By Chris Mun-Yin Seck
The rise of China is a common topic of discussion among our elites. Nevertheless, I shall quickly run through the statistical formalities: China's economy grew 10% last year. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has nearly a million more active troops than we do. China's population, at 1.3 billion, outnumbers ours by more than 4 to 1.
But statistics alone mean little. We want to know the story behind the numbers. And in documenting the story of China's rise, it makes sense to pay particular attention at how their films have evolved over the past 20 years.
Growing up as a student in Singapore, my Chinese teachers would often screen Mandarin films during classes. From grade 1 to the end of high school, I saw hundreds of these movies. Therefore, I feel particularly qualified to offer my take on how Chinese films have changed, and how this change might reflect the new mindset of modern China.
Here in America, we are well-acquainted with the classic 1950s Western film—cowboys versus Indians. Chinese cinema was famous for a different sort of classic—the anti-Western film, which China produced in large numbers well into the 1990s.
What does the typical anti-Western film look like?
The typical film's cast has three main characters. First, a white man as the villain. Invariably, he is a bigoted, trigger-happy, sex-crazed, imperialist thug. Second, an athletic, muscular Chinese guy—a sort of Bruce Lee clone—as the hero who fights the White Man with his fists and seems strangely immune to Western bullets. Third, an insanely beautiful Chinese woman who plays the damsel in distress who usually ends up kidnapped and killed by the villain for cinematic effect.
In my opinion, the most memorable of the anti-Western movies would be the 1991 film Once Upon A Time In China, where the hero of the film, played by Jet Li, has to rescue his aunt, who has been kidnapped by an evil American slaveholder. I fondly remember the irony of the last scene, where the Chinese hero who is trying to free his aunt from slavery has to fight his way through an entire battalion of blue-uniformed Union troops. As a child, I grew up watching such paragons of historical accuracy.
The anti-Western films are legion in number, and they include films such as Red River Valley, which condemns the British invasion of Tibet (apparently there was one in 1904), and The Opium War, which offers a distinctly Eastern perspective on the conflict.
But I have noticed one thing: Ever since the 1997 Hong Kong handover, Chinese cinema seems to have stopped producing anti-Western films, at least on the big screen. Perhaps this suggests that ever since China regained her lost territories, she has transcended her past humiliations and now sets her sights on higher things.
Today, instead of having an anti-Western, anti-imperialist focus, the newest Chinese films are deeply Sino-centric: They reflect China's new-found cultural confidence by focusing almost exclusively on Chinese culture, history, and myth. For example, Ang Lee's 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is set in Qing China, Zhang Yimou's 2002 film Hero is set during the time of China's first emperor, and Chen Kaige's 2005 film The Promise is set in China's mystical pre-history, when “men and gods walked together.” This seems to symbolize China's new-found pride: She is once again the “middle kingdom,” the center of the civilized world.
Moreover, it seems that Chinese cinema has even begun to invade Hollywood. The last time I checked, Zhang Ziyi had learned English in order to star in Memoirs Of A Geisha, and Gong Li was playing a lead role in Michael Mann's Miami Vice. It seems that China has begun to use globalization as a tool to buy influence in the West, both economic and cultural.
But what does this trend in Chinese cinema tell us about China's rise as a global power?
Many Western movie-goers have an incomplete view of Chinese cinema. We see a film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and we get all excited: “Hey, I just saw a really cool Chinese movie!”
But that is because economic expedience compels many modern Chinese producers, facing the need to sell their films to a global audience, to stuff their movies with Eastern stereotypes: fancy costumes, colorfully-choreographed swordfights, characters with weirdly metaphorical names, and loud lion dances. Most of these films have been deliberately Orientalized to boost ticket sales.
The Chinese films that Americans see here often do not leave us with a complete impression of Chinese cinema in general. The essence of Chinese cinema lies not in its outward trappings, but in the themes, stories, and morals that these films try to tell.
Here in America, our Hollywood films tend to perpetuate our favorite American myths: the commoner who becomes rich and famous (think Rocky), the poor girl who meets the man of her dreams (think Maid In Manhattan), and the black guy who achieves great things despite racial prejudice (think Men Of Honor). American films focus on individualistic themes like love, happiness, and money.
Chinese films, excepting a few comedies, rarely dwell on such themes. Most of them focus on more collectivistic values: patriotism, honor, and duty.
In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the hero refuses to pursue his lover because the lady was once married to another man—propriety takes precedence over feeling. And in Hero , an assassin, hired to kill China's first emperor, changes his mind and voluntarily submits himself to execution after realizing that the emperor's life is tied to China's destiny.
One of the most expensive Chinese films ever made, The Emperor And The Assassin (released 1999), offers us an interesting symbol of modern Chinese psychology. The film tells the story of a king who must follow an ancestral mandate to unite China by conquering all of the enemy kingdoms that stand in the way of unification. Unfortunately, the king also has a lover, a beautiful foreign princess who does not fancy the idea of having her homeland overrun. Eventually, however, the king goes ahead with the invasion—even at the cost of being left by his lover. In Chinese films, doing one's duty for the glory of the Chinese nation is more important than marrying the love of one's life.
What stories do these Chinese films tell? They speak of a proud, angry civilization that is determined to rediscover its great past, and equally determined to rule the world tomorrow, even if it requires great sacrifice. While America sustains multi-billion-dollar trade deficits with China every week, the Chinese government is buying up oil interests around the world and steadily building its armed forces in anticipation of becoming the next superpower. The Chinese people, who populate the factories that produce our televisions and computers and shoes and slippers, are seeking to build a great nation to rival ours.
Americans should watch China carefully. And her films.
Chris Mun-Yin Seck is a sophomore at Stanford and a staff writer for the Stanford Review.
Back |
