ABSTRACT
In the last few months of 1995, Miller Genuine Draft aired a commercial for its Miller Light beer. The Asian male antagonist in this commercial has the signature beard of Dr. Fu Manchu, a fictional character created by British author Sax Rohmen. The danger posed by the evil Asian male character in the commercial and his subsequent containment loosely parallel Sax Rohmer’s fiction. The Dr. Fu Manchu character perpetuates the myth that the Chinese, and by extension, Asians, are trying to take over the Western world. Sax Rohmer’s depiction of Dr. Fu Manchu fits neatly into the social memory of American society in which the Chinese are represented as radically different beings from Anglo-Americans. As Chinese immigrant male laborers became more visible in Western cities, they were often represented in various popular media as being diametrically opposite to the Western world.
