I think it's easy to say Peter Sellers as Sydney Wang is a mistake along the same lines as Mickey Rooney in (Truman Capote's) Breakfast at Tiffany's. But I'm thrown off by them casting an actual Asian guy for his son. Which made me wonder if maybe Wang being played offensively by a white guy was a joke in itself. Was Charlie Chan normally played by a white guy in makeup? Maybe it was a tongue-in-cheek joke acknowledging how ridiculous it was?
shareHe usually was played by someone in "Chinese" make-up. This was a joke, the character is a spoof of Charlie Chan (played by many) and Inspector Wong (played by Boris Karloff).
"The game's afoot!"
Not to mention Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto
the films were sometimes so deep into 'Yellow-face' that when a Chan script was re-written as a Moto Movie (the Chan actor of the time was ill) they kept Chan's "Number 1 son" still played by a real Asian as Moto's sidekick for the film
And it was Truman Capote's character who was berating Wang for his stereotypical speech -- all it needed was for him to say "You sound as bad as Mickey Rooney!"
shareWas Charlie Chan normally played by a white guy in makeup?
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Not appropriate for a movie forum. Besides, it's incorrect. China is not into beheading people. Neither are Native Americans or Indians from India.
The terrorists are arabic or persian Islamists from the Afghanistan/Pakistan/Saudi Arabian/Syrian/Libyan/Iranian areas.
Yes...in the original Charlie Chan movies, Chan was played by a white actor and his son was played by an asian.
shareno it was a comedy no respect to chinese people
Now it wouldnt be able to fly.
I personally liked wang but if I had to do this again I would change him a little bit
I would get rid of the buck teeth and he would wear oriental clothes but more modern
Look like Tarzan talk like Jane! HAHA
You don't seem to get it. MBD is spoofing those very things that you, with a lot of justification, consider racist in the original movies. It wouldn't work if the Charlie Chan/Sidney Wang character were played by a real Asian (which agains would not be politically correct, lumping Chinese and Japanese and Koreans and whathaveyou together as "Asians", as if a Spaniard and a German and a Greek could be merged into a "European") or if Milo Perrier/Hercule Poirot were played by a real Frenchie, er, Belgie. It's part of the satire that those characters are as ethnically fake in the spoof as they were in the originals. If some ethnic group were really offended by this, then sorry, they don't get it either.
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Nobody cuts and runs on Sheriff J.W. Pepper. And it's him who's speakin' by the by.
j_w_pepper
You don't seem to get it. MBD is spoofing those very things that you, with a lot of justification, consider racist in the original movies. It wouldn't work if the Charlie Chan/Sidney Wang character were played by a real Asian (which agains would not be politically correct, lumping Chinese and Japanese and Koreans and whathaveyou together as "Asians", as if a Spaniard and a German and a Greek could be merged into a "European") or if Milo Perrier/Hercule Poirot were played by a real Frenchie, er, Belgie. It's part of the satire that those characters are as ethnically fake in the spoof as they were in the originals. If some ethnic group were really offended by this, then sorry, they don't get it either