Lyon (AFP)

White actors playing Asians: this practice, common since the beginning of Hollywood is denounced in a documentary on the representation of Japanese in American cinema, presented at the Lumière Festival in Lyon.

"The Japanese Enemy in Hollywood" Clara and Julia Kuperberg, also broadcast on OCS, shows this less known face of "whitewashing", made to play roles of people of color by whites.

Just like the "blackface" (caricatures of black characters played by whites), the "Yellow face", the same principle for Asians, has been commonplace in American cinema.

This film is punctuated by interviews with film clips from Katharine Hepburn in "The Sons of the Dragon" (1944) to Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost in the Shell" (2017). by Marlon Brando in "The Little Tea House" (1956) or Mickey Rooney playing the caricature Mr. Yunioshi in "Diamonds on sofa" (1961).

If it has evolved over time, the representation of the Japanese, it remained caricatural.

"Before the war, the Japanese is always a bit of a cheat," says Kuperberg. "After Pearl Harbor, the cinema is a weapon of propaganda, so the Japanese becomes the enemy to shoot down.He is represented with big teeth, big glasses", before his representation becomes "more zany" after 1947, or go through "geisha with pretty flowers".

Because of the Hays Code, the American code of censorship from the 1930s to the 1960s that prevents the representation of interracial couples, love stories between Asians and Whites will be outlawed.

"We realized that it eliminated from all the cinema, until the end of the sixties, main characters black or Asian, that it finally institutionalized the racism", explains Clara Kuperberg.

It will be necessary to wait for "Crazy Rich Asians" in 2018, rare film in the casting 100% Asian, so that the Asian American community feels really represented.

Previously, the choice of Scarlett Johansson for the heroine of "Ghost in the Shell" or Tilda Swinton in "Doctor Strange" (2016) had triggered fierce protest movements.

"It took the social networks, the Asian community rises and says they find it humiliating to stop it," says Julia Kuperberg.

© 2019 AFP