White Knights in Hong Kong

Scream of the Butterfly

In Scream of the Butterfly, Lien is portrayed as a ghost, sacrificing herself for the American dream, devoid of racism and xenophobia.
The disturbing consequences of the Vietnam War and its impact on veterans fade, and the American patriarch reemerges to dominate women, children, and people of color.
The Pocahontas and Butterfly myths converge in China Gate and "The Lady from Yesterday," metaphorically legitimizing American rule over Vietnam.
Vietnam, feminized, sacrifices itself for assimilation into the American mainstream, reinforcing traditional female roles and American hegemony.

White Knights in Hong Kong

Romantic love and the romantic hero are intertwined in Hollywood fiction, often featuring the rescue of a woman from a stifling situation.
When set in Asia, the romantic hero becomes a white knight rescuing the nonwhite heroine from her culture while finding himself through the exotic liaison.
Despite promises of social critique, these films often reinforce the racial and gender status quo.

The White Knight Figure

The "white knight" figure is rooted in the myth of romantic love and the antiestablishment romantic artist.
Romantic love promises spiritual transcendence but delivers female passivity and subservience.
The romantic hero, like Byron or Goethe, champions individual transcendence against a corrupt society but often does little to address the conditions he deplores.
Both myths involve breaking taboos but maintain the dominant culture's right to rule.

Exoticism in Myths

Exotic settings allow for exploration of taboos at a distance, minimizing threats to the social order.
Hong Kong is a privileged exotic location for Hollywood, promising romance and adventure.
Hollywood's version of Hong Kong is constructed from the American imagination, differing from the local film industry's vision.

Post-World War II Melodramas

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and The World of Suzie Wong use Hong Kong's exoticism to reinforce myths of romantic love and the romantic hero.
Hong Kong provides a safe space to explore forbidden themes and topical issues, defining postwar American identity against Asian communism and European colonialism.
It's a cold war setting between Chinese communism and British decay, allowing America to assert its presence as an enlightened Western power promising neocolonial prosperity.

Social and Ideological Oppositions

Hong Kong serves as a stage for East-West, Communist-capitalist, and other ideological oppositions.
These oppositions are addressed through the cinematic vocabulary of male-female relationships, making national and racial boundaries seem as natural as gender differences.
Relationships between nations or races are portrayed as male-female romances, keeping inequality intact.

Opening Scenes

Both films open with wide-screen crane shots of the Hong Kong skyline, setting the stories in a world of sampans and skyscrapers.
The opening shots visually prepare for conflicts between foreign and Chinese elements, promising exoticism and romance.
Romance is used as a metaphor for racial harmony and intercultural understanding against the backdrop of Hong Kong's exoticism.

Contradictory Fantasies

Romantic relationships seem doomed due to colonial racism against intermarriage, yet love transcends social taboos.
These fantasies are contradictory, upholding social stigma while criticizing accepted practices.
The fate of each couple is linked to images of disease, death, corruption, destruction, and decay.
Neither film allows love to conquer all, exacting a price for criticizing social practices, with the female protagonists paying the dearest price.
The narrative favors William Holden's characters as vehicles of salvation for their lovers, with heterosexual marriage as the ultimate hope for women.
Despite calls for racial tolerance, neither film questions gender inequality or the hero's right to remove heroines from their cultures.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

Based on Han Suyin's novel, the film opens in 1949, featuring Dr. Han (Jennifer Jones), a Eurasian physician overwhelmed by refugees.
Dr. Han meets Mark Elliott (William Holden), an unhappily married journalist, and begins a relationship despite warnings.
Han describes her attraction as a struggle between her European and Chinese sides.
Mark is unable to get a divorce, ruining Dr. Han's career, and she moves in with Chinese friends.
Mark dies in Korea, and Dr. Han returns to their trysting spot to meet his spirit.

The World of Suzie Wong

Robert Lomax (William Holden) goes to Hong Kong to become an artist and befriends a prostitute, Suzie Wong (Nancy Kwan), who becomes his muse.
Robert discovers Suzie is illiterate, orphaned, sexually abused, and brutalized.
After Suzie is dumped by a British alcoholic, Robert and Suzie become lovers.
The discovery of Suzie's illegitimate baby doesn't interfere with their romance, but Robert's financial struggles do.
Suzie disappears to avoid Robert losing face then Robert's paintings begin to sell.
During a storm, Suzie asks Robert to help rescue her baby from a flood, but the baby dies.
Suzie and Robert reconcile at the funeral and walk off together.

Similarities in Hollywood's Treatment of Interracial Romances

Both films invoke myths of the white knight, femininity, and the Orient to address issues of race, ethnicity, and sexual identity.
Hollywood explores ideological contradictions and masks them using cinematic conventions.

The White Knight

The heroic knight promises salvation from woes such as lack of self-esteem, boredom, sexual frustration, poverty, oppression, or the stifling confines of the family.
The heroine is absolved of guilt due to her passivity.
The myth perpetuates gender inequalities and racism, signifying moral purity and the right to carry the heroine away.
He has legitimized white rule by saving womankind from the dark aspects of sexuality, associated in the racist imagination with the nonwhite male antagonist.

Chivalry and Moral Righteousness

Chivalry assures Western moral righteousness by pointing to its enlightened treatment of the weaker sex.
The white knight's gender and racial superiority affirm the moral imperative to rule.
In Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and The World of Suzie Wong, Mark Elliott and Robert Lomax are modern white knights.
Holden's persona is linked to this hero who rights wrongs in the Third World.
Both Suzie Wong and Han Suyin need saving.

Modern White Knight

Holden represents a modern, American, almost antiheroic version of the white knight, an expatriate escaping and searching for identity.
Through interracial love affairs, the heroes grapple with American dreams of melting-pot equality.
Robert battles a British sailor and attacks attitudes toward Asians.
Mark shows himself superior to the British due to his liberal racial attitudes.
Racism is softened by comparing American and British attitudes.
America's right to take over from the British in Asia is rationalized through Holden's characters' sense of being American.
Mark dies fighting North Korean Communist forces, and Suzie is predicted to grow old in America.

Identity Crisis

Both films present heroes with crises in national and gender identities.
Mark is plagued by an estranged wife, and Suyin's career threatens their relationship.
Robert's ego is challenged by Kay O'Neill, and Suzie's success as a prostitute threatens his self-definition.
Caucasian women remain independent and potentially dangerous, while Suzie and Suyin give up independence for love.
Hollywood affirms male identity against the threat of the Western "new" woman.
The films depict Asian women as more truly feminine, content at being passive and subservient.
The films warn women to take the passive Asian beauty as the feminine ideal.
The heroines' love affairs save them from the threat of economic independence.
Mark saves Suyin from a life dedicated to saving others, moving her from the operating room to domesticity.
The ending returns Suyin to the domestic realm and nature.

Salvation

Suyin is saved from China, communism, and gender leveling.
Suyin chooses America over China and remains with her adopted daughter in Hong Kong.
Robert manages to save Suzie from the last emotional link she had with the slums of Hong Kong.
Suzie is saved from prostitution and begins again under Robert's protection.
The enlightened American artist is positioned above the British hypocrisy and the cruelty of the Asian male.
Patriarchal, white, and American moral prerogatives come together as the couple walk off into the distance.
These fantasies are cast in the mold of the "woman's film" genre, exploring themes of male desire, female sacrifice, and social stigma.
The white knight fantasy appeals to female viewers, promising escape from a sexless existence and solutions to problems.
These unions also fantasized about as idealized “melting-pot" romances.

Appeal to Female Viewers

The white knight erases racial and class differences, promising material provision and superior social standing.
Han Suyin and Suzie Wong act as points of identification for female viewers.
Female protagonists are stripped of independence and dominated by white men in a gesture of romantic expression.
Hollywood draws in marginalized viewers through the contradictory play of gender and race.

Creating the Orient

Europeans' ideas about Asia have more to do with Europe's definition of itself than with genuine understanding.
America has used the "Orient" as a gauge for self-identity.
The heroes' national and gender identities are paralleled by the heroines' divided identities.
Each film revolves around the hero defining the heroine's true nature, constructing his vision of the Orient in his ideal lover.
The profession of each male protagonist allows each film to hide its ideological vision of the Orient under the guise of