Once in the new Disney+ drama "Westward Journey ABC", a rare release of 8 episodes of the first season at once. This drama has attracted a lot of attention since the news of the start of filming, it is a rare mainstream streaming platform in the United States, Asian creator-led, Asian faces starring, telling Asian American stories, it is also inextricably related to one of China's four famous books "Journey to the West". Michelle Yeoh, Kwan Jiwei, Xu Weilun, Wu Hanzhang (not yet appeared in the first season) and others who once starred in "Instantaneous Universe" met in "Journey to the West ABC". When the actors joined the show, "Instantaneous Universe" had not yet exploded. On the day Michelle Yeoh became the queen, "Journey to the West ABC" released a new trailer, which brushed a wave of presence well and filled the audience's expectations.
"Journey to the West ABC" poster When "Journey to the West ABC" is really online, the overall reputation is not as bright as "Instantaneous Universe". On several mainstream rating websites in North America, "Westward Journey ABC" has a passable reputation, with Metascore, which represents media evaluation indicators, scoring 72 points (based on 27 media), and the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes is as high as 95%. The reputation of the drama on Douban is quite mediocre, and the score directly fails and hovers around 5.5 points.
Metascore professional rating is good
The freshness of Rotten Tomatoes and the popcorn index are also very high, and it can be said that this drama has encountered a polarization of word of mouth among Chinese and foreign audiences. Although the Douban score is low, is it really that bad?
Why is Douban low
The most fundamental reason why domestic audiences gave bad reviews is that the changes made by "Journey to the West" ABC to "Journey to the West" are simply "magic changes". The plot is about the branch line of "Journey to the West": For thousands of years, the Heavenly Palace has been peaceful under the control of the Jade Emperor. Who expected that the Bull Demon King (played by Leonard Wu) rebelled, and the only golden hoop rod that could compete with Sun Wukong (played by Wu Yanzu) disappeared, and the one who stole the golden hoop rod was Sun Weichen (played by Liu Jing), the son of Sun Wukong, who wanted to use the golden hoop rod to unlock the "fourth volume".
Sun Wukong (played by Wu Yanzu) and his son Sun Weichen (played by Liu Jing) What is the "fourth volume"? In the setting of the play, Sun Wukong and his party obtained three scriptures when they took the scriptures from the Western Heaven, but there has always been a fourth scripture, and the fourth scripture is powerful and has the power to dominate everything. If the Bull Demon King obtains both the Golden Hoop Rod and the fourth scripture, then he also has the power to subvert the Heavenly Court. Sun Weichen believes that the Asian boy Wang Jin (played by Wang Ban) is the one who can lead him to find the fourth scripture and defeat the Bull Demon King, while Sun Wukong and Guanyin Bodhisattva (played by Michelle Yeoh) must also beware of the golden hoop rod and the fourth scripture falling into the hands of the Bull Demon King... They all went the same way, all to prevent the Bull Demon King from subverting the Heavenly Court and destroying the world.
Guanyin (played by Michelle Yeoh) Obviously, "Journey to the West ABC" only grabbed some of the characters and elements of "Journey to the West", and has little to do with the Journey to the West story itself familiar to Chinese audiences, and some domestic audiences will inevitably be uncomfortable when they see "Journey to the West ABC" so changed. For example, shouldn't the spiritual core of "Journey to the West" be to resist authority? As a result, in "Journey to the West ABC", the Bull Demon King is obviously a character who resists authority, but he has become a big villain, and Sun Wukong and Guanyin Bodhisattva are the ones who guard authority, but they are forced to become the big heroes of Hollywood's cliché "bad guys want to destroy the world, superheroes save the world".
The Bull Demon King (played by Leonard Wu) is a person who rebels against authority, Guanyin and Sun Wukong have become people who maintain authorityOn the other hand, the main creator probably does not know much about "Journey to the West" itself, the plot is based on Yang Jinlun's comic "Meisheng Chinese", and its cognition of "Journey to the West" is more from comics, so various elements are stewed in the play. For example, Sun Wukong has a son? How did Jigong mess into the story of Journey to the West, and Jigong in the play also became a selfish villain.
Jigong (played by Qian Xinyi) is also unknown, whether it is the limited investment, or the intention of the drama to highlight its deconstruction of "Journey to the West", the artistic presentation of the Heavenly Court Peach Club in the fourth episode is too cheap and tacky. If such ugly art is not because of lack of money, it can only be said that the main creator's misunderstanding of "Journey to the West" is really too deep, even if it is deconstructed, it is a fool's errand.
The Heavenly Court Peach Club part is really chaotic based on the above reasons, and it is understandable that some viewers gave "Journey to the West ABC" a bad review. To a certain extent, this is a simple and crude appropriation and rewriting of other cultures by a strong culture. However, a short comment similar to "milk (humiliated)" may also be a bit on the line? Regardless of the fact that "Journey to the West", which is regarded as a classic by later generations, is essentially a product of deconstruction, the adaptation of "Journey to the West" has been worldwide for many years. In other words, in addition to the Chinese literary classic "Journey to the West", there have always been other versions of Journey to the West stories around the world. For example, Japan already has multiple versions of "Journey to the West", Japan's first TV series version of "Journey to the West" is earlier than the domestic 86 version of "Journey to the West", and the Japanese version almost changes the identity of Tang monks to women. The adaptation of "Journey to the West" in the European and American world is not the first time, and the degree of magic change in "Qi Tian Dashen" filmed by NBC in the United States in 2001 is staggering; In 2017, Netflix also launched the Australian ABC version of "The Legend of the New Monkey King", not only Tang Sanzang became a woman, but even Sha Wujing became a woman. This time's "Westward Journey ABC" caught up with Michelle Yeoh's enthusiasm for winning an Oscar, so the attention of this drama has increased dramatically, otherwise in terms of the subversiveness of the adaptation, it is not an exaggeration in many foreign Westward Journey versions. While many viewers gave bad reviews, some viewers were attracted by some wild imagination in the play, and some rewrites in the play made people laugh. For example, Guanyin and Sun Wukong went to eat a buffet, and they quickly ate until they were full; The Guanyin Bodhisattva of Pudu sentient beings came to the world and became an idiot in life, and installing the simplest IKEA furniture made it difficult for her... How Guanyin Bodhisattva and Sun Wukong would live in contemporary times is indeed very imaginative.
Some small details are interesting, so while we are angry at other countries' magic changes to "Journey to the West", we can actually think: Have we dug "Journey to the West" thoroughly enough? In many cases, our attitude of reverence for the classics also limits our secondary interpretation of the classics, because we may be labeled as "magic reform", "insult to the classics" and "nihilism" at every turn. The result of shelving is that others adapt it properly, and we can only score low on Douban.
Why North America scores well
"Journey to the West ABC" consists of two parts: "Journey to the West" and "ABC" (American n-Born Chinese, Chinese born and raised in the United States). "Journey to the West" is just a novel setting, and "ABC" is the core and focus of this drama. This is in line with the original comic book "Meisheng Chinese", although it has the carnival imagination of "Journey to the West", but the focus is on the process of Chinese American teenagers looking for self-identity. Regarded by Sun Weichen as the leader who can lead him to the fourth volume, is an ordinary Asian boy Wang Jin. Wang Jin is a typical ABC whose parents immigrated to the United States in his early years, and now he attends high school in a white neighborhood with almost all white faces. Wang Jin has a faint sense of unconscious inferiority in his heart, both because of his ordinary family situation (his parents have repeatedly quarreled over financial problems) and because of his skin color. He is afraid of the isolation and ridicule of others, so he has been trying very hard to integrate into it, very deliberately trying to close the distance with his classmates, and does not want to offend them.
Asian boy Wang Jin (played by Wang Ban) has a very typical bridge in the play. Wang Jin was knocked over on a trash can in front of everyone, and the video was uploaded by classmates to social media and widely circulated as a joke. Some classmates spoke up for him, believing that this was bullying and aggression, and discrimination against Asians. But Wang Jin himself did not want to join the protest — although he was a party concerned, and in his view, the protesting classmates were merely "using him." So, when the Asian classmate was fighting for his rights, he instead jumped out to excuse the white classmate who shot the video and uploaded it, saying that he was a good person, which was just a harmless joke. The Asian classmate later questioned Wang Jin: You did this, and your compatriots' efforts were in vain.
In the face of Asian classmates' questions, Wang Jin responded. Subconsciously, he thinks that Asians had better be "ordinary people" with rules, otherwise they will become the focus of laughter. This bridge may be a bit superficial, but to a certain extent, it does reflect the characteristics of Asian Americans who do not like to stand out and rest in mainstream American society. In the end, because I didn't integrate and didn't feel safe, I didn't want to be the first bird, I just wanted to be well-behaved, keep to myself, and live carefully. This rule is also reflected in Wang Jin's parents. When Wang Jin's parents immigrated to the United States, they were full of spirit and fearless. Now that they have been in the United States for many years, they seem to have become the middle class in the United States, but Wang Jin's father (played by Huang Jinghan) is still embarrassed to propose a promotion and salary increase, although he is the most senior person in the company; Mother (played by Yang Yanyan) has become a full-time housewife, occasionally going to church to help, and her social circle is almost full of Chinese people... Like stereotypical Asian families, mothers are always a bit strong, rolling their husbands and sons. But Wang Jin's father's conversation with the teacher actually revealed the plight of Asians: "My wife is very strict with my son because she believes in him, she urges her, because she knows he can bear it; The reason why the Asian community is "better" is not only the "volume" in the blood of Asians, but also that only by being better than others can they integrate into mainstream American society.
After Wang Jin's father (played by Huang Jinghan), a speech by Wang Jin's mother touched the heartstrings of the audience. My mother concealed that my father used a large part of the family's income to buy Chinese medicine powder, hoping to do it as a business, but it seemed that he was deceived. Mom explained why she went into the pit, "That TCM doctor believes in me, it feels really good to be trusted." How humble and real, although I have become an American, it is so difficult to gain a little embrace and trust from society.
The sadness behind the difficulty of integration, many Asian audiences may have a heart, in order to three-dimensional Asian dilemma, the play also invited Guan Jiwei to act in a play-within-a-play. In the play, Guan Jiwei plays Jamie, an actor in an American sitcom in the 1990s, in the comedy, he relies on ugliness to make laughter, although the audience likes the harlequin, but this drama comedy did not bring further development to Jamie's career, and he had to leave the show business. This echoes the experience of Guan Jiwei outside the play. Kwan Jiwei was a famous Asian child star who participated in "Indiana Jones" and "Seven Treasures" in the 1980s, but for a long time after that, he almost completely disappeared from the big screen because there was no role to give him. In 2020, he participated in "Instantaneous Universe" - the movie will not be released until 2022, and Guan Jiwei did not get a single opportunity to appear in the entire 2021, so that he couldn't even pay for medical insurance. In the play, after 30 years, the actors of that sitcom reunited and invited Jamie. Jamie talks about her experience in an interview, "In those days, people like me weren't often on TV, and I'm still grateful for this opportunity... After the show stopped, I thought I would get a lot of opportunities, just like the other actors, but I only got the role of nerd and neighbor, sometimes a ninja. I wanted to play a hero, and that's every kid's dream, right? ...... Heroes may be people with superpowers, or people who are willing to defend important things, my parents are heroes, but like I said, they weren't often seen on TV at the time, and I wanted to have a kid who was watching a show and felt that he didn't have to be the laughing stock of everyone and believed that he could be a hero. ”
The Jamie, played by Guan Jiwei, highly overlaps with Guan Jiwei's own experience until here, and we may be able to understand why this ABC story should be put on a shell of a journey to the west. Because "Journey to the West" is about fulfilling a dream of Asians like Jamie and countless Asian children he represents: they too can become superheroes. There are only a few yellow-skinned superheroes in mainstream American culture, so they have to be taken from the world IP "Journey to the West" closely related to Chinese culture. And the ordinary Asian boy Wang Jin is a superhero, and he himself is the fourth volume that everyone is looking for. In the dream, his mother told Wang Jin that he was the product of the collision of two worlds (or China and the United States, East and West) and that he was "a combination of the whole body" and that "I wish you could know how strong you are, you just have to play well." Just as the Bull Demon King was preparing to use the power of the mortal world to endow the heavenly realm, Wang Jin finally realized the mission he undertook, and he stepped forward. While not every Asian boy is a superhero, every Asian American can be a hero: "A hero doesn't have to have superpowers, and being willing to take risks, go ahead, and help others is also a hero." ”
This drama is essentially a self-telling story of Asian Americans "Journey to the West ABC" is essentially a story about the integration of Asian Americans into mainstream American society, telling the plight of Asian Americans and wanting to pass on Asian strength and courage. As the original comic book author said, he once felt "ashamed" because of his identity, culture and even appearance, and this shame is related to various stereotypes of Asians in mainstream American society, so he created comics in the hope of breaking such stereotypes and encouraging more Asian children to accept themselves. The broadcast of "Journey to the West" in the mainstream media in the United States has played such a role to a certain extent. Together with the success of "Instantaneous Universe" and Michelle Yeoh's Oscar win, it is an important symbol of the integration of Asian Americans into mainstream American society. Domestic audiences are indifferent to such stories, but for Asians, "it feels really good to be trusted." This is also an important reason why "Journey to the West ABC" has received good reviews in North America.
Senior Editor of this issue Zhou Yuhua