In 1981, China began its self-funded study abroad. That year, the TOEFL held its first exam in the mainland, and few candidates took the exam; Yu Minhong, the "godfather of studying abroad", had just enrolled in Peking University. For the vast majority of Chinese, going abroad is something they dare not dream of. However, Chen Chong, an actress who is famous all over the world with the movie "Little Flower", chose to resolutely study in the United States in this year.
"Little Flower" Chen Chong
Five years later, Chen Chong starred in the first Hollywood movie "Big Class", but caused an uproar due to the insulting plot and exposed shots.
In fact, throughout the centuries of Hollywood, oriental women rarely get rid of the fate of being looked down upon, conquered, and hunted. Those stereotyped facialized images reflect the weakness of the East to the West and women to men, even in the 21st century, it is still difficult to get rid of.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >01 Sexy dangerous, ignorant obedience</h1>
Chen Chong played a twisted and charming female slave in "Big Class", extremely loyal to white men and often full of jealousy. The owner of her allegiance was an Englishman who sold opium to the Qing Dynasty. There is no doubt that such a plot and human design have attracted a lot of scolding, and the Chinese people cannot imagine that Chen Chong, who is pure and sweet in "Youth" and "Little Flower", went to the United States to become like this.
"Big Class" Chen Chong
However, "Big Class" turned out to be the first Hollywood movie starring a Chinese actress. Prior to this, only Huang Liushuang, who is a Chinese national, and Guan Nanshi, a Hong Kong mixed-race beauty, have been given the opportunity to star.
Huang was born in 1905 in Los Angeles' Chinatown, where her grandfather became one of the first Chinese workers to go to the United States because of the California gold rush. According to historical records, there were about 50,000 Chinese in California in 1870, of which 3526 were women, most of whom fell into the dust. The Chinese gathering area has also become a dark place for thieves, drug dealers, and gangsters.
Yellow willow cream
As a result, the initial Chinatown coincided with the distant and backward "pagan countries" of the East, forming Hollywood's first impression of Chinese women: mysterious, dangerous, sexy or ignorant and obedient, thus opening a Western peep and imagination of the "spectacle" of the East, which lasted for a hundred years.
In 2004, "Kill Bill 2" was released, and the Chinese actress Liu Yuling became famous for her perfect portrayal of gang leader Ishii Miren. Between its hands and feet, it is still the "dangerous and sexy" oriental female stereotype of a hundred years ago.
Liu Yuling played ishii Miren
And even this fixed routine with obvious discriminatory colors, Huang Liushuang, as a first-generation Chinese actress, has paid a great sacrifice and price.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >02 Looks oriental</h1>
In 1919, the "Red Light Illumination", known as "the earliest surviving American melodrama reflecting China", was released, and Huang Liushuang also completed her debut novel: a nameless and nameless English mistress.
Three years later, the first film in film history starring a Chinese woman, "The Death of the Sea", was released. Huang Liushuang plays a young girl living on the coast of South China, who inadvertently rescues an American who has been shipwrecked and promises her. In the end, the Americans began to abandon themselves, and the girls committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea.
Huang Liushuang "The Death of the Sea"
In the film, Huang Liushuang wears a cheongsam, combs Qi bangs, and raises her hands and feet to be full of shyness, thus fixing the image of an ignorant and obedient oriental woman. But what is speechless is that the superficially implicit young girls easily give their own consent to American men, which is absolutely unimaginable in China at that time. Therefore, this role of Huang Liushuang is to satisfy the empty obscenity of Western men easily conquering Eastern women.
Later, Huang Liushuang played the female slave of the great villain Mongolian prince in "The Thief of Baghdad", a sexy and evil facial character. In one of the few shots, she contributed to what was a large-scale performance of the year, a python snaking over her body, winning a sense of amazement. And its rich lips and thick and up-and-top eyeliner have also become the paradigm makeup of sexy and dangerous oriental women.
Yellow Willow Cream "Baghdad Thieves"
In 1932, Huang Liushuang played a dusty woman who scratched her head in "Shanghai Express". However, the distributor Paramount brought the film to China for release, causing great criticism. The Beiyang Pictorial published an article on the front page titled "Paramount Has Humiliated China with Yellow Willow Cream Again!" , said:
Huang Liushuang has no acting skills to speak of, and will only twist his waist and limbs in a group of exposed Western women to attract the attention of foreign men.
In the face of surging public opinion, the Nationalist government quickly listed "Shanghai Express" as a banned film. At the same time, American Film Magazine also published a book titled "Yellow Peril! China Invades the Screen and launches an attack on Huang Liushuang.
Huang Liushuang: "Shanghai Express"
In the cracks, she had no choice but to go to the United Kingdom to shoot a drama, but unexpectedly became popular with the movie "Chinatown Prosperous Dream" and was invited to attend the royal banquet, which surprised the audience.
After a great success in Europe, she returned to Hollywood, where she was re-accepted, and her reputation grew. In 1942, Huang Liushuang starred in two anti-Japanese films, and donated all the proceeds to the United Relief Society of China.
Enchant the yellow willow cream of the West
In fact, to this day, no Chinese actress can match the achievements of Huang Liushuang in Hollywood, and the National Portrait Museum has praised it as "the most important Chinese-American film star of the 20th century".
However, Huang Liushuang's acting path is undoubtedly a struggle. The blood-dependent mother country could not accept the Westernized her; the real mother country regarded it as an exotic voyeur and a projection of conquest.
Huang Liushuang's "Dragon Girl" stills, "Yellow Peril" has a strong meaning
In 1961, Huang Liushuang died of a sudden heart attack, and her tombstone was empty. And under the tombstone, buried a soul with nowhere to live.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >03 Sexy "cheongsam"</h1>
A year before Huang Liushuang's death, another important film starring Chinese women was released in the United Kingdom, which was Guan Nanshi's "Su Si Huang's World".
Poster of "The World of Suss Yellow"
KannanShi was born in Hong Kong to a famous Chinese architect and an English mother. The superior family environment and mixed Chinese and English background make Kannan Shi extremely outstanding, combining Oriental elegance and Western sensuality, so as to enter the film industry.
In "The World of Sushuang", Guan Nanshi plays a Hong Kong dust girl who falls in love with an American painter. On the screen, she wore a high-slit cheongsam, outlining a Western-style plump figure, with an oriental exquisite face, which soon swept the world and became the fantasy object of countless men.
Kannan Shi in Susie Yellow's World
However, this best-selling film is only a step further on the path of representation of Oriental symbolization. In the same vein as the girl in "The Passing of the Sea" and the dusty woman in "Shanghai Express", Guan Nanshi is still a "Chinese Doll" who admires white men and is ready to sacrifice for love.
It is worth mentioning that before the release of "SuSi Huang's World", the qipao, as the traditional costume of Chinese women, has always had nothing to do with sexiness. It is "SuSi Huang" that puts the short pendulum, high fork, and tight "new qipao" on the screen, and then promotes it to the world.
Kannan Shi
To this day, countless "net red models" wearing "qipao" come and go in front of the camera, adding bricks and tiles to the condescending and playful gaze of the West, making people look like a fish in the throat and be stunned.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >04 can't jump out of the routine</h1>
Back in the 1980s, Chen Chong starred in Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", which swept 9 Oscar awards, and she became the first Chinese woman to win the Oscars.
Chen Chong at the Oscars
This experience made Chen Chong deeply realize that "film is the art of directors". After that, she turned into a director who rejected the "China Doll", and directed the film "Sky Bath" in 1998, which put Li Xiaolu, who was only 17 years old, on the throne of the film queen.
11 years later, Li Xiaolu, who is already a little famous, played a female killer who rarely appeared in the Hollywood movie "Strange Energy". Her thick bangs, plump lips, and thick eyeliner are no different from the Mongolian slave girls played by Huang Liushuang more than 80 years ago.
Li Xiaolu in "Strange Energy"
After Chen Chong, Gong Li wore a series of post-film halos to enter Hollywood. In "Miami Storm", she played a female drug lord who combines sexiness and danger; in "Young Hannibal", she became the oriental mentor who enlightened the male protagonist's criminal road, and staged a forbidden love. In the film, Gong Li walks in a Western-style castle in a robe, exuding high-level secret lust.
"Young Hannibal" Gong Li
Even if you are the "Gong Emperor", it is still difficult to get rid of the inertia of the oriental female narrative mode and become a mysterious, dangerous and sexy fantasy object.
The only eye-catching thing is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", where the young Zhang Ziyi plays an Oriental girl with a very Western spirit of resistance, which is also a breakthrough that only director Ang Lee, who is a Chinese, can make. After that, he successively participated in the "International Chapter" of "Rush Hour 2", "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", and inevitably re-entered the Oriental women's routine of Hollywood.
Zhang Ziyi in "Memoirs of a Geisha"
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >05 tool for harvesting</h1>
After 2010, with the rapid development of China's economy, the film market and film capital have expanded rapidly, and huge economic interests have allowed Hollywood to release unprecedented "goodwill" towards China. Especially in those "co-production" films with Chinese backgrounds, the status of Chinese women seems to have been qualitatively improved.
Fan Bingbing in Iron Man 3
However, this "promotion" has a clear taste of money, and is often hyped up by the Chinese media when it is announced, but in fact it is shocking after the screening. For example, Chen Shu in "The Martian Rescue" is said to have played an important role in saving the male protagonist, but when it was really released, there were few scenes; and Fan Bingbing's "Iron Man 3" actually directly came out of the Chinese version and the international version, leaving people speechless; even Jing Tian, who has a considerable appearance time in "King Kong 2: Skull Island" and "Pacific Rim 2", has also been criticized for his dull makeup, uncreative characters and embarrassing acting skills.
Jing Tian in Pacific Rim 2
As a result, we seem to be caught in another routine of the West, where Eastern women on the screen get rid of the eyes of being entertained, but they have become a weapon to harvest Chinese box office.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" style="text-align: center" >06 Another war</h1>
Throughout the 20th century, Eastern women in Western cinema never escaped the representation of paradigmization. Danger and sensuality, ignorance and obedience, two solidified images have been deeply implanted in the memory of Western culture, becoming a simple and flat symbol of desire.
The "Oriental way" model commonly found in the top western runways
The reasons for this phenomenon are both the racism of the West and the lack of discourse power caused by the long-term backwardness of the East in the 20th century. However, in the 21st century, China's national strength has been continuously enhanced, but it has not won the corresponding status culturally, and it still passively accepts the condescending norms and definitions of the West, which has to be regretted and vigilant.
In the 2019 global film box office rankings, the top 9 are all American blockbusters, and only "Nezha" in China barely squeezed into the top ten, with a total box office of 700 million US dollars. And the first place "Reunion 4", the box office is four times that of "Nezha".
Top 10 at the global box office in 2019
What is even more frightening is that when "Reunion 4" was released in China, the scheduling rate was as high as 99%. Wong Kar-wai's "Crashed into a Sheep" and braved rape to challenge "Reunion 4". As for the end, it is conceivable.
As for overseas distribution, we can't fight for the United States for many years. Known as the first domestic science fiction film "The Wandering Earth", only 64 theaters under Wanda were released in the United States, and it received a dismal box office of 6 million.
On the other hand, "Captain America" was knocked down and stood up again and again on the Chinese screen, metaphorically referring to the "great" American spirit; and Scarlett, who played "Black Widow", did not know how many Chinese men's dream lovers?
The famous film theorist Richard Dyer once said:
The social history of a country can be written in terms of the country's movie stars.
However, from the pathetic Huang Liushuang and the Spokesperson guan Nanshi of China Doll, to Chen Chong, who has no choice but to transform, the "International Chapter" who cannot escape the routine, and then to Chen Shu, Fan Bingbing, and Jing Tian, who run the dragon set, what kind of China has the United States shaped in front of the world? What kind of China are we exporting?
The cultural struggle is obstructed and long.