lights, camera

People of a certain sociopolitical bent are prone to pointing out how the mainstream media subtly promote racism by casting minorities in few roles and casting them as less sympathetic characters even when they do.

On the one hand, yes tehre is some subtle racism at play in a lot of modern media but this isn't exactly a new thing, nor is it done for deliberately malicious reasons. Sometimes it's just a product of the times. A lot of the time it was considered totally acceptable at the time of filming.

English actor Richard Barthelmass played a kindly Chinese immigrant in London in a 1919 early silent film called 'Broken Blossoms', alongside a young Lillian Gish. The character, called Chang, is actually a very sympathetic character. He is very kind and generous despite the disappointments and hardships he faces as a foreigner in early 20th-century London and only once in the entire film does he do anything bad at all--and even then it's just to defend the Lillian Gish character with whom his has fallen smitten. (He shoots the character's drunken, abusive father shortly before he administers the assault that kills her.)

But as good a character as he is, they still apparently couldn't be fucked to get an Asian actor to play an Asian character. Richard Barthelmass is as white as his name suggests he is and looks slightly less than nothing at all like a Chinese man. Barthelmass apparently chose to remedy this fact by squinting for the entire 90-minute run. Nobody thought there was anything potentially insensitive about any of this. There were no overt ill intentions. It was just the product of a time and place where racism was a social norm.

It's still a cute movie, though. Well, sweet and sad anyway. I knew how it was going to end but it still made me choke up at the end. It's also one of those very old films that has outlived its copyright protection and is public domain, which means it's available online for free should you want to have a look at it.

And before you can ask, yes, this silent movie also scared the fuck out of me because it was silent. There isn't a single element of horror or suspense in this entire film but the lack of sound coupled with the exaggerated makeup and body language is still enough to creep me out. Even Lillian Gish did. Especially Lillian Gish did. And I have a massive girlcrush on that woman.