Wow, China is really milking it... - Jing wu feng yun: Chen Zhen (2010) Discussion

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Sash5034 13 years ago

This thread is hilarious. It's hilarious watching people defend the rampant nationalism and censorship in Chinese cinema. It's even funnier watching people claim that Hollywood is no better.
Really? For every Pearl Harbor, there is an Apocalypse Now. For every Saving Private Ryan, there is Platoon. How many movies has China made about the Tienanmen Square Massacre? Every movie that showed the cultural revolution in a negative light has been banned in China.
But go ahead, keep defending the oppression and censorship, it's hilarious.

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[–] MrCedric 13 years ago

Very true sash5034. It's also hilarious that people like lun_yue chooses to dislike Japan simply because of their past. Last time I checked, it was the Japanese Empire that commited the war crimes, not the current Japanese government. So where is the logic in making a huge generalisation and disliking the whole country?

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[–] lun_yue 13 years ago

vash229, I am glad that you find the things I said hilarious. It may all be a joke to you, but I'm not surprised.
The Japanese Empire commited the war crimes, but the later Japanese governments never admitted what they did was wrong, unlike Germany and Italy. Go and ask any Japanese in the streets, he/she will be proud of their past actions. The current Japanese government wont be reelected if they admitted their war crimes.

I can understand that there are much hate and venom in this forum, being western and all. You can believe me or not, China is not a dumpster, China is beautiful. China's government is corrupt, but it can change.

What I find hilarious is the fact that the western people think that the western media is equal the truth. Under the "Tibet incident" at the Bejing Olympics German and American newspapers took a photo of an ambulance, cut off the cross on the wagon, and stated below that a war vehicle is killing innocent people. When was the last time something good was said in the TV about China? I don't care really but I do find it frightening that people are so easily brainwashed. What US does is always justice, killing an unarmed terrorist in cold blood is justice.

I started posting trying to correct a guy stating that almost no Chinese died in WWII, but was in turn bashed by this individual. Other people has come to his aid, so I won't be visiting this forum anytime soon, it is hard to do a discussion with so much hate and venom on this board.

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[–] noahtenzin 13 years ago

The Chinese - Japanese schism isn't just something invented for purposes of narrative convenience -- there's a *significant* historical mooring to it!!

http://www.shockya.com/news/2011/04/23/legend-of-the-fist-the-return-o f-chen-zhen-movie-review/

^ Nice review here, btw, for those interested.

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] zukernik88 13 years ago

Most of the movies that have been coming out have been of the same theme. USA is just, china is great, for the glory of the USA. Everyone else is a jerk, everyone else is out to get Americans, Americans must overcome adversity. Like, come on, we get it. Love watching the movies for action and visuals, but man, it feels like the message is always the same "We are the most awesome, we've never *beep* anyone over but we will always overcome adversity". Just feels like American propaganda most of the time.

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[–] strawberrydioxide 13 years ago

Movies are pretty much all about people overcoming adversity. If the movie is made in America, it will be about an American overcoming adversity. Shocker! I want to know all of these so-called American propaganda films that keep coming out every single week. The only recent film I remotely remember resembling one was maybe Battle: LA, but that movie blew for reasons other than "propaganda". Plus, I will say again, it is called Battle: LA. POV.... America. Shocking! It's made in America, and it's from America's perspective..... oh man.... there's some propaganda right there.

When we speak about Chinese films, they literally have sequences involving conflicts with other countries more than you can possibly imagine. Whereas in America there are mostly infantile movies with no real extra-national conflict whatsoever. Also, when Hollywood films go political as the main storyline they are critical to the extreme. I can think of a dozen recent films like that, but I cannot think of any Hollywood political films that were showing how great America's government is.

I enjoy Chinese films, but recently it's as if there haven't been as many filmmakers wanting to push the envelope. There are really no more attempts like "The Blue Kite" or "To Live". If there are, please point me towards them! It's understandable though, given their censorship practices. They're constantly coming up with more creative ways to get past the censors. There's always metaphor I guess.

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[–] fireyhope 13 years ago

What a load a BS, you do realize there were plenty of Movies and Martial Arts movies even when China was communist and have no NATIONALISTIC MESSAGES EVER? the movies are not controlled by the government. MORONS.

They only censor.

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[–] JoeLon 12 years ago

One of the major subplots was about protecting student protesters and not overreacting to protests (e.g. the bridge scene). How can that not bring '89 to mind? Thankfully censors the world over are unskilled at detecting nuance.

In this film and "City of Life and Death," two films that really can only be connected by the presence of the same Japanese actor in each, there's a strongly negative portrayal of cowardly, self-serving Chinese, with the implication--especially in "City of Life and Death" (the fat guy that survives at the end)--that this type of person is common within China. I get the sense that these characters are meant to inspire self-reflection or national reflection.

This is not to say that this was some sort of wildly subversive film, but it certainly wasn't that propagandistic. I was more offended by Donnie Yen's fake tan than the politics. Some of the general complaints here are fair enough, and certainly my interpretations could be wrong, but some of the posts here don't pay enough attention to the film itself (or other films).

In 2006 the Japanese government dismissed the Nanjing narrative, calling it Communist propaganda. So it's not just a case of China picking at its own scabs.

As for more critical and artistically minded Chinese films, you have to be honest about whether you are actually looking for those films and whether you'd actually watch them. I'm not always vigilant, for the films aren't exactly released widely or widely publicized or widely available. However, I did buy a legal Chinese copy of Chen Kaige's "King of the Children," as surprising as it is to find a legal copy of anything.

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[–] LordofHalo 12 years ago

I love how bashers are completely ignoring the fact the movie takes place in Nationalist China, and more than a decade before the modern PRC is even founded. And this kind of nationalist movie is nothing new; Bruce Lee's original Fist of Fury was filmed in 1970's Hong Kong and along with numerous period pieces, are far more anti-Japanese. Yet since HK wasn't communist, this is perfectly ok.

The fact that the so called propaganda issue is only mentioned now shows an irrational hatred of China by Westerners. The Tienanmen Square Incident, which occurred 20 years ago, is exaggerated as a "peaceful protest" where in fact some armed students actually stole weapons from soldiers and burnt them to death, and the Tibetan riots are depicted as Chinese military attacking "peaceful" Tibetans, when in fact Tibetan rioters were engaging in pogroms against local Chinese. The Western media is turning a blind eye to their own atrocities that taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan such as Abu Ghraib, Haditha, secret CIA blacksites etc. Did a major Hollywood studio made a commercial movie based on these incidents yet?

Let's not forget the fact that ethnic groups, particularly Arabs are constantly vilified by Hollywood as stereotypical terrorists or oil tycoons in almost every action movie like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1ZNEjEarw. No Chinese movie has reached the degree of racism compared to the Delta Force movies or Rules of Engagement, the latter justifying US Marines massacring protesting Arabs because some of them might be "terrorists".

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[–] dtran29 12 years ago

I'm pretty surprised by the amount of responses this thread has received. Although, I must agree with the fact that while yes, western cinema will have it's fair share of patriotic movies that pump themselves up and villify other countries...but for every one of those you will also see a counterpart, showing the opposite. In fact, I find most of Hollywood are quite outspoken on their opposition of war and will call out their own country when they believe thins are unjust. Let's be honest, should a chinese celebrity speak out against the chinese government in any manner, there will be repercussions.

Now as to the Japanese falsely making up their history, yes, this is definitely an injustice and I am not at all defending them for what they did, nor will I make light of how the victims must have suffered through those times. But, to be fair, every country has it's fair share of carrying out...atrocities during times of war, or overtaking land. I doubt a western textbook will go into detail about how badly the natives were treated when their land was overtaken by the settlers etc. If you want to keep backtracking, let's have all countries that were at any given time attacked by China and had war waged upon them to start demanding China fix their textbooks to go into detail on their wartime atrocities too...I highly doubt that their textbooks would change any time soon.

I'm kind of writing this as I think it so forgive me if my point isn't well formulated. Difference is this, if a japanese person were to order or own material on the rape of Nanking, he or she would be able to do so, If a US or Canadian citizen wanted to speak out against their government, or make a movie about it, they could freely do so. If someone was reported to own material or known to have voiced their disdain publicly against the Chinese government, I doubt they would get away unscathed

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[–] LordofHalo 12 years ago

I'm kind of writing this as I think it so forgive me if my point isn't well formulated. Difference is this, if a japanese person were to order or own material on the rape of Nanking, he or she would be able to do so, If a US or Canadian citizen wanted to speak out against their government, or make a movie about it, they could freely do so. If someone was reported to own material or known to have voiced their disdain publicly against the Chinese government, I doubt they would get away unscathed

You act as if every Chinese originate from the PRC, when in fact there's numerous people in Hong Kong and Taiwan who are allowed to freely voice their opinions, and they hold far more radical opinions against the Japanese. In fact a large majority of the research regarding Japanese war crimes were done by overseas Chinese such as Iris Chang.

And the mainland Chinese film market has became more commercialized in recent decades, so the popularity of such films hold as much commercial concerns as political concerns. I remember the movie City of Life and Death was criticized by some older audiences because they viewed it as too pro-Japanese in their addition of sympathetic Japanese characters.

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[–] dtran29 12 years ago

I'm not acting anything :/ I'm basically reiterating what was discussed in the previous post...unfortunately it looks like half of them have been removed so I'm kind of at a loss there. I acknowledge your opinion and agree that not every Chinese person originates from the PRC, however that is not the issue; what we are discussing is the PRC government having influence in terms of direction and themes in chinese movies coming out recently. And to be honest, it's common knowledge how much the govt controls their media so I don't think I'm out of line for thinking that way

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[–] tetrahex 12 years ago

The japanese problems with history would be a problem if the chinese weren't hypocritical on the issue. The false history ignoring the crimes of mao are still running rampant in china, the apologist history of china relies on condemning japan to cover up all the lies it relies on. The ugly nationalism this false history creates is frankly dangerous, especially when combined with the hatred for the japanese.

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[–] ponstan 12 years ago

mate I think just because China does indeed have its own problems, that doesn’t invalidate their issues with Japan.

As for milking nationalist sentiment, this has gone on for donkey's ears; this is the PRC’s twist on (Han) Chinese pride that has existed since the earliest Chinese literature. The twist is that now it’s nationalist pride against the west or Japan whereas previously it was pride in being a Han against Jin or Yuan or Qing etc or loyalty to the Emperor or family.

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