Pre-Code Hollywood - Exotic Adventure Films

Exotic Adventure Films

Pre-Code films contained a continual, recurring theme of white racism. In the early 1930s, the studios filmed a series of pictures that aimed to provide viewers a sense of the exotic, an exploration of the unknown and the forbidden. These pictures often imbued themselves with the allure of interracial sex according to Pre-Code historian Thomas Doherty. "At the psychic core of the genre is the shiver of sexual attraction, the threat and promise of miscegenation." Films such as Africa Speaks were directly marketed by referencing interracial sex; moviegoers received small packets labeled "Secrets" which contained pictures of naked black women. As portrayals of historic conditions, these movies are of little educational value, but as artifacts that show Hollywood's attitude towards race and foreign cultures they are enlightening. The central point of interest in The Blonde Captive, a 1931 film which depicted a blonde woman abducted by a savage tribe of Africans, was not that she was kidnapped, but that she enjoys living among the tribe. The lack of black characters in films highlights their status in Jim Crow America.

The white protagonist in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) is the "King of the Jungle". Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) is a monosyllabic half-naked jungle creature whose attractiveness is derived from his physical prowess; throughout the movie, he saves Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) from danger and she gratefully swoons in his arms. When Jane's father warns her "e's not like us" she retorts "e's white" as evidence to the contrary. In the racy 1934 sequel, Tarzan and His Mate (the last word meaning both a status and a biological function), men come from the U.S. with fancy gowns and other accoutrements to woo and clothe the bra-less, barely clothed Jane, again played by O'Sullivan, hoping to lure her away from the savage Tarzan. He detests the fancier clothing and tears it off. The black characters of the film are treated poorly; when one of them refuses to go forward on a march in the jungle, the white ivory hunter shoots him on the spot, and moves on. The film included a skinny-dipping scene with extensive nudity with a body double standing in for O'Sullivan. Breen, then head of the SRC, objected to the scene, and MGM, the movie's producer, decided to take their case to the appeals review board. The board consisted of the heads of Fox, RKO, and Universal. After watching the scene "several times", the board sided with Breen and the MPPDA, and the scene was removed, but MGM still allowed some uncut trailers and a few reels to stay in circulation. MGM marketed the film primarily towards women using taglines such as the following:

Girls! Would you live like Eve if you found the right Adam?

Modern marriages could learn plenty from this drama of primitive jungle mating!

If all marriages were based on the primitive mating instinct, it would be a better world.

Ethnic characters were portrayed against stereotype in Massacre (1934). The protagonist (Richard Barthelmess) is a Native American who performs in a Wild West Show in full Indian garb, but then slips into a suit and speaks in American slang once the show is over. He has a black butler who is atypically intelligent; his character merely plays dumb by slipping into a stereotypical slow-witted "negro" character when it suits him, rather than being genuinely unintelligent.

The exoticism of the Far East was explored in films such as The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), however it was done using white actors in the lead roles, not Asians. When a white actor donned the yellow-face makeup, they frequently looked absurd next to genuine Asians, so the studios would cast all the Asian parts white. In Manchu, Karloff plays a mad scientist who wants to find the sword and mask of Genghis Khan as they will give him the power to control the "countless hordes" into battle versus the West. Manchu is a sexual deviant, who engages in ritual torture, and has occult powers. In a scene cut from the film due to its miscegenation, he shows a man the image of Manchu's depraved daughter (Myrna Loy) violating one of the chaste good characters. He is eventually conquered, but not before he temporarily lays his hand on the sword and proclaims to his men: "Would you have maidens like this for your wives? Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man and take his women!" Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen was not quite the same type of film. In that movie, Stanwyck plays a missionary who goes to civil-war-torn China and meets the titular general (played by Nils Asther) after his car kills the driver of her rickshaw. She is knocked unconscious in a riot, and he takes her out of the rabble, and onto a train car. She has lurid, horror themed, symbolic dreams about the General, in which she is both titillated and repulsed by him. The film breaks precedent by developing into an interracial love story, but his army ends in ruins. Yen kills himself at the film's conclusion—by drinking poisoned tea—rather than be captured and killed. Capra adored the script, and disregarded the risk of making a film that broke California's (and 29 other states') laws concerning the portrayal of miscegenation. Cinematographer Joseph Walker tested a new technique he created, which he dubbed "Variable Diffusion", in filming the picture. This rendered the entire picture in very soft focus.