The book also draws a distinction between Chinese and Japanese culture when the protagonists briefly stop in Japan before visiting China. There's also another Asian character Lily Alys Wu who helps Nancy by going undercover in Stromberg's book store. Chi Che also partly helps engineer her own rescue - slipping Aunt Eloise crucial information while she's being kidnapped. Emphasis is placed on finding Chi Che, subverting Missing White Woman Syndrome, and she's treated as the utmost priority. On the other hand, the villains are the Americans it's actually the white Mr Stromberg and Mrs Horace Truesdale that are the Hate Sinks (while their Chinese accomplice Mr Lung is a Punch-Clock Villain). George also pretends to be the missing Chi Che because she's Ambiguously Brown enough to look like her with make-up on. The Mystery of the Fire Dragon does have a Yellow Peril element to it, and the narration frequently refers to Grandpa Soong as "the Chinese".At least one scholarly article wondered whether or not it was a good thing, since rather than make minority characters more complex and three-dimensional, they just got rid of them entirely, whitewashing the entire series, leaving some scholars to say, "Sure they were offensive, but at least they were there." The original stories started back in 1927 had a lot of more offensive stereotypes, and the unfortunate habit of referring to a large number of the villains as "dark," "swarthy," and "foreign," not to mention stereotypical characters who were supposed to be the good guys.It doesn't help that the original versions of the first 34 volumes are mostly out-of-print and difficult to find, while the revised versions are still very widely available. These versions did remove the racist stereotypes often present in the original books, but some think they went too far in their "whitewashing" of almost all minority characters altogether. The biggest complaint is that Nancy is no longer as "tough" as she once was, and that she acts far too proper, polite, and traditionally ladylike in the updated versions. A lot of hardcore fans dislike the 50s/60s rewrites of the first 34 volumes, finding them to be bowdlerized, sanitized, condensed, and featuring less character development, and poorer writing.The late 80s version (specifically the Nancy Drew Files spinoff) has its fanbase, and they don't take too kindly to the new Girl Detective reboot for going the other way and being too "kiddy" (usually, they like the original 30s/60s version, but feel like a certain amount of Nostalgia Filter might make them slightly biased toward everything afterwards.Broken Base: Fans of the original 30s/60s version usually hate upon the late 80s version, for the way it modernized the character.The whole thing is resolved in about five pages, Nancy discovers nothing new about the case, none of the captors' names come up later and the ordeal isn't even mentioned again. It amounts to nothing as Ned sees the plane take off and immediately sends the air force after them. She's tricked into getting onto a plane by a girl with the same name as the missing Chi Che Soong - and immediately kidnapped. In The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, while Nancy is at the airport about to investigate smuggling in Hong Kong.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |