FORBIDDEN CITY, U.S.A.
A film review by Thang Nguyen
Copyright 1990 Thang Nguyen
Summary: "Forbidden City, U.S.A." documents the experiences
of the singers, dancers and musicians at a
1940's nightclub in San Francisco which earned
itself a place in the history books as the
first Chinese-American nightclub in America.
This movie is part of the PBS series "The American
Experience."
Until last November, I had never even heard of the Forbidden City nightclub. I didn't know that during the 1940's there was a cabaret show which featured Asian-American jazz singers and tap-dancers. Their existence wasn't documented in any movie I'd seen or books that I'd read. Until now. And I find myself enjoying the movie FORBIDDEN CITY, U.S.A.
I think Arthur Dong, the director, succeeded in communicating the feelings that being an Asian-American singer and dancer was indeed "forbidden" in those times. Being a jazz-singer or a tap-dancer just didn't fit the stereotypes of Asian-Americans held by American society. We were expected to be cooks and launderers. One of the dancers, Mary, recalled being told that the Chinese shouldn't be dancers because they don't have "rhythm" and are all bow-legged. Being an entertainer didn't exactly fit the roles that Asian parents envisioned for their children either. The women were expected to be dutiful wives and mothers. The men were expected to work in their father's businesses. If the father was a grocer, then the son was also expected to be a grocer. A career as a professional crooner or tap-dancer was out of the question. Or was it?
The Forbidden City nightclub was packed nightly during the war years. GIs who were passing through San Francisco were lured by the sheer novelty of a nightclub which offers "all-Chinese" cabaret acts. They arrive expecting something mysterious and exotic. What they see is exotic enough, I suppose, simply because of the ethnic origin of the performers.
The entertainers saw themselves as Americans. Their parents and grand-parents and great-grandparents may have come from countries in the Far East, but they themselves grew up in towns scattered all over the West Coast. However, they were perceived as foreigners. They were given nicknames such as the "Chinese Fred Astaire," the "Chinese Sophie Tucker," and the "Chinese Frank Sinatra." These nicknames belittle the achievements of these performers and reduced them to mere imitations. The effect is like calling Connie Chung the "Chinese Barbara Walters" or I. M. Pei the "Chinese Frank Lloyd Wright." The perception that they were outsiders was at times hard to ignore. One woman recalled being in a roadshow traveling through Oklahoma and Texas and having people following her around and wanting to touch her just because they had never seen someone of Chinese ancestry before. Several other performers in that show recalled something uglier--Jim Crow. Which restrooms do they go in, the one marked "black" or the one marked "white"? Where do they sit on the bus, in the front or in the rear? And what would happen if someone decided that they'd made a mistake?
I like this film because I can identify with the experiences of the participants. The recurrent theme is the frustration resulting from being denied opportunities in life because of arbitrary stereotypes set by one's society. The stereotypes have changed, but the problems still exist. Today, Asian-Americans are often lumped together and perceived as the "model minority", exemplified by the wiz-kids and rags-to-riches stories. The stereotypes mask the poverty and somewhat less-than-spectacular scholastic achievements of new Asian immigrants struggling to get by in urban ghettos, such as San Francisco's Tenderloin. These same stereotypes have led many Universities to apply quotas on the number of Asians who are accepted because there are "too many" of us, to the point that an Asian student with a 4.0 GPA was denied entry at UC Berkeley.
FORBIDDEN CITY, U.S.A. omitted some aspects of the nightclub business that I was curious about. No one talked about whether there was illegal business going there. Was there gambling? drug dealing? prostitution? How did these activities affect the careers of the performers? How did they feel about their lives after the club closed in 1962?
Overall, I'd say that this film is well-worth viewing, especially since it's shown for free on PBS as part of the series "The American Experience."
Thuan Nguyen nguyen%cardio.ucsf.edu@ernie.berkeley.edu University of California, San Francisco/Berkeley Bioengineering .
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