Instantaneous Universe: How to Bridge the Gap of Film Culture in the Age of Globalization?

At the 95th Academy Awards ceremony that ended at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA, "Instantaneous Universe", which won seven awards such as Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress, undoubtedly became the biggest winner, and many people regarded the victory of "Instantaneous Universe" at the Oscars as the spring of Asian movies in Hollywood. In fact, unlike the good reputation of the North American water, "Instantaneous Universe" has experienced a decline in ratings in China. This is not an isolated case, and other Hollywood Asian American movies have had their unpleasant appearance outside the walls. Why can't Asian Hollywood films successfully break into the Chinese market? What inspiration can they give to Chinese films that want to go global?

Author | FAN Yuanyuan (Author of Cultural Industry Review, Research Fellow, Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism Research Institute)

Editorial | time

Edit | peninsula

Source | Cultural Industry Review

With the end of the 95th Oscars, the dark horse of "Instantaneous Universe" rode in the dust, winning seven Oscars, starring Michelle Yeoh also became the first Asian Oscar actress, and the topics related to it blew a storm on the Internet for a while.

△ "Instantaneous Universe" poster

After winning the award, many reports regarded "Instantaneous Universe" as the light of Asian movies, and believed that the spring of Hollywood Asian movies may be coming. "Instantaneous Universe" was released in North America on March 25, 2022, and audiences in China will also be able to watch the film after the emergence of streaming resources. In terms of international market response, the IMBD of "Instantaneous Universe" reached 8.1 points, MTC media reputation was 81 points, the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes was 95%, the popcorn index was 89%, and the global box office exceeded 100 million US dollars, which can be described as a double harvest of word of mouth and box office. In China, the score of "Instantaneous Universe" in mainstream Douban movies has experienced huge fluctuations, from a high score of 8.9 at the beginning to 7.6 points now.

△ "Instantaneous Universe" Douban score

Although this is not a low score, if you carefully analyze the data of Douban movies, you can find that the one-star praise rate of "Instantaneous Universe" is only 1.6%, and the five-star praise rate is only 24%, and most audiences give this movie three or four points. So, what kind of movie is "Instantaneous Universe", and why is its reputation in China controversial?

Can the controversial "Instantaneous Universe" be treated by the domestic market?

"Instantaneous Universe" is a fantasy comedy co-directed by director Kwan Jiayong and Daniel Schintett, co-starring Michelle Yeoh, Kwan Jiwei and Jamie Lee Curtis, telling the story of Michelle Yeoh's middle-aged Asian female Xiulian, in a messy daily life, suddenly told that she is the only one who can save the multiverse, in order to defeat evil and save her daughter, Xiulian connects and jumps in multiple parallel universes, and finally saves her daughter Joey, and also understands how important it is to understand and inclusive love in her family.

△ "Instantaneous Universe" stills

As the title of Everything Everywhere All at Once suggests, the amount of information the film gives the audience is enormous, as if witnessing the explosion of the entire universe in an instant. Michelle Yeoh plays the middle-aged woman Xiulian with countless life possibilities, she is an ordinary laundromat hostess, a famous singer, kung fu actress, chef, scientist, etc.

△ Countless possibilities in parallel space-time

Although this parallel universe setting is not unique to "Instantaneous Universe", it is necessary to be full of creativity and full of Hong Kong cult movie-style nonsense and comedy effects by jumping the universe through abnormal behavior and obtaining its own special abilities.

△ "Instantaneous Universe" is nonsensical and funny

At the same time, "Instantaneous Universe" focuses on Asian immigrant families, in which the central position of the protagonist is rare to Asian Oriental women, which is undoubtedly exciting for Asian groups abroad. Not only that, the ingenuity of some clips in "Instantaneous Universe" can always win the audience's recognition, such as the silent dialogue between mother Xiulian and daughter Joey incarnating two stones, full of the ingenuity of Eastern philosophy, after the fast-paced picture, this "stillness" is evocative.

△ "Instantaneous Universe" stills

These highlights have helped "Instantaneous Universe" to deliver a good box office answer in the North American film market, although "Instantaneous Universe" has not yet been released in China, but thanks to the streaming platform, many audiences have seen the film. It is worth playing that compared with the high reputation of foreign countries, the reputation of "Instantaneous Universe" in China has experienced greater fluctuations, once falling from 8.9 to the current 7.6, throughout the comment area can be found that the audience's dissatisfaction with "Instantaneous Universe" is mainly concentrated in the following aspects, one is too fast, the second is the form is greater than the content, and the third is the stereotype of Asians.

"Instantaneous Universe" blends various pop culture memes on top of the setting of a parallel universe, and the director who shot the advertisement still chose the same way to present the film, basically every few minutes, the audience will suffer a visual spectacle.

△ This still may partially represent the visual state of the audience

Under such a dense visual concentration, many audiences' appreciation of the film's creativity dies as the film continues to advance, and then only fatigue is felt, and some viewers bluntly say that the viewing experience is like "forcing you to pour a bowl of boiled water with all the seasonings in the world every two minutes".

△Douban netizens commented

This problem may be related to the way domestic audiences watch, limited to streaming media platforms, domestic audiences can only watch this film on mobile phones, TV computers, and the sense of immersion and entertainment of watching movies collectively in cinemas cannot be obtained.

Form is greater than content is also the audience's criticism of "Instantaneous Universe", which is generally said that the creativity of this movie is good, but the story is not told well, especially the ending falls into the trap of love and peace. The boring and repetitive reality stifles the possibility that Xiulian should have, and Xiulian encroaches on and persecutes her daughter in the mother-daughter relationship, causing her to fall into nothingness and become the ultimate villain in another time and space, causing chaos in the universe.

△ became the daughter of the villain

How to face nothingness, how to solve the contradictions between generations? These deep, complex topics are not so easy to solve, so when "Instantaneous Universe" tries to solve everything with love, it can only be simple, unable to bear the weight of the topics it raises, and will also cause audience disappointment.

The stereotype of Asian Americans is a point that domestic audiences are very dissatisfied with. The protagonist Xiulian is the owner of the laundry, which seems to continue the reproduction of the image of Chinese in early Hollywood movies: Chinese people are at the bottom of American society, appearing as laundrymen, manicurists and other professions, and even Xiulian's name itself is also the name of Eastern women preferred by the West.

△ Xiulian dressed in corny clothes

These details undoubtedly convey that the film is still one of Hollywood's products operating along the inertia. For domestic audiences, they lack the anxiety and uneasiness of Asian compatriots from reality, and this lack of experience hinders most people's perception of empathy in the film, and can only see stereotypical depictions of Asian Americans, which undoubtedly makes domestic audiences very dissatisfied.

It is reported that the distribution rights of "Instantaneous Universe" in China are in the hands of Huayi Brothers, but it is unknown whether and when the film will be released. Can "Instantaneous Universe" achieve good results in the Chinese market? It may not be easy to simply give the answer to this question, but you can refer to both positive and negative factors. On the one hand, "Instantaneous Universe" as the biggest winner of this year's Oscars, has a reputation, which will undoubtedly attract some audiences to watch, and the visual effects of the film are more suitable for viewing in cinemas, and a better experience may be taken into account by the audience.

On the other hand, "Instantaneous Universe" has been launched on the streaming platform, and after winning the Oscar, there was a situation where various resources were flying all over the world, will the audience pay again for films that can obtain free resources? This is not easy to answer, not to mention that "Instantaneous Universe" has not yet been released on a large scale in China, there has been a situation of word-of-mouth fluctuations, and the word-of-mouth after the release is likely to continue to fluctuate along the two levels.

Whether "Instantaneous Universe" can be accepted by the Chinese market still needs to put a question mark, in fact, it is not the first film to appear in this situation, in North America with a good reputation Hollywood Asian movies "Shang Qi", "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Don't Tell Her", have also encountered the same problem, which reflects the question, why are Hollywood Asian movies not popular in the Chinese market?

Why are Hollywood Asian movies always not accepted "inside the wall"?

Hollywood Asian movies are not a proper noun, according to a broader literal meaning, it seems that as long as they are produced by Hollywood, movies related to Asian Americans can be called Hollywood Asian movies. But in fact, due to the influence of Hollywood's "white centrism", some roles that show Asian life or should be played by Asian actors are often replaced by white actors, such as the role of the heroine Suko Kusanagi in "Ghost in the Shell" who was assigned to Scarlett Johansson.

△ Scarlett Johansson plays the protagonist Suko Kusanagi

The Asian mage Gu Yi in " Doctor Strange " is also played by Tidar Swinton, so judging whether a movie can be called an "Asian movie" depends on the weight of Asian actors in the film.

The first film that can be called a Hollywood Asian film was "Joy Luck Club" released in 1993.

△ "Joy Luck Club" stills

The director and actors of this film are Asian, but unfortunately, this film did not bring more opportunities to Asians in the future, until the release of "Crazy Rich Asians" in 2018, Asians seem to have gradually become the "outlet" of Hollywood movies, and Hollywood Asian movies such as "Don't Tell Her" and "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" have appeared one after another.

△ "Crazy Rich Asians" overseas poster

Although these films are of different types, they have all achieved a double harvest of box office and word of mouth in the international market, "Crazy Rich Asians" has a global box office of 238 million US dollars, and was nominated for Best Musical and Comedy at the 76th American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards; "Don't Tell Her" has a Rotten Tomatoes index close to a full score, and the single-library box office once surpassed "Avengers 4"; "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" has a freshness rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, winning the box office for four consecutive weeks.

△ "Crazy Rich Asians" Rotten Tomatoes score

Compared with the popularity of these films in the international market, the experience of these films in the Chinese market can be called dismal. The promotional poster of "Crazy Rich Asians" reads the words "Hollywood all-Asian word-of-mouth masterpiece, three consecutive North American box office titles, finally on the mainland screen", but after the release, the response was mediocre, and the box office did not exceed the 10 million mark a week after its release, and finally only won 11 million yuan at the box office. "Don't Tell Her" suffered a withdrawal storm in Chinese mainland, and finally only had a box office of 4.184 million. "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" encountered a storm in the Chinese market and caused a lot of controversy.

△ The removed "Shang Qi"

These Hollywood Asian-American films encounter Waterloo in China for three reasons, the first is the change in the market environment. The reason why Hollywood has focused on investment in Asian films in recent years is because it sees the potential of the Asian market. In the context of the global spread of the new crown epidemic, the film industry has suffered a lot of blows, and under such circumstances, expanding the original market and attracting more audiences with "diversification" are included in their planning.

Although Asians do not belong to the traditional ethnic group of the United States like Latinos and African Americans, they have become the fastest growing group in the United States in recent years, accounting for 80% of the total immigrant population in the past 50 years, and the number of Asian Americans in the United States has exceeded 23 million and will continue to increase in the future.

At the same time, these Asian American groups in the mainstream white narrative situation, eager to see their own stories, but also eager to be recognized and accepted by the mainstream American society, Hollywood launched Asian films are born to cater to the market and consumer group psychology, which is the unique competitiveness of Hollywood Asian films abroad.

However, when these films are moved to Chinese mainland, such a good market situation and unique competitiveness will disappear, and audiences will encounter the same dilemma when watching "Instantaneous Universe": they lack similar survival experience, and not every audience has a rich imagination to transcend the gap of reality, so the factors that attract Chinese mainland audience are more in the fame of the film actors, visual experience or the story of the film and other factors, once these Asian films lack attractive elements. Box office fiasco became inevitable.

Secondly, Chinese audiences' weariness of Hollywood homogenization and the increasing number of excellent local films are also factors. In China, Hollywood blockbusters in the past are almost synonymous with high box office, magnificent visual effects, touching fight scenes attract the attention of the audience.

△ The wonderful special effects of "Avatar"

In order to ensure high efficiency, the Hollywood film production industry produces these film products on a highly modern assembly line, and various genre elements, series and IP universes emerge endlessly, but if these additional factors are removed, the story itself is highly homogeneous.

Taking Hollywood blockbusters as an example, the peaceful and beautiful life of the protagonist (usually a white male) will inevitably be broken by the underworld forces, and in the process of fighting the underworld forces, he will find a group of friends with different values and skin tones, and by the way, he can develop a relationship with beautiful women, and finally save the world in various gorgeous fighting stunts. Hollywood Asian movies also follow a similar model to a certain extent, Asian is only a selling point for publicity, does not touch the core of the story, the story itself is still highly homogeneous, such as "Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and other heroic stories in the Marvel Universe are essentially the same, but the protagonist is an Asian. With the increasing number of excellent local films such as "The Wandering Earth", the aesthetic threshold of the audience is raised higher and higher, and if Hollywood Asian films want to rely only on the name of "Hollywood" to run amok in the market, I am afraid that they cannot do it.

△ "The Wandering Earth" stills

Finally, Hollywood Asian films are often prone to follow the inertia of history and present the East in a "spectacle" style, and this performance will lead to a psychological shift, and the most intuitive consequence is to be rejected by the real East. The attitude of the United States towards Asians can be divided into two types, one regards Asians as beasts of deluge, and spares no effort to vilify or exclude the Asian community, which is represented by the image of the oriental "Fu Manchu" in the artwork.

△ Fu Manchu's image in film works

"Fu Manchu" is sinister and cunning, tall and thin, with slender eyebrows, appearing as a villain in the movie, the father of the protagonist in "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings", the original name is "Fu Manchu", which also caused dissatisfaction among Chinese audiences, Marvel was pressured, and then changed the name to "Mandarin", but the film still failed to be released in Chinese mainland.

Another attitude is to imagine the East according to one's own tastes and interests, and to put the East in the perspective of being gazed, rather than looking at it equally and objectively. Therefore, in Asian Hollywood films, Chinese audiences see either the isolated ancient villages of the East in "Instantaneous Universe", or the dense negative second-tier urban life landscape in "Don't Tell Her". When the audience looks forward to watching a film with "Asian" as the promotion point, but only sees a strange East that continues the Western imagination, and sometimes even finds itself a laughing point in the movie, this gap can only lead to dissatisfaction, and it is natural to be rejected by the Chinese market.

The lessons of Asian-American Hollywood films encountering Waterloo in the Chinese market can also be used as a mirror to allow Chinese films to learn more experience in the process of going global. After all, in the era of economic globalization, film, as a cultural commodity, also needs to go out.

In the era of globalization, how should Chinese films better go global

Globalization is an important feature of our time, and the world is no longer an isolated whole composed of a single independent region, but an organic whole that is interconnected and influences each other. Among them, film, as a kind of cultural commodity, is different from ordinary commodities, has both economic and cultural characteristics, and also has its own development laws in the process of globalization. The phenomenon of Hollywood Asian films encountering Waterloo in the Chinese market shows that films, a cultural and commercial product, cannot be successful if they are simply transplanted and copied in another environment. How to make audiences in different countries accept heterogeneous cultures? How can you reduce the cultural conflicts that can arise in this process to maximize the economic benefits? These are all questions to think about.

If Chinese films want to go out better, they should uphold the attitude of respecting and understanding heterogeneous cultures, not arrogant, not flattering, and ensure their uniqueness. An important reason why Hollywood Asian films frequently overturn in the Chinese mainland market is that they do not respect and understand Asian culture, and still depict Asian culture according to historical stereotypes, which actually reflects the unequal idea of respecting Western culture and inferior to other cultures. The Chinese film industry also needs to be wary of this idea and its variants, namely that Western culture represents advanced, that the content of films needs to cater to Western audiences, or that Chinese culture is above other cultures, which is incorrect. Chinese films should reflect China's uniqueness, involve the content of other cultures, and should not be demonized.

If Chinese films want to go out better, they should also use a cross-cultural perspective to promote the integration of Chinese and Western cultures, and they can try to tell Chinese stories well in Western narratives. If the esoteric truth is taught in a suitable way, it can also achieve the effect of simplifying the complex and turning it into a thousand pounds. In this regard, Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" may provide a good example. Starring Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, the film was released in 2000 and not only won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the United States, the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and also performed well at the box office, becoming the first foreign language film in the history of American cinema to exceed $100 million at the box office, deeply loved by Western audiences.

△ "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" title

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is a Chinese martial arts film, which also contains a lot of oriental philosophy, according to the truth, these are strange and incomprehensible cultures for Western audiences, but Ang Lee has made a clever arrangement in the characters, plot, film language and even the soundtrack, so that Western audiences can not only accept the movie, but also feel the immersion of Chinese martial arts culture. For example, Li Mubai and Yu Xiulian are traditional Chinese warriors with a Confucian temperament on the one hand, and the relationship between the two is platonic on the other hand, and Yu Jiaolong's character of daring to love and hate is similar to that of cowboys in the American West; The plot of Li Mubai killing the villain Blue-eyed Fox in revenge implies the main line of revenge of "The Count of Monte Cristo"; Use simple phrases and vernacular in dialogue to make it easier for Western audiences to understand; The soundtrack combines Western and Chinese instruments, which has a special flavor.

△ The famous fight scene of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"

Finally, if Chinese films want to go out better, they can also carry forward the traditional advantages of China, such as promoting the development of other genres while developing martial arts films and martial arts films. Chinese kung fu has always been a business card of Chinese culture, has a long cultural accumulation in the West, Chinese martial arts films and martial arts films, in the West has always had a wide audience, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan starring martial arts films are popular with Western audiences, even Hollywood has invested in the shooting of such films, or put Chinese kung fu as an element in the movie. Chinese films can first take advantage of the advantages of martial arts films and martial arts films to vigorously develop this genre, while other films should also move forward steadily and strive to go abroad as soon as possible.

epilogue

"Instantaneous Universe" has become the biggest winner of this year's Oscars, but this cannot hide the controversial phenomenon of its reputation in the Chinese market, and it also reflects the problem that Hollywood Asian films are easy to be unconvinced in the Chinese market. Changes in the market environment, the routine of the Hollywood film model, and the emergence of more and more excellent films in China and the stereotyping of the East are the reasons why those Hollywood Asian films are "rejected" by the Chinese market, and also provide negative experiences for Chinese films that want to go better in the era of globalization. For Chinese films, adhering to the attitude of respecting and understanding heterogeneous cultures, promoting the integration of Chinese and Western excellent cultures from a cross-cultural perspective, flexibly changing the way of telling according to time and place, relying on advantageous film types, such as martial arts films and other genres to tell Chinese stories well, and maintaining their own uniqueness, in order to better participate in globalization, I sincerely hope that more and more excellent film works in China can go abroad and go to the world.

Bibliography:

Chinese business newspaper "Asians win big at the Oscars, but Hollywood is not becoming more diverse"