Filipino Dandies of the ‘30s and ‘40s

Originally published on the VINTA Gallery Instagram

Let’s celebrate the Filipino trendsetters of the 1930s and 40s

With the rise of American cinema in the Philippines, many Filipinos immigrated to the US in the 20s and 30s to live out the “American dream.” Unfortunately, the increase of Filipino immigrants prompted racist anti-Filipino protests by white Americans due to their quick assimilation to American culture.

Cinema played an important role at this time–theatres were segregated with white folks on the main floor and people of colour on the balconies; international films were also usually only showcased at midnight. Filipinos were inspired by the fashion of the well-dressed men in Hollywood movies and began wearing custom suits to dance halls and other leisure activities. From 1929 to 1930, white Californians staged violent anti-Filipino campaigns. They used Filipino fashion as an excuse for their vicious attacks, similar to the violence they enacted largely on Mexican-Americans for wearing zoot suits, causing the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943. Filipino men dressed so sharply in their custom McIntosh suits that white folks were intimidated by their sexual appeal to white women, and in the era of Jim Crow, interracial relations were seen as “wrong.” These “dangers of Filipino masculinity” led to eliciting sexual regulations and policing. Jealous much?

Throughout the 30s, Shigeaki Hayashimo, a Japanese entrepreneur who owned numerous theatres in California, realised that the majority of his patrons were Filipinos who would watch the same films multiple times. This led to him showcasing Filipino-made films, the first to do so in California and even made proclamations such as “a favourite of Filipinos” and “Filipinos always welcome.” Other Japanese businesses did not share the same sentiment as Hayashimo, though, but instead shared similar attitudes towards Filipinos as white folks. This resulted in multiple boycotts of Japanese-owned businesses in Stockton in 1930, 1936, 1939, and during the Japanese occupation in the Philippines.

So in conclusion, white Californians hated on Filipinos because they were jealous of their style.

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Sources
“Filipinos are the Dandies of the Foreign Colonies”: Race, Labor Struggles, and the Transpacific Routes of Hollywood and Philippine Films, 1924-1948, Denise Khor
1930s Filipinos Were Hip To American Style. There Was Backlash, Livia Gershon
The Zoot Suit Riots Were Race Riots, Matthew Wills