The idea I have chosen to explore is the yellow face and whitewashing of Hollywood.
From my research I have learned that whitewashing of asian characters and the use of yellow face can be seen to date back to the early days of Hollywood. Due to the time period (post World War two) this sort of representation and stereotypical look of other cultures especially Asians, was quite common. An example of this is the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. This is a cultural iconic movie, considered a great of its time, unfortunately it has one of the worst cases of yellow face characterisation in Hollywood history. The yellowface characterisation being Mickey Rooney’s role as Mr Yunioshi.
Rooneys character has a very similar depiction to that of the United States WW2 anti Japanese posters.
Micky Rooney – Actor/Comedian
WW2 Anti-Japanese Poster
Mr Yunioshi – Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Controversial Yellow face – Played by Actor Mickey Rooney
As you can see when Mickey Rooney was in character he had to wear a lot of facial prosthetics and false teeth distorting his appearance immensely. From my research, the use of big stars in movies (especially in modern cinema today) as a reason for replacing other major (usually ethnic) roles, was to attracted production studios and have a big name aligned with the movie due to famous actors/actresses attracting their fan base.
Yet looking at Mickey Rooney, the distortion of his face was so extreme that he was barely recognisable. For me, it’s an illogical, because to summarize Guy Aoki , The use of such big actors combined with awfully distorting makeup essentially takes you away from the actors presence in the film as you are trying to figure out who it is and why they have for example asian like slanted eyes and buck teeth. (Asian American Perspective on Breakfast At Tiffany’s)
Although this sort of representation symbolises the time period. This sort of illogical decision making is still being seen in Hollywood films to date.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAafI9w7CY8
https://www.yomyomf.com/yomyomf-rewatch-breakfast-at-tiffanys-1961/
https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/04/08/the-mickey-rooney-role-nobody-wants-to-talk-about/
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