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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, 06:07:32 PM)
While Chow is still stuck playing roles like buddhist monks and kung-fu masters. Does this man have no pride?
he plays these roles in hong kong movies too, you know. he's not from the united states and probably is not that familiar with our daily struggle with racism.
anyhow, he didn't play either a monk or a kungfu master in the corrupter, anna and the king, or the replacement killers--in nearly half of his hollywood films.
also, it's a big deal for h.k. actors to break into hollywood. it's kinda like their dream. whether you believe it's a dream worth pursuing is a different question.
CYF has been around for a long time and has proved his ability to be an actor.
and, just in case you didn't know, he doesn't fake his accent. he's trying very hard to speak 'flawless' English, and the fact that he is unable to meet your expectations does not mean that he is deliberately trying to perpetuate any negative stereotype of Asian Americans.
penelope
Monday, May 13, 2002 at 12:08:37 (PDT)
"Bulletproof Monk??? The title alone already tells this is gonna be one dumb movie. Was never a CYF fan to begin with anyway."
You can say that again. Chow will
make us all pray for the days of Charlie Chan and white actors in yellowface.
Shit, at least back then Charlie Chan played a non-stereotypical role(police detective)and his sidekick son spoke flawless English.
While Chow is still stuck playing roles
like buddhist monks and kung-fu masters. Does this man have no pride?
It's not like someone is pointing a gun to his head to play these roles. And its not like he's hard-up on money cause he's already filthy rich.
What a dumbass.
abbercrapper
Sunday, May 12, 2002 at 20:53:16 (PDT)
Why is it that the world's top action star has gone MIA? I haven't seen a movie with Chow since Crouching Tiger and that was almost two years ago!?
It wouldn't make sense for Hollywood to bring him over, then just forget about him. Would it? But then again Chow does make guys like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt look like unsophisticated clods. And he makes Jackie Chan look like a goofball. Maybe turning Chow into a ghost is a way of protecting Hollywood's investment in all its leading men.
Or maybe Chow has learned his lesson has broken out of Hollywood and gone back to his roots. I heard he's working on a Hong Kong project that's coming out at the end of the year.
Movie Maniac
Sunday, May 12, 2002 at 13:37:26 (PST)
who wrote this article? it's just a bad reading of chow and some of his movies. the corruptor, for instance, was one of the more progressive hollywood films. the film asks the audience: who really is the corruptor? chow? chinese culture? white american racism? chow becomes corrupt for no reason? watch the film again - there' s a poignant scene where he talks about why he became a corrupt cop: RACISM in the police department, his father's gambling problems, the power of the tongs, and so forth. and of course, his white partner, wallace, ends up mirrorring chow as he faces similar problems.
corruptor is a very complex film that offers a subtle and nuanced analysis of race and racism. it even suggests that chinatown corruption has more to do with neoliberal capitalism than chinese culture. watch the film carefully.
aaaa
Friday, March 29, 2002 at 12:21:00 (PST)
[You've been taking too many lit courses. --Ed]
I Love Chow Yun Fat. I would like to see him succeed in America. However if it means taking on roles that perpetuate stereotypes of Asian males...Hollywoods version of the Asian male...I say Chow Yun Fat should NOT pursue a Hollywood career.
His less than spectacualr American films followed by his critically acclaimed Pan-Chinese film (CTHD) PROVES that hes better off WITHOUT HOLLYWOOD. When CTHD got those 10-plus Academy Award nominations, NOT ONE of them was for Chow Yun Fat (Best Male in a Lead Role)
Those ppl who are "in-the-know" and seen him perform in ABT I & II, The Killer, Hard-Boiled, God of Gamblers... KNOW just how talented an actor he is... even if Hollyood screenwriters/producers are narrow-minded & cant see passed their own self-deluted grandor.
Yoyogi
Wednesday, March 27, 2002 at 21:25:51 (PST)
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