According to anarchist writer Randolph Bourne “war is the health of the state”. Assuming this to be true, one can infer governments mobilise mass media to legitimise foreign policy decisions, in turn making the prospect of war more palatable to civilians. This essay will exam the role of racialised stereotypes within films produced by Hollywood in the interwar years, deciphering how transracial representations varied, the broader implications of political affairs in the early 20th century and fundamentally, the extent in which stereotypes were bolstered in direct response to war. The relationship between the US government and Hollywood, as well as theories of stereotypes and whiteness will firstly be outlined, followed by an analysis of films depicting African Americans, Middle Easterners and East Asians. The main thesis purports stereotypes were generally not bolstered as racial prejudices in cinema predated war, and America’s relations with each of these ethnicities during combat was not hostile enough to provoke significant defamation by Hollywood. War did, however, somewhat necessitate the preservation of stereotypes to counteract the revolutionary sentiments of African Americans, entertain audiences with tales of the Middle East and perpetuate the ‘yellow peril’ felt towards East Asians. Through interpreting these domains, understandings of the socio-historical location of racialised stereotypes and their interplay with conflict will contribute further analyses to existing literature, as will libraries of ethnic tropes and their connotations be expanded on.
To gage the extent in which racialised stereotypes were bolstered as a direct response to war, the methods used by Hollywood to conjure morale and the racial dynamics inherent in propagandist cinema must be accounted for. Contrary to the European film industry, which had provided the US with half of its films prior to 1915, American filmmakers entered the war with a monopoly over the global film market. Dominated by lucrative production companies: Fox, Paramount, Universal and Vitagraph, film had cemented itself as a major medium for mass communication with each company comprising of its own creative personnel, distribution apparatus and roster of ‘stars’. Despite an initial reluctance to ally with Washington, the industry operated at the core of Woodrow Wilson’s public relations campaign with films such as Liberty (1916) reiterating the sentiments of the Preparedness Movement with its conventionally Western jingoistic plot and xenophobic undertones. The reach of cinema was reiterated by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, who asserted “the motion picture is the most powerful propaganda.” According to Critical Whiteness Theory, intrinsic in the pro-war, nationalist productions that were used to promote America’s imperialist agenda became the use of white-centricity, synonymising the performance of socio-politically constructed whiteness with the American identity and positing ‘white culture’ as the default; “Hollywood’s narrow concept of America has ignored the long-standing presence of people of colour”. This would have entailed the overrepresentation of white demographics onscreen and, during instances where diversity was narratively essential, typecasting ethnic groups or casting white actors to perform alternate races. These performances encapsulated a response to the interests of society as defined by the ruling class, indicative of an evolutionary functionalism whereby non-white demographics were forced to assimilate their behaviour with whiteness or risk being accused of jeopardising the war effort. Likewise, the stereotypes inherent in portrayals of non-white demographics would have emerged from and perpetuated pathological stereotypes, which utilised negative group commonalities to justify the maintenance of systemic inequality. In doing so, film would have emphasised the dissimilarities of African Americans, Middle Easterners and East Asians to magnify the desirable traits associated with white Americans. Furthermore, films such as The Little American (1917) demonstrated conceptions of manifest destiny, with the title card in one of the final scenes reading “I was neutral – ‘till I saw your soldiers destroying women and shooting old men! Then I stopped being ‘neutral’ and became a human being”. War entry was thus necessitated as Hollywood framed intervention as defensive, relying on the virtue of Americans to protect their allies from the ‘savagery’ of opposition through supporting combat and the imposition of liberal institutions abroad. External influence was also thwarted with the authorisation of the Department of Justice to ban films regarded pro-German, pacifistic or damaging to the war effort of the Allied Powers. The extremity of censorship was reflected in the confiscation of Spirit of ’76 (1917) which, despite the film’s zealous patriotism in its depiction of the Revolutionary War, saw producer Robert Goldstein charged with espionage due to its hostile portrayals of England. However, the majority of production companies exceeded obligations as industry leaders, of whom exercised control over twelve million American cinema patrons, signed a telegram to Wilson pledging their “combined support for the defence of (the) US and its interests”. Subsequently, upon the defeat of Germany in 1918, the profit generated from Hollywood and Washington’s collaboration afforded the industry a creative freedom that would engender advancements in colour, screen format and sound, with post-war Hollywood exporting 90% of films in the global market and becoming the centre of the cinematic universe. Though success prospered it can also be argued that, so too did Hollywood’s political capitulation, with the industry continuing to act as a private reserve for US commercial interests. It can thus be assumed that, following an era where film situated whiteness at the core of American culture and ethnic minorities at its periphery, Hollywood would become a microcosm of the social climate, manipulating its representation of race in line with post-war political aspirations.
Whilst it is evident cinematic stereotypes of African Americans pre-existed war, the post-war ethos of freedom necessitated negative media depictions in maintaining the suppression of black populations. Subsequently, whilst stereotypes were not necessarily bolstered, they were enforced not in direct response to the First World War, but in response to the conditions war engendered. D. W. Griffith’s Birth of Nation (1915), exemplified the long-established nature of cinema’s portrayal of African Americans, with the feature film serving as the blueprint for overt normalised hatred and the glorification of white supremacy. The extent in which the film rendered black Americans an existential threat is reflected by the rebirth of the Ku Klutz Klan following its release which, exacerbated by the Great Migration whereby six million black Southerners emigrated North, capitalised off confederate rhetoric claiming Klansmen needed to emancipate the South from its black populations. In the scene where a young girl from the pro-Confederacy family goes into the woods alone, a black freedman follows and expresses his desires to marry her which, following a chase that leads them to a cliff edge, incites the young girl to jump. The man embodies the Jim Crow character America’s segregation laws were named after as his character adopts an exaggerated Southern vernacular to reinforce his illiteracy, as does he appear unkempt, insinuating laziness. Assumptions of black men being intellectually undeveloped are reinforced throughout, as he stumbles and is knocked down by branches in his pursuit of the young girl, demonstrating the assumptions once used to justify slavery; “no amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable citizens…their dullness seems to be racial”. The freedman also represents a ‘Buck’, drawing on stereotypes of the “emotions and ambitions (being) entirely dominated by sexual instinct” in black men. As reflected in his harassment of a white girl, this assumption purports African American men seek to pervert the innocence of their master’s daughters/wives, seemingly warranting violence towards them. Parallels can be drawn from a 1917 American anti-German poster that depicts a giant ape in a military helmet gripping a white woman, with the ape symbolising the savagery associated with America’s enemies, domestically and transnationally.
Due to the longevity of the assumptions discussed, it can be argued war did little to bolster Hollywood’s stereotypes as the pre-war themes in Birth of a Nation are equally present in post-war depictions of African Americans, as further evidenced by King Kong (1933) which chronicles a gorilla’s infatuation with an American film star. Motivations for this portrayal potentially differ however, as the 1920s represented a demand for improved race relations in response to the contributions made by African Americans during the war, and comparatively positive experience many black soldiers endured abroad. These sentiments were summarised by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, who asserted “we return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for democracy”, suggesting the disillusion of equality conjured by war shaped the political consciousness of Black Americans and radicalised the fight for civil rights. It can thus be argued post-war Hollywood maintained the portrayal of degrading stereotypes to ensure the climate for change did not proliferate to white audiences, with an awareness that the influence exercised over the American public and support afforded to the film industry by elite politicians would allow them to unreservedly champion white supremacy. The film Ingagi (1930), released under the guise of being an ethnographic documentary investigating a Congolese tribe of gorilla-worshipping women, further illustrates trends for anthropomorphism and a racial pseudoscience that synonymised civilisation with race. Ideologically, post-war conceptions of John Stuart Mill’s ‘Barbarian Other’ would have further underscored animalistic representations, as well as the ethnographic nature of both films which rendered blackness foreign and licensed Western voyeurism under the pretence of curiosity. It is therefore apparent Hollywood bolstered racialised stereotypes of African Americans to a lesser extent in response to war as black tropes had been in motion since the transatlantic slave trade. Whilst war potentially created a demand for negative representation in line with the expectations of ex-soldiers who sought to secure the democracy they had fought on behalf of, stereotypes grossly predated and outlived war.
Moreover, blackface transcended the boundaries of war as the performance mechanism had been solidified as the dominant iconography in portraying black populations long before war broke out. Its functions can be analysed in Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), which tells the story of Jakie Rabinowitz’s conflict between pursuing a jazz career at the expense of his Jewish heritage. The function of race within this film is disputed, with film scholar Corin Willis arguing race is central to the narrative as it is indicative of an exploration of the “ethnic hybridity of the American identity”, with blackface symbolising sentiments of duplicity. Contrarily, W. T. Hamon draws on The Warner Brothers thesis “to succeed, a man must first acknowledge his ethnic self” to claim Rabinowitz uses blackface to mask his compound identity, not explore it. Race is therefore not central to the narrative as the film serves as an expression of the struggle between stardom and tradition. Lisa Silberman Brenner contributes further analyses, asserting the film is “about blackface as a means for Jews to express a new kind of Jewishness”, functioning as a celebration of the African American influence in the modern American Jew. These claims would have been influenced by the Harlem Renaissance that was in effect during the film’s release, with the cultivation of black intellectual, social and artistic movements rebranding black Americans as ‘cosmopolitan innovators’ that could inspire white artists. Rabinowitz’s performance of ‘Mammy’ enhances the film’s racial aspects, with the term ‘mammy’ referencing black housekeepers. The character trope of ‘mammy’, typically a caricature of an innately domestic, enslaved black woman, is subsequently reinforced as Rabinowitz appropriation of black culture exceeds merely music genre. Willis or Silberman’s explanations thus appear most convincing as it is evident blackface served as more than a camouflage of the jazz singer’s authentic self, and instead potentially represents one’s lure to black culture and attempts to reconcile multiple ethnic identities. However, this further demonstrates the weak correlation between war and racialised stereotypes of African Americans, insofar that Hollywood operated in line with the socio-cultural movements brought about by war, but did not respond directly to war itself. The risk of nation-wide support for black movements may have necessitated the continued use of negative tropes, potentially to honour the wartime pact made with the government and emulate the success of earlier films such as The Birth of a Nation, but the bolstering of stereotypes would not have been a priority for America’s thriving film industry.
The extent in which Hollywood bolstered stereotypes of the Middle East in response to the First World War shares the same ambiguity as the case with African Americans in that, whilst Hollywood’s negative portrayal of Middle Eastern populations may have offered some political benefits, pre-war and post-war representations embodied the same orientalist prejudices. Despite the US joining the Allies as an ‘Associated Power’ and the Ottoman Empire fighting in opposition during the war, direct combat was minimal. This came as a result of America joining the war effort to offer economic support to its European allies and the Ottoman Minister of War, allying with Germany in the hopes of securing long term assistance in restoring internal stability, suggesting enmity was passive. Evidence of hostility may also be inferred from the Red Scare in the US that followed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, which saw a “nationwide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear that a Bolshevik revolution was imminent”, incentivising the American government’s enforcement of the Palmer raids targeting leftist radicals. Due to the formation of a Bolshevik-Turkish alliance stemming from the Bolshevik’s distain of ‘Western imperialism’ and its attempts to partition formerly Ottoman land, the Red Summer of 1919 potentially increased tension between America and many of the states previously under the Ottoman Empire. This could have been exacerbated by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where President Wilson accepted Armenian arguments for the expansion of the Democratic Republic of Armenia into Eastern Turkey on account of Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’. However, the externally imposed, indirect nature of this antagonism suggests grievances lacked genuine momentum.
The negative stereotypes of Middle Eastern people thus appear to be commercially motivated, as demonstrated by George Melford’s The Sheikh (1921), which recounts the kidnap of British socialite Lady Diana by Sheikh Ahmed, forcing her to succumb to his Arabian way of life. In the scene where Sheikh Ahmed meets with a French novelist to discuss Diana, with the meeting being held in a desert to reinforce the Middle East’s ‘Third world’ nature, Ahmed boasts “when an Arab sees a woman he wants, he takes her”. Archetypical tropes are subsequently projected, as Ahmed embodies “the perverted Sheikh”, as evidenced by his predatory behaviour in which he lusts over the chaste ‘First world’ damsel. Parallels can thus be drawn between the ‘buck’ African American and Sheikh, suggesting Hollywood hypersexualised ethnic identities as a means of reiterating the virtue inherent in whiteness. Similarities are also evident in the visual ‘othering’ of Ahmed, who embodies the cinematic Arab in his role as a “swarthy Sheikh, wiggling his eyebrows and chasing the Western heroine”, in which he is dressed in robes and a keffiyeh whilst the French novelist he converses with wears a colonial uniform and pith helmet. Stereotypes of Middle Eastern populations being more primitive than their progressive white counterparts and in need of the guidance of Europeans to cultivate an enlightened society are thus depicted; “the Arab stereotypes created by British and French colonialism are still very much with us.” Film critique William Greider argues the encoding of “anti-human qualities” in Middle Easterners, portraying them as thriving on disorder and not sharing American ambitions, is a self-generating technique employed to conjure a universal acceptance of these “irrational traits”, ensuring audiences are passive to negative representations. Likewise, many of the ‘race movies’ that were created by black filmmakers also advanced narratives of perverted Middle Eastern men, with their damsels being ‘mulatto’ women in the case of African American cinema. It can thus be inferred Hollywood carried out a racial exploitation that pitted ethnicities against one another, with certain tropes being utilised by filmmakers who had suffered from their own negative representations. Therefore, the extent in which Hollywood bolstered racialised stereotypes in response to war further appears insignificant as the government would have sustained little political benefit from negatively portraying Middle Eastern populations, implying their representation was merely cinematic. This is evidenced by The Sheikh exceeding one million dollars in ticket sales in 1921 and 125,000 views within its first week, denoting these stereotypes brought in substantial monetary gain.
The Thief of Bagdad (1924) further supports these sentiments as the film, directed by Raoul Walsh, chronicles the lives of Prince Ahmad and thief Abu as they escape from a dungeon and embark on a series of adventures involving a djinn and flying carpet; both of which have become iconographic of the Middle East. In the scene where Prince Ahmad confesses he is a thief to the princess, she is conventionally depicted as she remains mute throughout much of their dialogue. Stereotypes of Middle Eastern women being submissive are thus maintained as the princess embodies a voiceless servant answerable only to her male counterparts. This is reinforced by her veil, perceived as “the ultimate symbol of oppression” when compared to the representations of white femme fatales in flapper culture, and her departure when the guards enter, confining her to the domestic realm as it is evident she exercises little authority over complex matters. However, despite portraying Middle Eastern women as voiceless subordinates, Jack Shaheen asserts The Thief of Bagdad represents Arabs comparatively positive, humanising them through eradicating their ‘threatening’ nature and portraying many of them as the moral protagonists that would inspire characters such as Aladdin and Sinbad. Likewise, Shaheen claims out of the 1000 Hollywood films he surveyed for negative stereotypes, 5% debunked these assumptions by portraying Middle Eastern people as “liberators of the poor from the rich”. This indicates Hollywood films depicting Middle Eastern demographics are not only largely unrelated to the First World War, but also project the character tropes most likely to gain the film critical acknowledgement, with The Thief of Bagdad being branded the ninth best film in the fantasy genre. Bolstering would have therefore been cinematically motivated, as evidenced by the inconsistent portrayals of Arabians, whereby Hollywood was perhaps less incentivised to demonise or glorify these populations, and merely depicted them in accordance with audience demand.
Lastly, arguments can be made for East Asian stereotypes developing on account of the power asymmetries reinforced by conflict, subsequently bolstering not in response to war, but in response to the war era. This is evidenced by China who, humiliated by the Sino-Japanese War and Xinhai Revolution, maintained a general alliance with the allies due to imperial interests from 1914 and declared war in 1917 in response to America’s demands. These motivations are indicative of the state’s “political chaos and economic weakness”, whereby war entry was necessitated in an attempt to “reshape the geopolitical balance of power”, according to Xu Guoqi. This would have been exacerbated by the Alice Dollar Incident of 1920, in which Chinese rebels opened fire on an American ship along the Yatze River, resulting in two Americans being wounded and the US consul in Chungking demanding an apology. A distinct power imbalance is thus evident, not conjured by war but exercised throughout wartime political affairs and preserved in foreign policy decisions of the 1920s. The legacy of ‘yellow peril’ in the US, which peaked during the late 19th century but was still evidenced in the Immigration Act of 1924 and various anti-miscegenation laws, would have additionally justified hostile assumptions as fears that East Asians would displace civilisation spread. The extent of these dispositions was signified by the treatment of the first Chinese Hollywood movie star Anna Wong who, despite providing the ‘exotic atmosphere’ for many Hollywood films, was often relegated to supporting roles. Wong reiterated these sentiments, claiming “producers prefer Hungarians, Mexicans and American Indians for Chinese roles”, suggesting Hollywood projected yellowface to an accepting American public with an awareness that China lacked the authority to challenge these stereotypes.
Yellowface can be analysed in films such as Sidney Franklin’s The Forbidden City (1918), where San San is killed when her family discovers she is married to an American, with the story reflecting on the life of their orphaned child as she rediscovers her dad in the Philippines. The casting of Norma Talmadge to the role of San San exemplifies Wong’s complaints, as does her appearance reflect ethnocentric beliefs; “the star’s portrait of a Chinese girl is so perfect that director Franklin throws that perfection fairly in your face on an almond-eyed close-up”. According to Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Hollywood caricatures East Asians through fixating on their biological characteristics such as their epicanthic fold, dark hair, and ‘yellow’ skin tones to construct “one monolithic conglomeration of cultures”. East Asians are subsequently homogenised in line with orientalist assumptions that ‘other’ them through synonymising their identity with a distinctly foreign appearance. Stereotypes of East Asian women being childlike are also inherent in the scene where San San plays hide and seek. Her character is subsequently infantilised as her immature exterior connotes she needs guidance from superiors, such as her American love interest who helps her over a bridge. In doing so, the development of Western actors in contrast to a seemingly primitive East is reiterated, with the scene reflecting the sentiments of American missionaries in China during the late 1800s. Furthermore, the subservience of San San evidences Hollywood’s fetishization of East Asian women, in which American men are portrayed as having control over Chinese women who are not only visually youthful, but receptive of Western enlightenment; the scene a microcosm of Sino-American relations. Likewise, San San’s line “Buddah, please send love-man here to give me a million sweet kisses” further demonstrates notions of the ‘China doll’ stereotype. Therefore, it can be argued that China’s history of defeat, aside from in World War Two which did little to consolidate an authoritative global position, was manifested in the representation of East Asian women in Hollywood.
Rowland V Lee’s The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) provides further insight into Hollywood’s typification of East Asians, as the film narrates the revenge of Fu Manchu on the Western soldiers responsible for Chinese deaths in the Boxer Rebellion. In detailing a historical event, conceptions of America falling victim to China’s ‘anti-imperialist, domestically unstable’ tendencies are conjured, as the film portrays Fu Manchu as an antagonist intent on securing revenge. This is supported by William F. Wu; “Fu Manchu has been absorbed into American consciousness as the archetypical East Asian villain”, as evidenced in the scene where Fu Manchu attempts to kill British personnel with a hidden vial of poison. The character thus serves as the ‘yellow peril’ incarnate and perpetual foreigner, in which he is incapable of assimilating in part due to his physical pan-Asian attributes, and as a result of his “sardonic methods of murder”, reinforcing stereotypes of hyperintelligence and exoticism. Though tropes of East Asians having a high intellect appear innocuous, the long term repercussions of Hollywood stereotyping East Asians as a highly academic ‘model minority’ appear detrimental. Not only have studies found this assumption serves as a microaggression used to deny them of their racial reality and trivialise the professional impediments they face, such as the ‘bamboo ceiling’, but also facilitates neglect in the education system as these traits are imposed on Asian students, hindering those unable to conform. Another stereotype encoded in Fu Manchu is his distain of women; a quality not afforded to the predatory ‘Buck’ or Sheikh. A scene where he converses with British personnel exemplifies this as, upon the entrance of a British flapper who attempts to defend him, he berates her before furiously pushing her away. Fu Manchu thus embodies the “male chauvinist” who, despite exercising the same domineering qualities as American men, is displayed as an abusive patriarch. It thus appears Hollywood’s stereotypes of East Asians bare little semblance to the war as combat would not have incentivised major cinematic backlash. Despite this, the fact representations of East Asians were no more positive than that of Middle Easterners, who fought in opposition during the war, indicates animosity. It can therefore be argued that stereotypes were somewhat bolstered by political motivations as affairs dating from the late 19th century into the Warlord Era provided America with the leverage necessary to unreservedly vilify China. An awareness of the offensiveness of these stereotypes is demonstrated by America’s prohibiting of the Dr. Fu Manchu series during World War II in an attempt to improve relations with China.
To conclude, the extent in which Hollywood bolstered racialised stereotypes in direct response to the First World War was limited, and the extent in which racialised stereotypes were bolstered at all appears of little significance. The case studies examined reveal that 1920s cinema recycled decade old ethnic tropes to predominantly entertain audiences, and secondarily in response to political matters triggered by war, but unrelated directly to the events between 1914-1918. Minimal bolstering occurred in response to the rebellious sentiments of African Americans following war, but adequate relations with the Middle East, with wartime enmity merely being conjured by default, and the reconcilable nature of small-scale incidents with China during peacetime suggests negative depictions, albeit correlating to international politics, did not correlate to war. Negative stereotypes nonetheless tarnished public opinion of non-white demographics as self-perpetuating, regenerative ideologies encoded within Hollywood’s characters served to ‘other’ and vilify visually dissimilar populations. Cinema framed African Americans as mentally and physically inferior, sexually charged ‘savages’ incapable of intellectual progression and consumed with the perversion of white women in the South. Likewise, men of Middle Eastern descent were portrayed equally as predatory and lustful of Western women, though lacked American ideals rendering them comparatively unsophisticated; a quality demonstrated by the perceived oppression of Arabian women who ranked as second-class citizens, seemingly disempowered by Islam. Patriarchal ideals were also imposed on East Asians as dichotomous features were assigned to men and women, men embodying deviance and manipulation and women serving as naïve, coy ‘China dolls’ seeking the guidance of Western men. Inherent throughout Hollywood’s typification of ethnicities was imperialist, orientalist undertones which projected xenophobic assumptions of what non-whites should be, as opposed to what they were, amalgamating their external appearance with internal characteristics and rendering diverse ethnic groups monolithic. The psychological and social damage inflicted by these stereotypes additionally indicates they were not bolstered in direct response to war, as Hollywood was aware that the perpetuation of decade old prejudices would be sufficient in achieving underlying political objectives. Recommendations for further research into present-day stereotypes, such as Africans Americans being ‘ghetto’, Middle Easterners relentlessly seeking out oil and East Asians speaking ‘Engrish’, can subsequently be made to gage deeper historical insight into their origins and associations with conflict post-World War One.
