Town Savior or Scourge? Asian Identity in the Western and Generic Reversal in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The often-racist portrayals of Asians in Hollywood productions of the 1950s and 1960s and earlier decades constitutes one facet of a double-bind within which Asian Americans have historically found themselves. Bearing in mind wider cultural, economic, and political discourses surrounding Asian American communities in the postwar period, it is important to closely consider specific cinematic representations of Asians during this period. This article argues that 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) operates as a strange and conflicted film informed by progressive science fiction literature and many of the sentiments that would come to define revisionist westerns. Charles Beaumont's screenplay adaptation of Charles G. Finney's novel The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) infuses the film with clever and engaging dialogue and mirrors the concepts of reversal often present in Beaumont's work. Furthermore, Beaumont's screenplay offers insightful takes on racial and generic dynamics in a film that might otherwise be dismissed as an egregious example of harmful yellowface practices. Thus, viewing 7 Faces of Dr. Lao as a prototypical revisionist western draws attention to its engagement with concepts of reversal and critique of stereotypes.