At once, he could be a fearful prop for Hollywood xenophobia and still exude a dignified charisma that belied the political wrongness latent in the narratives in which he partook. Within Hollywood, Lone’s flirtations with racist archetypes, such as in Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, crossed a dangerous threshold. Early television and film parts (including a person named “Chinese” in 1979’s Americathon) reduced him to a blur of the Orient. The development of Lone’s curious persona was a gradual becoming, a response to both the Hollywood racism and the identity politics of the Asian-American theater that Lone encountered after leaving Hong Kong at 19. Lone’s insistence that he does not play racist archetypes appears incongruous when one notes how often his characters were positioned as agents of Yellow Peril or decorated with the trimmings of Orientalism. These fastidious efforts to maintain his privacy extended to a vehement refusal of any racial categories projected upon him as an Asian performer, whether Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu, Chinese-American (he asked in 1987, “Does anyone call an English-American actress?”) or Chinese. (Chinese news outlets, and fan-operated social media accounts, report that he has since moved to Canada.) But the actor had never revealed much about himself to start, at times denying even his age and refusing to disclose where he lived. Atwell’s War (2007), he did not formally announce his retirement, nor did he provide any personal or professional reasons for vanishing. Though he receded from the public eye after his role in Philip G.
Whatever happened to John Lone? Lone, curtained by mystique since his days as a youth member of the Peking Opera, has left behind very little hints.
Confessions of a Mask: John Lone in "M Butterfly" by Kelley Dong ()
0 kommentar(er)
