An elegy to Charlie Chan : Chang Apana, Earl Derr Biggers and Asian America

Abstract

Asian Americans, due to the experiences of their ancestors, are characterized by a "negative" history. While modern day historians and Asian Americanists endeavor to write a new history for "Asian America", the experiences of immigration and hardship, the group's encounters with racism and the supposed success of its people as a whole are overshadowed by the role the media has played in perpetuating this negative history. The portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans in American media, more often than not, are stereotypical in nature. In movies and on television, these highly characterized depictions, forever imprinted on film, can be detrimental yet continue to be aired on cable channels across the country and throughout the world everyday. From the Dragon Lady to the villainous yakuza boss, from Suzie Wong to Long Duck Dong, "the Oriental appears in various guises throughout American popular culture, in pictures, songs, paraphernalia, books, and movies and no single image represents the totality of the representation. Although some of the aforementioned characters stick out in our minds more than others, arguably, no other Asian character sticks out more as a thorn in the side of the modern day Asian American community than that of Charlie Chan.