'Memoirs of a small minded Dumb*rse'

A fine, sensible post.

In a very minor quibble, I take issue with "In a remarkable show of small mindedness, China's chat rooms and bulletin boards have..."

I would find it remarkable only if Chinese chat rooms were NOT small minded. To my eyes and ears, they are always caldrons of ignorance and jingoism.

Basicly, I had a choice between saying that people had closed minds, or that they were ignorant rascists. I chose the least inflamitory of the two.

Reading your descriptions of the attitudes towards Zhang's acting the role of a geisha was like stepping back into Victorian England, with the social/sexual roles so rigidly defined and puritan.

Do you think, in the long run, the controversy will destroy her film career? Is she in physical danger from extremists?

"Do you think, in the long run, the controversy will destroy her film career? Is she in physical danger from extremists?"

Personally, I don't think that this will damage her career in the long run.

Zhang is a great actress and a great asset to China. This controversy will jus get her even more exposure. I think that there are few Chinese directors who would refuse to cast her, and that most of the ones who would, wouldn't be making the kind of films that she would be in anyway.

Plus, she's broken into Hollywood already. This controversy has barely been noticed there, people just think that it's some silly fued and are quite ignorant of the seriousnes with which Chinese and Japanese take this issue. Even if she were exiled from China in disgrace by Beijing, she would still have a future in Hollywood.

I do notice however, two things

1) That some people are more upset about the fact that she did a sex scene or two with a Japanese, than anything else.

2) That these people are ignoring the fact that China has made about a million anti-Japanese movies or Chinese V Japanese martial arts movies with completely Chinese casts, meaning that thousends of Chinese have been playing Japanese for years.

Zhang is just one of the few Chinese to play a good Japanese.

Beijing doesn't any problem with Zhang Ziyi. She even won the government-sponsored Golden Rooster award last month.

The controversy in China has more to do with Zhang Ziyi's unpopularity in her home country than Chinese disdain for Japan. The other two MoAG costars Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh didn't get bashed. Cecilia Cheung recently did a sex scene with a Japanese actor, not many people cared.

Sorry for being off topic:

"Newspaper staff strike over reshuffle" http://paowang.com/cgi-bin/forum/viewpost.cgi?which=paowang&id=578326

I understand Zhang isn't being critisized by the sate, only by the people, who really should know better.

"The controversy in China has more to do with Zhang Ziyi's unpopularity in her home country than Chinese disdain for Japan."

Why, exactly, is she unpopular?

Michelle Yeoh isn't mainland Chinese, she's an ethnic Chinese Malaysia living in Hong Kong (AKA, she's a foreigner), and she did recive some critisism over this in Hong Kong.

Gong Li wasn't the films lead so she naturally wouldn't recieve so much critisism, and she wasn't shown doing a sex scene with Wanatabe Ken (the Japanese male lead actor).

Here in the United States, the movie is criticized not for the choices in casting, but because the movie itself sucks. Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is just a bad, bad, boring, pointless, uninteresting movie.

BDF

No offence, but when an America says that a film about another culture or country is a "bad, bad, boring, pointless, uninteresting movie", I tend to question whether what they actually mean is 'I didn't understand it', or 'it didn't have neough fight scenes in it'.

America tastes in films tend to be rather mono cultural.

Then again, it was written by an America and made by an American studio - for American audiences. So it might actually be, as you said, a rather rubish film.

"Why, exactly, is she unpopular?"

The common perception in China is Zhang's success come from not talnet but sheer luck, and some people, under the influence of HK/Mainland entertainment taboids, think she's some kind of 'attention whore'.

That sounds a touch like envy to me.

So wait. You were about to call people "ignorant racists" according to one of your earlier comments, and then you turn around and make sweeping, yet totally misinformed statements about Americans.

Just checking. Keep up the good work.

First of all, you have to QUOTE ME, I can't defend my comment if I don't know which one you are talking about.

Secondly, I have to speak in general terms a lot of the time. Don't blame me, there are exceptions to everything and I can't account for them all.

I take it that you are talking about the 'American's not understanding foreign films' comment above (even though Geisha was about a foreign culture, but was made by Americans. Well .....

It is a fact, not just for America, but for the entire world, that people often don't like imported movies or movies about forieng countries because they don't understand them or because they stray from whatever the national preferance in that country is.

American's tend to like fast-moving, loud, and in your face productions. Which Geisha wasn't. If saying this is rascist, then I am a rascist. I firmly believe that Americans like different kinds of movies from other foriegners, and they don't like movies about topics that do not interest them or which are about cultures which are alien to them.

However, I don't think that I'm a rascist, I was just pointing aout the inate differences between tastes in different countires.

For example, I could show the greatest Chinese or British costume drama in the world to your average American (Canadian, Mexican, Spanish, Russia, or even icelandic) audience, their first comment is likely to be that it is boring and pointless. Yet their native audiences will love it.

This doens't mean that the drama was bad, or that the audience was stupid, only that they didn't like it because A) they didn't understand the cultural perspective, and B) because it didn't meet up to their criteria for a good film.

I hold US DVD sales and box office seat up as my evidence. Most films in the US are domestic films about domestic interests. There are very few international films on screen in the US. Even Spanish films are comparibly rare, and a huge section of the US populaiton is decended from Spanish cultures.

I can take just about any American comedy or drama and I will describe it as being boring and pointless because my country has a very different idea about comedy and drama, specifically, we like a lot more depth to it, and a lot less bravado, and I'm pretty sure that you would accuse me of not liking it because I didn't understand it, or because it was different from those produced in my country.