Mutant Palm

I will give Jackie credit for this, which is just hilarious. And Herman’s Hermits covering Billy Idol’s White Wedding is clearly the product of a fevered mind.

After writing about Jackie Chan’s refusal to take responsibility for the Rush Hour franchise, it occurred to me that I hadn’t even mentioned the fact that the Rush Hour movies are full of eye-rolling Asian stereotypical humor. It’s interesting to see that he’s also cast in next years animated “Kung Fu Panda”, where he’ll be playing Master Monkey! Lucy Liu will be Master Viper! Nobody else Asian in the main cast there, the title panda will be Jack Black and “Shifu” will be played by Dustin Hoffman. Meanwhile Lucy Liu is involved in a Charlie Chan remake, and there’s a Kung Fu remake out there as well.

So thank the gods there’s a Bruce Lee mockumentary coming out, Finishing the Game, by Justin Lin, who made Better Luck Tomorrow, in which he tackled the Asian American overachiever bit. And then there’s the documentary Slanted Screen covering the history of Asian American men in film and television. It points out the ghost of Bruce Lee, and chopsuey in general, looms large over Asian portrayals in Hollywood. Lin makes a similar point:

I think it was a few years ago there was this thing that came out called “The Lost Interviews with Bruce Lee.” It’s this black and white Canadian kind of Charlie Rose type show and they were interviewing him, and it was a great interview. The thing that really blew me away was if you watch that interview and you didn’t know when that interview took place, everything that he was saying could apply to today’s Asian-American actors and today’s filmmakers, so I thought if somehow we could pull it off and make it ’70s, it gave it more context. That was kind of the inspiration.

Somebody go buy Jackie some tickets.

I keep the Federation of American Scientists blog Secrecy News in my RSS because they republish handy dandy Congressional Research Service reports, usually to see what they write on China. Today I checked out “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2007,”, which looks suspiciously like something I think I saw in something Howard Zinn wrote. I thought it’d be handy to put it all on a map, but as I realized it didn’t include all the countries U.S. forces entered in World War II, or some of the more recent bases and “lily pads” the U.S. has established (Pakistan, for example).

So I slapped this together with some stuff from Global Security, Military.com, what WW2 history I could remember (I know I’m missing something), and some Googling. To be fair, some of the older events in the CRS report are things like “a dozen Marines deployed to protect Consul-General in Abyssinia”, but if CRS includes it, so do I. I’m still wondering about post-Soviet Eastern Europe, which is changing everyday (missile defense in Azerbaijan?), Southern Africa considering U.S. support for South Africa, and whether or not anymore countries would be included if I went through peacekeeping operations, humanitarian missions or U.S. military aid. But hey, it’s pretty much the whole world anyway.

This Yahoo! article caught my eye: Jackie Chan isn’t a fan of ‘Rush Hour’.

“When we finished filming, I felt very disappointed because it was a movie I didn’t appreciate and I did not like the action scenes involved. I felt the style of action was too Americanized and I didn’t understand the American humor,” Chan said in a blog entry on his Web site seen Sunday.

The reason the blog entry was “seen” on Sunday is because Jackiechan.com apparently just added a slew of older “JC Messages”. In the entry, Jackie goes on:

But to my surprise, this movie was exceptionally successful in the box office and results were very pleasing. Because this movie was so popular, I was offered an irresistible amount of money to film the sequel and I could not say no.

Um, does Jackie Chan have financial problems I don’t know about? Cuz I think he could say no. Also, Jackie made $15 million against 15% of gross on Rush Hour 3, as well as gaining China/HK distribution rights. Yknow, I think by the third movie he could’ve been asking for executive producer rights as well and more creative control – not to mention asking someone to explain the jokes to him. There were 9 years between Rush Hour 1 and 3 to figure that one out.

But the worst part is not Jackie blatantly admitting he cashed in not once, but twice after deciding he didn’t like the product. No, it’s this bit of wrongheadedness:

To me, it was about making another sequel for the audience around the world because in each country I travel to, someone would always ask me, “When will you film another Rush Hour?” But when I‘m in Asia, a lot of people would ask me, “When will you film another Drunken Master?” Or “When will you film another Police Story?” No one asks me about filming another Rush Hour. From what I have observed, I now understand the difference in movie tastes between the American/European audience and the Asian audience.

The reason, Jackie, that nobody in America asks about when you’re gonna make another Drunken Master or Police Story is because they’ve never seen them. Why is that? It’s not because of cultural differences – it’s because the American companies buying distribution rights to Asian films bury them or release them with as little marketing as possible (“Hero”, “Shaolin Soccer”, “Spirited Away”), rename them (“Drunken Master II” is called “The Legend of Drunken Master” in the USA, “Police Story 5” is “Supercop 2”), re-edit them (Such as “Tom Yum Goong”, aka The Protector, aka “Honour of the Dragon”, aka “Warrior King”, for which the Miramax US DVD release murdered the main character’s father who originally lived) and release them with the shittiest DVD covers of all time:

That chick on the cover? Not in the goddamn movie. And of course there’s all that goddamn dubbing. It’s not cute anymore. Stop it. There are online petitions against Disney and their ilk for all this butchery, but y’know who might really be able to stop these villains from killing Asian film in the US and Europe? Jackie Chan. Unfortunately, he’s too busy swimming in his pools of cash and complaining about cultural barriers.

Oh and Jackie? Alot of China seems to think “The Myth” sucked, even though they endlessly love (to my chagrin) Endless Love (无尽的爱). Maybe there isn’t so much disagreement between cultures on what makes a crappy movie.

Bonus Jackie Chan insanity:

I also admire the local government and the regional police force for their full support towards the film industry. They make the whole of Hollywood aware of the industry.

Yes, because no one in Hollywood would be aware of the Hollywood industry if it weren’t for the valiant efforts of the local government and regional police force. The mind reels.

Tim Johnson points out a series of designs illustrating the differences between German and Chinese cultures. The illustrations are by Chinese-born German designer Liu Yang, whose website can be found here. The series was on exhibition at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs this past May-June. The clearest versions of the images I can find, complete with Chinese descriptions and background, is here.

Some pictures might illicit from both sides a “Haha, it’s funny cuz it’s true” reaction, such as the innocuous “beverages” – Germans are blue, Chinese are red:

But then there are other images like “Problem Solving”:

It occurs to me that some Chinese people may perceive this image as illustrating a failing in Chinese society, whereas Germans (or Westerners in general) are less likely to look at their side as problematic behavior. I think a Westerner would be far more likely to say “Of course we approach problems directly, there is no better way to do it!” than a Chinese person is likely to say “Of course we avoid confronting problems directly, there is no better way to do it!” The designs themselves provide an apt, glib comparison of East and West, but far more interesting would be to examine reactions to them.

British actor Stephen Fry, known for playing everything from medieval clerics to alarm clocks, has a blog. And considering that he is so ubiquitous that he’ll even rouse you in the morning, it’s quite appropriate his second post is on Fame, it’s advantages and drawbacks.

I am not famous. Not even a little. And yet, living in China, I experience something akin to Mr. Fry’s fame. Consider this passage:

I get stopped on the street, I get (occasionally) hounded by photographers, I get letters from strangers asking for money, sex, advice, approval, time and so on. Journalists with nothing better to do write descriptions of my personality or offer glancing mentions of me. People who have never met me know that they loathe me, or that they like me. I am asked to be patron of this charity and to be on the board of that good cause and so on. I can get a table at the Ivy restaurant and tickets for premieres and parties. A medium ranking sleb.

In my time living in China, I have been stopped on the street, surreptitiously (and occasionally blatantly) photographed, been offered jobs, interviewed by journalists, and overheard people opine about whether or not they approve of me. But I am not famous. No, my skin, my genetic heritage, my physiology is famous. Because I’m white. I just hang on to those coattails, or rather, I’m dragged by them, since I can’t change my appearance. My phenotype is a medium ranking sleb. I am a distinctly separate entity in these encounters, orbiting the interaction between this Chinese person and my body. Whether they actually are addressing me, or simply the archetype they assume I am, is a roll of the dice.

There are times when it is utterly impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone in China because of my blinding whiteness. I am perceived as a White Man, with all the intrinsic characteristics attributed to that category. Some have been unable to accept that I am not Christian – I have been called a liar for asserting I was not. All white men are wealthy Christian Americans, for some, is a tautology.

Some expats and bloggers in China have argued with me that these are naive and sweet stereotypes, a product of isolation and ignorance, and separate and distinct from Racism™, which is the monstrous creature that burns crosses, enslaves nations and exterminates whole peoples. I cannot accept this argument. Once you are in the habit of placing people into boxes based on something as slight and insubstantial as appearance, it is merely a matter of changing the label on the box from “silly foreigner” to “inhuman enemy”. I am not so quick as to embrace terrified imaginings of a near future in which tens of millions of sexually frustrated, xenophobic Chinese men invade Everything, but I recognize the backdrop that makes such a suggestion imaginable.

Mind you, if I were black in China, I might apply the word “infamous” rather than “famous”. It’s been no secret to those of us living in China that people of different races are painted with a brush as broad as Yunnan, and the recent round-up of black people in Beijing is par for the course. Likewise, other racial categories, including even Southeast Asian Chinese, are further down the totem pole. I’ve witnessed Chinese businesspeople say they will hire a Filipino because they are cheaper. Skills are irrelevant; your market value is determined by ethnicity. As a white man in China, I feel more self-consciously privileged than I ever have before in my life, and simultaneously never felt so discriminated against, objectified. In a strange way, it has been a good thing for me – I don’t think I would be as aware or sensitive to how race is perceived, around the world, if I had only lived in the U.S.. Indeed, recent hysteria over China confirms this belief.

This tendency to define people in groupings like this is not strictly Chinese but all too human. To apply attributes to individual actors because of their membership in an ethnic group or nation, denying their individual choices or self-definition, is something I now prickle at when coming from my own country as well, as toy recalls invoke the dangers of “The Chinese”, as opposed to the dangers of long supply chains and merciless price competition. It’s interesting to read about the newly released Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s movie about three well-heeled American brothers touring in India, and how it casually depicts Indians as essentially exotic props.

I find myself wanting to follow a sort of code of radical individualism, resisting the application of broad categories or stereotypes as shortcuts to familiarity with people I encounter. But it’s damned hard – after all, it can become progressively harder not to stereotype a Chinese stranger who stops me on the street as someone who will stereotype me, becoming a negative feedback loop of stereotyping and distrust.

Like Mr. Fry, I would like people to stop coming up to me in supermarkets because of my face. But I don’t think they will.