Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance [Hardcover]

Hye Seung Chung (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2006

From silent films to television programs, Hollywood has employed actors of various ethnicities to represent "Oriental" characters, from Caucasian stars like Loretta Young made up in yellow-face to Korean American pioneer Philip Ahn, whose more than 200 screen performances included roles as sadistic Japanese military officers in World War II movies and a wronged Chinese merchant in the TV show "Bonanza". The first book-length study of Korean identities in American cinema and television, "Hollywood Asian" investigates the career of Ahn (1905-1978), a pioneering Asian American screen icon and son of celebrated Korean nationalist An Ch'ang-ho. In this groundbreaking scholarly study, Hye Seung Chung examines Ahn's career to suggest new theoretical paradigms for addressing cross-ethnic performance and Asian American spectatorship. Incorporating original material from a wide range of sources, including U.S. government and Hollywood screen archives, Chung's work offers a provocative and original contribution to cinema studies, cultural studies, and Asian American as well as Korean history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The author has succeeded in bringing an oft-neglected artist and part of film history back into the forefront of scholarly literature. Highly recommended." Library Journal " Hollywood Asian is an exciting and original contribution to Asian American and Korean studies ...It is clearly written, making it accessible to a wide readership in a number of disciplines." Chris Berry, Goldsmith's College, University of London "Hollywood Asian is meticulously researched ...an excellent and important contribution." Darrell Y. Hamamoto, University of California, Davis "Chung crafts a compelling exploration of how the cinematic representation of Korea and its people became a palimpsest for American domestic and foreign anxieties...the exemplary depth and nuance to Hollywood Asian's analysis highlights the complex but intimate ways that America's cultural imagination is tied into international relations and tensions." The International Journal of Communication "Fascinating...this book makes an excellent contribution to the growing body of work on Asian Americans in the cinema...Essential." Choice "Chung's book is well researched and well written. Unless the reader is a film historian, much of the content is new and illuminating...Chung makes a critical point about the persistence of reductive images and perception." Korean Quarterly "Chung paints a fascinating portrait...While the book is theoretically provocative, it is at its best when reporting little-known information about Ahn and the Asian American actors with whom he worked...By illuminating the rich and complex career of a Korean American trailblazer in Hollywood cinema, Hollywood Asian should prove quite useful for scholars in Asian and Asian American studies and U.S. film history." The Journal of American History Sept. 2007 "[O]ffer[s] important new opportunities to develop our understanding of the transnational history of Hollywood cinema. From the vantage point of the particular systems of production, representation and reception concerning the deployment of East Asian actors within American narrative filmmaking, [it] uncover[s] valuable insights into Hollywood's global strategies during a time of enormous political upheaval and cultural change regarding the construction of American self-identity and the USA's attitudes to its East Asian citizens and neighbours. [Chung] write[s] impressively from 'within' in order to stage...understanding of the ambivalent status...of Americanization and modernization...Chung deploys an active model of textual analysis and spectatorship which argues that, as an example of the Asian 'cross ethnic performer', Ahn occupied a particular status within Hollywood...Chung's book goes on to trace the varied elements of Ahn's career...generat[ing] numerous useful insights...propose[ing] a vital contribution to the current reconceptualization of Hollywood cinema within the framework of modern international film studies." Alastair Phillips, Screen 2008, issue 49

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; annotated edition edition (October 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592135153
• ISBN-13: 978-1592135158
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,591,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb Exploration of Hollywood and Asian American Ethnicity, January 19, 2008

By 

Brian Taves (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance (Paperback)

More than 20 years ago, I completed a book on Robert Florey, who directed Philip Ahn in three movies and at least twice as many filmed television dramas. The two were close friends, with Florey visiting Ahn's Moongate Restaurant, and Ahn writing Florey's name in Korean on the background of a Vietnamese prison set in ROGUES' REGIMENT. Florey's DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI, starring the fabled Anna May Wong, featured Ahn in his first lead role, and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2006.
However, back when I wrote on Florey, there was almost no writing about Asians in Hollywood. Books on Asians and cinema implied Japan, usually auteurist approaches to Kurosawa or Ozu, or perhaps Satyajit Ray in India, and maybe some fan interest in the Hong Kong martial arts genre. This has fortunately shifted in the last few years, and Professor Chung has been in the forefront, opening the subject of Asians in Hollywood for scholarship. Moreover, she has done so in several unique ways.
Biographies of performers have been so dominated by popular books, consistently dwelling on a few of the most famous players in cinema, that this avenue has been eschewed by scholars. Chung's volume proves why academia cannot abandon this aspect of film history. She has created a masterful work, which demonstrates the need for the scholarly biography of certain performers. Ahn was far more than the second-tier player of menacing Japanese in World War II films for which he is often most remembered. Chung weaves together the forty years in which Ahn combined his career as Hollywood's first Korean "star" with activities carrying on the legacy of his father, "Tosan" An Ch'ang-ho. An Ch'ang-ho was a renowned educator and leader of the Korean independence movement as well as early Korean American immigrants, allowing the book to provide unique insights into American ethnic studies, immigration, and Korean studies, as well as filmmaking . Chung has extensively mined primary resources, including those of the Ahn family.
In her biography, Chung explores new avenues of textual reading by combining film production, film history, historical context, theoretical insights, and detailed visual analysis. In analyzing such films as DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI, her conclusions have wide implications for the way in which ethnicity could be treated in Hollywood movies that were made outside the conforming pressures of big-budget "specials." As the Library noted when adding DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI to the Registry, "B-films during the studio era often resonate decades later because they explore issues and themes not found in higher-budget pictures." Chung also offers intriguing commentary on the ways in which Asian audiences perceived "difference" in Hollywood films through masquerades that are opaque to non-Asian viewers. She demonstrates how Ahn, as a Korean partisan during World War II, when his ancestral country was occupied and his father had died there after Japanese imprisonment, was willing to play Japanese villains. These roles are often decried now as anti-Asian when seen outside of their historical context, but the Asian solidarity in America is a comparatively recent development, and one that took place long after Hollywood war films of the 1940s and 1950s.
Chung has taken the star approach a step further than other recent books on Wong and Sessue Hayakawa by examining an actor who usually was in various supporting, rather than starring, roles. Actors in this position have generally been overlooked by biographers, and Chung provides an example of how such a career may be fruitfully explored. Hollywood Asian revises the common definition of star-status that confined it (during the studio era) almost exclusively to Caucasian actors. Her new approach will serve as a model and expand the range of performers who may be considered for star analysis.
Chung's writing is impeccable: lucid, intelligent, and challenging, and never encumbered with unnecessary jargon. Her work is accessible to the scholar as well as wider audiences, who will enjoy both her intellectual rigor and her creativity. This is a truly groundbreaking book in the areas of ethnicity, history, and the star system, and I recommend it unreservedly.