Number One Son providing comic relief. No, I'm talking about the Charlie Chan of Earl Derr Biggers original novels. There were six books altogether: The House Without a Key, The Chinese Parrot, Behind That Curtain, The Black Camel, Charlie Chan Carries On, and Keeper of the Keys. I've read the first four. What strikes me most about these books is that they are good. Really good. Not just good from the standpoint of crime novels. Good as novels, period. Biggers was just a very good writer. He knew how to construct sentences and weave them into a narrative that brings the settings to life. He puts you right there in Honolulu and San Francisco and California's Central Valley. He puts you in 1926. His artistry with the words lets you see what Waikiki looked like when it was a pristine, white crescent, before the high rise hotels crowded into it cheek by jowl. The Honolulu he creates is still a relatively small town sleeping in the soft tropical breezes, scarcely imagining the metropolis it will one day become after World War II, which was still more than a decade away when Biggers penned his novels.Bigger's created the character of Charlie Chan to combat the Yellow Peril that was spreading through California. He based his hero on real-life Honolulu detectives Chang Apana and Lee Fook. Chan stands in direct contrast to threatening characters like Fu Manchu.
Charlie Chan is not very tall, but he is very round. Surprisingly, he is also very light on his feet. With his Western dress and his Eastern philosophy, Chan walks the fine line between both worlds. His voice is soft, most of the time, almost apologetic. He's so sorry to interrupt you, hates to impose his unworthy self upon you, but he has a most unpleasant job to perform, you understand. Chan is humble, self-deprecating. He's also sharp as a tack, intensely tenacious, and possesses a formidable instinct that always leads him to the killer in the end. Like Columbo, Chan puts people at ease with his gentle ways and his humility. Sensing that he is not smart enough to catch them, the killers always get careless, and that's when Charlie sheds his meek demeanor like a cape and springs into action. While his command of the English language is not great, you won't read any of that "Lookee see, me findee clue heah" nonsense dropping out of Chan's mouth. Not unless he's attempting to fit the culprit's stereotypical image of what a Chinese person is supposed to talk like.Nowadays, it's all the rage to disparage characters like Charlie Chan as being racist and creating harmful stereotypes. But Charlie Chan wasn't created in our day. And at the time of his creation,
Chinese Americans loved him. Here was a positive Chinese role model, a non-threatening individual who portrayed all that was good in the Chinese culture and showed how both the old and the new, the foreign and the domestic can live together in perfect harmony. While most Chinese characters minced about in traditional garb and spoke horrid pigeon English, Chan walks softly in a Western suit and dispenses ancient pearls of wisdom. When asked if he thought Charlie Chan was a demeaning stereotype, Keye Luke, who played Charlie's son in several of the film adaptations, said, "Demeaning to my race? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!" Charlie Chan was, in its time, one of the most positive endorsements ever for the Chinese culture and Chinese Americans. It would do us good to remember that a lot of the tearing down of racist barriers came because of authors like Biggers, who dared to attack the stereotypes of the day. Charlie Chan was a great creation, and he has inherited a status right up there with Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason. He's become a part of our national identity, a part of what it means to be an American.
No comments:
Post a Comment