forced on a ship and ends up in Africa. No surprise that he ends up in a cannibal stewpot (even though Zulus were the only Africans that Europeans explicitly declared to be not only not cannibals, but fiercely anti-cannibalism - despite causing the famines that led to cannibalism. But you didn't expect a Rastus - aka 'coon' - flick to be historically accurate, did you?). Rastus' abduction and forced labor on the route of the slave trade ends with him being beaten by a cop. Could there be a hidden message here?