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Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from WWII to the Present charts how the dominant white and black binary of American racial discourse influences Hollywood s representation of the Asian. The Orientalist buddy film draws a scenario in which two buddies, one white and one black, transcend an initial hatred for one another by joining forces against a foreign Asian menace. Alongside an analysis of multiple genres of film, Brian Locke argues that this triangulated rendering of race ameliorates the longstanding historical contradiction between U.S. democratic ideals and white America s persistent domination over blacks.

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Introduction: Two´s Company: Flash Gordon (1980) and Lethal Weapon (1987, 1989, 1992, 1998) Strange Fruit: Bataan (1943) White and Black to the Brink: China Gate (1957), Pork Chop Hill (1959), All the Young Men (1960) The Blaxploitation Buddy Film: Three the Hard Way (1974), Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975), Brotherhood of Death (1976) The Orientalist Buddy Film and the ´New Niggers´: Blade Runner (1982, 1992, 2007) Ghosts of Los Angeles: Rising Sun (1993) ´Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto´: The Matrix (1999) and the Virtual Asian Pearl Harbor Eclipsed?: The Last Samurai (2003), Crash (2004)

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BRIAN LOCKE is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He has taught comparative race studies and cultural studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the University of Utah, and Yale University.

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