The Asian character in ‘Broken Blossoms’ is Cheng Huan who is a very decent and religion-loving guy. He tends to spread peace and serenity throughout the world and cherishes the sights of innocence and feels pleasure from such sights. Cheng Huan is shown to be Chinese by nationality. Cheng Huan is a spiritual character overall while he is subdued by violence and anarchy that is witnessed all around the world. In order to spread more peace and pleasure, Chen leaves his homeland and travels to Anglo Saxon lands such as London where he tries to spread this spirituality that he has contained and experienced himself. Chen also believes that this spirituality will bring more harmony towards the brutal reality of life.
However, Chen is dismayed when he sees hat his spirituality cannot overcome the grieving savages and brutality of Anglo Saxon lands and their gritty lifestyles. Chen is also a character that is played by an American rather than an Asian. The dressing and appearance of Chen Huang is somewhat hippy in lifestyle as he indulges in nature and exotic flavours. The room of Chen Huang shows that he is a person who loves simplicity and learns from it as much as he enjoys it. Chen Huan’s impressions are also ones that make him lovable in all aspects. He tries all he can to get to the other person without any intention of violence or chaos. He uses normal and short sentences to allure the other person towards him, interacting slowly in the start before going on to the point that he really wanted to make. This makes Chen Huan’s interactions somewhat peaceful in nature and innocent in form. This also allows Chen Huan’s interacting counterparts to feel very subtle and comfortable while in his presence. Chen Huan’s appearance and residence also makes others feel equal to him in nature and in wealth. This simplistic nature of Chen Huang could get him to interact with any kind of person he comes across .
The Asian Character that is involved in ‘The Cheat’ is Hishturu Tori and is Japanese by nationality as well as a wealthy industrialist but a sadistic minded oppressor. He is known to brand things for his own desire and is forceful as well as disrespectful in his motives. He enjoys insulting and humiliating others as he sees them as someone who is below his standards and deems them inferior to him rather than equals. Tori also uses his wealth as the main source of power and has been shown to use this wealth as power throughout the film, especially when he takes charge of henchmen for capturing and holding the American lead character in the movie. he is played by an actual Asian. He seems to be a vengeful character and enjoys violence and evil crimes rather than committing himself as well as his wealth for the benefit of the town, let alone the world. Furthermore, he is also seen as someone who is manipulative and evil in his plans, taking opportunities to benefit himself and his fate altogether. Hishituru Tori has an appearance that can be likened to a business tycoon who is full of himself and selfish in nature. He has a predominant lifestyle which is more of a cliché and a much less form of uniqueness. He wears tuxedos and other apparels that only the rich can afford and he does this deliberately to shun off others as inferior beings to him as well as portraying himself as someone who is not equal to others but more close to being superior in terms of respect, wealth and power.
Tori interacts in dreadful ways towards his interacting counterparts. He brutally humiliates them and insults them on every aspect of their life. He keeps reminding others that he is in charge and they are more like his slaves rather than mere human beings. This method of interaction makes other people who interact with him feel scared, full of fear and dominated. Such reactions also make others feel very uncomfortable in Tori’s presence and lead them to avoid him wherever possible. Tori’s henchmen are also seen to be quite afraid of Tori and hesitant in his orders. This is because what Tori says is only followed because of fear and not mutual consent or attribution .
Chen Huan’s obsession in the ‘Broken Blossoms’ is Lucy Burrows, a woman he bonds with while treating her back to life after she was abused by her father who is an alcoholic and ravaging boxer. He is subdued by Lucy’s innocence and tries all he can to protect her from any kind of possible harm she can get into. When her father takes Lucy away, Chen Huan moves away from his way of peace to enter violence and save her in whatever way possible. When Chen finds Lucy death, he avenges her death by killing Lucy’s father before he honours Lucy by building a Buddha shrine for her and sacrificing his own life in order to be with Lucy by committing suicide .
Hishituru Tori, on the other hand, is obsessed with Edith hardy who is the wife of Richard hardy. Tori sees Edith as more of a property rather than a person. Unlike Chen, Tori manipulates Edith into buying her as she is in dire need of money and when she wants to pay back, Tori refuses as he is adamant on keeping Edith all to himself like he does with all his property. When Edith refuses to do so, Tori brands Edith like he does with the rest of his property. In this manner, Tori humiliates and insults his obsession unlike Chen who cherished and honoured his obsession. Tori later on sues Edith when he sees her escape from his grasp and tries to culminate all the power and wealth he has in order to show Edith who is superior and who is inferior. In this manner, Tori makes the situation a matter of ego while Chen made his situation a matter of rescuing innocence from abuse and constant torture .
In ‘Broken blossoms’, Chen is portrayed by an American actor in my opinion, this doesn’t bring on a performance that can be accurately credited to Asian behaviour as a natural Asian would behave, without mistake, as an Asian character with the same behaviour and accent that is necessarily needed. However, in ‘The Cheat’, Tori is portrayed by an Asian and his acting is just sublime. It tells the difference of how original an Asian character would look in a movie if it was portrayed by an Asian actor rather than a westerner which was the exact case in ‘Broken Blossoms’. A lot of dispersive acting that is not typical Asian behaviour was caused by the character of Chen in “Broken Blossoms”. In my opinion, if the character of Chen was portrayed by an Asian actor, the acting would have been much more sublime and original .
Works Cited
Ebert, Roger. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-broken-blossoms-1919. 23 January 2000. 14 October 2014.
Fristoe, Roger. http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/72485%7C0/The-Cheat.html. n.d. 14 October 2014.
Hamilton, Andrew. http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/06/broken-blossoms-or-the-yellow-man-and-the-girl-1919/. n.d. 14 October 2014.
TheEarlycinema. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIiZzc0Ceo. 25 September 2012. 14 October 2014.
Wonkat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBKj0W1JylU. 29 January 2012. 14 October 2014.
