Shirley Temple — The Angel Girl
Chih-Ping Chen Studies the Impact of the Child Star Actress on Ethnic Literature
Chih-Ping Chen devoted a portion of her spring sabbatical to a
seemingly unconventional purpose: She watched more than a dozen Shirley
Temple movies.
There was an academic reason for her endeavor. The movies offered insight into Chen's research on the
impact of the 1930s Academy Award-winning child actress on 20th century
culture and literature.
“When I began teaching American ethnic literature, I began to see
references to Shirley Temple by some authors,” says Chen, associate
professor of English who joined the Alma College faculty in 2000. “The
more I taught, the more I realized this was not accidental. These
references project Shirley Temple as an icon of the ideal child — an
angel girl — and as a mirror for ethnic girls to compare themselves
negatively. The ethnic characters in these stories want to be like
Shirley Temple.”
Chih-Ping
Chen says of Shirley Temple: "We haven't had a child star of that
magnitude" since the Depression.
For example, in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the heroine feels judged by her mother because she doesn’t have talent like Shirley Temple. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the heroine longs to have blue eyes like Shirley Temple’s.
“These girls want different parts of the Shirley Temple image, and
those characteristics underlie their struggle for identity,” she says.
Writers continue to evoke Shirley Temple more than a half century after
her movies were made. Her child star career came to an end, but
writers, who grew up under her cultural influence, continue to be
inspired — or perhaps haunted — by her cultural influence.
“Her movies were in a different time, during the Great Depression,”
says Chen. “Even President Roosevelt told Americans to spend a few
pennies and go see the little child because it will ‘make you happy.’
We haven’t had a child star of that magnitude since then.”
Chen is studying how Shirley Temple “embodies America’s industry of the
perpetually beloved child” in the first half of the 20th century, and
the African-American and Asian American “collective anxiety not only
over the racial marginalization” but also over her influence on the
development of ethnic girls’ character and personality.
She received a Discovering Vocation grant in fall 2006 to develop a
course on “Ethnic Self and American Cultural Ideals.” She also
presented a paper on Shirley Temple in ethnic novels at the joint
conference of the National Association of African American Studies,
National Association of Hispanic and Latino Studies, National
Association of Native American Studies, and International Association
of Asian Studies in 2006.
Chen used her Winter 2008 sabbatical leave to write and research
further, including watching Shirley Temple films to take notes on the
characterization of minorities and foreigners and the depiction of
racial relations. She plans to continue her research this fall at
special collection libraries and archives such as the UCLA Film &
Television Archives to finish her article on Shirley Temple and her
“other” American sisters.
She also wants to expand her project to study the influences of Shirley
Temple in countries outside the United States, particularly in Taiwan,
India, Europe and China.
The Shirley Temple phenomenon lends itself to the recent Summer
Olympics when China wanted to project “the perfect child” during the
opening ceremonies by substituting a girl with a perfect voice with a
girl perceived to be prettier.
“The politics of the image of the child was connected to national pride and identity,” she says.
Chen also spent part of her sabbatical on a second project that she
hopes will ultimately result in a book based on the cultural
presentation of women in popular museums.
“What interests me most is how authors like Charlotte Bronte and George
Eliot reconceptualize women’s visibility and subjectivity in the
exhibitions of painting, sculptures and freaks,” she says. “When a
women walks into a museum, what does she really see being displayed,
and what does it say about herself?”
The project involves revising and expanding her original dissertation, which was titled Re-Mapping Female Space: The Politics of Exhibition in 19th Century Women Writers.
As part of her research, she investigates authors Charles Dickens,
Maria Edgeworth, Bronte and Eliot. An article on Eliot has been
accepted for publication in the academic journal The Prose Studies.
Posted: Thu, September 25th, 2008 at 10:20AM
