Rose Fong goes for a ride: Women, moviegoing and social change in early 20th century San Francisco Chinatown

Abstract

This article argues that female moviegoing in became a multilayered symbol for social and political change in Chinese San Francisco during the first decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of archival research and historical scholarship, the author situates the emergence of film culture in San Francisco’s Chinatown–home to one of America’s historically most marginalized immigrant communities. As movie theaters became popular among the neighborhood’s younger generation, older, conservative members of the Chinatown community became concerned that new form of entertainment would lead its youth away from the community’s cultural traditions and customs, safeguarded for decades in the face of legislative oppression, social injustice, and racial violence. Especially concerning was the ‘Americanizing’ influence the movies were thought to have on Chinatown’s young women, whose visibility in the unsegregated spaces of the movie theaters went against the community’s traditional gender hierarchies. Female moviegoing came to the fore of a public debate in the Chinese diaspora regarding social progress, women’s liberation, and the preservation of cultural identity.