JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies
Pacific Crossings: Remaking Bodies and Cultures Through Film
Jane Chi Hyun Park
University of Sydney Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jchihyunpark
Keywords Diaspora Transnationalism Crossover Orientalism Hallyu Cultural Translation Hollywood Australian Film Masculinity
Abstract
This paper draws on scholarship from Inter-Asia and Asian diasporic cultural studies to look at two recent attempts by East Asian performers to appeal to Western audiences on the big screen, reading their crossover attempts as embodied forms of cultural and aesthetic translation. The first considers the ‘success’ of an Australian film, Mao’s Last Dancer, based on the life of a male Chinese diasporic ballet dancer, and the second, the ‘failure’ of two Hollywood films, Blood: The Last Vampire and Ninja Assassin which star Korean actors, Jeon Ji-hyun (Gianna Jun) and Jung Ji-hoon (Rain), Focusing on the ways in which these stars were produced and consumed transnationally, the paper questions the cultural, institutional and generic terms through which western films showcasing non- western bodies and themes are deemed to fail or succeed. It argues, ultimately, that a close examination of how certain narratives, genres, stars and performances are (mis)translated across different cultures demonstrates the continued existence of cultural and national differences in a supposedly swiftly globalizing world.
Contributor Note
Jane Chi Hyun Park is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney and has published widely on the social uses of media technologies, the cultural impact of minority representations, and transnational flows of popular film, music, and television, with a particular focus on East Asia and Asian America. Her most recent book is Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), which looks at the ways in which East Asian bodies and cultures get articulated through and as technology on the big screen.
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Introduction and identification of viewers with the radical difference that these sub- In Yellow Future: Oriental Style in cultures signified. These two modes of Hollywood Cinema, I examined the representation occasionally merged as ways in which Hollywood films since in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden the 1980s, have imagined the Dragon (2000), the action films of dystopian near future, focusing on the Robert Rodriguez and the ghetto- role of Asian images and iconography centric cycle of Black youth films in the backdrop of popular genre films directed by Allen and Albert Hughes in such as Blade Runner (Scott 1982), the 1990s. Rush Hour (Ratner 1998), The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers 1998) and Along with other minority groups, Asian Batman Begins (Nolan 2005). I Americans since this period have attempted to show how this pattern of become more visible in US media referencing East Asia as fantastic culture. The number of Asian bodies in spectacle and mise-en-scène – a front of and behind the camera has pattern I coined ‘oriental style’ – increased, and oriental style continues contributes to the process of racialising to be showcased in everything from Asians in the US (‘oriental’) even as it requisite martial arts action sequences sells this racial difference as an to remade versions of the futuristic aesthetic product with wide appeal due Blade Runner city in recent films such precisely to its lack of depth, as Looper (Johnston 2012), Total Recall subjectivity, and history (‘style’) (Park (Wiseman 2012), Cloud Atlas (Twyker 2010: vii-xii). 2012) and many others. These developments would seem to indicate During the three decades the book that the once abject and undesirable surveyed, explicitly stereotypical ‘Oriental Other’ has been made over depictions of racial and ethnic into ‘Cool Asia’ – an object of attraction minorities from previous eras gave way and even emulation in the US as well broadly to two alternate modes of as other places around the world representation in US cinema. The first where American popular culture is appeared in realist narratives that routinely consumed. showcased the lives and experiences of minorities, usually in emotionally Yet, as I discussed in the book, many of deep and complex ways that the new, seemingly celebratory images humanised the characters. Written and of East Asia in Hollywood replicate the directed by members of the minority uniquely Orientalist forms of racism group, examples of such films that that have structured previous successfully crossed over into the representations. For example, an Asian mainstream include The Joy Luck Club actor’s top billing does not ensure that (Wang 1993), Boyz n the Hood the film in which she or he appears will (Singleton 1991), Smoke Signals (Eyre not utilise one-dimensional stere- 1998), and Real Women Have Curves otypes. Indeed such stereotypes often (Cardosa 2003). The second mode continue to be played to the hilt for continued to portray non-white people, spectacular or humorous effects, such places and cultures from dominant as in the character of Mr. Chow in the Anglo-American perspectives but in Hangover films (Philips 2009; 2011; ways that highlighted the fascination 2013), a comic caricature of Fu 1
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Manchu updated for the twenty-first Pacific region, tracing the effects of century. Performed with an ironic, different countries’ cultural contact postmodern wink in a supposedly with Western and neighbouring nations post-racial and post-feminist era, such through war, diplomacy, education and effects not only detach cultural trade (Chen and Chua 2007). These signifiers of race, gender, and sexuality forms of contact are linked to the from their historical contexts but also colonial history of countries such as elide their legacy in the unequal India, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, relations of power underlying express- Taiwan and Korea and the ‘colonisation ions of present-day racism, sexism, of consciousness’ (Comaroff and classism and homophobia. Comaroff 1989) that characterises the relationship to Western modernity in Since the publication of Yellow Future, these formerly colonised nations and my work has turned to look at the others such as China, Japan, and creative ways that Asian and Asian Thailand which were only ‘semi- diasporic films, actors, and directors colonised’. For instance, in many of have performed, negotiated and these countries, the aspirational attempted to resist oriental style. In the connotations of the American Dream process, I have found myself being have been internalised and drawn more and more to ways that we commodified, coming to signify local, can defamiliarise and decentre the national and regional tastes and West. The idea of a monolithic ‘West’ is identities as much as ‘American’ ones just as dangerous but far less critically (Chua 2000; Wang 2012). examined than its necessary counterpoint, the Orientalist notion of a The different forms of cultural homogenous ‘East’. This impulse also translation that were used to make arose, in part, from my move to sense of, justify and resist these Australia where I had to adapt to a new encounters with the West engendered culture, institution and discipline. new ways of seeing and imagining Through the questions and challenges one’s place in the world for coloniser that arose in attempts to translate my and colonised alike. We can see these work to colleagues and students, I cosmopolitan perspectives reiterated – became aware of my own privileged always with a twist – in the highly and limited position as a scholar who paradoxical forms of mixed modernity had been trained to see race and lived and constantly created in many analyse the problem of racism in contemporary non-western nations. specifically American ways. In her reading of Walter Benjamin’s As Kuan-Hsing Chen suggests in Asia essay, ‘The Task of the Translator’, Rey as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Chow used the metaphor of transport one way to decentre the West is by to emphasise the movement that looking at ongoing processes of underlies and enables any act of decolonisation around the world (Chen translation – from one language, 2010). Chen, Chua Beng-Huat, culture or medium to another – and Meaghan Morris, Soyoung Kim, Koichi the ways in which the original text, Iwabuchi and others in the Inter-Asia doubled through this movement, is Cultural Studies group have examined thus transformed and its authenticity how this process plays out in the Asia questioned (Chow 1995: 248-254). 2
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According to Homi Bhabha, ‘colonial geographically closer to and mimicry’ is subversive and generative economically dependent on East Asia, precisely for this reason – because it is especially China. Yet despite its a deliberate mistranslation of the economic ties to this region, Australia coloniser’s words that occurs in and aligns itself, culturally and politically, with through their repetition by the the US and the UK. This emotional colonised which produces ‘a subject of disconnect, or ‘distant proximity’ that Ang difference that is almost the same, but suggests (white) Australians feel toward not quite’ (Bhabha 1994: 86). Yet as Asia, for which China often serves as a Paul Bowman shows in his work on the metonym, seems to be echoed in the mediated dissemination of mixed disproportionately low number of martial arts and the continued trans- narratives about people of Asian descent national appeal of Chinese American in Australian media. I would add here martial arts star, Bruce Lee, that even more significant than the postcolonial binaries of coloniser/ number of Asian representations (which colonised, East/West and core/ to some extent, reflects the international periphery are also challenged when marginalisation of the Australian popular culture is transported and entertainment industry) are the generally translated through different media, to clichéd nature of these depictions – in different audiences, around the globe which Asians as tourists, migrants, (Bowman 2013: 100-124). international students or traveling chefs – appear either in the background of Drawing on these ideas, this paper stories about white Australians or peddle focuses on two recent attempts by their exotic cultures to liberal white Asian performers to appeal to Western audiences. audiences on the big screen as embodied forms of cultural and Given this, the commercial and critical aesthetic translation. The first con- success in 2009 of Mao’s Last Dancer, a siders the ‘success’ of an Australian biopic based on the memoirs of former film, Mao’s Last Dancer, based on the ballet dancer and Chinese-Australian Li life of a male Chinese diasporic ballet Cunxin, seems, at first glance, quite dancer, and the second, the ‘failure’ of remarkable. The picture, directed by two Korean stars performing oriental Bruce Beresford, made $15 million at style in Hollywood. the box office to become the top grossing domestic film of the year, followed closely by Baz Luhrman’s Australia. Centring on a Chinese inter- national student who politically defects Mao’s Last Dancer to the US in the 1980s, the film is Ien Ang has described the often directed, adapted and choreographed by contradictory, always strategic position Australians; shot in China, Australia and that Australia has occupied with respect the US; and performed by a to the East/West binary as ‘sometimes multinational cast for a global audience. already part of Asia; at other times … As such it presents itself as an not at all’, a position that she predicts interesting case study for thinking about ‘may well be the fate of many Western the relationship between China and societies in years to come’ (Ang 2010: Australia as mediated through the US, 128). On the one hand, Australia is and in particular, through the 3
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transnational movements of the figure of giving him considerable creative control. Li Cunxin, Chinese-American-Australian Mao’s Last Dancer premiered at the dancer turned stockbroker and Toronto Film Festival in September 2009 motivational speaker. and was released in Australia the following month. A year later, the film, distributed through Samuel Goldwyn Backgrounds Films was released on a limited number of screens in the US, made $4.8 million Li’s memoirs trace his multiple journeys there, and received mixed reviews. from a poor childhood in Shandong to a rigorous education at Madam Mao’s Dance Academy in Beijing to an Art, Freedom and Authenticity internship at the Houston Ballet as the first international student from Mainland Mike Walsh describes the off-screen China. His marriage to American dancer position of Australia in the film as a kind Elizabeth MacKey and subsequent of mediating Third Space. He writes, defection from the People’s Republic of ‘Australia is the unseen end point in the China in the early 1980s comprise the narrative, the place of calm outside the climax of the book. After battling action, the place from which reflection is depression and divorce, Li becomes an now possible. It is also a point from internally acclaimed ballet dancer and which both the US and China can be marries another white woman, Australian criticized with varying degrees of severity. dancer Mary McKendry, at which point China, of course, gets the worst of it’ the memoirs end. (Walsh 2009: 162). Walsh points to the grainy ‘dull green’ filter that permeates Li and his family moved to Melbourne in scenes of Li’s childhood as well as the mid-nineties where he danced with constant references to the lack of the Australian Ballet for a few years creativity and individuality in China due before retiring to take up a second to its totalitarian, communist govern- career as a stockbroker for Bell Potter ment. In contrast America is painted in Securities. In 2003, he published his broad strokes as a place of excessive autobiography, which won several consumerism and political freedom national awards and went on to became where Li’s artistic abilities flourish and an international bestseller. his subjectivity subsequently emerges.
Li’s success as an author led to his side In order to appeal to both domestic and career as a motivational speaker (of international audiences, the film needed which more later) and brought producer to sell the character as an exceptional Jane Scott and writer Jan Sardi to his Chinese immigrant who achieves door in 2007, asking for the option rights success in America and by extension, to adapt Mao’s Last Dancer into a film. becomes modern and Western. It does Beresford was signed on to direct, and this by interweaving Li’s past as a poor after six months of negotiation, shooting peasant child and one of Madame Mao’s began in China, followed by Australia and dancers with his present as a fish out of the US. While the Australian Film a water in the Houston of the 1980s, Commission partly financed the $25 slowly being deprogrammed of his million budget, Li and his contacts in the communist brainwashing. The film private sector raised most of the money, moves in between different temporal, 4
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geographical and mental spaces to personal individualism. This individualism delineate Li’s own ‘Great Leap’ from the gives him equal status with the white economically and culturally impover- characters and superior status over ished collective darkness of Maoist China Asian ones, who serve as plot devices in to the singular light of artistic and his back story or as symbols of a political freedom in America. demonised Chinese Communist collectivism that stifles the freedom that Even viewers, who were critical of the he – and the film – associate with film’s representation of Maoist China, American capitalist individualism. It is accepted and celebrated the trope of worth noting here that Li’s narrative dance as a universal communicator of subjectivity and sex appeal is heavily the values of desire, hard work and dependent on his job performance, success. This is in keeping with the namely his artistic and athletic skills. general message of the film. Artistic and political freedom are implicitly linked in The same masculine individualism that the tagline of the movie – ‘Before you leads Li to professional success also can fly, you need to be free’ – and leads to the demise of his relationship reiterated throughout. Li’s character with Liz whose own dream of becoming changes as he plays characters from an a successful dancer never comes true. In iconic Maoist worker to a Spanish hero this sense the film elides the fact that to a Modernist concept. He becomes Li’s freedom is based on Liz’s sacrifice more confident and self-assertive, a for him to stay in the US. Similarly, Li’s process paralleled in his courtship with memoirs are dominated by memories of Liz where, after a shy beginning, he is the his hardworking, peasant mother whom one who takes the lead, sexually and he must leave in order to succeed. China otherwise. trains him technically, America teaches him to dream and Australia becomes the Liz’s initial attraction to Li is his in-between home where he realizes that exceptional dancing, which not only dream. masculinises him in her eyes but also racialises him through its association Li marries an Australian professional with martial arts. On their first date, a woman, an expatriate like himself. Mao’s scene from a Kung Fu movie with an Last Dancer ends in a three quarter angry hero on a motorcycle cuts out to a profile freeze frame of Mary and Li two-shot of the couple watching the dancing for the villagers in his Chinese movie in a theatre in Chinatown. Later hometown, balletically gesturing off- we see Liz visibly falling in love with Li as screen as red flags fill the backdrop, she watches his performance on TV. All metaphorically reconciling Li’s two of his dance sequences are shot like homes and identities. In this final scene, action scenes in sports or martial arts the narrative of freedom as specific to films, with heavy use of slow and sped the US is rendered obsolete. up motion to denote his strength, agility and physical power. Much like the tumultuous first love he experiences with Liz, the American In this film, Li embodies the hybrid, Dream represents an adolescent phase westernised masculinity of the martial in Li’s development as a liberated artist artist by transcending national, racial and and capitalist. To develop fully as a ‘free’ sexual boundaries through his profess- artist, Li must be able to translate and ional exceptionalism, which is linked to transfer that dream outside the US and 5
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indeed, anywhere in the world that his The same fluidity that marks Li’s cultural capital can take him. Off-screen performances on and off stage also then, the far past of Chinese ‘back- characterises Mao’s Last Dancer wardness’ and the near past of American generically. It can be, and has been achievement slips into the continuous described as a ballet film, a chick flick, a present of Li as consummate performer, family-friendly film and a heart-warming an adopter and adapter of different roles. melodrama. In other words, the film passes in much the same way Li does. In doing so, it upholds the liberal humanist Performance, Entrepreneurship and fantasy that underneath radically differ- Inauthenticity ent political systems, cultures and histories, we all think, feel and want the In an Australian advertisement for Li’s same thing, namely, professional and services as a motivational speaker, his personal ‘success’. effectiveness in instilling productive values among members of civic and corporate organisations – values such as Hallyu Crossover having a strong work ethic and being goal-oriented – is built on the authen- I want now to switch gears and contrast ticity of his experience as someone who the successful performance of oriental has gone from the extreme rags of style in Mao’s Last Dancer for Australian Maoist China to the riches of the US. audiences to the commercial and critical Particularly appealing here is his failure of two Asian-themed Hollywood simultaneous universality and singularity, films the same year: Ninja Assassin as the ‘last’ representative of a bygone (McTeigue 2009) starring Rain (Jung Ji- era, and the nostalgia this evokes on the hoon) and Blood: The Last Vampire part of Western and Chinese audiences. (Nahon 2009) starring Gianna Jun (Jeon Ji-hyun). In particular, I want to consider Yet I want to argue that what makes Li how the execution of the lead fantasy Cunxin so fascinating for audiences is his roles in these films by South Korean inauthenticity – his ability to perform actors reproduce techno-oriental themes seamlessly so many different kinds of and tropes yet in their inability to appeal identities and roles, professionally and to critics on both sides of the Pacific, ideologically, depending on his audience. also point to the limitations of this This frees viewers from feeling the need postmodern mode of depicting East to identify with him as a Chinese man, Asian difference. and instead allows them to align themselves with the (mostly Anglo-) There has been a plethora of scholarship American characters that admire him. in recent years on hallyu, or the Korean Indeed, the focus on Li’s disciplinary Wave, which refers to mostly mediated training of his body and his dance Korean cultural products such as TV performances may free them from the dramas, films and Kpop that have need to align themselves with any become increasingly popular outside characters at all, and instead, simply South Korea (hereafter, Korea) since the enjoy the spectacle of the choreography mid-nineties. However, most of this work – which many critics hailed as the has focused on the circulation of these centrepiece of the film. products within the region with less emphasis on their transnational and 6
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diasporic relationship with the ‘West’ – as imitative sellouts (Garofolo 1993: 232- whether this is North America, Europe, or 240; Nexica 1997: 65-67). Australasia. The brief reading that follows of Jun and Jeon’s crossover attempts A similar pattern occurs in the centres on this relationship to consider positioning of ethnic others in the film the impact of the rising visibility of industry. Non-white and non-western Korean popular culture in the United identities, communities and cultures States. remain under-represented, and people of colour usually are relegated to In contrast to the ways in which US stereotypical roles in front of the camera. remakes of Asian films are often While this pattern has been changing for denigrated as ‘deracinated’ copies of the Asian Americans in television since the original (Xu 2005; Lim 2009: 243-244), mid-nineties, film has lagged behind in the bodies of Korean stars that have colour-blind casting. As Korean Canadian begun to appear in US popular culture actress, Sandra Oh, notes, ‘I’ve always felt are read a bit differently, since they a heavy glass ceiling in my film career involve another kind of cultural and because it just did not move for years. If aesthetic passing or crossover. The Grey’s Anatomy were a film, they racialised bodies of these actors cannot probably wouldn’t have cast me’ (Onstad be as easily erased as the cultural ‘odor’ 2007). of Korean narratives (Iwabuchi 2002: 28). For the most part, Korean and Asian actors and musicians who have actively Rebellious Ninjas and Vampires tried to woo the American market have been criticized as inferior imitations of In a 2006 interview with Chosun Ilbo, their Western counterparts. These stars Korean American actress, Yun-jin Kim, and their performances are often felt to revealed that when she moved to LA, she be aesthetically and affectively jarring not intentionally made appointments in only because they are out of place but Korea, telling her US agent that she was also anachronistic, or out of time. busy and only available on certain dates so as not to seem desperate to be cast. The term ‘crossover’ first emerged in the The strategy worked. When Kim music industry to describe the auditioned for the female lead in the movement of a singer or group from a soon to be hit TV show Lost, its producer marginal, often ‘ethnic’ genre such as J. J. Abrams, showed interest in her R&B and soul to a mainstream one such successful career abroad, and created a as pop or rock. In the process of specifically Korean role for her and later, crossing over, a non-white artist sheds Daniel Dae Kim to play her husband. his or her racialised cultural difference in Now known in the US as the ‘Julia order to be accepted in the dominant Roberts of Korea’, Kim starred in the culture. As Irene Nexica and Reebee Korean blockbuster Shiri in 1999 which Garofolo point out, white artists never sparked the so-called New Korean need to cross over and can easily Cinema and several other Korean films appropriate non-western musical styles and TV dramas before landing her whereas the same is not true for non- pioneering role on Lost. She links the white artists who are instead seen either current interest in Korean actors to the as naturally gifted in their own musics or market potential of hallyu in the following way: ‘When casting Asian actors 7
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in the US, casting directors look not only Blood was directed by French filmmaker, at Asian actors in the US, but to actors in Chris Nahon, co-produced by Pathe and all Asian countries. Because the Asian Edko, filmed in China and Argentina, market is huge, American producers written by Chinese American, Chris tend to choose those who are popular in Chow, and choreographed by Corey Asia’ (‘Kim Yun-jin’). Yuen. Saya (Gianna Jun) is an ancient vampire and demon-killer raised by Kato Jina Kim critiques the current popularity (Yasuaki Kurata) after her human father of hallyu in the US, urging further is murdered by the demon Onigen investigation into ‘how Hollywood and (Koyuki). Disguised as a high school teen, the US continue to instill dependence on she is sent to root out demons on an the part of Korea’ as evidenced in the American Air Force base in Japan during widespread notion that for hallyu stars to the 1970s. Saya becomes friends with succeed, they must break into the US another student, the General’s daughter, market as Yun-jin Kim has (Kim 2010: Alice (Allison Miller), also an outsider. 167). In a footnote, she mentions the Eventually she gets revenge on her recent efforts of Jung Ji-hoon (Rain) and father’s killer, who unsurprisingly, turns Jeon Ji-hyun (Gianna) to do precisely out to be her mother. Produced for $30 this, noting that ‘what is interesting and million, the film grossed only $8 million troubling about these ventures into around the world with highest box office Hollywood films is that all these Korean earnings in France. actors and entertainers were cast as fantasy figures’ (167). Before engaging These films exhibit familiar techno- with Kim’s observation, let me give some oriental tropes such as fantastic background on the Hollywood films in characters from anime and ninja films which Rain and Gianna starred. and heavily digitised East Asian martial arts choreography. Such tropes cons- Ninja Assassin was directed by Australian ciously draw on the violent aesthetics of James McTeigue and produced by the industry-constructed genre of ‘Asia Warner Bros., and Lana and Andy Extreme’, which lumps together East and Wachowski. Raizo (Rain) is an orphan Southeast Asian live-action, thriller and adopted by an evil Japanese ninja, horror films for a primarily adolescent Ozunu (Sho Kosugi) into his multi-ethnic Anglo male audience in the US and UK clan, one of nine Ninja Clans that have (Shin 2008) and its Hollywood cousin, the been hired assassins since ancient ‘hip hop kung fu’ genre, a term coined by times. Trained to be a merciless killer, producer Joel Silver to describe films like Raizo leaves the clan after Ozunu kills his The Matrix, Romeo Must Die and others girlfriend and hides out in Berlin where that meld high concept martial arts he is discovered eventually by his rival sequences with Black hip hop style (Park: and adopted brother Takeshi (Rick Yune). 143). Takeshi attempts to kill Mika, an Interpol agent played by Black British actress, Along with being fantasy characters, Naomie Harris, who has been targeted Raizo and Saya share a number of by the clan for discovering its secrets. common traits. Both are orphans The film ends with Rain killing Takeshi rebelling against adopted parents who and his sadistic father. Made for $50 are ontologically evil. Both lack family million, it failed to recoup its production and community, live between two worlds costs, grossing $38 million. and work for international military
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organizations (Interpol and The Council) remember the lines, but to headed by Americans. Indeed we could express my character’s emotions read Raizo and Saya’s rebellion against while speaking in another their Japanese parents – and their language. (Zeeneshri 2009, emph- collusion with the US military – as loose asis added) allegories for Korea’s ambivalent relationship to its histories of Japanese Note her emphasis on the challenge of colonisation and US military occupation. learning to emote in another language. Byung-hun Lee, the most successful Extending that reading would be the Korean crossover actor to date with his dependent role that the stars play with continuing role as Storm Shadow in the respect to American side characters. G.I Joe films (Sommers 2009, 2013), Both Rain and Gianna perform the role expresses the same frustration, of what Cynthia Sau-ling Wong has called describing how acting in another ‘caregivers of color’ to female American language involves cultural as well as sidekicks who need constant rescuing linguistic translation: and with whom the audience is supposed to identify (Wong 1994: 70). I’d memorize each and every line Mika (whose name sounds vaguely perfectly before going to the shoot. Japanese) plays Aliyah to Rain’s Jet Li in But I’d just forget every line – a CGI ninja version of Romeo Must Die literally every single line – when I (Bartkowiak 2000) while Alice uncon- was told that I’d pronounced one vincingly plays whiny best friend to a word wrong while acting. Having to stoic Saya. Finally, both stars changed think that I somehow have to fix my their names for American audiences – Bi pronunciation for that one would to Rain, Jeon Jihyun to Gianna Jun – just make me totally lost at the set. diligently studied English and trained There’s a huge difference between hard physically for their roles. Indeed the making conversation in a foreign Korean papers consistently stressed their language and acting in a foreign strong Confucian work ethic as evidence language. I feel the most of their determination to succeed on the comfortable when I perform for world stage and make the nation proud. pieces that are based on Korean culture. So I can’t help but feel that One major challenge for the Korean I could’ve done better if this were a actors was learning to speak English to Korean movie. (Lee 2012) play their roles. Gianna Jun described the challenges of learning and acting in The irony, of course, is that Jun and Lee English in the following way: needed to perfect their American- accented English in order to portray Communicating in English created authentically Japanese fantasy mental stress. The action stunts characters for American (read: that I had to do put pressure on international) audiences. my body. Both were rather difficult for me. … It was not easy at all Rain and Gianna’s hard work did not pay trying to express my feelings in off. Most critics panned both films for English during the shooting so I being stylistically derivative, narratively had to train very hard to speak incoherent, and lacking compelling the language. The hardest part dialogue and character development. was not so much having to Peter Bradshaw’s review of Ninja 9
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Assassin in The Guardian is represent- audiences as well as US and Western ative. He writes: ‘Hardcore action and ones. Consider the following two quotes martial arts fans might find something to from Rain’s former manager, Jinyoung interest them here, on DVD maybe, but I Park, describing his market strategy: found it a living death of boredom’ (Bradshaw 2010). So dull, in fact, that he Every market has been tapped mistakes Korean American actor Sung except for the Asian market, and Kang who dies in the first scene for Rain, that’s 5 percent of America. That’s the Korean lead. This mistake is our base. But I believe we can particularly interesting given the move beyond that, and I believe deliberate erasure of Asian American that the American music industry presence in the opening scene and the needs to partner with us to make film’s elision of the Korean heritage of inroads into Asia, too. (Sontag 2006, the two young leading actors. emphasis added)
Sung Kang plays an Asian American Although it sounds paradoxical, that gangster, appropriately named Holly- is because we want to maintain the wood. This character blatantly dis- Asian market … only after achiev- respects an old Asian tattoo artist who ing success on the best [biggest] warns him of the existence of ninjas. stage, that is, the American market, Sure enough, within seconds, Hollywood can Rain consolidate his position as receives an envelope full of black dust – Asia’s number one. It is essential to the symbol of the Ozunu Clan. Members enter into the American market to of the clan proceed to materialise as conquer the Asian market with its shadowy ninjas enveloping and hacking huge population. (Choi 2006, off heads and limbs of Hollywood and his emphasis added) Asian American crew. The scene Note the shift in the crossover rhetoric to ironically proves the ‘authenticity’ of the emphasize the focus on the Asian rather ninjas as Asian to the ‘inauthentic’ Asian than American market. In the first quote, Americans who are all killed for mocking Rain’s fan base moves from the hitherto Oriental stereotypes. untapped Asian American market to the Along with Asian Americanness, the mainstream American audience, which extradiegetic Koreanness of Kang, Rain, in turn would give the US music industry and Rick Yune is effaced at the narrative access to the vast Asian market. In the level; after Kang’s character is second quote, Rain needs to capture the dispatched, a Korean and a Korean American market in order to maintain American play Japanese-style ninjas his audience in Asia. This questions the whose ethnic backgrounds are unclear. implicit Western and specifically US- Similarly, Saya (who is racially and centred mode of globalisation that we culturally ambiguous in the original short have come to take for granted in cultural anime film on which the movie is based) studies and postcolonial theory. Indeed, is superficially coded Japanese in the in a certain sense, Park’s strategy, put fetishistic seifuku (Japanese schoolgirl into practice here through the attempts uniform) she wears and the samurai at crossover by Jeon and Jung, hopes to sword that she wields. realise the techno-orientalist fear of Asians beating the West at its own Finally, these techno-oriental tropes were consumer capitalist game – or at least performed, with an eye, to Asian entering it on its own terms. In any case, 10
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regardless of whether the balance of market as well as the global one. power will shift in the Asian Century and Consider, for instance, Byung-hun Lee’s China will come to ‘rule the world’ pragmatic response to the question of (Jacques 2009), contemporary flows of whether his character, an evil ninja, can mediated culture – such as the be regarded as another American examples of diasporic and transnational stereotype of Asian men: crossover that I have sketched here – clearly indicate that the model of I didn’t necessarily decide to play globalisation first introduced by the West this character because I loved it so through imperialism, has been and much. Right now I’m not given a lot continues to be decentred as the of choices in Hollywood. I thought characteristics of post-industrial this character was something that I capitalism and the neoliberal, entre- had to do as I take my first steps to preneurial spirit it engenders are break into their world. And maybe I translated and adapted around the will be given more choices if I world. portray this character very well, even though he may be another Asian male stereotype. (Lee 2006)
Conclusion While it is tempting to use Bhabha’s notion of ‘colonial mimicry’ to describe There is no doubt that the Korean actors the conscious modes of self- played stereotypes. What is interesting is presentation exemplified in all of the how they failed to perform these actors’ performances, the concept is not stereotypes, which buttress the applicable in this case as the mimicry deliberately inauthentic, postmodern performed is neither active nor genres of fantasy and horror in a deliberate, nor postcolonial in the sense convincingly authentic way – visually, discussed by Bhabha and other South narratively, and affectively – for critics on Asian postcolonial scholars (as neither both sides of the Pacific. Meanwhile, China nor Korea was officially colonised analysing the performances of the lead by Western powers). Instead, Michael actors in Mao’s Last Dancer proves more Taussig’s definition of mimesis in complicated as they bleed into the Mimesis and Alterity gets a little closer to remembered experiences of Li Cunxin as describing the dynamic within these a diasporic artist. Yet here, too, the lines hallyu crossover attempts into between authenticity and inauthenticity Hollywood. Taussig defines mimesis as are blurred in how we are to read Li’s ‘the nature that culture uses to create performances of his constantly moving second nature, the faculty to copy, and changing identity – as cosmopolitan imitate, make models, explore difference, citizen (of China, the US and Australia), yield into and become Other’ (Taussig lover and husband and freedom-loving 1993: 5, emphasis added). The idea of dancer, author, and motivational speaker. ‘becoming Other’ is particularly Rather than simply dismissing these self- conducive to the medium of film, as a orientalising performances as examples mode of imaginative transport. Jane of false consciousness or ‘selling out’, I Gaines’s concept of ‘political mimesis’, suggest reading these performances as which links Eisenstein’s work on the hybrid acts of mimicry that are affective impact of montage and Fanon’s performed by Asian and Asian diasporic concept of the colonial mirror, gestures stars to survive in the local and regional 11
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toward ways in which the usually ignored these onscreen cross-cultural trans- visual and the visceral elements in lations. Jina Kim’s ambivalence about the documentary film may be able to move fantasy genre is based on the notion that spectators politically (Gaines 1999: 92- this genre, especially expressed in the 96). Similarly, the aesthetic power of commercial form of the Hollywood fictional films and popular media more blockbuster, has a strong potential to generally also might, in some cases, lead distort and dehumanise Asian Americans audiences to question their perspectives and people of colour. This is a popular and take different affective and position, and follows prevalent public ideological positions. Finally, and perhaps and academic discourse that privileges most significantly, in Identity Anecdotes realism as the most effective narrative Meaghan Morris articulates this mode for moving audiences politically. To connection with one’s audience as some extent, it also explains why Mao’s crucial to cultural and aesthetic Last Dancer – with its familiar capitalist translation. As she puts it, ‘Identity is trope of rags to riches wedded to the always a matter of address, that is, as melodramatic mode of minority made produced by desire and undoubtedly, good – did so well at the box office, at history in an encounter with others’ least in Australia. (Morris 2006: 6). In other words, context matters. While it is important to study how and why certain representations of minorities In this sense, the kind of nomadic, can cross over successfully to main- cosmopolitan subjectivity embodied by stream audiences, it is as just important ‘successful’ diasporic celebrities like Li to look at how and why other Cunxin and the ‘failure’ of the imitative representations fail to do so. Here I turn attempts by Jung and Jun to embody to Blood: The Last Vampire and Ninja Hollywood fantasies of Asian characters Assassin. It should be obvious by now both provide interesting cases in point of that I read these films as exaggerated transnational Asian performers examples of the idea that an authentic constantly having to worry about shifting and homogenous nation, race, or culture contexts and the matter of address in is itself a fantasy. Not only are these films relation to others. Li’s success in themselves hybrid and transnational Australia, the US and China reflect his (with international finance, settings and keen understanding of these cultures production crew) but so also is the hallyu and his ability to code-switch in order to style that distinguishes Rain and Gianna appeal to whomever he is addressing. as ‘Korean’ in its combination of Oriental And while hallyu ostensibly celebrates and Occidental signifiers. Korean ‘culture’ – its regional and transnational popularity has as much to Yet a large number of people in the do with the ability of that culture to world, for better or worse, watch and quickly mimic and transform genres, enjoy fantasy films more than they do forms, and styles. documentaries, dramas and other more serious forms of media. For some of Finally, I want to end by questioning the these people, like the young Australian cultural, institutional and generic terms Filipina woman from whom I rented through which failure and success are Ninja Assassin at my local video store in determined when it comes to how Sydney, seeing an Asian celebrity, scholars, critics and audiences assess especially Rain, as the lead in a
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blockbuster film – even if it is cheesy, they move audiences – across geo- even if Rain self-orientalises – in itself, is graphical and cultural borders. a pleasurable and vaguely empowering thing. In particular, a close examination of how certain narratives, genres, stars and Does this private pleasure have the performances are (mis)translated across potential to move people collectively? different cultures highlights the And if so, move them toward what – the continued existence of cultural and creation of consumption communities in national differences in a supposedly fandom, the development of a critical swiftly globalizing world. As Asia becomes consciousness, the practice of some one of Hollywood’s biggest export form of political activism? Answers to regions and as stars, styles and stories these questions are beyond the scope of increasingly cross over from Asia to this paper, but we need to keep asking Hollywood and back – and across to them in our discussions of how other film industries and audiences representations travel, how they are around the world – understanding and translated and transformed – and how appreciating these differences will become ever more important.
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