Film, as a traditional and beloved media, has been influential on people's life. We spend time in the cinema to be entertained, touched, scared and experience romantic love story and exotic places. As one of the most famous film industry base in the world, Hollywood, produces and sell their movie products all over the world.
During the process of globalization, countries are about to understand others’ culture as well as to realize how one’s culture compares and contrasts with other. Media globalization stands for the process in which film companies deliver images of national cultures to the whole world. In fact, the process of globalization increased the number of global cinema audiences; their aesthetic is having a profound effect on the way that Hollywood films are being made. Traditionally Hollywood is unfair and pernicious in its portrayal of Asian, but things get changed. According to recent figures from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to almost 70% of the studio’s annual revenues from box office now come from international markets. Potential overseas customers nowadays determine the style, cast and characters image of a film.
However, historically reviewing the perception of Chinese in Hollywood movies, the stereotypical Chinese still have a great impact on the rest of the world to understand China.
This paper will examine 10 major Hollywood films, one per decade between 1924 and 2013; with determining how Chinese image has been portrayed and how their portrayals have changed over time. The research also includes 3 case studies; I will select three famous Chinese actors who had achieved success in Hollywood and with reviewing their careers to examine the nature of stereotypies, as well as the power bal...
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... Dir. Ewald André Dupont. British International Pictures. 1929. Film
The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Dir. Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures 1933, Film
Charlie Chan in the Secret Service Dir. Phil Rosen, Monogram Pictures 1944, Film
Battle beneath the Earth. Dir. Montgomery Tully, Reynolds-Vetter Productions Ltd. 1967, Film
Meng Long Guo Jiang. Dir. Bruce Lee, Concord Productions Inc., Golden Harvest Company 1972, Film
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. Dir. Piers Haggard, Richard Quine, Braun Entertainment Group, Playboy Enterprises 1980, Film
The Joy luck club. Dir. Wayne Wang, Hollywood Pictures, 1993, Film
Rush Hour 3. Dir. Brett Ratner, Metropolitan Films, New Line Cinema, 2003, Film
The Green Hornet Dir. Michel Gondry, Columbia Pictures, 2011, Film
Hollywood Chinese Dir. Arthur Dong, Center for Asian American Media, DeepFocus Productions Inc., 2007, Film
In his 1937 film Street Angel, Yuan explores the inequities facing Shanghai’s urban proletariat, an often-overlooked dimension of Chinese society. The popular imagination more readily envisions the agrarian systems that governed China before 1919 and after 1949, but capitalism thrived in Shanghai during that thirty-year buffer between feudalism and Communism. This flirtation with the free market engendered an urban working class, which faced tribulations and injustices that supplied Shanghai’s leftist filmmakers with ample subject matter. Restrained by Kuomintang censorship from directly attacking Chinese capitalism, Yuan employs melodrama to expose Street Angel’s bourgeois audience to the plight of the urban poor.
Walt Disney Co.’s China division and Marvel Studios chose to partner with Beijing-based DMG Entertainment as the latter maintains close working ties with the state-run China Film Group. By doing so, the producers were able to bypass China’s rigid foreign film quota system of 34 films a year. This quota will be increased to 44 films in the next few years and that is good news for aspiring filmmakers from Singapore who is considering a join venture with China. By partnering with a Chinese company, the Singapore producer will gain leverage in obtaining a spot in the quota, as state media will view the co-production as a domestic film as opposed to a 100% foreign film.
Made in Hong Kong (1997) is one of the independent films directed by the “grassroots director” Fruit Chan on low budget production. The cost of production was kept low by utilizing the leftover film reels and amateur actors such as Sam Lee Chan-Sam who has been awarded best New Artist in the 17th Annual Hong Kong Films Awards and nominated Best Actor in 35th Annual Golden Horse Awards. Made in Hong Kong is very much a vernacular film featuring the Hong Kong society and culture in 1997, particularly the social marginality and violence in juvenile delinquency . This paper will assess how the film expresses nation’s sentiments by portraying the livelihood of four teenagers, namely Autumn Moon, Ping, Ah Lung and Susan, and the Hong Kong social environment in 1997 during the transition of the Hong Kong Handover.
I gave several examples where Asian Americans were used to play very simple characters. These roles were defined by stereotypes that exist in America. I also researched instances on counter actions taken by Asian Americans to protest against these negative images. My research also has examples of Asians that have succeeded in breaking through the racial barriers in the media.
There are very few positive representations of Asian Americans in Hollywood films. Chan is Missing calls for more genuine representations of Asian American identities through its cast of complex characters and defiance of Asian stereotypes. The film also urges viewers to critically think about their own notions of identity through the use of several recurring themes and filmmaking techniques.
Though contemporary media continues to create stereotypical images they can be contested and renegotiated through alternative and independent sources. In Renee Tajima’s essay “Moving the Image: Asian American Independent Filmmaking 1970-1990” she posits that artists of color will not sit in the center or margin of media but instead “as the links of a new cultural matrix” (MTI, 32). While traditional media continues to be constrained by dominant hegemonic representat...
A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial
There have been a variety of themes in Asian American cinema history, both contemporaneously and in the past. The Mask of Fu Manchu played on the Yellow Peril theme, serving as propaganda to help western society view East Asians as the evil in the world. Better Luck Tomorrow used the model minority stereotype in a way that parodied it, making it ridiculousness enough that it helped to remove the constraints of various Asian American labels. Lastly, Chan is Missing helped to highlight the difference in the shifting nature of Hollywood films. Asian Americans used to be cast as the evil opposition in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but now Asian Americans have a voice in how they are portrayed in media as more and more begin to make movies. Different, diverse themes are abundant in the history of Asian American films.
Modernization in the 1980s paved the way for the Hong Kong New Wave, as the studio system set up in the 1950s was dismantled, the film industry experienced more freedom. Since decolonization was heavily present 75% of Hong Kong’s box office revenue were home grown movies, while the meager 15% was left for the foreign market. As one can see the political context of Ho...
Throughout the film ancient China’s profound history and glorious culture has displayed through various cultural elements. The martial arts, writing system, architecture all together gives an image of the Chinese culture. The developments and advanced techniques have shaped the country and stabilized the society. China has accomplished some of the greatest achievements of mankind. It had also made significant contribution to the development of advanced systems around the world. Chinese culture is very unique. All the elements presented in the film have truly strengthened my understanding of the Chinese
Since the first influx of Asian immigrants to the United States, Asian Americans were never treated as an integral part of the American population. Accounting for five percent of the US demographic, often times, they are still portrayed by provincial people as outsiders who do not belong in society. Over the years, this negative mentality has transformed into the way Asian Americans are viewed in media. Though there are many attempts of reversing the trend such as diversifying the cast members, stereotypical personalities such as “the human calculator” or “undesirable partner” are still utilized for writers to infuse racial slurs into comedy skits. However, in reality especially now that many Asian Americans are second generation, none of these stereotypes pertains to all them. As a result, directors and script writers have an ethical responsibility to best portray Asian Americans as human beings who can function normally without putting negative stereotypes as the primary focus of Asian characters’ personas.
There is a saying that Chinese actors use that helps us to understand the ...
While watching movies, have you ever noticed that the villains in almost every single Hollywood film are of Middle Eastern or European descent? In a reoccurring theme of Hollywood, the villains in these films are almost always foreigners or people of color. This is a stereotype. On the other side of the spectrum, we often see that the heroes of these films are most often than not white males. This is another stereotype. Within the last few years, we’ve seen actors such as Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, and Zoe Saldana take the lead roles, so it can’t be said that there are no non-white heroes, but there certainly isn’t many. Hollywood action movies, moreover than other genres, are typically loaded with an abundance of stereotypes. The way these movies are composed and structured can tell us a great deal about the views held within the American psyche and who holds the social power. The harsh reality is that the media ultimately sets the tone for societal standards, moralities, and images of our culture. Many consumers of media have never encountered some of the minorities or people of color shown on screen, so they subsequently depend on the media and wholeheartedly believe that the degrading stereotypes represented on the big screen are based on fact and not fiction. Mary Beltran said it best when she stated in her “Fast and Bilingual: Fast & Furious and the Latinization of Racelessness” article, “ultimately, Fast & Furious mobilizes notions of race in contradictory ways. It reinforces Hollywood traditions of white centrism, reinforcing notions of white male master while also dramatizing the figurative borders crossed daily by culturally competent global youth – both Latino and non-Latino” (77). This paper will specifically look...
To this day, the United States has been considered a nation that thrives off of globalization. While the U.S. may be a great influence to foreign nations, foreign nations also have a significant impact on the U.S. Take the world of Hollywood as an illustration. As mentioned by The Economist, the Hollywood industry has become immensely successful due to its acceptance of foreign talent and money. Award wining motion pictures have actually been remakes of foreign motion pictures. Such case is seen with the film “The Departed” which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2007. This given film was a remake of a Chinese film entitled, “Infernal Affairs.” Another great example is the motion picture “The Tourist” which thrived at the box office
Hollywood has also lobbied the US very effectively over decades to ensure cultural exports are classed as just another form of trade in international agreements, and to help it gain control over distribution networks abroad. From the view of entertainment, most of the people would admire and wish to step into Hollywood industry ad they think they would be famous after and increase their position world-wide. If they got a chance to participate in one of the Hollywood movie, they will get high pay and everyone knows them after. It provides people with hope and changes their life, it is one way of international connections without the nationality issue.