The Amazing Chan Clan

Posted on January 16th, 2009 by Manic | Cartoon Chronicles

You remember those old Charlie Chan films? You know, those movies about a Chinese-American detective living in Hawaii? The movies that starred a white guy with his eyelids taped to the back of his head because Hollywood wasn’t hiring Asian actors?

Yes, well Hanna Barbera made a cartoon. And this time, it’s racism the whole family can enjoy!

Meet Henry, Stanley, Suzie, Alan, Anne, Tom, Flip, Nancy, Mimi, and Scooter Chan– sons and daughters of the amazing detective Charlie Chan. Apparently, somewhere between solving murder cases, finding missing artifacts, and offending more Asian-Americans than David Carradine could ever hope to, Charlie did a whole lot of fucking. These days, Charlie is solving his cases with his children in tow. Why? Because they forgot to draw the man with eyeballs, so he needed all ten of his kids to look for his clues for him.

Besides, it was a Hanna Barbera cartoon made in the 1970’s. In those days, that animation company was convinced the entire universe would collapse unto itself, invert, and start shitting out of its own mouth if they didn’t have at least two cartoons on the air about teenagers solving mysteries. And Josie and the Pussycats had just gone off the air that year.

Hanna Barbera gets my compliments for not resorting to too many racial stereotypes on this show. While Charlie Chan himself spoke Engrish like a dyslexic William Shatner reading a 5 year old’s diary from across the room, his ludicrously numerous children were all voiced with American accents, and were themselves portrayed like Hanna Barbera portrayed all teenagers: semi-stoned sleuths who played music in their spare time.

If you have Cartoon Network’s Boomerang, you might be able to catch an episode of The Amazing Chan Clan. However, because Boomerang’s weekly schedule works on a “we’ll play whatever the hell we feel like playing at any given time” system, good luck finding it. You’ll literally have an easier time catching the theme song played randomly during a commercial break.