"Chinatown Aesthetics" hatched a plate of Tso Zongtang chicken

Kayleigh 2021-12-31 08:01:43

1.

In the aesthetic system of the Greater China School, there is a "sub-state" that has been ignored by most people who speak Mandarin because of the special geography.

But in fact, I went to the Chinatowns of capitals and big cities around the world and looked at the weird archways standing alone among the high-rise buildings, the Tang Palace-style Chinese restaurants, the waiters who dressed indecently mixed Chinese and Western, and the chopsticks were held on the street seats. The blond men and women with plates, the roasting shop with greasy meat hanging in the window, the cheap supermarket with dirty eyebrows full of domestic products, the second floor Daomen Guild Hall with big signs but locked doors and windows, listening to the Cantonese vernacular, Fujian Chinese, Minnan dialect, Shanghai dialect, Wenzhou dialect, Dongbei dialect, and the fluent and non-knocking Chinglish flew around, passing by the fat aunt who was smiling and swaying through the city with groups of GUCCI bags and big diamond rings. Will understand this atmosphere.

"Chinatown Aesthetics" is actually a critical state that has been stretched across history for a long time. It is not only different from the mainland culture, which has changed the world, but also has a fundamental difference from the Taiwan-Hong Kong culture and the Southeast Asian Chinese culture with a strong regional color. It survives like an isolated island surrounded by a strong Western culture, with the dual ambivalence of being self-proclaimed and eager to be accepted, over time it has formed a weird and embarrassing existence: it acts as a window for Westerners in reality. The decorations are as familiar, but they are isolated from the mainstream culture, and there are few opportunities to show their faces in the public media.

For more than a hundred years, many Chinese have come to Chinatown in their respective dialects, just to transition to another ideal "other place", but they don’t want to live here, start a family, and have children. This area looks a bit like China. But struggling to make a living in an enclave the size of a few blocks. What is curious is that their children who speak fluent English, those who were born labeled as Chinese but have never actually been to China "Chinatown Second Generation", have lived and grown in such a constrained critical state for many years. What vision and values ​​will they have?

The answer to this question was finally glimpsed in "Golden Romance" (a closer translation should be "Crazy Rich Asians").

2.

Prior to "Golden Romance", all Asian teams gave speeches about American movies about the lives of overseas Chinese that could be counted with ten fingers. Among them, Wang Ying's "The Joy Luck Club" and Lin Yibin's "Hot Maji" are relatively well-known works, but they are still in the category of independent production. "The Year of the Dragon" created by Michael Cimino and Oliver Stone N years ago invited Zunlong to play the role, but because the protagonist is a lawless and cruel Chinese gangster, he was exposed to extremely vulnerable Chinatown people as soon as it was released. Going back in the name of "ugly".

These relatively famous films were all eclipsed by "crazy rich Asians." Since its large-scale release in North America on August 15, 2018, the latter has been dominating the box office rankings and has received overwhelming praise from mainstream media film reviews in the United States. According to the photo, this is the most successful Asian film produced in the United States in history, and it is likely to bring about a wave of Asian Hollywood trends.

Minority films are an important branch of Hollywood, among which the most common are black films. Take the Marvel movie "Black Panther" that won last year as an example. The protagonists in the movie are basically all black, regardless of men, women, young or old. If black film and television works in the early years still had certain ethnic characteristics, then with the mainstreaming of black culture, its content was quickly assimilated by white culture, and gradually evolved into black skin except for the appearance of actors, its core expression Popular cultural products whose ideas and content are indistinguishable from other mainstream American commercial films.

Just look at the plot of "Golden Romance", and you will find that it has taken the mainstream line almost exactly the same as that of American minority movies-the plot is easy to understand to the extent that even if you don't understand English, you can't understand it by just looking at the screen. : Zhu Liqiu, a young Chinese economics professor born and raised in New York, followed her boyfriend Yang Li, who had been dating for more than a year, on her first trip to Asia, but suddenly discovered that her lover was the son of a rich Singaporean, and the poor family only had a lot of money left. Surprised, she suffered all sorts of difficulties from her boyfriend’s mother. She was inexplicably dragged into the "you but me"-style mother-in-law and daughter-in-law falling into the water. The platonic spirit that robbed her son was entangled.

To tell the truth, this kind of "sparrow walks into the Phoenix's nest"-style old-fashioned contemporary Cinderella story, even if it is set in Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, not many viewers would be interested to take a look. But when it was wrapped in a layer of "Asian skin", its connotation immediately changed.

Although the protagonists of the film repeatedly claim to be Chinese, they have nothing in common with the Chinese people around us (whether it is the rich N generation or the poor dick) Place. However, in the eyes of Western audiences, the easy-to-understand story of the sparrow becoming a phoenix paired with an oriental shell is tantamount to a new bottle of old wine—not only the familiar taste has not changed, but what’s more, it is for the Chinese. The exaggerated portrayal of material wealth is more in line with their random imagination of China in the 21st century: I am afraid that only Chinese people in the world hang various signs of seeking wealth in Chinatown during New Years and holidays. After so many years of hard work, you should Have you become rich?

Of course, they must not be able to tell who is the official rich N-generation who came out of China to throw money on Fifth Avenue in New York, and who is the "Chinatown N-generation" who has worked hard in the United States for many years in small business.

3.

The director of "Golden Romance", Zhu Haowei, is a typical American ABC banana man, and it is said that he is from a typical Chinese family who opened a Chinese restaurant. Like other descendants of Chinatown, while he is very concerned about the abstract concept of wealth, he has the same imagination for extremely large amounts of material wealth as ordinary Americans.

Therefore, the depiction of the wealth of the drunk fans we saw in the film is exactly the same as the extravagant scenes in the rap MV of the black gangs on the east and west coasts of the United States: mansions, fragrant cars, swimming pools, parties, helicopters, yachts, beauties in backless outfits, and all kinds of colors. A sportsman wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt. The money is so much that it is the only "Asian" image that it wants to leave to Western audiences. If it doesn’t agree with each other, it will pay for it. The impression of ethnic minorities who have swaggered across the city.

On the other hand, in addition to the yellow-skinned Asian faces in the film’s presentation of China and Asia, there are only two items left: rubbing mahjong and making dumplings. And even if you put a rolling pin on my neck, I can hardly believe that a Nanyang Singaporean billionaire family whose mother tongue is Cantonese and vernacular would treat making dumplings from the northeast as a family habit. These thirteen unreliable cultural mashups are more or less derived from the cognitive dislocation caused by the film creators' perennial immersion in Chinatown.

The creator’s wishful thinking, monotonous and grandiose imagination due to the extreme lack of in-depth understanding of China and Asia, happened to be confronted with more or less ordinary American audiences who had experience as curious passers-by in Chinatown. The film produced an overwhelming commercial market effect. To put it bluntly, it has become a hit, and it has a close connection with the "low-end Orientalism" complex that pervades the middle and low-level citizens of the United States. The "Chinatown Aesthetics" has cultivated the misplaced cognition of China and Asia over several generations.

4.

But "Golden Romance" is still a well-intentioned commercial work. Although the creators have limited knowledge of Asia, they have effectively used various points in American popular culture.

For example, the heroine Zhu Liqiu, who is a professor of economics, appeared as a professional Texas poker player at the poker table. This may seem like a little overwhelming, but in fact there is no other reason, just because the popularity of Asian female public figures in the American public is really lackluster at her age. Professional poker player Maria Ho is the most representative among straight men and straight women audiences. Dressing the heroine in her debut as her will immediately increase the favorability of the local audience towards her.

For another example, Christy Lemire, the female film critic of WHAT THE FLICK?!, described the film as one of her favorites: "Almost made into a song and dance music film in many moments." And when we reminisce about the Shanghai pop songs of the 30s and 40s throughout the film, and the actors who dressed in colorful evening clothes and acted neatly at every turn, it is not so much that they are partying in a mansion in Singapore, it is more of an extra Rehearsal on a Bollywood set. Musical songs and dance films, especially those with exotic colors, have always been a box office guarantee for audiences in Hollywood.

Of course, what the film best suits the taste of ordinary American audiences is actually the conservative ideological communication. What we saw was a group of Americans with Asian faces accidentally falling into the money pile Drooling expression), while attending all kinds of colorful and luxurious parties, while politely said: Whoever rares banknotes, what I want is love. If you have money but are willing to pay and sacrifice for your family, you can finally get the three harvests of wealth, love and family. This is probably the core life model advocated by the popular American Protestant ethics.

What’s interesting is that on the theme of “You can only reap wealth and love if you don’t worship gold”, another mainland movie expressed the same meaning more than a month ago: when Shen Teng couldn’t wait to throw money in "The Richest Man in Xihong City" When we were about to spend a billion, we all suddenly understood the paradox truth of the money world that only spends a lot of money to get more wealth. It and the money of the boyfriend in "Pink Romance" can finally marry into the rich. The settings are the same.

Both of these films gave the audience a satisfying material and moral double standard answer: you don't want gold to support gold. Of course, their objective potential common goals are still getting richer. Only at this point, "Chinatown Aesthetics" can be regarded as a bridge of communication between Western culture and Chinese tradition.

5.

For a while, I lived in the slums of Montreal, Canada, and spent the summer evening on the public balcony. A French guy who had lived in New York for ten years came up next door and asked if I had eaten a delicious "Chinese chicken". It is said that I have been eating all over China for many years, but no matter how he describes it, I can't figure out which dish it is. After going back to Google for a long time, I found out that he was talking about the world’s No. 1 delicacy in Chinatown: Zuo Zongtang’s Chicken.

I can't blame me for being slow, because it's impossible to find this dish in restaurants in both the north and the south. It is made for the taste of foreigners, and I have never eaten it in China. But for the foreigners and banana people who eat Zuo Zongtang’s chicken as a habit in Chinatown, it is the most representative essence of Chinese cuisine.

"Golden Romance" is a cultural by-product of "Zuo Zongtang Chicken" based on "Chinatown Aesthetics". We can say that there is no need to be so true to such an exaggerated love comedy, but the actual effect it produces is to once again hang Asians, especially Chinese, on the dislocation of identity recognition that makes people laugh and laugh at a loss. There is no such thing as a "crazy rich Asian" who looks, think, and emotionally, just as there is no trace of Zuo Zongtang's chicken in Chinese cuisine.

For "Chinatown II", portraying some Chinese people as omnipotent and well-possessed handsome wealthy people is probably a way to proudly announce that they will get rid of this humble Chinatown identity. But what they neglect to think is that in the eyes of Westerners, this nouveau riche mania is nothing more than a symbolic output of a certain Chinatown culture in the future world.

It is impossible to wash away the stubborn temperament of wandering Chinatown immigrants just by relying on the infinite and easy possession of wealth after becoming a phoenix.

View more about Crazy Rich Asians reviews

Extended Reading
  • Mary 2021-12-31 08:01:43

    It's a quasi-Cinderella story with a bad class, a common love genre film routine, with some Southeast Asian color matching to collide with cultural style, and a bad choice of Chinese song routines, and short sentences in Hokkien, Cantonese, and Beijing dialect are random. It's nothing good, but there is no need to rise to the criticism of emulsification (descent), right? ! Do you really have to feel that you are a representative? You don't have to.

  • Brooke 2022-04-24 07:01:06

    [UA Berkeley 7] 2018.8.23.4pm It is said to be a breakthrough in the visibility of Chinese in Hollywood, but it is still necessary to adopt such a self-imagination and self-writing. And this kind of "inversion" is precisely the most faithful reproduction of the racial hierarchy "created by the historical violence of globalization and modernization and inscribed by the wealthy class." It can be seen how narrow the cultural predicament of Chinese Americans (or Chinese living in the United States) is. (Of course, China is not beyond this kind of logic, but if it can win back its history and self, it can make a little more room for it.)

Crazy Rich Asians quotes

  • Lord Calthorpe: [to his managers] Meet the new lady of the house, Eleanor Young.

  • Curtis: [to Rachel, about her cards] Nothing! This whole time you had nothing.