extension of the racialization of a group of people not readily understood; however, it is Griffith’s film that sets forth a series of seemingly castrated Asian characters in American cinema for more than eighty years, and which still remain a part of the cinematic storytelling landscape.
In today’s multiplexes and art houses, actual Asian actors frequently overcompensate to match the feminized Asian male lead roles of yesteryear. Movies by Asian American filmmakers have swung the pendulum to an extreme the other way in Freudian response to Griffith’s Huan and the films that followed over the decades.
Huan is a character that has a home setting of Oriental styling and fabrics. The mis-en-scene is a clear composite of Huan’s femininity that complements his attire and demeanor. As Gina Marchetti writes,
Cheng Huan embodies the “feminine” qualities