They say that the Charlie Chan movies are racist. Asian Americans particularly object to the way the Chinese detective is portrayed as a stereotypical pidjin English speaking Chinaman. However, I recently began to read Charlie Chan by Yunte Huang and have a new found appreciation for this character based on a real life detective in the Honolulu Police Department in the early part of the the 20th century. Hollywood's portrayal of the detective in the noir genre gave birth to a truly American pop culture icon.
I found Charlie Chan in the Secret Service on Netflix. Racist as it may be, the anachronistic portrayal of the horrible Confucius wisdom spouting detective by Sydney Toler had me giggling all the way to the end. It's hard not to imitate the way he speaks afterwards. Detective Chan earned much respect from this humble viewer.
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