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Crafting a World-Class Brand: Shaw Brothers' Appropriation of Foreign Models

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Crafting a World-Class Brand: Shaw Brothers' Appropriation of Foreign Models Media Industries 7.1 (2020) Crafting a World-Class Brand: Shaw Brothers’ Appropriation of Foreign Models Erica Ka-yan Poon1 LINGNAN UNIVERSITY Erica.ky.poon [AT] gmail.com Abstract In the 1960s, Hong Kong–headquartered film studio Shaw Brothers was intent on boosting its profile on the international stage by carefully crafting a “world- class” image. It also hoped to boost productivity and creativity with a new wave of films, for which it hired Japanese directors, cinematographers, and others above the line talent. Japan’s Nikkatsu Studio, the home of “borderless action” pictures, supplied a ready-made source of stories, styles, and marketing templates. Directors from Japan were asked to change their names, and titles of remakes tweaked to appeal to local audiences and regional Southeast Asian markets. Shaw Brothers’ desire for international recognition, box office success, and film festival prizes also drove the studio to look abroad at the model of successful Anglo-American productions such as the James Bond series. Were Shaw Brothers rewarded with market dominance, festival rewards, and a “world-class” status? This article will survey the output and financial growth of the studio from 1964 to 1971 to determine whether this strategy paid off. Keywords: Hong Kong Cinema, Japanese Cinema, Shaw Brothers, the James Bond Series, Transnational Film Remakes Shaw Brothers, one of the major film studios in Hong Kong, attempted to brand itself as being on a par with world-class film industries like Hollywood in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. One of the founders, Run Run Shaw, had already in his mind the vision of expanding his entertainment empire globally when Shaw Brothers was set up in Hong Kong in 1958.2 This would occur by going global by establishing new markets beyond the Chinese dias- pora in Southeast Asia and making Shaw Brothers an equal member of the international film industry like Hollywood. The plan had not yet been fully implemented or publicized at that time, as the studio restructured to compete with its major rival Cathay Organization.3 Media Industries 7.1 (2020) However, after the sudden death of Cathay Organization founder Loke Wan Tho in 1964, the studio’s production began to decline and led to a decision to scale back on film produc- tion in Hong Kong in 1970. As a result, Shaw Brothers faced no serious competition in its local and Southeast Asian markets until 1971, when independent production company Golden Harvest emerged. During this period without rivalry, Shaw Brothers endeavored to pave a path toward becom- ing a world-class cinema. It was not until the mid-1960s when the competition had turned mild that Shaw Brothers’ in-house magazine Southern Screen publicized the plan. It boasted in consecutive years that the studio’s annual achievement was having produced films of “world-class”4 quality. However, this assertion of the so-called “world-class” status did not quite hold up in comparison with the world’s oldest film industry, Hollywood. An empirical comparison of production costs, for example, gives the impression that Hong Kong cinema was still far behind Hollywood’s fiscal resources and dominance. In the mid-1960s, the aver- age production cost of a Mandarin-language film in Hong Kong was about HKD500,000 (US$84,000),5 whereas the cost of an average film in Hollywood was US$2,500,000.6 Then what did Shaw Brothers imply by “world-class”? This article considers “world-class” as a branding strategy which Shaw Brothers leveraged as part of its strategy to grow its opera- tions and its own brand on the global stage and investigates how it crafted this brand. Looking abroad at the model of successful Anglo-American productions such as the James Bond series, Shaw Brothers decided to produce its own Bond-style action films for which it hired Japanese directors. These films adapted Japanese studio Nikkatsu’s style, which was itself a by-product of Hollywood. This article examines the films, financial growth, and international reputation to determine whether Shaw Brothers’ Bond productions facilitated the studio’s branding attempts to be of the “world-class.” A brand works as a guarantee of quality or to give a mass-produced commodity an identity by linking it to an identifiable producer.7 In this case, Shaw Brothers wanted audiences to associate its films with established world-class productions like Hollywood films. Shaw Brothers’ “world-class” brand was not backed by any tangible empirical evidence such as high production values on par with Hollywood’s finest films; instead, the studio sought to use its “world-class” brand to create a connection in the minds of audiences between Shaw Brothers and Hollywood. Despite such intangible values, the material aspects of the brand should not be overlooked. To emphasize a brand’s materiality, Celia Lury argues that a brand is an object, albeit an intangible one.8 A brand is an object because it is a dynamic platform for the various components and practices that function together to exert tangible effects, such as on the financial outcomes of production. When Lury argues for the mate- riality of a brand, she does not simply point out the institutional practices that build a brand as constituting its material aspects. Rather, she argues that it is this dynamic plat- form of a brand that makes it material. In other words, it is important to note that institu- tional practices and a brand provide a foundation for each other: While a brand is a basis on which institution practices function, anything that the institutional practices have gen- erated supports a brand’s intangible values. And hence, our focus should not be limited to marketing strategies that directly build a brand but to incorporate other practices. Regarding the film industry, in particular, the set of institutional practices that relate to a 128 Media Industries 7.1 (2020) studio’s brand include talent pools, narrative traditions, methods of production, manage- ment structures, and marketing strategies.9 As a studio’s brand is a total sum of all the above practices, it is too large a scope to discuss them all. This article focuses on talent pools and narrative traditions while only briefly touching upon management and market- ing strategies because it explores how the decision of Shaw Brothers to employ Japanese filmmakers in the late 1960s enabled it to diversify its genre output in the goal of advancing its “world-class” brand of filmmaking. The first section of this article discusses how drawing Japanese talent into the studio’s pool of directors followed the principles of media capitals that aligned with Shaw Brothers’ goal to transcend its local status. This industrial practice not only moved Shaw Brothers a step forward in becoming a world-class film industry but also facilitated the process of establishing a perception of a world-class brand. Brand names of studios can be estab- lished through product features such as genres, stars, plots, and spectacles.10 However, cinematic images and sound can also be considered as a locus of brand activities.11 The next section moves on to examine how Shaw Brothers’ world-class brand was also estab- lished through cinematic images and sound in the genre films directed by these Japanese directors, who brought with them a ready-made source of stories and style to Shaw Brothers’ productions. All the Japanese directors who were hired by Shaw Brothers were experienced in directing Nikkatsu Action films, which was the label applied to the “border- less action” pictures produced by Japanese studio Nikkatsu in the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. This article examines subsequent Shaw Brothers’ action films helmed by the Japanese directors, many of which imitated the genre tropes, narratives, and iconography of the James Bond series. These British spy films became a pop-cultural phenomenon and were a huge global box office success, including in Hong Kong, where they were among the high- est grossing films in the mid-1960s.12 Capitalizing on the global popularity of the James Bond series, Shaw Brothers decided to produce its own Bond-style action films. It made at least eleven such action films from 1966 to 1971, seven of which were produced by Japanese directors. This section analyzes Asia-Pol (Matsuo Akinori, 1996) and Interpol 009 (Nakahira Ko, 1967). These two films are chosen for their obvious connection with Nikkatsu. The for- mer one was a Shaw Brothers–Nikkatsu coproduction, whereas the latter was a remake of Nakahira Ko’s Nikkatsu production, The Black Challenger (1965). This article argues that Shaw Brothers’ appropriation of foreign models gave its Bond-style action films façade of a world-class, international brand, and a cosmopolitan dimension that served the fantasy of being world citizens for Asian audiences, who were themselves consuming and appro- priating an ever-increasing diet of international ideas, attitudes, and styles during this time. Shaw Brothers’ films adapted popular elements from global hits in its bid to guaran- tee the popularity of its films, as well as to engineer its products for a more diverse audi- ence. It is fair to say, however, that these genre films produced by the Japanese directors were derivative at best. International recognition for a world-class brand needed some- thing greater and more finessed than imitations. The conclusion of this article surveys the outcomes of these strategies of crafting a world-class brand in terms of market expansion and international film festival prizes. The Japanese factor in Shaw Brothers’ strategies succeeded in increasing the studio’s productivity but failed to lift its reputation to the worldly heights. 129 Media Industries 7.1 (2020) Institutional Practices: To Become a World-Class Film Industry As a brand and institutional practices provide a foundation for each other, it is significant to first examine Shaw Brothers’ institution practices that provided a basis for the world-class brand.
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