of this constructed character is sublimated into the consciousness of Western audiences seen again and again in films. In Chong-suk Han’s essay, Geisha of a Different Kind: Gay Asian Men and the Gendering of Sexual Identity, he writes,
For Asian men, the discourse of domination focused largely on the “feminine” East opposed to the “masculine” West. Historic projects that have hindered Asian American family formations and excluded Asian men from the “masculinized” labor market of the West, have simultaneously produced an image of Asian men that has both racial and gendered implications… Moreover, popular media portrayals further emasculated Asian and Asian American men until… at their best, effeminate closet queens like Charlie Chan and, at their worst, [were] homosexual menaces like Fu Manchu… Given this tendency to view Asian men through the prism of