And it was all yellow: are we really that Oriental? Yellowface and its absurdity

No matter what race, ethnicity or nationality you may identify with, cultural appropriation can always be wrong. Edward Said's theory of Orientalism struck me close to home. Eurocentric ideas used for the "othering" of other people served as a rationale for colonialism and imperialism in the past. They might seem irrelevant today, but such lingering racial ideas can be seen in modern day racism and how characters are portrayed in the media. 

The practice of yellowface  was used so that white actors could not only colour their faces with bright yellow skin, but portray what they believed to their greatest ability what it meant to be Asian on the big screen. With exaggerated facial traits such as slanted eyes achieved through make up techniques, they manage to impersonate characters that indeed aren't what they're used to. But it is by no means appropriate. It shows how there is systematic bias when it comes to selecting who to cast in a film.

From the 1930's onwards, whether it is Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan, these types of

Asian characters were played by white actors as either antagonists or comic reliefs. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall describes this type of discourse as the West and the Rest, which lumps all-non Western cultures as inferiour. Whether its blackface, yellowface or redface, you can clearly see that in the days of early cinema.

The argument often expressed in favour of casting Caucasian actors as non-white roles at the time was a general policy of "colour-blind casting" which is to cast an actor for his talent as an actor, regardless of what he physically appears to look like. It then seems appropriate to cast them as ethnic minorities but really it lowers them down to something that was never meant to be taken seriously. If you were an actor of colour at the time, you surely would be offended if white actors dressed up to look like what they generally thought you looked like as a single unified race.

Surely casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan seems like a bad idea right? No, let me rephrase that. It is an atrocious idea and one of the greatest miscasts in Hollywood history. Asking an actor memorable for his roles as a cowboy to play a Mongolian emperor is just as morally wrong as people wearing Native American chieftain headgear without any consideration for Native American people. Please google: "Washington Redskins Fans".

These ideas might seem outdated but in reality they still occur in modern film and television. Alyson Hannigan portraying a racial stereotype of an Asian woman during an episode of How I Met Your Mother was widely criticised. The entire episode might have been a tribute to old Kung-Fu films, but the writers wrote in so many stereotypical tropes that it came off as racist.

You might argue that overall practice of yellowface has died out out of fear of offending people in our increasingly multicultural societies, but the recent occurrence of "whitewashing" of characters proves that a similar mindset still exists. The casting of the live action version of the Last Airbender (2010) should have followed the animation and portrayed characters who were either indigenous or Asian but Shymalan had absolutely neglected this. He simply rewrote the ethnic backgrounds for each character so he could cast white actors to play them instead.

Hopefully not following in the footsteps of the Conqueror, Mickey Rourke has recently announced that he is to play Genghis Khan in an upcoming film. In my mind, I'd like to follow what the Duke himself stated after his portrayal of the Great Khan: "Don't make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you are not suited for".