Chinese actor Jackie Chan, perhaps the friendliest face to Western eyes from a country which prizes obedience and group effort over individual achievement, has come under a good deal of fire for his comments at a recent Chinese Business forum.
Known for portraying largely upstanding citizens who find themselves in larger situations and finding the courage to go outside the box to combat evil, he has developed a film career un-equaled in cinema history. His initial goal, to be seen as something other than just a Bruce Lee clone, gave him fuel to pursue the blending of comedy and his particularly enhanced physical acrobatic skills which has propelled him way past the achievement of any western actor's standing. His biggest failing as an actor is a slightly weak dramatic acting capacity, which has tended to push his parts toward comedy.
After a relatively disastrous attempt to break into western cinema in the early 80s when Hollywood had no idea what to do with him (imagine pairing him with Danny Aiello as an action partner.... enough to make you leave Hollywood forever....) he came back again in the tail end of the 1990s to much greater acclaim, some modest success (compared to what might have happened had he had greater control over his destiny here...) and then finally in the last few years he saw the limitations and disasters of working in Hollywood, and returned to Hong Kong and Chinese Cinema vowing never to make any permanent change to appease western audiences again.
Blame Chris Tucker, who forced Jackie to follow thru on Rush Hour 3, which was a slap in the face to him artistically, and on a personal level. Jackie did the job and to his credit what little screen time he had he kept a solid front up for, but it was clear that sub-standard Chris Tucker, whose own career would have been significantly lessened had he not fallen into the first Rush Hour, was the person in control.
Which brings us to the present day. Jackie does not particularly want his films re dubbed for western distribution, and he wants to finish out his career primarily serving Chinese cinema.
The only person who was treated worse in recent years was Jackie's good friend and fellow school-chum ( a phrase which means significantly much more to Chinese actors than it does to western actors.... Chinese Opera School life is akin to having eight year old boys put through the Navy Seals training, and then for a graduating thesis mastering Cirque Du Soleil.... ) Sammo Hung, whose physical girth masks an agility and capability every bit the equal of Jackie's.
Sammo had his own CBS TV series, where his phonetic English was reasonably well handled as he took time and effort to learn the language, only to find his first season cliff-hanger of a traditionally intriguing police crime-drama typical of Hong Kong Cinema being ignored so he could return to the second season with.... wait for it... Arsenio Hall as his hip and jive-talking partner, doing his best Chris Tucker impression.
Ratings plummeted and Sammo got out of Hollywood faster than you could say "stupid Americans".
So it's really not unexpected that Jackie's attitude toward our level of freedom is what it is. Even though he had the opportunity to live among us, work among us, and do the things that we value as free men and women, he was mistreated, badly showcased, and used for the financial gain of the studios and even professed friends. It's a good bet that Chris Tucker ruined a promising start to a second career in the US for the highest rated actor in much of the rest of the world.
Hollywood can do that to people. It can bring out the worst in them, and make them screw people over. From Joan Crawford to Janeane Garafolo, appearing on film seems to give people lease to be assholes out there, and controlling those people makes studio executives the toilet paper of the toilets of the cinema industry.
Now as it happens, I work for a Chinese-born man who built a company up in North America from a small office to a series of offices and warehouses around the world. As a boss he can be quite harsh with the largely Chinese staff of his Toronto office, and honestly, as much as they detest it it, they seem to accept it as part of their community. He knows enough not to get too harsh with his employees from the West as we would not accept many of the things he demands of his own people.
I, for instance, have managed to learn enough of the man, and said as much to his face, that I understood when he would yell at me, which happens from time to time, that it was not a personal thing so much as an urge to dispense with pleasantries and finish a subject. Once I understood that relations between him and I... I won't say they blossomed, but things became better.
I asked my boss a few months ago a question that plagues me to this day. As a self-made man in our world, who understands the value of personal achievement, who understands that he has to earn every dollar he makes, and has in true Reagan-era free-market manner become an employer of a pretty decent number of people, how was it that he had not only no problem with Barack Obama becoming president given his desire to tax the rich at greater levels and remove freedoms for most Americans.
His answer came from his perspective on America. His information about the US comes not so much from working with us or selling to us, but from reading about us and listening to BBC world news. He favored America's new president, saying that control was what Americans needed most.
He considers the control that the Chinese Government has over its own people far superior to the free society we have here in the west.
He has his own reasons for wanting to see the US economy weakened, and the US dollar's value diminished, especially against Chinese currency. When you live in Canada and pay your factory in China with US funds it's preferable to have the US dollar weaker than the Canadian dollar... which currently it is not. The US Dollar is on average lately worth about $1.25 CDN.
I do not think my boss is evil, or that his reasons for wanting what he wants are wrong. To do so would be to be ignorant that there are any other viewpoints in the world beside my own. He has been very generous to me, given me second chances that honestly I did not deserve, helped me in situations he had no cause to, and opened up to me about some of his private life which he shields from others.
I have learned in life that so long as I take someone's paycheck I am charged with advancing their agenda. And he has little real impact upon the US economy, as our company sells apparel to one sector of the business only, and not at volumes that shake any foundations. Hell, president hussein himself probably wouldn't want to take control of our company.
I have found it an interesting and rewarding lesson in other cultures, and while I do not share their agenda or goal, I have come to learn some important things about the Chinese. We are alien to them, and they are alien to us.
Jackie Chan has experienced the same sort of thing with the Western world. He came away from America seeing its worst side, while at the same time being toasted everywhere he went as a great ambassador. But while you can force him to follow up on a contractual agreement to make an ill-conceived movie with Chris Tucker, you can not take the man's appreciation for his culture away.
I am NOT advocating a change to Eastern culture. I am NOT advocating a switch to socialism or looking favorably upon Chinese influence. I still feel there is much to be concerned about as they spy on us, challenge us and keep us at an arm's length. What I do understand, and I believe it's worth knowing, is that you CAN work with the Chinese, but you need to know they will never be like us.
Sometimes in this world, that is reasonably comforting.
But I still don't watch BBC World News.
I'm Dr. Calamity and I approve this message.
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