Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 35

Orientation via Orientalism: Chinatown in Detective Narratives

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I do not believe in some “new identity” which would be adequate and authentic.
But I do not seek some sort of liberation from identity. That would lead only to
another form of paralysis — the oceanic passivity of undifferentiation. Identity
must be continually assumed and immediately called into question. (Gallop,
in Bondi, 96)
As a feminist critic, I too would look to the strategic uses of closure for political purposes.
This may be what Jameson also intended.
2. These are the descriptions of William Walling (Chinatown, Film in Society, ed. Arthur
Asa Berger, 1980,41.), Glenn Man (Radical Visions, American Film Renaissance 19671976, 1994, 143.) and Dennis Bingham (Acting Male, 1994, 127).
3. William Walling speculates that Towne’s screenplay may have been inspired by a real
episode of scandal in Los Angeles’ expansion. It is worth quoting him at length here:
In 1904, with Los Angeles parched to desperation by a severe and prolonged
drought, William Mulholland, the superintendent of water, conceived the idea
of a bold aqueduct system to carry the water of the Owens River from the
eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevadas to the heart of the city. Supported by
$25 million in bond issues, Mulholland was eventually to bring his dream to
completion, presiding over the official openin