ABSTRACT
There is an apocryphal scene of the American cinema of the last thirty years which has worked its way into popular conscious ness rather more than most. It features an inscrutable oriental face, its supercilious smile reinforcing an evidently unjustified hauteur, confronted by an ingenuous White Anglo-Saxon Protestant face, attractively puzzled by the presence in this world of deceitful cunning. The oriental face delivers itself of the observation ‘Ha-ha, Amellican, you surplised I speak your language!’— and adds in explanation a brief, ill-accented curriculum vitae, detailing its owner’s ungrateful attendance at some Anglo-American seat of learning.
