Oral Presentation Hand-out
Oral Presentation Hand-out
Helen Lee
Asian American Women in Hollywood
My research paper examines the history of Asian American actresses in broad terms by comparing the careers of 2 actresses:
• Anna May Wong (1905-1961) one of the earliest Asian American actresses
• Sandra Oh a contemporary Asian Canadian actress who crossed over to Hollywood more recently
Some other topics explored in my paper include:
• Type of roles the actresses played in the movies.
• Whether stereotypes played a role in their typecasting.
• What kinds of barriers prevented early actors and actresses from reaching their full potential?
Example: The Good Earth (1937)
- movie with Asian characters
- major roles were not played by actors or actresses of Asian ancestry
- Instead these roles were awarded to Caucasian actors who would imitate Asians by imitating Asian facial features by putting on yellow make-up (yellow-face), taping their eyes to make them appear almond shape and using other fake facial features like buckteeth, black eyebrows, etc.
- O-lan, the lead female role in The Good Earth (1937) went went to Luise Rainer, a German-American, even though Anna May fought for that role.
-So why did this occur? During that time period, the motion picture industry did not allow minority actors from staring in movies as the love interest of a Caucasian actor due to the social pressures of miscegenation laws. Since the lead male role in “The Good Earth” had already been given to a Caucasian actor, the lead actress could not be played by Anna May Wong.
-Also, the director decided that she was too Chinese to play the role of a Chinese person; she did not fit the audiences’ perception of what a Chinese person looked like ()
Discussion Questions:
1) How has the movie industry changed for Asian American actresses? In terms of types of roles offered and representation in Hollywood?
2) Are Asian American actresses still being typecast into stereotypical roles?
3) How might portrayal of Asian American women in movies affect how the larger community perceives them? What are the consequences?
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Anna May Wong. Photo from
Sandra Oh in Sideways. Photo from
Figure 3 Luise Rainer in The Good Earth. Photo taken from
Luise Rainer in The Good Earth. Photo from
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