The new face of China – Hollywood style
I just saw the 2010 remake of the Karate Kid. While the film is enjoyable and a soppy mix of bullying, victim turned kung fu wiz, and with a sweet romance, what got my attention were two other aspects.
The setting is China – with travelogue images of the Forbidden City, a monastery high up on a mountain top and the Great Wall of China. Why China and not California as of old? Because the Chinese government helped pay for the film -- as a vehicle to promote its new, post-Olympic image as a great place to visit and work.
Yes, China is open for tourism and embraces foreigners as employees. And skin colour or race is not an issue.
Everyone, from Jackie Chan as the ‘master’ and all the other people seen on screen are Chinese except for 4 characters: a blonde haired American male classmate, a bearded white American violin teacher and African American, 12 year old Jaden Smith, the ‘student’, and his African American widowed mother.
Jaden and his mom are welcomed with open arms by everyone – no southern U.S. here. And the love interest—between African American Jaden and a young Chinese violin playing beauty is colour and race blind from the start. Even the bullying that is at the film’s kung fu core is not racial but due to a love triangle. And when the girl’s parents learn of her close friendship with Jaden, their criticism is, as she repeats it to him, based on class and social status, not race. In the end, she is allowed to come out and cheer Jaden on in the ultimate kung fu tournament.
As for the employment angle, Jaden and his mother move from the U.S. to China because she has been transferred by her employer, an anonymous auto company. As she tells Jaden when he is upset and wants to go back to America, “This is home now; there’s nothing left for us in Detroit.”
Yes, Detroit, America’s auto headquarters is the past and now Beijing (and China) is the future!
If you think this is a curious message and some wishful thinking on the part of Mao Tse Tung’s heirs, think again. General Motor’s new, prize Buick model, the LaCrosse is regularly promoted in company fed press releases as ‘designed in China’ and ‘with the Chinese middle manager in mind’. So much for “What’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A.” (famous 1952 quote by Charles E. Wilson, the former head of General Motors and Secretary of Defense under President Dwight Eisenhower. to a Senate subcommittee).
Maybe that is why I, at 6’3”, can barely squeeze through the driver’s door, and get chopped off at the shoulder if I even try to get through the rear doors. And forget about the trunk!
