It's everything I've come to expect from the genre of that era; some people may be taken aback by the racism, lack of forethought for casting and dialogue, if it doesn't appal you it may garner some giggles. I contend that the genre contributed to the bigotry and rationale of at least two generations of viewers. (Queen of the Bungle on Amazon)
Ignorant, loud-mouthed, stupid pig of a man - a know-all, nasty, repulsive. (Warren Mitchel on his character Alf Garnett)
That's one way to look at it, but if everyone were the same, where's the drama? Drama could be said to come from the similarity of differences, in the way that the ornate rituals of China and India came against the pomp of the British Empire in the 19th century. Add Russia and you have 'the great game.'
Sax Rohmer was probably the first pulp-stylist to deliver this - predating Talbot Mundy's The Eye of Zeitoon - with the legend of Fu Manchu. Watching the Republic serial, the vaudevillian falsetto of Fu Manchu is giggle-inducing, nicely matched in this contemporary illo.
The mask-like caricatures in Drums of Fu Manchu are clearly labelled bad versus the good Nayland Smith of the British Empire. Where there are powerful forces in opposition, the sensuous differences become apparent, and the accent is on the body language and ornate trappings of the civilizations.
The feminine principle of sensuous trappings flows through the action like incense smoke, and the Republic serial (directed by William Witney of Nyoka) is certainly atmospheric. Honour is the somewhat mystical force that pits the antagonists in continual hand-to-hand combat.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these types of characters have gone out of fashion, and it does represent a warrior 'type', of the body as opposed to the head which, of the modern leaders, only Putin seems to have any recognition of.
Nostalgia towards such antagonists is probably really to do with this notion of 'type' (see Radin, prev.) The warrior type expresses the similarity of differences through combat and ritual (or actually ritual combat in the Middle Ages.) But in the situation, caricatures and masks and peculiarities of speech are all part of the drama (the great game)!
There's a lot there, and where differences are acknowledged there's going to be bigotry and comic effects. The body and the elegance of rituals and the female dimension are all in the content of these old pulp adventures. Once you take that out there is much less content (psyche.)
In other words, the physical (body) imbues the psyche (behaviour). Nowadays, the way news is delivered seems to get in everything, and yet much less content is there. The war between Russia and Ukraine is a complete mystery to me at the moment.
Possibly Putin is trying to reestablish a 'Rus' psyche, so there is a mystical aspect to it. However, the way he is going about it doesn't allow for the rebellious psyche of yore that established 'Rus' in the first place (see prev.)
Modern news is like a ticker-tape that delivers a lot of facts that seemingly are everything, and yet is a type of nothing. One possibility is there is a capitalist agenda to the news, as in Carpenter's
Another possibility is that capitalism is just a way to calculate everything in terms of money (number, ego.) If everything is calculation, then everything is of the head and not the body.
Words can make grammatical sense while exploring a nonsensical (if logical) world. Reflections in the mirror of illusions; variable time; calculation; sun; electromagnetism; perspective; x-ray diffraction (DNA); measurement..blah blah blah.
The body can't be calculated because, as noted previously, articulate actions come from a fundamental articulate nature of reality. The warrior 'type' and the nomad and the Greek athlete are all fundamentally attached to reality. The body, the feminine dimension, imbues a psyche, be it Greek figure vases or
Modern news is something like DNA in that it appears to contain everything, but that everything is instructions for calculation and so is also a type of nothing (in terms of the fundamentally articulate reality.)
The fact that bigotry exists in the old type of civilization makes it less than perfect. But a perfection that is a type of nothingness is an even worse option. In short, the tribal and the bodily aspects of civilizations are the realities and not the illusion of a global corporation of equality.
