Abstract This paper explains that there is a region called Chinatown in many major American cities, a region where Chinese immigrants have gathered together and opened businesses in such numbers that they have created a small version of their home in China. The author states that the Los Angeles's version of Chinatown is not very large, not as large as the Chinatowns in San Francisco and New York. The author believes that visitors who come to the Chinatown region often will get more of the flavor of Chinese culture than casual visitors because there are many celebrations scheduled during the year.
From the Paper "One can approach Chinatown from the Sunset Boulevard (recently changed along here to West Cesar E. Chavez Avenue) side, more or less across from Olvera Street and not far from the downtown railroad station and the main Post Office. The visitor enters a different world, with shops that have different goods than are found in other parts of the city, buildings with a different kind of design, and many more Chinese people than are usually found in other parts of the city. The shops contain many Chinese-designed goods, including colorful fans, scarves, holders for incense, products made from bamboo and teakwood, finely painted silks, and carved figures of people and animals. The food shops contain packages with Chinese lettering and containing foods with which most people may not be familiar, or may not have seen outside of a Chinese restaurant."
Abstract This paper discusses Chinese immigration to the United States from 1848 and looks at how the laws relating to Chinese immigrants have developed up until today. The paper then focuses on how Chinatown in San Francisco has affected the American way of life and how San Fransisco's tourism has never suffered due to the appeal of its Chinatown. Specifically, the paper looks at how San Francisco's Chinatown has affected the status of Chinese Americans.
From the Paper "There is also the ancient tradition of homeopathic medicines that is beginning to filter into traditional American medicine. In the 19th Century Chinese medicine many times was all that was available and it served the need for Chinese and non-Chinese alike. Medicine was primitive at best in the west. There were no anesthetics, vaccines or surgeries available. Chinese Americans understood the benefits of herbs for medicinal purposes and it was their knowledge that was used throughout the United States to deal with injuries and diseases (Lyman 23)."
Abstract This paper examines the city of Toronto, particularly the location and nature of Chinatown. It traces the history of Chinatown and then explores the community's absence from the debate over the Spadina Expressway.
Abstract This paper is written about the nostalgia and identity in fictional depictions of Chinatowns/Japantowns. For much of the history of Asian immigration to the United States and Canada, Asian immigrants - primarily from China and Japan - settled in small communities in these new lands. These communities, known as Chinatowns or Japantowns, represented the confused identity of these people.
Abstract This paper discusses Robert Towne's film, "Chinatown," portraying it as a powerful glimpse into the social production of the modern metropolitan city. The evils of the city are amplified the further in you go; or at least, that is the way it is portrayed. Water, the giver of life, is purposefully withheld from a dying community on the whim of a businessman. The paper explains that the area called Chinatown stands as an example of everything that is dreadful about the urban experience, but remains inescapable. Wealth and power held by a single type of human, the white male, alters the way in which identities are formed. Ultimately, the truth can be substantiated with evidence, but still ignored by the victims of disorder.
From the Paper "Chinatown is a vision of the historic degradation of Los Angeles and the American dream. Contrary to the simple, monocentric view of a city put forth by Robert Park, Towne's interpretation of Los Angeles is more strongly tied to the urban sprawl theories of Mike Davis. The primary aspect that defines one's existence in the city is emotion. This emotion is generated by perceptions of crime, racism, drugs, and sex. The way in which a city is seen by its inhabitants depends upon how these aspects of human existence are presented to them. Today, we get this through the media of television and newspapers; in Chinatown it is largely through the printed press. The key, obviously, to alter a community's perception of itself is to manipulate the information the citizens are exposed to. This fact is illustrated in Towne's film, and the fabrication of fear by Noah Cross and other businessmen drives the public's understanding of itself."
Abstract This paper examines "Chinatown", a film that combines elements of environmentalism into the story that it tells. It looks at how the films beginning may be classified as a classic film noir, but as the film progresses the film speaks to humanity's responsibility to the environment, as well as different moral and ethical philosophies and how they relate to the environmental movement. It discusses such themes as personal ethics and environmental justice as well as the two moral theories at play in the story, that of Mill's and Bentham's Utilitarianism and that of Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative.
From the Paper "There are several features about Utilitarianism that are important, for the sake of the movie, and otherwise. One of these is that actions, in and of themselves, have no moral value. The problem is then, that the actions of Noah Cross and his cohort are not in and of themselves moral or immoral. At the same time, the actions of Gittes are, in and of themselves, neither immoral or moral either. In each case, what is important is the end-result. According to Utilitarian principles, the only aspect of the state of the world that has any moral significance is the happiness or misery of people. All people are, ethically speaking, always equal, in other words, one person's happiness is worth as much an y one else's happiness."
Abstract This paper describes various scenes ,such as the exchange between Gittes and Cross, which takes over five minutes, much longer than today's standard scene length, particularly for a scene with nothing but conversation; however, the conflict between Cross and Gittes and their constant give-and-take fills the scene with tension. The author describes another scene in which Polanski trains the camera on Gittes's face as he looks down on Cross; Gittes appears hesitant, and the shot serves to highlight his injured nose. When Gittes takes his hat off and sits down, there is no doubt in the audience's mind who is in control of the situation. The paper concludes that ?Chinatown? is a richly-layered movie in a classic 'film noir' tradition.
From the Paper "The scene is short and moves quickly. Roman Polanski reveals volumes about Jake Gittes by juxtaposing the detective with the client. Curly, dressed in work clothes, is sweating in the intense heat. He is crying and in his distress, he bites into the Venetian blinds. Gittes, on the other hand, is dressed in a crisp white suit. Despite the apparent heat -- the fan is on -- Gittes looks cool and, in contrast to his client, unperturbed. The detective calms his distraught client down with a joke ("You can't eat the Venetian blinds. I just had 'em installed on Wednesday"). Then he reaches into the liquor cabinet, quickly shuffles through the whiskey bottles and pulls out a cheaper bottle of bourbon and pours his client a drink."
Abstract The 1974 film, "Chinatown," is a critical representation of the history of Los Angeles and its implications for the myth of the American dream. This paper discusses how Robert Towne presents a depiction of America in which justice, morality, and the individual are helpless to combat the forces of thievery, bigotry, and business interests.
From the Paper "The position people occupy in this society is determined by several factors; race, gender, and class are foremost among these. In many ways the city of Los Angeles mirrors the diagram drawn by Davis, with these factors limiting the mobility of the citizens. The infrastructure of the city is dominated by the ruling class, race, and gender-wealthy, white, males. It is this small handful of individuals that possesses the power to mold the future to their own designs, and to augment public perception of what the "truth" may be. Accordingly, to Towne, the American dream is a representation of reality specifically designed to hide the truth. In Chinatown, like in the rest of America, it is often impossible to know what is going on."
Abstract This paper analyzes Roman Polanski's film, "Chinatown" and its focus on the motif of the "big fish" , represented by the wealthy and corrupt, versus the futile efforts of the "little fish", represented by farmers, children and detectives.
From the Paper "The modern film noir thriller "Chinatown" is similar to many film noir detective films in which the police are corrupt, bought off by the big fish in town. The big fish in town in Chinatown is Noah Cross, an evil wealthy individual who is trying to make a fortune by enriching land in the San Fernando Valley through a water diversion scheme. As Cross tells detective Jake Gittes, always one step behind him, "you may think you know what you're dealing with but believe me..."
Abstract This paper reviews and compares the male protagonists of Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' (1974) and Elia Kazan's 'On the Waterfront' (1954). The paper discusses their evolved understandings of themselves in relation to their community.
From the Paper "While Roman Polanski's main character J.J. Gittes, as a detached, objective, and dispassionate private detective becomes involved, against his better judgment, with some members of the surrounding community as he works his case in Chinatown, Terry Malloy, on the other hand, in Elia Kazan's film On the Waterfront (1954), is, as a poor waterfront lackey on the docks of New York, integrally connected with, and related, in terms of both blood shared hardship, to members of his waterfront community right from the start. Further, Malloy himself, unlike the main character J.J. Gittes in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) is someone directly oppressed by the corrupt municipal power structure that controls his working life. used, In that sense, then, Malloy's own hardship and suffering is his community's hardship and suffering as well. J.J. Gittes, on the other hand, is (although Gittes does, little by little, become emotionally involved with other characters due to the many injustices and victimization he sees) more detached."
From the Paper "There is a region called Chinatown in many major American cities, a region where Chinese immigrants have gathered together and opened businesses in such numbers that they have created a small version of their home in China. Such regions have a strong attraction for tourists because of the exotic nature of the food and goods sold. The best-known Chinatown may be that in Los Angeles because of its being featured in the movie Chinatown, which had little to do with Chinatown then or now.
The Chinatown best known as a tourist mecca is probably that in San Francisco, a Chinatown that has been closely identified with the city for decades. The reason for the concentration of Chinese in San Francisco in particular is historical, since many Chinese were brought to California in the nineteenth century to work on the railroads. Once the railroads were built, most..."
Looks at the representation of the past as a painful but potentially helpful influence in two books, "No Great Mischief" and "Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood".
1,400 words (approx. 5.6 pages), 3 sources, 2002, $ 53.95
Abstract This essay will explore these two books MacLeod's "No Great Mischief" and Choy's "Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood" in order to show how the past is represented as a painful and ghostly reality, which can also bring restoration for the characters that seek it. In this sense, part of accessing the past and allowing it to be a helpful influence is coming to terms with its shadows and its ghosts.
Abstract The essay discusses the history of immigration of Chinese to Canada, and focuses on how race and class conflicts have contributed to producing Chinese ghettos in urban Toronto. The essay asserts that Toronto's Chinatown is as much shaped by class and gender, as it is shaped by class and racism.
Abstract This paper is written about a principal intersection of Toronto's now traditional Chinatown area. This district has a timeless quality about it, in a bustling street life that might be found in a Chinese working-class district of San Francisco or perhaps, a Chinese enclave in a Malaysian coastal town, as easily as in Toronto.
Abstract This paper examines a distinctive ethno-racial neighborhood in Toronto (Chinatown) in terms of its social, psychological and ecological structure or structures. In so doing, the paper reveals and discusses how Canada's largest city is a community which has (albeit not with complete enthusiasm) embraced new cultures and ethno-racial groups over time. It shows how as a result, a civic culture has sprung up that allows all groups, regardless of origin, to rise to success and prominence if desired.
From the Paper "Going further, Toronto's view of itself as being a city of many "publics" or ethno-racial communities all living together comfortably is a view that can be investigated even more so by examining how the psychology of Chinatown is linked, in part, by its churches. To wit, there are - or there were as of the middle 1990s - more Christian churches scattered among Toronto's Chinese community than in any other Chinese urban community in North America (Mackey, 1995). This suggests a Chinese community that was, historically-speaking, largely left alone to practice its faith without incident in large measure because that faith was the faith of most Torontonians even into the latter stages of the twentieth century."
