Echoes of The Sheik

While we're on the topic of The Bitter Tea of General Yen, there are a few things I'd like to say. First off, I had assumed it would be much less racist than it was. I had felt certain for some reason that the Chinese government had been merely overreacting in its cries for censorship. I probably gathered this impression from Smoodin's report that it had attempted to get the film banned world-wide (an unrealistic demand), and from my previous impressions of 1930's films. While Bitter Tea does not attain the great heights of racism that films like Birth of a Nation achieve, it is certainly far more inappropriate than I expected—and thus, unintentionally, far more humorous and enjoyable.

Moreover, I feel that the interwoven themes of race and seduction put the film into a genre which until now, I believe, has not been named. I would like to call this genre, the "Great Racist Seduction Film." This genre includes films such as Valentino's The Sheik, Son of The Sheik, and The Desert Song. It is defined by the basic trope that a white woman is attracted to a man of another race, is whisked away by him, and subjected to ceaseless temptation which she must resist, feigning disinterest, for as long as she can. Prior to Bitter Tea, it seems as though the Great Racist Seduction Films frequently constructed the leading man as Arabic. Bitter Tea takes an intriguingly different approach by making our seducer instead a dashing Chinese general.

Interestingly, in most of the previous Great Racist Seduction Films, the dilemma is solved by the discovery that the man is actually "white," and has either been merely raised by another race, as in The Sheik, or has been operating under a secret identity, as in Desert Song. This discovery makes it suddenly acceptable for the woman to be with the (now) "white" man, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I have a symptomatic interpretation of this deus ex machina. It seems that the message to come away with is that racism makes one so foolish as to refuse even Rudolf Valentino, if one somehow misconstrued him as Arabic. Interestingly, in Bitter Tea, this plot contrivance is noticeably omitted.

In the case of General Yen—whose name I suspect is a pun—the man is definitely "Chinese." While declining to stoop to the usual ending, Bitter Tea tamely insists on the separation of the mixed-race couple, and gives us a few diegetic spoonfuls of sugar to help us swallow our "bitter tea." Unlike the other films, it makes the non-white male noticeably more evil, gives the girl a white male fiancé, and keeps subverting the would-be risqué boudoir scenes with General Yen's darn silly Chinese pajamas. While the latter condition may not be intentional, I feel it nevertheless makes a difference in audience reception.

All things considered, Bitter Tea is an entertaining and fascinating film. I feel it is certainly one of the Great Racist Seduction Films of our time.

–Cordelia Siporin