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ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
IS HOLLYWOOD UNDERMINING CHOW YUN-FAT?
f it's a sin to make ambidexterous mayhem look stylish and virtuous, Chow Yun-Fat was once eternally damned. Blame it on the camera. Its slow-mo infatuation with his every grin and grimace in John Woo classics like A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard Boiled had made him the world's most idolized action star long before his 1996 leap to Hollywood.
Chow's Hollywood projects have undermined rather than enhanced his godlike stature.
Take The Replacement Killers (1996). Its plot was contrived and sterile to a surreal degree. Add to that the look-but-don't-touch romance with leading lady Mira Sorvino and a box office flop was assured.
The Corruptor (1998) did even less for Chow. Not only was he cast as a cop who became corrupted for no good reason, but the action was set in the kind of squalid fleshpot one sees only in the poorest of third-world countries and the Chinatowns of schoolboy fantasies. The coup de grace were jokes casting aspersions on Asian male sexuality. Strike two!
Then came Anna and the King (1999) in which Chow donned embroidered silk buffoonery to play a backward monarch held in thrall by a western schoolteacher. The reworked plot wasn't as ludicrous as the original King and I, but the remake cut Asia's top male superstar to fit the old Hollywood cosmology in which Asians are a quaint race in need of western enlightenment. Strike three!
After that Chow might have been reduced to playing wizened oriental masters dropping metaphysical pearls on young white heroes in training had Taiwanese director Ang Lee not come along to cast him as a legendary swordsman in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Despite its modest production and promotion budgets, the movie slashed all expectations and fairly flew up to become the year's most profitable release.
No coincidence, some suspect, that the role that saved Chow's chestnuts was conceived and written by an Asian and filmed with an all-Asian cast in the world's most pro-Asian nation -- China.
It isn't so much that Hollywood consciously sets out to undermine Asia's top male superstar, argue some. It's just that its imagination has been stewed for so long in its own racist malarkey that it is incapable of letting an Asian leading man play a truly sexy and heroic role. Look how it turned Jackie Chan into a tool (fool?) of Asian-male-bashing comedy in Rush Hour 2. And Hollywood may yet get its apparent wish to deep-six Chow Yun-Fat. In early 2002 Chow starts shooting Bulletproof Monk, a cult comic adaptation, in which he plays an aging master passing on warrior wisdom to a young white hero.
Is Hollywood undermining Chow Yun-Fat's action-superstar stature?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:07:37 PM)
I am so unhappy with american caucasian movie casting producers etc...right now!
WHY must you choose the short weird looking(even to me, who is chinese and FOB)for movies like Rush Hour 2 and The Last Emperor?
They are purposely choosing chinese people that they perceive as normal...sheesh, Chow Yun Fat is almost 6feet, so this could be a reason they dont like him.That's why only kung fu people make it, cause they short and ugly. Americans are missing out on the real chinese celebrities who average for males, 5'11 and females 5'7! Stop being so ignorant and let chinese people choose the chinese people
WhyTheyDoThat?
Sunday, December 16, 2001 at 05:47:47 (PST)
He needs to get his act together man, go back to Hong Kong and just go old school. F Hollywood and just keep making Killer and Hard boiled. Aight?
True Fan
Wednesday, December 12, 2001 at 12:03:07 (PST)
Decon, Provincial America, and others:
How 'bout we move our debate to the Politics and the Presidency board here?
Asian Dominatrix
Monday, November 19, 2001 at 14:27:24 (PST)
[A copy of your earlier discussions have been moved there. --Ed]
What does all this america vs. europe crap have to do with chow yun fat? stick to the freaking subject!!!
Chow Yun Fat Fan!
Monday, November 19, 2001 at 05:25:12 (PST)
[We agree. This must stop now. --Ed]
Provincial America,
Spot on again.
I don't think I said anything to the effect that the American economy is necessarily better than any other; I was just saying that there is more emphasis, or rather, more verbiage about it. During the Kyoto treaty, Americans could only question in a puerile manner over why it was OK for 3rd world countries to pollute, and not the US--even tho' the US has done more than its fair share of polluting many times over, considering that it's been industrialised for a far longer period of time.
You're right in that America is deteriorating culturally. It's called the influence of Mammon: let's see who sells the most, quantity over quality, etc. That means selling to the lowest common denominator like you said in your earlier post. (Yet, even LCD can be done well, if you consider silly but sometimes imaginative shows like Mr. Bean.) The more special mind-blowing effects, the better--so long as the public doesn't realise how short of plot and character that extravagant piece of 1 trillion dollar rubbish is. And as long as it conforms to basic Republican propaganda BS. And Hollywood is doing its best to reduce America to an icon: blond, blue-eyed, slim, virtually indistinguishable looking....ever wonder why there are no longer real American actresses of QUALITY like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Katherine Hepburn (to name a few)?
Academically, grade inflation is rampant. If Americans relied on more serious testing like in Asian countries and the UK and not those dumb Mickey Mouse SATs and GREs, they wouldn't produce so many half-educated morons who can't locate small nations or add and subtract. Or lag behind so many countries in math and science at primary level education. Or unwilling to learn non-Western languages. There was a recent article in the Boston Globe and another in the Princetonian about 90% of students receiving Latin honors at elite universities: tell me, what sort of honor is that??? No wonder there are so many from so-called elite schools whose spelling is less accurate than that of a older generation highschool grad!
I have to admit I'm not very knowledgeable on rock, but what you said was interesting. As long as there is a patina of Western Europeanness, everything is hunky dory here. Just look at all the T-shirts and jeans with the Union Jack or the royal insignia emblazoned across them--and I'm talking about before Sept. 11 (so before the British pledged their support.) Can you imagine Americans manufacturing T-shirts w/ the rising sun, or any other Asian symbol? Or even Germany, Italy, and France? The 'cool' nations it seems, are anglo nations.
You're definitely right about embracing our Asianness. I've always wished that my primary school and highschool taught Asian literature and history. I think more Asian-Americans would have more of a sense of Asian pride if they could read Tale of a Gengi, Adventures of Monkey, Dream of the Red Chamber, I am a Cat, and many others alongside of Romeo and Juliet, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Crime and Punishment, etc.
P.S. If I've been laying stress on the UK, it's cos' I've lived there for 7 years...
Asian Dominatrix
Sunday, November 18, 2001 at 16:29:27 (PST)
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