Was ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ a Racist Movie?
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Stephen Magagnini, Sacramento Bee, August 22, 2008
Is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”—the lighthearted 1961 classic starring Audrey Hepburn—a racist film that perpetuates negative Asian stereotypes?
Asian American activists think so, and Sacramento Vice Mayor Steve Cohn agrees—he plans to bleep out offensive scenes when he shows the film in his district Saturday.
{snip}
In the movie, Mickey Rooney plays Mr. Yunioshi, the bumbling, cantankerous upstairs neighbor of Audrey Hepburn’s character, country girl turned socialite Holly Golightly.
Rooney’s character “conjures all the requisite ‘Jap’ stereotypes: grotesque buckteeth, thick-rimmed glasses, unforgivable ‘Asian’ accent,” wrote Dr. Christina Fa of San Francisco-based Asian American Media Watch in a letter to Cohn.
Fa, a longtime Sacramento resident, called the film “arguably the most racist anti-Asian film in American cinematic history” and asked it be canceled. The movie won two Academy Awards for its music.
CAPITAL (Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership), an umbrella group for more than 90 local organizations, joined Fa in asking Cohn and the rest of the City Council not to show a film that perpetuates “offensive, derogatory and hateful racial stereotypes detrimental and destructive to our society.”
{snip}
Cohn confessed he hasn’t seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in decades and didn’t recall the offensive content.
“My first choice was try and switch movies,” he said. “Unfortunately we were unable to do that since the film was already mailed out from the distribution company we contracted with in Illinois.”
After talking with CAPITAL legal counsel Jerry Chong, Cohn decided to delete the main scene featuring Mr. Yunioshi and use it as a teaching moment.
“I know I could take some flak for censorship,” Cohn said, “but it’s an educational opportunity, and that’s how we plan to handle it.”
Sacramento County Supervisor Jimmie Yee, who is Chinese American, said Thursday he was unaware of the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” brouhaha.
He said he’s OK viewing older films that may include white actors playing Asians.
“I don’t have any problem going back and looking at historic movies,” said Yee, who compared it to Charlie Chan movies, which aren’t socially acceptable when viewed through a modern lens.
{snip}
Cohn’s decision to issue a public disclaimer “and bring it to people’s attention” makes sense, Chong said.
“You don’t teach people things by keeping everything quiet,” he said. “A lot of young people are not aware of these stereotypes and don’t even think they’re offensive. But it’s particularly offensive to those of us who grew up in the ’50s and ’60s—they were used to insult and taunt us while we were at school.”
{snip}
Email Stephen Magagnini at smagagnini@sacbee.com.
(Posted on August 26, 2008)
Comments
A question for Mr. Taylor: Are there any Japanese films which perpetuate “negative white stereotypes”?
There is an entire world of Asian films which white people have never seen. I find it hard to believe that some of them do not portray whites in a bad light.
Posted by at 5:44 PM on August 26
In case we follow these IDIOTS, we must destroy the world culture.
A solution? It’s easy. DO NOT LIKE -> DO NOT WATCH.
PS. Give it to me. I’ll watch it.
Posted by alex at 6:10 PM on August 26
How about the way the media portrays whites or western civilization? Certainly Charlie Chaplin has nothing on the three stooges? Someone brought up here recently the fact that the Kung Fu TV serious was patently anti-white male. That was the very basis of the show, it’s anti western society outlook. The show went beyond just constructive criticism. Senator Jesse Helms said once during the 1960’s, “These television shows are being produced by those, who, if they do not hate American first, then they certainly have a smug contempt for American principles and values.”
Posted by Dr. Smith at 6:17 PM on August 26
Since they wouldn’t post a picture of this ghastly crime against humanity, here’s a video of Mickey caught in the very act (Actually, he looks like Jack Nickleson instead an Asian):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__-unOqTPYk
Posted by Nordic at 6:20 PM on August 26
Where is Spain’s olympic basketball team when you need them?
All of these offended asians are nothing but student lackeys of white marxists. If they still retained any of their Japanese heritage, they would enjoy stereotyping Koreans, Whites, and especially those crass Russkies.
Posted by Flamethrower at 6:23 PM on August 26
OMG now the jerky asians are starting up…..and sure they are a minority????? There are billions of asians…dahhhhhhhh!
Posted by lydia at 6:42 PM on August 26
Is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — the lighthearted classic that won two Academy Awards — a racist film that perpetuates negative Asian stereotypes?
Asian American activists think so, and Sacramento’s Vice Mayor, Steve Cohn, agrees — he plans to bleep out offensive scenes when he shows the film in his district Saturday.
Fa …called the film “arguably the most racist anti-Asian film in American cinematic history” and asked that it be canceled.
Cohn confessed he hasn’t seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in decades and didn’t recall the offensive content.
— — — — —
Are we going to prevent the showing of anything that someone or some group doesn’t like or finds “offensive” or doesn’t want to let others see? That could come to cover practically everything. Movies, plays, books. Anything that portrays smoking or drinking. Eating meat, wearing fur. Wasting resources. Child abuse. Attitudes for (or against) marriage., etc. How far are we going to take this new mania for censorship? It’s boundless.
Isn’t that what we fought wars to prevent from happening here?
Actually, the movie romanticized prostitution (though subtly, and I didn’t get the point back then), and that’s what I find more objectionable than anything else. Even so, I’m not demanding to have it closed down.
I would have more respect for Mayor Cohn if he showed the courage to stand up for American rights and freedom of speech, rather than buckling under so compliantly to these exotic pressure groups.
Btw, I saw the move too - many years ago - and I don’t even remember any Oriental character played by Mickey Rooney. That’s how much it affected me.
Get over it!
Posted by browser at 6:45 PM on August 26
Well of course Asians are complaining, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that race-hustling pays off in America.
Posted by RHG at 7:26 PM on August 26
This again shows that when a critical mass is reached of any minority, problems occur. The movie was made by whites for whites, and not directed at Asian viewers who could be “offended”. Now, in other time, a different people is doing the viewing, and they don’t check their agenda at the door.
Posted by at 7:26 PM on August 26
I’ve seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I love the movie (and the song), but it’s true that when I first saw it my jaw hit the floor when I saw Mickey Rooney’s character. Then I started to laugh because it was hilarious. That’s the idea-it’s such an over-the-top performance that it’s side-splittingly funny.
Posted by Anglokraut at 8:05 PM on August 26
As a European American of Southern heritage, I was hurt and traumatized by “Borat”. Any chance that the cable companies, video stores, and public libraries carrying this blood libel against Southern White Christians will pay out reparations for my pain and suffering?
Thought not.
Posted by Thoughtcrime at 8:57 PM on August 26
This is just the beginning of the supplanting of our culture, heritage and traditions. Imagine a time in the future, say about 40 years hence. Population - 600 million. Percentage of White Europeans - 35%. Percentage of Asians - 20%. Percentage of Hispanics - 30%. Percentage of Blacks and ‘others’ - 15%. Imagine Hispanics going to war, much like the South in the mid-19th century and wanting their own country and wanting to take about 5 states with them. Imagine Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Gays, and everyone else all blaming Whites for all of their problems and White Europeans becoming a hated and hunted minority. This is where we are going right now. It’s just a matter of time.
Posted by Awakened at 9:10 PM on August 26
How desperate asians are that they have to bring up a 47 year old movie to join the racial ponzi scheme. Let’s all apologize to make them feel better. Or better yet, let’s just re-write history. Does anyone know if you can still buy the movie Airplane? If so, that’ll be the next one to go.
Posted by at 10:21 PM on August 26
Why is everyone so sensitive nowadays?
Posted by at 10:45 PM on August 26
That character, Mr. Yunioshi, is extremely racist. It’s just a two dimensional charicature of how Americans saw Japanese people at the time. It would be no different than a white guy dressing up in black face and minstrel clothes, playing a banjo and eating watermelon.
I think the Asians involved in the current showing of the film handled it the correct way by allowing it to be shown as a historical piece of work. They didn’t hoot and holler and cry. They just dealt with it in professional manner. I don’t see why this story even got onto this site.
Posted by at 10:50 PM on August 26
I seriously doubt that any Asians could possibly think Breakfast at Tiffany’s was racist. People who are achievers, which all East Asians are, can take a joke, even a clumsy one.
It’s more likely that Holly Golightly would be seen by dedicated feminists as an affront to women, being that she was a a self-absorbed witless ninny masquerading as a “free spirit.”
Funny, I knew any number of women from that peculiar era who would proudly identify with that caricature of independence.
Posted by john at 11:03 PM on August 26
“Asian American activists think so, and Sacramento Vice Mayor Steve Cohn agrees—he plans to bleep out offensive scenes when he shows the film in his district Saturday”
This is a country that shows Jerry Springer on prime time TV where kids can watch adults who claim to sleep with their grandmas or horses or whatever and they’re worried about this?
Posted by at 11:10 PM on August 26
Somebody ought to put up a sign saying the movie has been edited/censored by the Board of Political Correctness.
They ought to have a new rating in addition to X, R, PG etc. PC, so any liberals won’t be offended by content.
What is wrong with Charlie Chan? He is smarter than most of us anyway!
Posted by at 11:55 PM on August 26
Wasn’t Hepburn’s character a wife and mother who abandoned her family to party in NYC? That seems to be more disgusting than Rooney’s character. The basic problem is that Rooney didn’t play it well.
What next? John Wayne for his role as Gengis Khan?
Posted by flyingtiger at 12:00 AM on August 27
It’s more likely that Holly Golightly would be seen by dedicated feminists as an affront to women, being that she was a a self-absorbed witless ninny masquerading as a “free spirit.”
Funny, I knew any number of women from that peculiar era who would proudly identify with that caricature of independence.
***********
Then again, Holly Golightly was really a gay man’s (Truman Capote’s) concept of what the perfect modern woman should be back then—materialistic, flightly and dreamy.
Posted by at 1:29 AM on August 27
What’s that you say? They decided not to show “Deliverance” because it stereotypes hillbillies?
I’ve met people whose concept of the South was based almost exclusively on “Deliverance.” But I’d forgotten “Breakfast at Tiffanny’s” even had a Japanese in it, and I couldn’t imagine what the headline of this article was referring to.
When a race and culture stops making fun of other races and cultures, you know it’s losing the race. So to speak.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 2:47 AM on August 27
I wonder what they would make of the late, great English comedian Benny Hill, whose stock ‘Chinese’ character (apparently he was named ‘Chow Mein’, not that was ever disclosed), was a real masterwork of the actor’s craft - the character was utterly indistinguishable in looks, speech and jovial character from your ‘typical’ Chinese senir businessman or politburo member - he was a ‘dead ringer’ for former communist party boss Li Peng, especially with the sly calculated remarks and jovial, self-satisfied chuckle.
On a digression, Benny Hill is of course still very much greatly loved wherever and whenever his television shows are actually broadcast, in almost every continent of the world.He is chiefly remembered for his hilarious slapstick sequences featuring his trusty side-kick the late, great Jackie Wright (to all you Americans out there he was the proverbial ‘little bald guy’.Hill, of course, garnered many laughs by rhymically slapping Jackie Wright on the head, at strategic intervals, accompanied by exagerrated ‘slapping’ noises.
Jackie Wright was in fact an Irishman who spoke with an inpenetrable, undecipherable Belfast accent - hence he was hardly ever accorded a speaking role.
Posted by Peter Williams at 6:04 AM on August 27
If you follow the context of this article - then every movie made before politicial correctness took hold - could be labeled as racist - since most movies before the 60’s showed only minimal black characters. Black characters as maids, butlers and mammies.
And let’s not forget the greatest racist movie of all “Gone With the Wind.” Scarlett did smack Prissie for lying and Mammie and Big Sam did have to run and fetch for da white masser.
You know this is the reason that even as a baby boomer, I have grown to love all of those old 40’s and 50’s classics. “House on Telegraph Hill.” “The President’s Lady.” “Kings Row.” “No Man of Her Own”, “The Ten Commandments”, “Ben Hur”. Give me John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and all those other cigarette smoking he-men characters of the 40’s and 50’s anyday over the junk they pump out of hollywood today.
Posted by Gayle Sollenberger at 7:58 AM on August 27
Actually, the movie romanticized prostitution (though subtly, and I didn’t get the point back then), and that’s what I find more objectionable than anything else. browser
Your right. It’s really a silly movie, but for fans of Hepburn it’s a classic. Her beauty, femininity and elegance were unique, particularly compared to today’s slovenly, slutty female stars. Mr. Yunioshi was a ridiculous character. Hey, get over it Mr. Cohn. It will not get you anymore Asian votes.
Posted by Sardonicus at 8:14 AM on August 27
It does portray Asians in a bad light, by making fun of them. But as an Asian, I don’t care. This is what white people thought of Asians then and I don’t care. If white people think this way about Asians now…I don’t care. If white people started committing murders, rapes, and dropping out of high schools, like the blacks of today, then I’d care. To get rid of all PC in this country, I’d put up with a little racism now and then. And I really got offended, I’d make a movie and put white people in it and make fun of them, would you care????
Posted by Korean at 9:11 AM on August 27
It’s really ironic to consider that Audrey Hupburn and Truman Capote were two of the mildest, most innocuous actors/authors one could think of. Hepburn was known as the very embodiment of gentleness and sweetness. She never criticized, argued with, or offended anyone. PC-wise, she was considered in Hollywood very “safe”. I’m sure (if they were alive today) that they would both be horrified and shocked to learn that they had contributed to any work that was being picketed as an offensive “racist” production.
This goes to show that anybody can find fault with anything. And they will! Who knows what utterly innocent works being produced today will be considered outrageous and offensive by someone, 40 years from now?
Posted by ghw at 9:18 AM on August 27
It does portray Asians in a bad light, by making fun of them. But as an Asian, I don’t care. This is what white people thought of Asians then and I don’t care. If white people think this way about Asians now…I don’t care.
Korean
……………………………….
Don’t worry. This does not portray ALL Asians in a bad light. (And anyway, he wasn’t portrayed as “bad”, he was portrayed as funny.) Some Asians are funny. Some Caucasians are funny too. That doesn’t mean that we all are. So what’s wrong with funny? And funny is better than bad.
It doesn’t mean this is what ALL white people thought of ALL Asians, for goodness sake! It’s just a movie. After all, her funny, upstairs neighbor had to be portrayed as SOME kind of person, so it was a toss-up as to who. The Japanese character won. Some people nowadays are just too touchy. It was supposed to be humor, nothing more. This was not a malicious portrayal.
Posted by ghw at 12:47 PM on August 27
Now that the mayor has given in , the Asian activist groups smell blood…. this is just the beginning. and of course you can stereotype whites, southerners christians - we all know the drill by now.
BTW, I wonder what will happen if they show Olivier’s Othello? Or is only the Fishbourne version allowed now?
Posted by at 2:01 PM on August 27
As an European-American, I can’t help but notice that every EuroAm character in the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s is either a prostitute, a gigolo, or a drunk. Not a flattering portrayal of our vast,proud, and sensitive community.
Posted by at 2:32 PM on August 27
“I’ve seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and I love the movie (and the song), but it’s true that when I first saw it my jaw hit the floor when I saw Mickey Rooney’s character. Then I started to laugh because it was hilarious. That’s the idea-it’s such an over-the-top performance that it’s side-splittingly funny.”
Posted by Anglokraut at 8:05 PM on August 26
Perhaps we ought to get a protest up concerning the racist portrayal of Marlene Deitrich in “Blazing Saddles?” And I am insulted by the portrayal of a Nazi on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” during the ’60s. And all those Jewish commedians who made fun of Jews ought to be crucified! Let’s get Jerry Lewis! (And Dean Martin while we’re at it).
The problem with PC is that it has robbed our culture of its open sense of humor. When I lived in Slovenia, I found much more humor there, lots of ethnic jokes, but on themselves too, and far funnier tv commercials. The English speaking world is becoming a humorless, social straight-jacketed world of double-thinking, politically correct enforcers.
Just imagine; Now that we have Asians feeling the need and power to retrogressively review American cinema for racial insults, how many of the nearly 200 ethnic groups in the U.S. will we have to satisfy as they find the power available to them via this sort of protest? Not enough Humong people in our media? Not enough Yemenese? When will we give a serious romantic role to an East Indian? Indulging any of this sort of portest encourages a further desmemberment of American culture - to its death.
If you don’t like a movie or particular product, you can vote with your patronage or not. That various ethinic groups wish to control what everyone can access is evidence of a lack of understanding of democracy and a free society.
Posted by Whiteplight at 3:02 PM on August 27
The Japanese treat whites the best of all “Gaijin” because whites are generally the best behaved. However they despise many of the foreigners including probably whites, as seen by this “Racist” Anti-Gaijin magazine http://www.stippy.com/book-reviews/racist-magazine-gaijin-hanzai-ura-file-1/
Posted by at 3:57 PM on August 27
Actually I just watched some asian cartoon with southern redneck hillbilly types who had a travel-trailor ‘transformer robot’. The asian girl won out against them by playing the fiddle, ‘cause when they hear music, they has to dance. The robot shot BBQ sauce.
Lighten up.
Posted by at 5:19 PM on August 27
“Is ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’-the lighthearted 1961 classic starring Audrey Hepburn-a racist film that perpetuates negative Asian stereotypes?
Asian American activists think so, and Sacramento Vice Mayor Steve Cohn agrees-he plans to bleep out offensive scenes when he shows the film in his district Saturday…”
Well, this should be a wake-up-call to all the “white nationalists” and “race realists” who feel that Asians do not pose a threat to the USA and the West!
They are acting here just like: blacks, Latinos, “Native Americans,” and all other racially incompatible denizens of the non-white “world” do, with arrogant ignorance and disgusting ingratitude for the civilization (and people who built it) they are being allowed to infect. After WW II and the atrocities perpetrated against whites during the war by the Japanese in it, they should consider themselves lucky that we did not visit similar upon them with interest in return.
Of course, the “grotesque buckteeth, thick-rimmed glasses, and unforgivable ‘Asian’ accent” of Mr. Yunioshi in this film make Pearl Harbor and the Batan Death March look oddly forgivable, right?
Or so the: Chongs, Yongs, and Ding Dongs would have us believe and the Rape of Nanking notwithstanding too?
Jeepers and domo arigato for wanting to stick it to whitey, Mr. Asian “American” Robotos???
As always, God help us all!
Posted by John PM at 5:59 PM on August 27
This is just the beginning. I can see at some future point where all the classic movies will be digitally edited to remove anything deemed offensive. Pedestrians, extras in movies like On the Town will be darkened and altered to show New York in 1949 to be just as “diverse” as in 2008.
I noticed some censorship on a movie that’s not that old. I was watching A Very Brady Sequel on TV about a week ago. I’ve seen this movie a dozen times (it’s just too hilarious) and know it almost line for line. Towards the end of the movie John Hillerman asks Shelley Long if she was a Jehovah’s Witness. Something as harmless as that was edited out!
Posted by at 7:17 PM on August 27
Every single TV commercial seems to have a white guy, or four, who needs to be shown how to behave by his wiser, darker neighbors, and all they can think to do is complain about how an Asian guy 40 years ago was portrayed to look dumb and then edit out the part?
Posted by at 7:57 PM on August 27
Sez Mr. Sensitive Jap:
“It would be no different than a white guy dressing up in black face and minstrel clothes, playing a banjo and eating watermelon.”
No, Mr. Sensitive Jap, you are wrong. Japs and Blacks are not the same. As a mater of fact Japs ridicule blacks all the time. Ask any black about their treatment in Japan and how racist Japanese are. As about the pet Jap words for lesser races like white people and Koreans and Chinese. You Japanese have quite a handful, don’t you, Mr. Sensitive Japanese. As a matter of fact what apologies have you as a Japanese given to the lesser race comfort women your race raped in WWII? Or The Rape of Nanking?
No, Mr. Sensitive Jap, I know you would like to fashion yourself a victim race like blacks, hence the pathetic parallel between Mickey Rooney and minstrel shows, but your history just belies the very victimhood you seek to wrap yourself in.
When you Japs drop your racism, apologize for your race guilt and make reparations to the Koreans, the Chinese and the whites your race slaughtered, come talk to us white folks. Until then, you are wasting your breath.
PS: Mickey Rooney is no caricature, he is the spitting image, buck teeth goofy glasses and all, of your warlord Mr. Tojo.
Posted by Big Bill at 9:13 PM on August 27
Welcome to the new Soviet Union, where every aspect of life-even the past- must be scrutanized and made ideologically “correct”.
Posted by at 12:41 AM on August 28
I don’t know if the popular 1970’s British sit-com “It ain’t half hot hot Mun” has ever been broadcast in the USA (it is very funny), but the whole show was based on a British army garrison stationed in tropical India in the 1940s.
One prominent character in the show was an Indian known as the ‘Cha’ Wallah’played by the English actor Michael Bates.
Michael Bates was so utterly convincing in this character (he got absolutely everything right from the pronunciation, mannerisms, head-tics, colloquiliasms etc), that until I was actually told that ‘Cha’wallah’ was being played by a White English man I was convinced that I was watching an Indian actor on the screen.
Bates of course ‘browned-up’.
In case you are wondering “It ain’t half hot Mum’ was made by none other than that bastion of political correctness the BBC - which also at the time prominently featured the “The Black and White Minstrel Show” (featuring blacked-up British actors grotesquely impersonating southern uS blacks), as its top and most highly rated Saturday evening light entertainment show.
This was as recent as 1978!
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 6:25 AM on August 28
Far from showing him (much less ALL Asians) in a bad light, Audren’s character actually called him, “You dear, sweet, little man.” Is that the way you talk about someone who is considered hateful, bad, or stupid? And the only harm he did to anyone was to himself: nearsightedly bumping into things, hitting his head and stubbing his toe. Poor guy! That’s being shown rather sympathetically. He could have been far worse.
And he was the one being taken advantage of since she conned him and didn’t pay her rent, but he let her stay on anyway. Who’s the bad one here? Not him!
As another poster said above, all of the Caucasian characters in the movie were shown as either drunks, prostitutes, or idiots. Who comes out the worse here? Are we protesting?
Posted by browser at 4:06 PM on August 28
Do American crybabies complain about what goes on in Japanese movies? I suggest Dr. Christina Fa move to Japan if she finds our movies offensive…
Posted by at 4:15 PM on August 28
“grotesque buckteeth, thick-rimmed glasses, unforgivable ‘Asian’ accent,” wrote Dr. Christina Fa of San Francisco-based Asian American Media Watch in a letter to Cohn.”
As much as it might hurt some far eastern person out there to hear this, stereotypes are based on truth. My grandfather was sent to Japan shortly after the war ended. He took a picture of some Japanese soldiers in a unit photo that he’s kept for years. Looking at this photo I would have to say maybe a third of them fit the above description. Just recently at the Olympics they had to replace a little Chinese girl who was scheduled to sing at the opening. She was replaced because she had buck teeth.
Posted by at 5:12 PM on August 28