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Home Theaterby Lons
"Garden parties are seldom given in Peiping without a purpose" Putting on "The Mysterious Mr. Moto," one of four Moto films available in the new box set from Fox, at the video store the other day, I received a reprimand. "You probably shouldn't put that on," a co-worker assured me. "It's racist." Of course, he was right. The eight Mr. Moto films, all released in the brief span of 1937-1939, each present a condescending and exoticized view of the Japanese. The Moto character himself is a repository of imagined "Japanese" characteristics - he's quiet, he knows martial arts, he's shifty, he's brainy, he's socially awkward and, above all, he's easily prone to embarrassment. On top of these Mr. Moto adventures, Fox has also released the first batch of the similarly-offensive Charlie Chan detective films. Advertisements for the 1930's Charlie Chan films starring Warner Oland referred to the character as "inscrutible," and this same description could extend to Moto. Both Chan and Moto are defined by an essential foreign-ness. Everything about them is strange, different and, in many ways, child-like. Of course, you're also talking about Asian characters that are portrayed by white men in silly costumes. Oland, a native of Sweden, takes the unfortunate Asian pantomime further as Chan than the Hungarian-born Lorre as Moto. As brilliant Honolulu-based Chinese detective Chan, Oland uses a garbled, cartoonish accent and speaks only in silly Confuscian aphorisms. He sounds more like a deaf Jesus than a Chinese guy. It's not really possible to say that one thing is more racist or xenophobic or condescendingly offensive than another. These things are highly subjective. But there is an immediate and interesting difference between the racism directed towards blacks in these '30s films and the attitudes taken towards Asian characters. Chan and Moto remain outsiders within their own movies. The plots always focus on attractive, bland white characters who get in some trouble, requiring the assistance of the featured detective. Obviously, studios felt that white audiences would need a way into the store, and wouldn't want to simply follow around a minority character for a full movie. If you imagine studio executives don't continue to think this way, you must not have seen Tom Cruise's "The Last Samurai." Yet even though the Asians are kept at arm's length, cordial but never emotionally involved with the main white characters, they are nevertheless respected for their intellect and granted their dignity. A prime example of this divergent take on minority relations comes in "Charlie Chan in Egypt," included on this recently-released box set. Stepin Fetchit appears in the film as Snowshoes, a servant, and his very presence is used as comic relief. It's a degrading take on black men, with Snowshoes hitting the trifecta of dumb, lazy and angry. Compare this to "Think Fast, Mr. Moto," in which he's not only seen as the intellectual equal of whites, he's actually allowed to one-up them on occasion. When a wealthy young heir tries to play a prank on him, the wily Japanese businessman reverses it and gets the better of the situation. It's unthinkable that a black man would be allowed the kind of access granted Chan and Moto. I mean, it's MISTER Moto...He's addressed as a peer. Not poor Snowshoes. It would be tempting to say that the Moto and Chan films are therefore less racist, or at least that the racial prejudices running throughout are less pernicious, therefore affecting ones enjoyment of the film less. But this almost feels like making an excuse for vile, glaringly ignorant material. Yes, the films are now distasteful to audiences because they play on stereotypes no longer in use. (I can only hope that audiences 70 years from now will similarly cringe when they see "White Chicks," "Soul Plane" or that Larry the Cable Guy movie.) I'd say this is enough reason to dismiss these '30s Chan films out of hand. They're moderately interesting from a filmmaking perspective (especially considering that the first batch were produced as early as 1932), but rather dull in terms of story. Chan's not a very active or engaging detective. He wanders around, chats with the primary players in the mystery, offers up ridiculous little bon mots in pidgin English and then the case is solved! Racist and uninteresting can be a fairly lethal combo. I'm less certain the Moto films can be dismissed so completely. Orientalism aside, these are pretty strong, entertaining and surprising films. Perhaps because he's not white, and therefore wasn't seen as privy to the same Western, Judeo-Christian morals as all the other characters, Moto's a particularly dark, violent and unpredictable hero for a mainstream film. In "Think Fast, Mr. Moto," while sailing across the Pacific, he finds a man snooping around in a friend's state room. He proceeds to beat the guy into (The fight scenes, I should add, are joyfully impossible and wonderfully goofy to behold. Lorre crouches down and somehow flings his enemies into the air using his legs, in a movie that I suppose stood in for jujitsu or something back then.) Director Norman Foster (who worked on all the scripts as well) fuses elements of mystery, noir and fish-out-of-water comedy together for these Moto films, which gives the movies an individual, distinct tone that's unique for the period. And Lorre's terrific in the role (again, if you can get past the fact that he's wearing jagged fake teeth and says "ah, so" a lot.) When the Moto series derailed in the early '40s (a Japanese hero being less than desirable at the time), he appeared in "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca" in fairly short-order, forever typecasting him as the scheming, sweaty, evil, foreign guy. Never again was he allowed to play clever and suave like he does here, and it's obvious he really got into the character of Kentaro Moto. An importer/exporter and freelance adventurer whose true motives are never known until the last scene, Kentaro Moto's something of a Japanese Renaissance man. In many ways, the character's a direct precursor to Indiana Jones. He trots around the globe, exploring distant and exotic locales, and he gets into tight scrapes involving ancient artifacts. If Indy, rather than beating up Nazis on tanks, instead invited them all over for glasses of milk in order to explain the error of their ways with greater clarity, he'd be Mr. Moto. The stories themselves just work better than those in the Chan films. While not neccessarily the kind of triple-reverse mindfucks that contemporary thriller/mystery writers tend to strive for, the focus is more on outrageous set pieces. "Thank You, Mr. Moto," for example, features one of the more audacious, well-shot car chases you're likely to see in a '30s film. Perhaps it's the joy of performance and the professionalism of the filmmaking evident here that makes the Moto films more enticing than the Chan movies. (Particularly that awful one with Fetchit). I don't mean to diminish the experience of anyone Asian who feels offended by these films, as it's a reaction I can certainly understand. But these movies have such a loose, tongue-in-cheek demeanor, and they go about developing their tight, 60 minute narratives with such deft timing and exuberance, I personally
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Issue 3: Garden parties are seldom given in Peiping without a purpose Issue 2: He's making a scrapbook of everything I kill! Issue 1: Okay, could I be a worse narrator?
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