How Did Hollywood Play the Chinese Element Card?

Recently, “Kung Fu Panda 2” has been screening on every cinema in the U.S.; lots of parents brought their children to watch it. When I went to the movie, I found out that even in a small city where I live there are many screenings of the movie. The film was also released simultaneously in China, and many Chinese elements in it aroused great interest among Chinese audiences.

The Chinese elements in the film caused lots of controversy among Chinese audiences. Some audience members spoke highly of the Chinese ethnic music, martial arts and Sichuan dan dan noodle in the film, but other people called to boycott the film. No matter good or bad comments, most people are thinking: from Hua Mu Lan to Kung Fu Panda, why must these elements of Chinese culture be “cooked” into “delicacies” and sold back to us?

The term “cultural might” may be a bit fuzzy, but the key is in the American confidence in their value system. Compared to China’s value confusion during the transition period, the U.S. has a clear and relatively confident value system, which contributes to the success of these movies. Hollywood is good at using value elements that sink deep into people’s hearts, especially when producing movies that appeal to families.

A majority of Americans have definite family values and values growing up; there is a relatively higher level of cohesion in terms of social identity. For example, in the parent-child relationship, the Chinese value the blood relationship more, while Americans value the later nurturing of family more; for instance, how much time they spend together (the film portrays Po and his father cooking together), and the quality of the time spent together, etc. Those scenes look very Chinese but are very American in essence. The director was making a U.S. concept apply to China, which means that there are much more American elements than Chinese ones in the film. For other details, the director tried to keep them as close to life in the U.S. as possible; for example, the bike ridden by the panda on the street is very similar to the bicycles children in the U.S. ride; the former is just an ancient version of the latter one, which makes it more clumsy and hilarious.

The main reason why the movie is so popular is its good combination of entertaining elements and not-necessarily-attributed-to-the-Chinese elements. It’s unnecessary for Chinese to feel happy about it or boycott it blindly. If the director used the Australian kangaroo instead of Kung Fu Panda, the effect will probably turn out to be the same; it’s just that the Chinese market is bigger than Australia, so the panda became the choice. After watching the movie, I went to the U.S. film review website Rotten Tomatoes and read some reviews by famous film critics like Roger Ebert and found that they seldom mentioned the Chinese elements; they mostly analyzed the gains and losses of the movie as an entertainment film.

The lack of commentary on the Chinese elements indicates that those elements are seamlessly fused into the film and not strange at all; those elements became the film’s own texture and grain. For instance, Chinese audiences complimented the use of Chinese ethnic music, which was fused into fighting scenes and slapstick humor. Americans know it is Chinese music, and it doesn’t prevent them from appreciating the film even if they don't know the name of the music, but Chinese audiences can recognize the music; thus, the film appealed to the specific needs of different markets, which is really smart. However, when we Chinese tried to propagate Chinese culture to other countries, we are usually too impatient. In other words, hoping audiences learn about the culture immediately will make the product too moralistic: sometimes it’s boring, and sometimes it feels like cultural aggression.

Hollywood broadened our knowledge of the connotation of Chinese elements. Having observed for many years, I found that, from Chinese arts groups performing in the U.S. occasionally to the systematic cultural output in the Confucian academic style, Chinese elements were mostly restricted to clay sculpture, woodcarving, martial arts, traditional Chinese painting, etc. Such a way of cultural communication is too narrow-minded and rigid. We need to activate our culture, widen our minds. There is an abundant range of elements in culture in a big country like China; we should not just focus on several points.

This issue has already been picked up by some scholars in China. Several years ago, a cultural scholar named Dr. Zhou from Huazhong Normal University in China visited the small city where I live in Virginia. She told me that when she was collecting folk songs in China’s countryside, some countryside cultural cadres frowned upon what she did and tried to show her some officially gathered resources. However, Dr. Zhou is more interested in collecting original and unfiltered cultural products. She said that those cultural cadres could only produce cultural products that are defined by some so-called “culturati,” which may not necessarily contain original folk elements, or feel as fresh and rich. The so-called “canon” culture may not be canonical in other contexts.

People who produce cultural output may not realize this distinction. Not long ago, I got a chance to communicate with a company in China that attempted to hold a large-scale exhibition of Chinese cultural heritage through paper-cuttings, calligraphy, traditional paintings and embroidery. However, the liaison in the U.S. preferred to conduct the exhibition through inter-school exchange between American and Chinese schools, hoping to depict each culture through artwork by primary and secondary school students. Through this, we can see that the two parties have a very different understanding of cultural connotations and ways of cultural communication.

Since Hollywood has no stereotyped thinking with regards to culture in the vein of the Chinese “culturati,” they are more open and innovative in exploring fresh and lively elements and in injecting new meanings into Chinese elements. For example, in the movie “2012” Chinese migrant workers, who are overlooked in China, were brought into scenes. In “Kung Fu Panda 2,” we saw dan dan noodles on the street and in hawker stalls. I even saw that while the understrappers of Lord Shen were policing laws on the street, they carried some flavor of China’s urban managers.

Since China has a big market, there will be more Chinese elements used in Hollywood after “Kung Fu Panda 2,” which is a trend that is unstoppable and unnecessary to stop. We should regard Hollywood as the trainer of Chinese cultural output. Apart from that, looking at how others depict Chinese elements — in watching movies like “Kung Fu Panda 2” and reading books like “Country Driving” — is helpful in widening our minds in terms of cultural communication and strengthening our own culture.

(The author is a scholar living in the U.S.)