heritage propaganda

by muchtomychagrin

The New Shaolin Temple

(from Google Images)

Whenever I go to the movies with my parents we’re always and only watching Chinese movies – mostly historical dramas, or some action film,  but mostly historical stuff.

Curse of the Golden Flower, Red Cliff, Hero (which for some reason I don’t remember the story, verdict on having actually watched this is still debatable), Ip-Man, most Jackie Chan movies (even his Hollywood stuff).

We rarely catch the Hollywood movies unless, again, it’s some epic drama action film, that is not cheesy like Pearl Harbour or Australia. My father’s a pretty traditional Chinaman, and a damn proud one.

So it wasn’t at all surprising that Mom BBM-ed me at work on Wednesday to ask if I wanted to watch Shaolin with them the next day. Yeah, my parents are the sort that buy tickets the day before, but as I was doing the listings for the paper that day and I knew it what it was about otherwise I probably would’ve declined the offer. We were the few that managed to catch the first day screening of it.

In the Oriental world, releasing movies just before Chinese New Year is probably at it’s most optimum. I don’t know if it’s just me (probably is, or most Westernized Chinese), but I think they’ve worked it in a way to strike the heads and hearts of Chinese folk strewn all around the world at a time when they feel closest to their heritage. It does for me at least.

I’ve never regretted being Chinese, or Asian for that matter. Sure, I may hate on my eyes a little bit, and wish I were a little taller, but I’m really proud of my morals and where I come from. Sometimes I wonder if that’s where my conservatism comes in but I think this is a universal factor, not much a racial thing. I love the traditions we observe and the importance we place on the generations before us. I’ve come to notice that mostly all the Asian films we watch always hits that nerve with me. Where I become acutely aware of what my culture is made of.

Shaolin was no different in this respect, but after a while, I’ve come to realize so much about what I take as entertainment.

I’m attesting it to the fact that the religious undertones of the Shaolin temple and it’s teachings stirred some childlike emotion of remembering Ah Tai when she used to wake up at 5 am to pray. Watching the movie was like looking through the lens of a ViewMaster and I felt like I was four years old again. I remember helping her button her QiPao and mirroring her prayers. Listening to her meditate with prayer beads and watching her read from right to left, top to bottom and open books from left to right.

I think Mom felt it too.

But I digress.

And so I wonder, am I watching these movies and feeling this way because of how often I watch Hollywood movies  that when I watch a Chinese movie, being reminded of my culture is an external feeling I don’t expect from watching a movie?

OR

Do I feel this way because the Chinese films I happen to catch are of the historical sort? The sort that revels in the once thriving countryland China once was. My grandmother never fails to remind me of how amazing the Chinese are, what with our chopsticks, abacus, gunpowder, paper and possibly the world’s most difficult language. I somewhat get the same feeling when I watch these movies set in a time before China closed their doors.

(Mind, I’m perfectly aware that there are rom-coms set in modern day and are just about as quirky and have their own flavour, but those set of movies carry a whole different cultural mindset that I once again wince and struggle to comprehend.)

OR

The Chinese film industry is just pretty much propaganda? The last two films I’ve watched, Ip Man 2 and The New Shaolin Temple had white men as the bad guy. (Ip Man had the Japanese then and lawd, I don’t have to be reminded of my grandfather speaking ill of the Japanese.) They would always be projecting an evil laugh, while the Chinese villagers wail to the heavens. And it always ends with the white guy vomitting blood.

The propaganda is just laughable, I mean seriously. It just bothers me that 1.3 billion people in China buy that shit. And it bugs me because the biggest race in the world are just being pushed to become even bigger xenophobic fools.

So, for the sake of other than just pure argument, I’m aware that most films are used as propagandist tools.

And now I’m so annoyed that I can’t just watch a movie for pure entertainment; I’m bothered by the blatant deliberate propaganda in Chinese movies and now I feel brainwashed.