Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu (Chinese: 傅滿洲/福滿洲; pinyin: Fú Mǎnzhōu) is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 100 years, and he has also become an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, while lending his name to the Fu Manchu moustache.
For other uses, see Fu Manchu (disambiguation).Dr. Fu Manchu
"The Zayat Kiss" (1912)[1]
Emperor Fu Manchu (1959)
- Arthur Hughes
- John C. Daly
- Harold Huber
- Frank Cochrane
Male
Si-Fan
Fah Lo Suee (daughter)
Chinese Manchu
Background and publication[edit]
According to his own account, Sax Rohmer decided to start the Dr. Fu Manchu series after his Ouija board spelled out C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N when he asked what would make his fortune.[2] Clive Bloom argues that the portrait of Fu Manchu was based on the popular music hall magician Chung Ling Soo, "a white man in costume who had shaved off his Victorian moustache and donned a Mandarin costume and pigtail".[3] As for Rohmer's theories concerning "Eastern devilry" and "the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese",[4] he seeks to give them intellectual credentials by referring to the travel writing of Bayard Taylor.[5] Taylor was a would-be ethnographer who, though unversed in Chinese language and culture, used the pseudo-science of physiognomy to find in the Chinese race "deeps on deeps of depravity so shocking and horrible, that their character cannot even be hinted".[6] Rohmer's protagonists treat him as an authority.
Fu Manchu first appeared in Rohmer's short story "The Zayat Kiss" (1912).[1] It and nine further stories were later collected into the 1913 novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.[1] Two more series were collected into The Devil Doctor (1916) and The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917), before the character entered a 14-year absence.[1] Following 1931's The Daughter of Fu-Manchu, Rohmer wrote nine more Fu Manchu novels before his death in 1959.[1] Four previously published stories were posthumously collected into The Wrath of Fu-Manchu (1973).[1] In total, Rohmer wrote 14 novels concerning the character.[7] The image of "Orientals" invading Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer's commercial success, being able to sell 20 million copies in his lifetime.[8]
Actors who have played Dr Fu Manchu:
Actors who have played Dr Petrie:
Actors who have played Sir Denis Nayland Smith
Cultural impact[edit]
The style of facial hair associated with Fu Manchu in film adaptations has become known as the Fu Manchu moustache. The "Fu Manchu" moustache is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a "long, narrow moustache whose ends taper and droop down to the chin",[12] although Rohmer's writings described the character as wearing no such adornment.
Before the creation of Fu Manchu, Chinese people were often portrayed in Western media as victims. Fu Manchu indicated a new phase in which Chinese people were portrayed as perpetrators of crime and threats to Western society as a whole.[13] Rohmer's villain is presented as the kingpin of a plot by the "yellow races" threatening the existence of "the entire white race", and his narrator opines, "No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty of the Chinese."[14]
The character of Dr. Fu Manchu became, for many, a stereotype embodying the "Yellow Peril".[8] For others, Fu Manchu became the most notorious personification of Western views of the Chinese,[13] and became the model for other villains in contemporary "Yellow Peril" thrillers:[15]: 188 these villains often had characteristics consistent with xenophobic and racist stereotypes which coincided with a significant increase in Chinese emigration to Western countries.
After the Second World War, the stereotype inspired by Fu Manchu increasingly became a subject of satire. Fred Fu Manchu, a "famous Chinese bamboo saxophonist", was a recurring character on The Goon Show, a 1950s British radio comedy programme. He was featured in the episode "The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu" in 1955 (announced as "Fred Fu Manchu and his Bamboo Saxophone"), and made minor appearances in other episodes (including "China Story", "The Siege of Fort Night", and in "The Lost Emperor" as "Doctor Fred Fu Manchu, Oriental tattooist"). The character was created and performed by the comedian Spike Milligan, who used it to mock the racist attitudes which had led to the creation of the character.[16] The character was also parodied in a later radio comedy, Round the Horne, as Dr Chu En Ginsberg MA (failed), portrayed by Kenneth Williams.
Dr. Fu Manchu was parodied as Dr. Wu in the action-comedy film Black Dynamite (2009), in which the executor of an evil plan against African Americans is an insidious, moustache-sporting kung fu master.[17]
Science historian Fred Cooper and colleagues draws a parallel between narratives that COVID-19 was created by China, and the machinations of Fu Manchu, who is “expert in the deadly application of animal and biological agents” and who has been depicted on US television shows as threatening the West with lethal diseases.[18]