TCM's Asians in Film

Turner Classic Movies is hosting a month long retrospective called Race and Hollywood: Asian Images in Film for the month of June. Every Tuesday and Thursday starting at 8pm and ending in the wee hours of the early morning, thirty-seven films will be aired representing historically significant and stereotypical images of Asians in cinema. It's an impressive selection from early films such as The Cheat (1915), Broken Blossoms (1915), Shanghai Express (1932) to recent films such as Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Joy Luck Club (1993). Although some of the choices for these recent films are totally random like Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Mr. Baseball (1992). It features some of the first Asian American actors and actresses like Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star in the 1920s, James Shigeta who is considered to the first Asian American leading male in the 1960s, Nancy Kwan and her debut role as an exotic prostitute in The World of Suzie Wong (1960), and of course, the martial artistry of Bruce Lee and many others. It also covers the politically charged and problematic practice of "yellow face" with actors such as Peter Ustinov as Charlie Chan and Christopher Lee (yes, Count Dooku himself) as Fu Manchu.

I would totally give this an "A" but I'm not. It gets a "B" grade not because of a lack of content or bad selections, but who TCM hired as their "expert" on the subject of Asian American representation in film. I don't know how the hiring process works or what the mechanics that drove this retrospective, but the choice made me wonder if someone in TCM was on crack or just didn't know. I think the latter. There are numerous other scholars who have studied and researched this subject for decades, but I guess he's the one to represent all of that work. Whatever.