18 Apr 2008 0002H

re: Forbidden Kingdom

Hollywood is bankrupt. I fever for the burning of Babylon till a river of flames drip from my brow. The studios can’t burn soon enough.

Why does there have to be a damn gwailo involved everytime we have the possibility to break the glass ceiling? Here of course Jet Li, who vowed to make Fok Yuen Gaap/Fearless his last martial arts film, is paired at long last with Jackie Chan, the venerable scion of the Peking Opera Schools, who practically singlehandedly saved the kung fu genre from itself after the death of Bruce Lee. Poor Jackie Chan who only wants to be treated like a real actor, not some set of hands and feet, not some buffoon, much less an exotic buffoon. Poor Jackie Chan who felt he had to sing an Elvis song, intoning sincerely “Wise men saaaay….” on Letterman to prove himself capable of doing real acting and real talent. No one in Babylon will hear him, or Jet Li, and no one, least of all their agents, wants to tell them they are fooling themselves if they want to do REAL acting and be treated as REAL actors, because they still think America is the land of opportunity. No one wants to say that they have to deal with a form of industry that is much like Communist-in-name-only China, with its eunuchs, princes, princesses, cliques, all the conspirators in the Forbidden City, which exist here as movie studios.

But none of this matters cos the eunuch clique in Hollywood have once again put pen to script and come up with some kid who is living out some colonialist white suburban fantasy by setting him up as the lead and having him save the poor Chinese from themselves, because Buddha knows, they can’t do it themselves. And then we pull out the kung fu, because that’s all Chinese folks are good for, and trap the Chinese in some kind of feudal era, a time which media execs can’t really seem to shake. It’s almost like China never became a republic and never struggled for democracy or tried to figure out how to survive in modernity against hostile foreign powers, or that Chinese Americans go to work everyday, raise children, come home and take out the trash and turn on the TV and go to PTA meetings. Nope. None of that shows up, no, Chinese people are not normal: all Chinese people know is kung fu and crime. Just don’t tell Jackie and Jet or they’ll sic the Yakuza on you.

You know how you make these movies compelling? Make them with Asian leads. Make them stories about kids who experience parental pressures to perform, the constant pressures of family, the twisted needs of our people, the daily lies and the fictions we weave everyday to fill the holes inside just to keep the family going. Make them about the struggle to overcome shame and self-loathing, make them about denying one’s own culture, about the petty prejudices from the whites, blacks, and Latinos, all the unfounded and unwarranted and all the things we do to ourselves to try and fit as square pegs in round holes. Or forget about all that and make movies where the Asians are just plain normal people with everyday heroism and foibles like everyone else. Nothing exotic, nothing tortured, nothing that any other lead, white, black, Latino should or should not be able to do. That’s the most radical filmmaking or screenwriting of all, apparently, considering how rare it is to see such figures on screen, big or small. Why can’t we have normal Asians on TV or in movies in the US? Why is it that the only time I see these figures is on Cantonese TVB from Hong Kong? Thank Gods that Harold & Kumar are here to save us, ironically. There’s no baggage there and what baggage is there, they skewer. I feel bad for Jackie and Jet. I really do. They deserve much more, much better than this.

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1 response to "re: Forbidden Kingdom"

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18 Apr 2008 2000H

Tim writes:

It really is sad, that neither of those guys can get another gig besides ”martial arts film.” I wonder about Zhang Ziyi too…clearly, she’s been typecast as well. That’s all we are, the hired help there to enable the white suburban fantasy.

I would _love_ to see a film about , say, diaspora Chinese financing the 1911 revolution and their inevitable disappointment. THAT would be interesting. It’ll have to wait, though, until someone in the diaspora actually starts making those films.

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