Juvy

Broken Blossoms Both Fights and Reinforce Asian Stereotypes

Broken Blossoms is a 1919 silent film directed by D.W. Grifith (The Birth of a Nation) starring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess (in yellow face), and Donald Crisp. It tells the story of a young girl, Lucy Burrows (Gish) abused by her alcoholic prizefighting father, Battling Burrows (Crisp) and who meets a kind-hearted Chinese man, Cheng Huan (Barthelmess) who falls in love with her. The movie ends with Gish’s character being beaten to death by her father and Barthelmess’s character finding her body and shooting the father to death, then killing himself.

The film was released during a period known as Yellow Peril, which was a period of anti-Chinese feeling in the U.S. Griffith based Cheng Huan on a character in a book by G.G. Rupert title The Yellow Peril; or Orient vs. Occident published in 1911. However, Griffith gave Cheng Huan’s character a personality makeover that is different from the book. In Rupert’s story, the Chinese protagonist is a sordid young Shanghai drifter in the naval service who was addicted to opium and whores. This character in Cheng Huan becomes a Buddhist missionary whose goal was to spread the word of Buddha and peace.

The main theme of Broken Blossoms was child abuse but the fact that a white man is playing yellow face and his Chinese character is based on a Chinese character in a book makes it significant to Asian/Asian American culture. First of all, Griffith portraying Cheng Huan as a do-gooder instead of like the bad guy his book character was surprisingly shows the Chinese in a good light, especially during such time as the Yellow Peril. However, Cheng Huan was still the stereotypical Chinese with his Buddhist beliefs; plus he did frequent opium dens when he was depressed, albeit not as often as his character in The Yellow Peril. Furthermore, the fact that he cast a white guy to play a Chinese character shows that Griffith wasn’t that immune to anti-Chinese sentiments or into breaking the norm by casting a Chinese man in his movie. Nothing happens between Cheng and Lucy and instead of a happily ever after where they get married, we see them dead. This reflects the law in 1919 in which interracial marriage or relationships were a crime so although viewers were tantalized with possible kisses between Lucy and Cheng, it never happens. Stereotypes were obvious in the film but Broken Blossom’s portrayal of a Chinese man was quite well-meaning, open-minded and liberal in the context of his time and audiences.