Fu Manchu and the characterization of the Chinese as yellow peril in Spain

Abstract

This article traces the Chinese characters presented as the anti-Western threat in Spanish culture, namely the Yellow Peril discourse, which has not received adequate attention from the academia. Since the 19th-century, Chinese characterization in Spain has taken place as an especial cultural phenomenon, in which the connotation of “peril” first emerged from a press representation from France and England. After a period of inner circulation of stereotypes, it is revived by the irruption of Anglo-American popular culture, in the form of a well-defined Fu Manchu in the first half of the 20th century. The authors examine two films directed by Jesús Franco: The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu, co-produced by European production companies and shot partly in Spain. In the whole process, the “peril” associated with Chinese characterization maintains both its “vicarious” and “referential” representation. Thus, Jess Franco’s cinematographic version of Fu Manchu anticipates the postmodern pastiche and turns Fu Manchu into an entire “empty” cultural entity. The article aims theoretically to differentiate “media culture”, which is a fertile terrain of both stereotypes and its extreme form, pastiche, from other types of high culture and popular culture. In the case of Chinese characterization in Spanish culture, media and a culture shaped by media can be considered as the producers of the Chinese peril phenomena.