Racism (or not?) in The Manchurian Candidate
October 3, 2008
I recently re-visited the 1962 version of the film The Manchurian Candidate, which I hadn’t seen in a while.
Just to be clear, it’s a great film — eerie and suspenseful, well-written, and has some wonderful performances. The disturbing “dream” sequence described nicely here (scroll down a bit) is quite possibly the greatest example of inspired film editing ever.
That said, AsianWeek agreed with me in that the film’s big flaw is the use of “yellow face” in Chunjin, a Korean character played by an actor who doesn’t even look remotely Asian. I was actually confused when he first appeared on the screen, as it took me a moment to realize that he’s supposed to be Korean. And…he does martial arts! Of course!
I don’t find much to object to in the politics of the film, however. I could see what people are getting at — the title of the film admittedly has “Yellow Peril” written on it — but I see the film as an accurate representation of the fear and paranoia surrounding the Cold War. There’s an interesting discussion in a college course message board regarding the film and (presumably) the book What Have They Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America. I haven’t read the book (I’m not sure about a 288 page analysis on one movie), but if anything, I think The Manchurian Candidate is even a bit subversive how it turns out that the real sneaky villain that’s infiltrated American politics is a white woman, in a “you-didn’t-see-that-coming-didja?” plot twist. (Hopefully nobody’s mad at me for spoilers on a popular 40+ year old movie.)
So I cringe through the scenes with Chunjin and enjoy the film.
Entry Filed under: Art/Entertainment/Culture. Tags: asian characters, Cold War film, film, racism, The Manchurian Candidate, yellow face.
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Brendan | October 3, 2008 at 9:12 pm
One thing that’s really interesting relative to this is the way that the the meaning of the phrase “Manchurian Candidate” has expanded beyond its Asian context. A recent example would be those who think that Sen. Obama is a Muslim (as if there were anything wrong with that), some of whom have referred to him as a Manchurian Candidate.
Even in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, with Denzel Washington in the Sinatra role and Liev Schrieber in the Lawrence Harvey role, the brainwashing takes place in the context of the first Gulf War and has really nothing to do with China, Manchuria, Communism, or any of the original context. It’s almost as if they made an original film using a popular phrase, rather than an older film, as the starting point.
In these two contexts, there is of course a racial component, but it is separate from the original East Asian one, and the phrase is used in several other contexts without any racial consideration. So, aside from being a great movie, The Manchurian Candidate has managed to put a flexible figure of speech out there as well.