Some Movie-Related News: 'Extraordinary Measures,' 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'

February 4, 2010

 snowcrap.jpgSome news to pass along...
1. Another whitewashing case over in Hollywood. The movie Extraordinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford as a brilliant scientist, is based on real-life Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen and his research while at Duke University. Dr. Chen has been mentioned as a possible future Nobel Prize winner for his research, and now heads a research institute in Taiwan. Roger Ebert called out the movie's whitewashing in his recent review. Add this to the list of recent Hollywood movies that have whitewashed characters: from 21, to Avatar: Last Airbender, to remakes (more like near-copies) like The Departed.

2. Hugh Jackman is set to star in Hollywood's next White Knight-genre film. According to one movie site, "Set in 19th-century remote China, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan revolves around the lifelong friendship of Lily and Snow Flower and their imprisonment by rigid cultural codes of conduct for women." The film is based on the book by Lisa See and will be directed by Wayne Wang, a veteran of the White Knight genre after his pandering work The Joy Luck Club. The film is co-produced by Wendi Murdoch, who also acts in the film.

Based on the author's own description of the book, it depicts illiterate women, whose feet were bound, isolated in single-window rooms. It also features physically abusive husbands. I'm not surprised to see the author's page list what the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about her book: "With Snow Flower, See has written a novel that ranks with the best fiction of Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, the modern luminaries of Chinese storytelling." Entertainment Weekly wrote, "You can relish See's extraordinary fourth novel as a meticulously researched account of women's lives in 19th-century China, where it is 'better to have a dog than a daughter.' (And where the girls' feet are bound in a stomach-turning ritual that See describes with admirable precision and coolness)." Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston rave about the book as well on the author's page -- no surprise there.
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Color me not amused.
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When will there be a movie set in 19th-century Britain or America, about illiterate women who must wear suffocating and damaging corsets, who can be legally raped/beaten and are treated like property, who must give all their possessions and wealth to their husbands, who must obey marriage laws and a religion which specifically describes them as 2nd-class, who are blocked from education or work, and who are not considered citizens? There probably aren't enough self-righteous consumers in Asia, or elsewhere outside the United States, to create an art market for works like that, in a way that exists in the United States.
Here is what one blogger had to say about white privilege in film. This writer asks why movies like Avatar (and also District 9, Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, etc) must insist on using a white protagonist in order to be "relatable" to audiences. In these stories, the white protagonists side with foreigners and must save/lead the people against whatever aspect of Western civilization endangers them. The White Knight genre is related to this as well, and is an even worse case of white privilege, where a white protagonist character is needed to save oppressed (and more backwards) people from their own savage and uncivilized cultures. It becomes even more damaging when minority artists themselves help to create works that pander or support these existing white-privilege structures, consumer tastes, or ideologies, and give them credibility.
Color me not amused.
.
When will there be a movie set in 19th-century Britain or America, about illiterate women who must wear suffocating and damaging corsets, who can be legally raped/beaten and are treated like property, who must give all their possessions and wealth to their husbands, who must obey marriage laws and a religion which specifically describes them as 2nd-class, who are blocked from education or work, and who are not considered citizens? There probably aren't enough self-righteous consumers in Asia, or elsewhere outside the United States, to create an 'Asian Knight' art market for works like that, in a way that exists in the United States.
.
Here is what one blogger had to say about white privilege in film. This writer asks why movies like Avatar (and also District 9, Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, etc) must insist on using a white protagonist in order to be "relatable" to audiences. In these stories, the white protagonists side with foreigners and must save/lead the people against whatever aspect of Western civilization endangers them. The White Knight genre is related to this as well, and is an even worse case of white privilege, where a white protagonist character is needed to save oppressed (and more backwards) people from their own savage and uncivilized cultures. It becomes even more damaging when minority artists themselves help to create works that pander or support these existing white-privilege structures, consumer tastes, or ideologies, and give them credibility.

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Alvin Lin

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Alvin Lin was born in Taipei, Taiwan and hails from New England. He blogs about Asian American pop culture, film, music, literature and politics, as well as relevant news around the world. He also writes for Imprint Talk. Alvin has degrees from Cornell and MIT.

Comments

Comments

This is too depressing for so early in the morning.
you know what'll *really* make you spit out your coffee? (cover screen first) Snow Flower the BOOK (yes, I've read it; know thy enemy) has no white men in it. bad as it is (and it's a pile of steaming writing--my aesthetic as well as ideological assessment), all of the characters are Chinese. so we can all thank Wayne Wang *personally* for deciding that we need a white savior.
I am a fan of Ebert's reviews, and in this one, he handles the Harrison Ford/whitewashed replacement of Dr. Chen quite well. As for the Lisa See book, good lord. This is one of the major reasons why I just don't believe that major publishing houses in North America are the place where API authors will ever make the most meaningful impact for our communities. There's just way too much big money involved there, in which few editors will be willing to risk publishing a writer of color who isn't conforming to their expectations of what people of color are supposed to write about, and how we are to write about ourselves. My understanding is that someone like Nam Le (THE BOAT) is an important exception. We gotta stop seeing those lucrative book contracts with the major publishing houses as "successes" for our community.
[We gotta stop seeing those lucrative book contracts with the major publishing houses as "successes" for our community.] Completely agree. I am tired of various role models or "successes" touted by the AA community based on their mainstream commercial success. The vast majority of them were huge commercial successes, or popular, because they pandered their work to non-Asian and non-AA audiences. David Henry Hwang (M.Butterfly) said something similar in a recent NYC conference I was it... which was surprising to hear given his own success.
Written by self-hating director Wayne Wayne (Joy Luck club), produced by Wendi Murdock (Chinese gold digger who married Rupert Murdock (chairman of Fox News). It is like a match made in heaven. Two self-hating Chinese who worship white people make a movie about a white man saving Chinese women in the 19th century. Ignoring the fact that 19th-century China's ills were in large part due to Western imperialism and the result of an aggressive war by whites against China to push their opium. Man, I am starting to think this s--t is a conspiracy or something.
"David Henry Hwang (M.Butterfly) said something similar in a recent NYC conference I was it... which was surprising to hear given his own success." It's also surprising given the fact that Hwang himself has pandered and made Orientalist works such as Golden Gate, The Lost Empire, and M. Butterfly. I thank Frank Chin for keeping it real. Not many people are willing to keep it real.
Hollywood=American Goebbels. Leni Riefenstahl had nothing on American media spindoctors of today and their thinly disguised White Supremacist values. European-Americans are infinitely more manipulative and sophisticated in their racism--hidden as it is behind a mask of "diversity" and liberal pluralism.
Asa: I don't think Wayne Wang is "self hating", though that may appropriately apply to some other icons. I think he's either a willing tool in order to gain money/fame/etc, or unaware of the impact/role he has.. basically the same way I think of the guy who played Long Duk Dong. BigWOWO: I unfortunately saw Lost Empire once just to see how ridiculous it would be, and good lord. Still no idea how Bai Ling has a movie career. The Forbidden Kingdom movie was almost a near duplicate of that sorry movie too, with just more famous actors and a bigger budget. There is one thing I wanted to add that I should have clarified in the original post, and I apologize for the lack of clarity. My point about making a 19th-century Western film about women was more about white privilege and smugness, not about the non-existence of any such films. There are several Asian-made films which highlight the historical lives of women in Asia. There are also Western movies set in the past, which depict the lives of women. However, in these Western movies they are more as a historical back-drop to a love story or heart-warming story, which also includes many positive White male characters. The point is there aren't Asian or AA movies which specifically highlight the conditions of women in Western societies (with an Asian male savior), though there is enough material to do so, in a manner that Hollywood does about Asian cultures, and that it happens in Western art partly due to ingrained white privilege and self-righteousness that exists among consumers here.