THOSE PEOPLE

Watching Marlene Dietrich chewing up the scenery in a movie about Catherine the Great makes clear that the world was a very different place eighty years ago.  And that Josef von Sternberg truly hated the Russians.

Which is understandable. The problem was that he hated damned well everyone else too.

Earlier, Sternberg had made Shanghai Express, which was a fictionalization of the Lincheng Incident.


Lincheng Incident: On May 5, 1923, over a thousand bandits from Shandong hijacked a train and took all passengers hostage, including nearly three dozen white folks. Their demands were the withdrawal of troops from their home province, amnesty and military employ for most of the perpetrators. After much dithering by the Chinese and Western Powers, Shanghainese gangster boss Tu Yuesheng took matters into his own hand (on behalf of friends in the French Concession Police) and paid a rather paltry ransom (and probably made some extremely credible threats against family members of the wannabe soldiers), whereupon the hostages were released, and three thousand Shandong stalwarts were absorbed into the army.

For the next few years, train hijackings in China enjoyed an upsurge.

Within months of the event, the Chinese government, in reaction to intemperate demands by the western powers that such things absolutely be prevented in future, by employing white troops if need be, had politely told the white world to kindly and with due diligence take a hike.

But please do continue to visit our famous sights.

And also enjoy the local cuisine!


Sternberg's treatment of the tale makes nearly as little sense as his berserk interpretation of Catherine the Great's life story.

Naturally the film was shot within driving distance of the studio. Southern California looks remarkably like China between Peking and Shanghai.

Representational accuracy was not an operative concept, and few people would object to inaccuracies or outright balderdash, as long as it re-enforced their own value system while telling a darn good story.
The narrative was a greater truth than the facts could ever be.


Sternberg was not unusual in his distaste for other people and other languages, that was a common cultural trait among white Americans at that time, in which they were no different than most of the world. And if "the other" was a different race or culture, then it had a prescribed position as either exotic oddity or howling savage, often parts of both.
Any attempt by the 'not-our-type' class to act like "normal people" was considered both dubious and suspect.

What's surprising is that it took so long for things to change.

It has been less than fifty years since that happened.

Any improvements may be only skin deep.

Or marked by willful blindness.



Of course, economic segregation has gotten a lot worse in the intervening half century, and the wealthiest classes will do almost anything to avoid living cheek by jowl with "those people", and prevent their offspring from having to attend school with them. Which, given that so few Americans can actually afford to go to college nowadays, is quite odd.

More Americans are the economic underclass than ever before.
We have all become "those" people.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================