Comment
Leave flattery out of Hollywood blockbuster
By Chang Ping (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-10 10:41
I'm not against people making comparisons between a movie and reality, or making political interpretations. However, reviews of the blockbuster 2012 in Chinese media have really made people feel heavy. I don't think it's necessary to take Hollywood products so seriously.
Hollywood is a world-class, fast-food cultural factory. You may say it has produced a lot of cultural rubbish. Hollywood sells such rubbish to the whole world after it's labeled and classified. Disaster blockbuster 2012 might well have been just one of this kind of work.
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The movie began to show in China during US President Obama's visit to China. People would be gullible if they believed the marketers' ideas that the movie was symbolic of China and the US working together to save the world.
Many Chinese people were happy to find that Chinese-made arks saved the world in the movie. But others also realized that in the movie, Americans still had a firm control of the power to save the world, although Chinese built the arks. The Chinese laborers who looked like ants in the movie had the opportunities to board the empty arks, only after Americans or Indians made a decision with their conscience.
Compared with some American movies that hurt Chinese feelings, 2012 was quite clever. But the script writers and movie producers cannot represent all Americans and the entire American culture. Even if many Americans look at China in this light, it doesn't prove the rise of China as a new super power.
If there is anything good we should learn from Hollywood, that's it has much more space for imagination, whether it's a blockbuster or artistic film. If we flatter ourselves with the movie 2012, we may have been taking it too seriously. Entertainment is just entertainment. Don't read too much into it.
(Excerpts of a commentary that appeared on xinhuanet.com on Dec 9)
