The old ‘white actor playing a Chinese man’ trick: Get Smart and race

This article examines the portrayal of Chinese characters in Get Smart (1965–70). Get Smart was a 1960s American spy comedy based on the premise of good (Control) against evil (KAOS) set against the back drop of the Cold War. Many of the episodes in this comedy featured a Chinese character as the enemy. This article will examine the way the characterization and performance of the Chinese roles play out in Get Smart. It locates them within the long-standing but now highly dubious tradition of ‘yellowface’ casting in American vaudeville, theatre and cinema, as Caucasian actors almost always played the Chinese roles in Get Smart. More particularly it examines Get Smart and especially the episodes with Chinese characters as examples of adaptation. Doing so suggests that different and at times competing conceptions of Chinese archetypes have been brought onto the screen, from the oriental villainy of Sax Rohmer and Ian Fleming to the criminal detective genius of Earl Derr Biggers’ Chan stories. These archetypes (and indeed stereotypes would be a better word in some instances), nonetheless permit the argument that Get Smart brings onto the screen a reasonably complex understanding of its Chinese characters and a critical view of the American characters.