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June 6, 2000
THE EAST IN THE WILD WILD WEST
The popular Chinese martial arts star Jackie Chan's latest movie, "Shanghai Noon," is a smart look at Asian racism and stereotypes, but the lesson is cleverly wrapped in an entertaining, and very funny Western comedy.| By the 1890s, when the Geary Act prohibited Chinese immigration, Japanese laborers were considered more docile and hardworking than the Chinese. |
The film has all the trademarks of Chan's work: intricately choreographed fight scenes, daredevil stunts (with Chan doing all his own stuntwork), and a self-effacing sense of humor that lets audiences know that the star doesn't take himself too seriously. But "Shanghai Noon" has a serious side to it.
The movie, which also stars Owen Wilson as a bumbling, new-age outlaw who becomes Chan's partner, and Lucy Liu as a Chinese princess who is kidnapped and brought to America, is set in the wild wild west of the 1880s. When the princess Pei Pei is "shanghaied" (a term which became popular about this time because of the city's reputation for kidnapping men by getting them drunk and sending them off as sailors against their will), Chan is one of the Imperial Guards sent to pay the ransom and rescue her from Carson City, Nevada.
The adventures that follow include a train robbery in which Chan is separated from the other Chinese in his delegation; an encounter with an Indian tribe after Chan saves the chief's son from another tribe; another run-in with the outlaw (Roy O'Bannon) who robbed Chan's train and subsequent jailing; and a federal marshall who is on the trail of both Chan and O'Bannon after they escape from the jail.
During the course of the plot, Chan learns to shoot a pistol and is nicknamed "The Shanghai Kid" on wanted posters.
The movie is full of cross-cultural puns and funny observations. Even the title is a pun on the classic 1952 Western, "High Noon," which starred Gary Cooper. Chan's character is named Chon Wang which sounds suspiciously like "John Wayne," which O'Bannon declares is an unfit name for a cowboy. While being entertained by the Indian tribe, Chan repeatedly asks two elders how to get to Carson City, and in subtitled text, the Indians make fun of the Chinese man in their midst, who seems to think that speaking slower will make more sense.
But there's a serious undercurrent to "Shanghai Noon" that makes the film more than just a comedy. There are repeated references to the blunt racism that was prevalent at the time, starting with how the Chinese delegation has to travel in their own train car at the beginning of the film. The Chinese immigrants are all kept in a camp where they work like slaves on the railroads that helped to tame the West. "Chinaman" is used often as a derogatory word, and Chan even overhears his partner, the outlaw O'Bannon, saying how he can't really be Chan's friend because he's "just a Chinaman."
On the other hand, the Indians are bemused when the chief's daughter marries Chan, saying "It could be worse -- she could be marrying a white guy." And although Japanese had barely begun to immigrate to the United States at the time, the Caucasian characters already confuse all Asians as the same culture, and think "sayonara" is Chinese for goodbye.
Chan and the film's producers know their history, because the story of America's expansion of the West did rely on the influx of Asian immigrants in waves, and how Americans of the time reacted racially.
The first Asians in America were Filipinos (1760s) and Asian Indians (1790s), but by the mid-1800s, Westerners were most familiar with the Chinese and their culture because of a long history of trade. The first Chinese immigrants were brought to America as indentured servants in the late 1840s, because of a strike at a California gold mine which required cheap replacement labor. Throughout the next decades Chinese were exploited as laborers but refused basic rights, including the ability to testify in court and the exclusion of their children from public schools in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Japan was opened up to America in the late 1850s, and by the 1890s, when the Geary Act prohibited Chinese immigration, Japanese laborers were considered more docile and hardworking than the Chinese. This cycle of racist exclusion continued well into the 20th century, as Chinese immigration was indefinitely excluded in 1902, Koreans became the Asian laborers of choice when Japanese workers went on strike in Hawaii in 1903, and Japanese immigration was limited and later excluded in 1907.
This cycle of exploitation and exclusion is no laughing matter, but Chan and his producers handle the issues with both sensitivity and gentle wit. No one will be offended by "Shanghai Noon" but hopefully some people will leave the cinema with at least an appreciation of the early Asians' experience in America.
Then again, maybe not -- the night I saw the movie, some people sitting behind me thought it was perfectly acceptable to talk loudly during the introductory scenes, which take place in China and have English subtitles. I think they assumed since the dialogue wasn't in English, they didn't need to pay attention to this part of the story.
A brief news story this weekend also gave an interesting twist to the history of Asian immigration to America.
Some scholars are now claiming that long after the supposed migration of early Asian peoples to America via a land bridge between Asia and North America, Japanese and Chinese sailors settled in parts of North and South America. The conclusions are disputed by various researchers, but the article pointed out that the new book "The Zuni Enigma" by Nancy Yaw Davis states there are certain physiological and cultural similarities between the Zuni Indians of New Mexico and Arizona and ancient Japanese.
The book also compares similarities in language between the two cultures, including the word for crow ("kalashi" in Zuni, "karasu" in Japanese) and sparrow ("suzua" in Zuni, "suzume" in Japanese).
There are also scholars who have found pottery patterns and inscriptions in Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico which match those of Japan and China from thousands of years ago.
If these researchers are correct, it turns out that Asians staked out land in America long before the Europeans -- and that the cowboys of the wild West were beaten to the frontier by the very people they exploited at the dawn of the modern century.