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
...e the Gambler part 1, Directed by Fritz Lang 1922, Youtube Video, 2:02 , Accessed May, 14, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqglLUaOUvc
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.
Yang, Gene Luen, and Lark Pien. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006. Print.
McCrisken, T. B., & Pepper, A. (2005). American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
The “lotus blossom” stereotype is an Asian American female stereotype that portrays them as feminine, submissive, and desirable romantic interests for the white male protagonist (Tajima 309). Although the stereotype is the production of films fetishizing the “traditional Orient” culture, the stere...
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.
The number of Asian American communities is growing in the U.S. population, however, these groups of people are often marginalized and misrepresented in mainstream media. In today’s mainstream media, there is a visible lack of Asian American representation on film. Asian actors, when given roles in film and television, are rarely cast for central roles and form about only 3% of prime-time characters (Ramasubramanian, 2011). Not only is the number for casting Asian and Asian Americans low, the roles of these characters are often portrayed in the stereotypical ideology which has been present for decades. But why are Asians portrayed the way they are? Why has Hollywood maintained its representational practices when it comes to the portraying Asians? Why do these portrayals persist in the presence of a growing Asian population and racial diversity? What is the significance of the Asian American segment for Hollywood? To what extent does the consideration of the Asian American market influence the way Hollywood portray Asians? These are the questions that surface when watching films, and in the lens of an Asian American, many Asians and Asian American do not fit the mold created by Hollywood. First, I will introduce the range of common film representation of Asians. This literature review will focus on the negative and positive light of Asian representation , the structure of Hollywood film industry and its effect on representing Asian race, the social acceptance of Asian stereotypes, and Asian American’s social identity theories.
Hollywood has for over twenty-eight years created and supplied products associated with movies to all main film studios, leisure and entertainment industries. The most revered clients recognized in the entire world include Disney, Paramount, Colombia, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and Universal among others. For this basis, the greater part of the actors all over the world wants to labor and make a living in Hollywood. The exceptional and distinctive characters have their own customs, beliefs and cultures which aid them to pursue fame and fortune in this Dream Factory. Every talented person desires this American dream. There are numerous prospects that make life better and in Hollywood, t...
The quest for identity quickly finds its place in the construction of the notion of ‘Hong Kong-ness’ in films. The local cinema has remained as a powerful cultural institution, both reflecting and intervening in the discourses of alterities and selfhood. It is therefore not surprising that in local films, the cinematic representations of Hong Kong have been seen as inextricably interwoven with the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland, and Hong Kong itself. Since its inception in the 1910s, the Hong Kong film industry has enjoyed much independence from colonial control, yet simultaneously much association with Western culture. Many films openly deal with the theme of ‘East meets West’ in which ‘Hong Kongese’ identity is often expressed in "transnational settings" against the existence of a Western Other, in particular through the portrayal of Westerners visiting Asia, and vice versa. After the handover, "Hong Kong" as a geopolitical en...
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...
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
The film Hero depicts one of the most culturally rich and diverse country, China. China is one of the largest countries in the world with the long profound history. It is also the most diverse country in terms of language, religion, rituals, traditions, and beliefs. The film Hero has an unusual movie theme, it repeats similar events through flashbacks and with different outcomes. The tale is about the nameless warrior and the triumph of Qin’s idea of unifying China. The king invites the warrior to honor him for defeating his three most dangerous enemies, who are often proclaimed as the unbeatable warriors. The film is a cultural description of Chinese traditions. It has expanded my understanding of Chinese culture by portraying the spectacular
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.