Yes, in 2008, Osborne co-hosted a series called ''Race & Hollywood: Asian Images in Film'' on Turner Classic Movies.
He was joined by Peter X. Feng, an author and film studies professor who helped program the series. Their TCM intros can still be found on YouTube, and they include ''The Toll of the Sea,'' ''Old San Francisco,'' ''The Good Earth,'' ''Dragon Seed,'' ''Sayonara'' and ''The Killing Fields.''
As for yellowface, I don't make any distinction between the ''respectful'' depictions and the more ''offensive'' ones. The end result is still the same: It's systematic racism. White actors, often in prosthetics or makeup, played Asian characters, and that deprived actual Asian talents of their opportunity to bring their own humanity to those roles. It also robbed Asians of their rightful shots at stardom. And because so many people take their cultural cues from Hollywood, the Asian Pacific Islander community still has to deal with decades of damaging stereotypes and yellowface. |
