Visualizing Orientalness: Chinese Immigration and Race in U.S. Motion Pictures, 1910s-1930s

In the early twentieth century Hollywood was fascinated by the Far East. Chinese immigrants, however, were excluded since 1882 and racism pervaded U.S. society. When motion pictures became the most popular form of entertainment, immigration and race were heavily debated topics. This is the first book that analyses the significance of motion pictures within these discourses. Taking up approaches from the fields of visual culture studies and visual history, Bjoern A. Schmidt undertakes a visual discourse analysis of films from the 1910s to 1930s. The author shows how the visuality of films and the historical discourses and practices that surrounded them portrayed Chinese immigration and contributed to notions of Chinese Americans as a foreign and other race.