'To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short'.

Whilst perusing through these internets this morning, I read the following story on the BBC about an Australian mini-series adaptation of the life of World War One Chinese-Australian sniper and hero, Billy Sing. 

The article informs us that:

'the director, Geoff Davis, actually picked his son, Josh, to play the role, and defended the decision by saying that he could not find a 60-year-old Chinese actor to play Billy Sing's father.
He therefore decided that both men should be Caucasian.'

Quite naturally the Chinese-Australian community are indignant about this white-washing of a man whose father was Chinese and put his life on the line for King and Country.

The director, Geoff Davis, has cast an actor as Sing's father whose previous best known role, was the helicopter pilot in err Skippy... Davies claims not to have been able to find a 60 year old Chinese actor who would work on a deferred payment basis. No stereotype there, then...

On first reading the article I presumed Davies  would be delving in to the hideous world of putting a white actor in make-up to appear 'Oriental', they used to call it 'Yellow face' acting, there's an extensive history of actors doing just that. This tact has been used since the earliest days of cinema since Richard Barthelmess appeared as 'The Chink' in DW Griffiths Broken Blossoms aka The Yellow Man and the Girl in 1919. 

 

The practise continued with Hollywood casting a Swedish actor, Warner Oland, in the eponymous Charlie Chan detective series.

It reached ludicrous proportions with a host of white actors donning make-up, sello-taping their eyes back and adopting a subservient and toothy demeanour. A portrayal which sadly to this day still informs our own native racists.

There's been an excruciating panoply of well respected actors who've gone down this path, when directors supposedly couldn't find an Asian actor for the part. They include Edward G. Robinson in The Bitter Tea of General Yen,  Peter Sellers, Peter Ustinov, Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff have all had a go at the evil Fu Manchu, Keith Carradine as Kwang Chang Caine in Kung Fu (even his surname was Anglicised) and Canadian thespian, Robert Wiseman as Dr No. 

Yet what must rank as one of the most offensive racial stereotypes of Asian characters in cinema history, is generally overlooked and rarely spoken about. It can be found in a film that engenders the feel good factor and is chock full of  love, romance, beauty, comedy etcetera. Mickey Rooney, son of a Glaswegian comic, scraped the stereotype barrel to come up with Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's. I suspect his role is overlooked simply because of the cult status of Audrey Hepburn.

The intriguing thing for me as a silent cinema buff is that early cinema had genuine Asian film stars who were accepted in a wide array of film roles from villain to hero and saint to vamp. 

Sessue Hayakawa was a Chinese actor who rivalled Fairbanks, Chaplin and Pickford in the superstar and earning stakes. Modern audiences will remember him as Colonel Saito in perennial Bank holiday movie, Bridge on the River Kwai. 


Here he is in the 1915 Thomas Ince romantic film The Coward

Anna Mae Wong was actually an American born Chinese actress, she became a bit of a sultry pin up in the early 1920's

Unfortunately by the time of the Wall Street crash, Hayakawa was being cast as a down the bill villain and Anna Mae Wong was reduced to playing murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. Film making had reverted to Anti-Asian stereotypes probably due to the depression and that old standby, a rise in immigration from the East.

Yet, here we are nearly a century on, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Lucy Liu, Michelle Yeoh, Yung-Fat Chow are superstars of global cinema. Ang Lee is an Oscar winning director working on subjects as diverse as Sense and Sensibility, Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and The Hulk. Meanwhile in Australia this dipstick director can't find a suitable 60 year old Chinese actor to play Billy Sings father, so decides to drop the truth, cast a true blue Ozzie and his own son as Billy Sing and hope nobody notices...fair dinkum.

This is the trailer for Billy Sing. Geoff Davis didn't opt for the lazy stereotype of make-up and comedy accents. He simply whitewashed ethnicity from the screen.




In an effort to save a bit of money, if his excuse is to be believed, Geoff Davies has merely tapped into a mindset that hasn't been seen since the heady days of Thatcher citing the 'Black and White Minstrel' show as being her favourite telly entertainment.

As for Billy Sing, well he married a Scottish girl when he was being nursed for his injuries in Edinburgh. He returned to Australia, and applied to have his wife join him. Despite being a national hero, miscegenation was still frowned upon by Australian society and she never joined him...he died alone and broke in a run down boarding house in the 1940's. That's a real story that needs telling.

The significance of Billy Sing's identity is too rare and too meaningful to be treated so poorly. 
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