The internet has changed the way we live our lives in countless ways, one of which being the way we watch films. Gone are the days of stressful decisions made in the last fifteen minutes before Blockbuster closes, where your parents only let you borrow films in the cheaper, weekly rentals section, or sprinting to and from the bathroom in the commercial break of a tense Friday night thriller on TV. Now, not only can we watch movies anywhere, any time, but the movies themselves can be from anywhere around the world. This is the world of global film.
Like last week’s post on global television, the global flow of content and how it affects our thinking is the focus of this week’s topic, this time in film. A key concept in understanding this process is cultural homogenisation, where the globalisation of mass media exchange results in a convergence of indigenous or peripheral cultures into a universal culture, shaped around the dominant ‘host’ culture seen to be most central in the global community (Barnett & Kincaid 1981, Kincaid 1988 as cited in Fu & Govindaraju 2010, pp. 219). These dominant cultures are often considered part of the ‘global north’, a socioeconomic division between wealthier countries and poorer developing countries in the ‘global south’. An example of this is the development of Shanghai Disney Resort, which has been criticised as a form of cultural imperialism and Western neoliberal expansion (Kokas 2017, pp. 56).
However, the resort is also argued to be “authentically Disney and distinctively Chinese” by Walt Disney Company chairman Robert Iger (as cited in Kokas 2017 pp. 56), rather than simply an extension of Western commercial culture. In other words, it is an endeavour of cultural hybridisation, another key term from this week’s lecture. Kokas (2017, pp. 57) describes this concept by looking at the increase in popularity of Hong Kong Disneyland after it better incorporated local culture as a form of cultural proximity, like Chinese banquet food and feng shui design principles, and plans for the Shanghai Disney Resort to feature Disney and Pixar characters to represent the twelve figures of the Chinese Zodiac. As opposed to the one-way flow of culture from the dominant, Western powers described by cultural homogenisation, cultural hybridisation describes the process of reorienting the existing America-centric examination of media, essentially ‘de-Westernising’ it, and understanding it as an active process where these ideas are made sense of through local context and appropriation (Berry 2003, pp. 218). Examples of this in Chinese and Korean blockbusters are also examined by Berry (2003).
Putting these concepts into context, this week I watched the film Ip Man, a 2008 biopic of the Cantonese grandmaster of Wing Chun martial arts, co-produced by China and Hong Kong. This film and its sequel were exceptionally popular across both countries (Cheung & Law 2017, pp. 160). Understanding the impact of this film requires an understanding of the political history and tension between the two nations. Here, the dominant hegemony is that of China, rather than Western culture as in the earlier examples.
Kung Fu films are a distinctive genre of Chinese martial arts action films established by Hong Kong cinema under the influence of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial responses from Hong Kong in the 1960s arising from British colonial rule (Zhouxiang, Zhang & Hong 2014, pp. 324). The genre features strong representations of Chinese nationalism and exaggerated xenophobia against historic Chinese enemies, like Japan and the Western powers, as seen in Bruce Lee’s popular films in the 1970s (Cheung & Law 2017, pp. 163). However, the revival of Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong cinema has since resulted in a complicated response, reflecting the varying cultural and political dynamic following China’s resumption of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 (Cheung & Law 2017, pp. 160). Ip Man’s success has been credited to its pluralisation of Chinese nationalist discourse that appeals to both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong audiences (Cheung & Law 2017, pp. 170).
The complex relationship between cultures in global films is intricate, complicated and constantly changing. Understanding these key concepts is crucial part in examining and appreciating the flow of content in our increasingly interconnected global culture.
References
Berry, C 2003, ‘What’s big about the big film: “De-Westernising” the blockbuster in Korea and China’, in J Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, Routledge, London, pp. 217-229.
Cheung, SK & Law, WS 2017, ‘The colony writes back: nationalism and collaborate coloniality in the Ip Man series’, Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 159-172.
Fu, WW & Govindaraju, A 2010, ‘Explaining Global Box-Office Tastes in Hollywood Films: Homogenization of National Audiences’ Movie Selections’, Communication Research, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 215-238.
Kokas, A 2017, Hollywood Made in China, University of California Press, Oakland.
Zhouxiang, L, Zhang, Q & Hong, F 2014, ‘Projecting the ‘Chineseness’: Nationalism, Identity and Chinese Martial Arts Films’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 320-335.
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