Nathan's Place: Racist Hollywood, Et Al

I want to talk about this without it being divisive, without it being alienating, without harping on a single issue too much, and without getting hung up on it. Maybe first I should explain why I decided to blog about this.

I was reading an article about music from back in the day, cartoons from back in the day, I guess a retrospective of sorts. In the article, there was an image of an old magazine with a picture of Batman on it, but it was Batman from the 1940s.

Batman from the 1940s?

I mean, live-action Batman, not comic book pictures of Batman.

So, I'm like, "Cool."

I start looking up more pictures, reading about it, finding out about this Batman movie serial from the 1940s. Turns out Columbia Pictures put out a cliff-hanger style series of movies back in the 40s of Batman, shown at the theaters weekly. It starred a little-bit-out-of-shape actor with a Boston accent named Lewis Wilson as Batman, Douglas Croft as Robin.

I'm all for Batman. I like what they did in the late 80s with Michael Keaton as Batman, I like the current Dark Knight series, Heath Ledger was brilliant as the Joker. And, of course, as a kid I was a comic book aficionado, and loved Batman.So, I had to know what they did with him back in the 40s.

It's amazing to me how long this character has been a part of the American mind and American culture. Not that 70 years is super long, if we're counting back to when Batman was first in theaters, but it's a long time by American standards. Especially for something which is basically Pop Culture. It's an entertainment enterprise, an institution of Hollywood.

I was a bit fascinated. It was looking kind of corny, the costuming was different, Batman had a spare tire around the waist, but it still looked kind of cool.

Then the gnarled branches and dark clouds came in and my hope crumbled before my eyes.

Not that bad, but here's what I find out.

Batman is a racist.

The other thing is, to get past censors, rather than have Batman be a vigilante, in the old 40s movie serial they have him working for the government. Quite the good boy patriot.

And, this being a film series during the World War Two era, he has to stop the evil Japanese from imposing their twisted ways on the world.

Seriously, this is the message of the film.

There's even a part of the first episode in which they justified Japanese-Americans being put in internment camps.

Well, I hadn't thought about it for awhile, but I started to recall my youth in the 1980s, and how I basically hated that era because hate and stereotypes were common and accepted. Japanese were constantly ridiculed, depicted as having buck-teeth and always carrying a camera and snapping pictures, speaking with ridiculous accents; and Asians never got laid, according to common myths. Except that all Asian women were sex kittens, so the never-getting-laid myth was reserved for Asian men. Then Dirty Harry and Charles Bronson were competing for how many black men they could kill in their movies, while Rambo was killing Vietnamese. It was all noticeable to me, being sensitive and growing up bi-racial in a backward and predominantly white town in the 80s. Well, to be honest, I hated it.

Anyway, the 40s Batman serial made me realize how long this image making has been going on and been ingrained into the American psyche. No wonder Americans are so dumb. Hate Japanese, hate blacks, hate Arabic people. I mean, most people today would watch that old Batman serial and think it's absurd, some would be shocked. And I think 70 years from now, people will be looking at how our current thinking is and consider it absurd; that we look down on the homeless, that we are expected to conform and slave away at jobs.

Well, I can hope people are that enlightened in the year 2083.

Anyway, after surviving the patriotic and conservative and rigid Reagan-Bush 80s, I recall in the 90s, noticeably things started changing. You saw Asian men in movies and TV, getting laid or otherwise having some relatively important roles. Japanese things started being considered cool; anime, manga, even superstars like Gwen Stefani paying tribute to Japanese culture and people. It surprised me when I started seeing it. Of course, I also consider it too little too late. But I also still live in a town in which it's still acceptable to be scared of any religion but Christianity, to make fun of people because of their ethnicity, and to be openly homophobic. Not too bright in these here parts. And I'm going through a mid-life crisis, so my give-a-care is wearing out.

Gwen Stefani and Harajuku dancers. Source: http://harajuku-l.blogspot.com

In fact, this town is stuck in time, like maybe stuck in the 40s, back there with the Batman serial.

I've had people tell me how Chinese people don't belong here, one guy told me (who knows why) that a Chinese guy put up his blinds incorrectly, another guy who delivers beer said some N-Word (he used the word) or maybe a Mexican stole beer off his truck, and maybe a month ago a martial artist I know was making fun of the Asian folks who created the martial art he practices; "Ching chong Chinaman" kind of talk.

I mean, backward, dim dolts.

What's my point? It's a pattern. We change it periodically: Who to ridicule, who to hate, who to fear. At any rate, it permeates the culture, in how people talk, in the movies, on TV, when you go to the store, when you're eating at a restaurant. If you're sensitive, you can feel it hanging in the air and hear it oozing out of people's pores.

At least, I do.