The contentious "squinting" setting
Sun Haipeng, an animation director with a beautiful resume, may not have imagined that the domestic animation film "Lion Boy" created by him would reach such a high degree of discussion, and its reputation has been in a state of "polarization" since its release.
People who praise it believe that "Lion Boy" as a domestic animation film that departs from the traditional mythological themes of the past, its emergence is conducive to breaking the bottleneck of innovation, and through this work, people who have never been to Guangdong can understand the folk art of "lion dance", which has a century-old heritage.
People who hate it think that this work has a serious tendency to flatter, and several characters in "Lion Boy", such as Ah Juan, Ah Cat, Salted Fish Qiang, and Ah Zhen, all adopt an uncomfortable "squinting" modeling setting.
This setting is the most commonly used smear method used by the Western camp against Chinese for a long time, and even gave birth to an exclusive term: the yellow peril theory
Not only that, in order to further deepen the effect of smear, this group of despicable Western media also made the yellow race synonymous with evil through hype, and specially created the image of Fu Manchu to occupy the high ground of public opinion.
It is precisely because of the emergence of this reason that this "Lion Boy" was touted by a certain group on the one hand, and was sprayed wildly by the majority of netizens on the other, and the two sides did not let each other and could not convince anyone, and even some official media failed to calm down this public opinion.
So what is the contest between the two sides? In my opinion, the most objective evaluation is still from the comments of the Communist Youth League.
The official media concluded that "squinting" is the so-called "Orientalism"
For the setting of "squinting eyes", the Communist Youth League directly summarized it as "Orientalism" and presented strong evidence for argumentation.
In this article, Mr. Zhou Ning's books, "The Distant Heavenly Dynasty: A Study of the Image of China in the West" and "China in the World: A Study of the Image of China Outside the Region", are mentioned and listed.
And in these contents, without exception, they are not full of smears on Chinese, and their hearts are reprehensible.
Back to the animated movie "Lion Boy", whenever some netizens criticize its problems, some people jump out and say that this is "buttoning the hat" and trying to divert attention through small eyes.
But I have always believed that the audience has their own judgment and will not be affected by the praise and depreciation.
At last
If you ask me what kind of work can be regarded as cultural output, in my opinion, the current domestic animation may only be "Wu Liu Qi", because this work was not only shortlisted for the Magnolia Award after its launch, but also actively translated into multi-Chinese words for global audiences to appreciate by the world-renowned streaming media Netflix, and the works that go abroad can really be regarded as exports to foreign countries.