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Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
This article seeks to make sense of the enigma of Charlie Chan by situating him at the intersection of critical legal studies, genre studies, cognitive psychology, and postcolonial critique. It contends that Chan is more than a shameful chapter in the history of American racism and Orientalism, rather a product of the legal Orientalist imagination's exploitation of a peculiar genre schema of detective fiction. As such, he is a figure of ambivalence, equivocation, and exception. On the one hand, Chan fits the stereotype of the maverick detective who must operate within the penumbra of formal judicial apparatuses—in the zone of the exception—in order to match wits with the master criminal. On the other hand, it is his “race” that reifies the power of the exception, making him the unctuous alter ego of the insidious criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Authors 2017
References
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Filmography
Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. Directed by Donner, Clive. American Cinema Productions, 1981.Google Scholar