Stereotype(face): Origins Of The Chop Suey Font

By Lily | Tuesday, February 21, 2012 | 5 Comments

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Stereotype(face): Origins Of The Chop Suey Font I must confess, I am unabashedly obsessed with fonts. Pretty ones, ugly ones, skinny ones, fat ones, overused ones, undervalued ones, and even the poor font that gets beat up every day in gym class (by which I of course mean Comic Sans). So you can imagine I’m pretty interested in “Chinese” and “Asian” typefaces and was intrigued by a recent article on GOOD interrogate where the chop suey font comes from and why they’re used and at times, useful. More than just because of its use of the font in Pete Hoekstra’s terrible racist ad, its obvious to most people that whatever is written in the “chop suey” type fonts is related to China and Chinese things. There are , of course (as a quick Google search illuminates) other versions of these “Chinese-style” fonts – karate font, chow fun font, takeout font, wonton font – all splendidly named to evoke standard American Chinese food images (I will presently just ignore the fact that the linked list of 30 Chinese-style fonts also includes a manga font and Osaka sans font, which are, you know, not Chinese).

But returning to the topic at hand, what’s the deal with these typographies? I know and you know that we see them everywhere, in Chinatown, on board games, menus, random things. Apparently the type, which tries to mimic(ish) Asian calligraphy styles, became popular when used in a poster aimed at attracting tourists to San Francisco Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake. Chinese American restaurants actually used the font strategically as it was an easily recognizable way to basically say “we serve Chinese food.” You could actually say that the font became popular in much the same way as the dish it was named after – something that catered to preconceived American notions about what was Chinese. And Chinatowns today certainly perpetuate the font’s usage. After all, it is a really easy identifier.

Hrm. And all these years, I’ve wavered between hating this font for being kind of racist and being okay with it for being so over-the-top kitsch (I think I might even own a t-shirt that uses the font). But of course a strategic and sometimes even ironic use of the font (like Jennifer 8. Lee’s website for her book Fortune Cookie Chronicles) and the derogatory way in which it is more often utilized by people and groups like Hoekstra and Abercrombie & Fitch are radically different. So what are we supposed to make of this? GOOD’s summary of the whole phenomenon is quite tidy: “ethnic” fonts survive (on weird free font websites) because “they are good at what they do: distill an entire culture into a typographical aesthetic that becomes a signifier to the uninitiated.” Are these fonts problematic? Yea. But it also doesn’t seem like they’re about to go away anytime soon…and sometimes, might they be okay? I know you can (at least try to) re-appropriate words, can you do the same for fonts?

[Image via FontBros]

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SimonSlant

I think it’s possible to re-appropriate nearly all types of cultural epitaphs, words and fonts included. Fonts can be viewed as a type of visual art and that’s something that has definitely morphed over the ages (even distinctly “cultural” styles, though they aren’t as well known or perceived in the general population).
mwei

@SimonSlant but is it something that you would like to re-appropriate in the first place or something you feel like you’re obligated to because of the racial connotations?

if you’re that Simon from “The Slants” group, that’s the question you seriously have to ponder…

case in point is that “chink in the armor” ESPN controversy: obviously APAs didn’t feel it’s something they’d like to co-opt “chink” like the N-word…
SimonSlant

@mwei Me personally? I don’t really have any personal feelings about re-appropriating the font type myself, I was just merely saying that it was possible. I think re-appropriation can be an important part of of the dynamics of changing culture but it isn’t depending on whether one feels an obligation to that particular epitaph or not. To me, true re-appropriation is birthed in pride, not pain. For example, when you look at the LGBTQ’s community and the term “Queer,” the propagation of its meaning was in community pride rather than simply a recoil over hateful connotations. It was decisive, purposeful action.

With the “Chink in Armor” situation or other racial connotations, I believe that those things are situational. For instance, while the Asian American community would predominately agree that ESPN’s use of “chink in armor” was inappropriate, Asians using the term in a positive manner have been generally accepted (such as the San Francisco band fronted by Mike Park, “Superchink,” Jin the Emcee’s self-reference as the “Original chinky-eyed MC,” or even the recent film, “Chink”). Those were situations used by APA’s for APA pride, not someone outside of the community ignorantly slighting a member of our community.
http://www.8Asians.com/ jozjozjoz

Typography nerds rule!
mwei

@SimonSlant I can’t see how you “re-appropriate” something that’s not offensive to start with. must be a semantics definition thing…

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