Transition to Peacetime
Films of the 60s began straying away from topics of war and gang violence, although some titles still included these themes. Film’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) created a new stereotype of Asian characters in films. The “Japanese” character Mr. Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney in yellowface, is portrayed as an irritable, unhappy, but amusing character that is likeable because he is not threatening: he is comic relief. The film The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao similarly uses a white actor to play an Asian character. Some speculate that this is because the majority of the American public of the 1960s would not go to see a film featuring Asian or Asian American actors in lead roles.1
There were still films produced that used the themes of the past few decades, including Yojimbo (1961), which was a movie about samurai that was influenced by elements of western films, and Swiss Family Robinson (1960), which has a Swiss family encounter pirates, who are played by Asian actors, that are supposed to be immediately identifiable as the enemy. This film uses the stereotype in films that Asians are the enemy, and that Asian and Asian American actors can only play sidekick roles or the role of the enemy that is eventually beaten by the “good guys”.
