Sessue Hayakawa: Implementation of Model Minority Through Film I

Although the emergence of Asian actors into the “big screen” was initially considered to be “progressive” for Hollywood because of the lack of ethnic diversity in the film industry beforehand, the intentionally dehumanizing portrayals of the majority of Asian characters in an overwhelming number of Hollywood films, actually perpetuated the already widespread prejudice directed towards Asian Americans and Asian immigrants living in America. While having Asian actors play caricatures of grossly exaggerated stereotypes led to anti-immigration ideologies resembling the sentiments of “The Yellow Peril” materializing in all aspects of life for Asian and Asian Americans, a glass ceiling for success amongst Asian American actors was subsequently created in Hollywood as a trickle down effect. Rising against the rampant racism of America and greeted with barriers bounded by anti-immigration semitism, with his “childlike ferocity” and “painful beauty,” Sessue Hayakawa transcended into universal superstardom. Despite primarily being used by Hollywood to propagate the assimilation of Western ideals and cultures, Hayakawa's masculine on-screen persona simultaneously alleviated the savage perception of Asians living in America during the dawn of the 20th century.
                                             

Hayakawa’s ascent to worldwide renown was rather unexpected, given the turbulent time for Asians living in the United States during the latter half of the 19th century, who not only had to completely abandon their previous lives back East, but were forced to face a barrage of legislation that limited their opportunities for success. What initially gave birth to these isolated, discriminatory laws directed toward Asians in America, however was the widespread belief that the mass immigration of Asian peoples, also known as the “irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East,” would lead to the takeover of Western civilization (Marchetti, 2). This belief, which was rooted from the medieval fear of Genghis Khan’s Mongol invasion was known as the “Yellow Peril” and was coined by German Emperor Wilhelm II in 1895 rose due to the limited knowledge of Asia and Asians in America held by surrounding countries during the time (Marchetti, 2). Generally, in regards to the racism in America held by white, the underlying belief was that non- white people were intellectually and physically inferior to white people, and are in addition, “morally suspect, heathen, licentious, disease-ridden, feral, violent, uncivilized, infantile, and in need of the guidance of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants” (Marchetti, 3).

In response to the mass influx of Asian immigrants to the West, as well as their concurrent economic uprising, the American government subsequently created laws targeting those categorized as “yellow” that stripped away what would have been their “unalienable rights”  (54). Examples of this type legislation includes the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law, which ceased the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, except for “merchants, students, teachers and diplomats, and travelers” and after years of amendments to the Chinese Exclusion Law, it was made indefinite in 1904 (Chan, 55). The discrimination of Japanese immigrants also materialized, but was much more indirect. With legislation not explicitly including the words “Japanese” in them, such as the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907, Executive Order 589 and the Immigration Act of 1924, they limited the immigration of Japanese immigrants just the same (Chan, 55).

Hollywood’s treatment and utilization of non-whites in film did not stray much away from the American government’s conduct toward Asian American and Asian immigrants, which meant that prejudice carried over to the film industry. Hayakawa was regarded as the first male sex symbol of Hollywood, but his on-screen presence was an aberration from what Asian male actors were routinely perceived as, which were as “rapists or asexual eunuchs” (Marchetti, 2). In other words, Hayakawa's success did not well represent the reality of the Hollywood film industry, where typecasting and stereotyping remained prevalent forms of hiring actors (Marchetti, 2). According to Marchetti, Hollywood’s primary use of Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders representation in films was to “avoid the far more immediate racial tensions between blacks and whites or the ambivalent mixture of guilt and enduring hatred toward Native Americans and Hispanics” (6). In other words, the implementation of Asians actors and actresses in Hollywood served as a diversion from the other types of racism directed toward different ethnic groups. Additionally, Hayakawa’s presence in the films that he starred in was to reinforce the idea that Asians could never achieve the supposed "higher" status of whites, while promoting the adherence and assimilation of Asians into American culture (Miyao, 15). With these additional boundaries in Hollywood on top of the legislation outside the film industry, Hayakawa’s likelihood of leaving an imprint on the film industry seemed slim — that is, until he broke through with his performance in The Cheat (1915).