YMMV / Charlie Chan

• Ethnic Scrappy: Being a franchise that started in 1925, it doubtlessly has examples of this.
  • Charlie himself is an example, depending on who you ask. He was considered a progressive and groundbreaking character at the time for being an intelligent, positively portrayed Asian hero, but from a modern Asian-American perspective, he's a dated relic who embodies too many condescending stereotypes of his era for comfort (acting subservient, saying Ice Cream Koans constantly, and generally being treated like an exoticized "other"). There's also the issue of virtually all of his actors being white and wearing Yellowface.
  • The truly cringe-worthy appearances of black character actors Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland as characters such as "Snowshoes" (wince) and "Birmingham Brown". It's worth noting that Afro-American audiences liked such characters and would go to films just to see them. It wasn't just for visibility's sake. Characters like these were common in Afro-American theatrical tradition.
  • Biggers' own attitude toward the Japanese. In The House Without A Key, published in 1925, one Japanese character is called "a smooth little Jap", a brightly colored kimono is an "absurd costume" and so on. Charlie himself has a "what can you expect from those people" attitude towards them. That said, this is actually a very realistic stance for a Chinese character (back then or now) to have, as there's no love lost between the Chinese and Japanese people.
    • The Black Camel has Kashimo (played by Otto Yamaoka in the film version), The Klutz assistant who's as likely to spoil clues as to discover them. A former fish market janitor, Charlie threatens to send him back there if he screws up again.
  • To be fair, Chan's family are largely played as intelligent and respectful people. Number One Son has his goofy moments as his father's Watson, but he gets his chances to shine such as when he wins an Olympic Gold Medal in the 100 Metre Swim.
• Fair for Its Day: Biggers invented the character partly as a refutation of the Yellow Peril villains who were common in the Mystery Fiction of the Genteel Interbellum Setting. The series shows a Chinese person as a good guy, and the Chan children (played by actual Asian-Americans themselves) are largely non-stereotypical, but the dated aspects (such as the use of Yellowface and meaningless faux Confucian quotes) are hard for modern viewers to get past.
• First Installment Wins: Largely averted. Charlie Chan sequels, spoofs and homages pay little attention to The House Without a Key, which in both film and prose started the Charlie Chan series (the film remains lost as of 2009, however). The "Number One Son" Henry first appeared in the novel Black Camel. Keye Luke played him in the films (in the first film, they explicitly refer to Luke's role as Henry; later installments generally preferred the name "Lee" with the exception of the 1972 animated series).
• Harsher in Hindsight: In Charlie Chan at the Olympics, Charlie beats an important passenger ship to Germany by taking the zeppelin Hindenburg. Unfortunately, the film was released only 15 days after the Hindenburg exploded and crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, where Chan makes his connection for the airship in the film.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Many Asian-American critics dislike the Charlie Chan franchise because of its Ice Cream Koans, Yellowface (despite the fact that the actor playing Charlie in the first iteration was actually 1/4 Mongolian), misrepresentation of Chinese culture, broken English, and the title character's alleged subservience to whites. However, he's also a brilliant, law-abiding detective in a time where most Chinese characters were villains and some of his Ice Cream Koans are funny. Plus, Chan is the hero of the series, always defeating the villain. While Chan is a stereotype, his children are shown as being all-American kids (Number One Son, Lee, even wins a Gold Medal in the 1936 Olympics!) and were played by actual Asian actors. This has earned the franchise a few Asian-American defenders, including actor Keye Luke (who would voice his animated equivalent). Asked if he thought Chan was "demeaning to the race," Luke exclaimed "Demeans? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!... we were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood!"
  • His enormous popularity in East Asia could also be due to Values Dissonance. The use of color-face (blackface, whiteface, yellowface) isn't seen as offensive as in the US, especially if it's portrayed respectfully and not used spitefully. A commercial by Nippon Airline had an actor dressing up in whiteface for a gag, and most Japanese didn't see the problem, and an English competition in China featured middle school students dressed as "foreigners".
• Unintentional Period Piece: Charlie Chan at the Olympics features Chan investigating a plot at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and features possibly the most sympathetic portrayal of Nazi police ever depicted in American film. At the time, Nazi Germany was a lucrative market for Hollywood, and any negative portrayal of Germany was subject to heavy scrutiny and censorship as a result. Just three years later, the invasion of Poland and consequent onset of World War II rendered sympathetic portrayals of Nazi officials unthinkable.

---