Hong Kong Vs. Hollywood

A dominant theme in studies of both popular culture and cinema in recent years has been the increasing homogenisation of popular cultural production around the world - the development of a "global popular," as Simon During⁽¹⁾calls it. This occurs both through the increasing reach of Hollywood (and western culture in general) as technology increases the reach of the media, and through the adoption by indigenous entertainment industries of Hollywood forms⁽²⁾. Fear of "Americanisation" or "Hollywoodisation" seems a fundamental feature of the contemporary cultural landscape. Populations of countries outside America fear the extinction of their local culture at the hands of American media just as small communities fear the loss of their language as new generations grow up speaking English.

The dominant form of this hugely popular American cinema is, increasingly, the big-budget blockbuster film. The popular genres for top-of-the-line Hollywood films have shifted from the dramas (melo- and otherwise), comedies, and musicals that were popular in the Classical Hollywood period to the former B-movie and serial genres such as science fiction and action / adventure films. These genres have risen in prominence because they suit the new aesthetic centred on spectacle. These post-Star Wars films increasingly entertain not simply by constructing an involving narrative, but by impressing the audience through moments of incredible special effects or amazing stunt work (or, as in True Lies, incredible special effects used to simulate amazing stunt work). Thus the popularity of these genres heralds a return to the "cinema of attractions" that Tom Gunning identifies as being dominant in the early days of the form⁽³⁾. This is a cinema that is self conscious about its own trickery. In the early days that Gunning writes about, the trickery was simply the act of projecting the image: now, special effects technology becomes the novelty that is shown off.

Hollywood can afford advanced technologies such as computer generated imagery, bluescreens, or matte processes. Yet most other film industries cannot, at least not in any significant form⁽⁴⁾. So the special effects side of this cinema of spectacle cannot easily be reproduced overseas. So when they attempt to compete with Hollywood it is the action based spectacles that they attempt to outdo. These films try to achieve this through the careful identification of the American product's shortcomings. As Jackie Chan puts it:

Then [I] ask myself - can I make any movie better than America, better than somebody else? . . . Special Effects? None. Bluescreen? Zero. . . Only things I can do is action. I'm talking about real action.⁽⁵⁾

Hence Chan's films exploit the relative timidity (or sanity) of America's stunt performers, and John Woo's thrillers highlight the extreme violence that America's MPAA rating system effectively excludes from Hollywood⁽⁶⁾. From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan to John Woo, action has definitely become a staple element of Hong Kong cinema.

It is also undeniably true to say that Hong Kong shares the trait of asking us to step outside our involvement with the narrative for our enjoyment. In fact, this is even more prominent than in Hollywood films. Hence the use of slow motion to show off particularly intricate stunts or kung-fu moves (a common feature in all kung-fu films that recurs in John Woo's action sequences and in Jackie Chan films such as Armour of God) or through the even more jarring use of instant replays that turns up in Jackie Chan films. In some cases (such as the fall from the clock in Project A) the films use slow motion and show multiple contradictory versions of the same event. Clearly, in a moment such as this, the audience is asked to thrill at the stunt performed by Chan himself rather than the actual narrative moment involving the character Chan plays. This is why it's important that Chan does his own stunts, and the motivation behind screening out-takes from stunt sequences over the final credits.

So there is a similar concern with spectacle that links eastern and western commercial cinemas. Yet at this point it's worth looking at the numerous qualifications that need to be made about this statement. The first is that we need to be aware of how limited the current terms of reference are: we are talking about commercial cinema, which immediately excludes the large number of arthouse films by directors such as Zhang Yimou that are made in Asia (particularly China and Taiwan). The other point is that even within commercial cinema this is a limited viewpoint. Not all Hollywood films are blockbusters; it's simply that (almost by definition) the most prominent films are. Similarly, looking the other way, the western picture of the Hong Kong cinema is somewhat distorted in favour of the action films. Action can appeal largely independent of language (though some who've sat through the less professionally dubbed of Jackie Chan's films might disagree) and thus travels well. This is, of course, one of the reasons action films (and spectacle based films in general) are popular worldwide. Yet it is also an important factor in explaining the perception of Hong Kong's cinema from the west. There is a substantial industry in Hong Kong in producing comedies⁽⁷⁾, and these films are only rarely screened outside Asia. This should be remembered: we will misrepresent Hong Kong cinema if we read back only the most familiar elements.

So this adoption of an action aesthetic is limited in scope - there are some areas of eastern cinema that do not exhibit this tendency. Yet it is also, I would suggest, limited in effect. This common interest in spectacle does not obliterate national differences. Firstly, there is a lot of room within mainstream cinema for filmmmakers to edge into thematic issues that may be unique to the local cinema. Hence Chris Berry⁽⁸⁾ looks at the way in which eastern cinema explores issues of postcoloniality in relation to both the areas history and its present. Similarly, Tony Williams describes the way in which John Woo's films (and others) signal a deep preoccupation with Hong Kong's coming change of ownership, quoting dialogue from Woo's Hard-Boiled that quite explicitly brings this topic up⁽⁹⁾. It seems likely that such thematics will be more apparent to an indigenous audience than to western viewers to whom many references must be quite alien.

Far more obvious is the way in which Hong Kong action films find room for massive difference within their preoccupation with spectacle - the very thing that seems to define their similarity to Hollywood. Certainly, after seeing my first Jackie Chan film (Rumble in the Bronx) it was not similarities that struck me: it was the complete difference from anything I'd seen in Hollywood films that was most apparent. I think it's fair to say that difference is, in fact, the basis for most of these films' appeal in both western and eastern markets. Trailers for Rumble in the Bronx were quick to emphasise that Chan was something new: "the action star who does all his own stunts.⁽¹⁰⁾" Word of mouth about John Woo and Jackie Chan consistently presses the point that their films are "like nothing you've ever seen before."

Jackie Chan's films can be, in fact, quite disorienting for a western viewer. Western genres may be taken as the basis for most of them, but often they are used in a bizarre fashion. This may involve unexpected generic hybrids, as with Mister Canton and Lady Rose (also known as Miracles) which melds Chan's action scenes into a plot that has come from Damon Runyon's story "Madame La Gimp" via Frank Capra's film Lady for a Day. This is a highly melodramatic story that would never feature in a Hollywood action film. Chan accidently inherits control of a crime syndicate, the resources of which he then uses in an elaborate plot to convince a local flower seller's future in-laws that the vendor is actually a highly respected socialite (it's hard to imagine Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenneger's characters actually meeting a flower seller, let alone wasting valuable screen time helping them avert a domestic crisis). The end result is a highly sentimental tale that sits somewhere between Guys and Dolls and Enter the Dragon.

Often, it is simply the tone of these films that sets them apart. Armour of God is an acknowledged steal from the American Indiana Jones films⁽¹¹⁾, and the opening scene plays out the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark very precisely. As in Steven Spielberg's film, the scene features a hero penetrating a historic ruin in search of a valuable artefact. Like Indiana Jones, Chan's character is forced to flee from a band of angry natives, and he too makes his escape by air. Yet the scene is completely different in tone. Where Indiana Jones (in this sequence at least) is astonishingly assured, Chan's character is committing blunders within seconds: attempting to sneak past the natives using a flying fox, he knocks the head off a statue and alerts them. When forced to fight, his carefully choreographed style borders on slapstick; as he slides down the side of a hill with axe-wielding natives tobogganing in pursuit the shift to comedy is complete. Even John Woo - who represents the most Hollywood influenced end of the Hong Kong spectrum - includes moments of bizarre comedy such as the scene with the babies that concludes Hard-Boiled. This tendency to involve even the toughest of heroes in moments of comedy is quite alien to Hollywood.

The Armour of God sequence illustrates the way in which the differences in different cinemas assert themselves, and poses something of a challenge to the way in which we construct generic boundaries. If we take the framework to approaching genres suggested by Rick Altman⁽¹²⁾ in which genres can be described in terms of their syntactic elements (story structure) and their semantic elements (the iconography that identifies the genre) we see that even with both these elements held largely static, the end result emerges as something unique. This sequence, as described, uses the same essential plot as its Spielberg forerunner, and similar iconography (Chan hooks the artefact through the use of a strap in a manner that recalls Indiana Jones's bullwhip) to completely different effect. So despite Chan's close mimicry of a Hollywood role model, the different cultural conditions the film was made under seem to lead to a product that remains easily differentiable.

This tendency for international films to simultaneously hold positions of imitation and rebellion is not new. It might be argued that foreign films can either compete with Hollywood on their own terms or differentiate themselves and thus try to carve out a market niche⁽¹³⁾. Yet many of the most internationally successful non-Hollywood films are those that take on Hollywood directly while establishing their uniqueness through the inherent differences in approach. As well as Jackie Chan and John Woo, this has been the approach taken by such foreign film directors as Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, George Miller, and Robert Rodriguez. I'm not particularly familiar with Mexican arthouse cinema, but certainly Italy, Japan, and Australia have a history of producing more independent, arthouse cinema (in the case of Japan, Kurosawa was producing much of this product too) as well as more mainstream fare.

So even though non-American films often take up positions that emulate Hollywood, I believe current Hong Kong films and their historical predecessors suggest that, as yet, Hollywood is still not powerful enough to prevent these films achieving something unique. If the problem is seen as being that everybody is making action films, this may not be much comfort (though again I stress that there are other modes of films being made in Asia, if not so much in Hong Kong). Yet I do think it's significant that in fact these action films are notably different creatures, and that as yet the "global popular" has yet to override the cultural differences that continue to spontaneously assert themselves when other cultures attempt Hollywood style films. The aesthetic of spectacle travels world-wide, but it is definitely not being swallowed up whole: it gets adopted piecemeal, transformed into the local environment, and launched back at Hollywood in altered form.

Notes

1. During, Simon, 1993, "Towards the Global Popular," in David Bennet (ed.) Cultural Studies: Pluralism and Theory, 1993, Melbourne University Literary and Cultural Studies, p 133. (Back)

2. See During, op. cit., pp. 133-156, and O'Regan, Tom, 1992, "Too Popular by Far: On Hollywood's International Popularity," Continuum, vol. 5, no. 2, 1992, pp. 302-351. (Back)

3. Gunning, Tom, 1993, "Now You See it, Now You Don't: The Temporality of Cinema Attractions", The Velvet Light Trap, no. 32, Fall, 1993, p. 4. (Back)

4. Exceptions to this rule, such as Babe, are generally only possible due to the use of either Hollywood money or expertise. (Back)

5. From an interview with Paul Harris on Film Buff's Forecast on 3RRR FM earlier this year. Exact date unknown. (Back)

6. See Logan, Bey, 1995, Hong Kong Action Cinema, Titan Books, London, p. 138 for detail on the effect of the US rating system on Woo's style. (Back)

7. This is made clear both in Logan, op. cit., and Dannen, Frederic, 1995, "Hong Kong Babylon," from The New Yorker, August 7, 1995. (Back)

8. Chris Berry, 1995, "These Nations Which Are Not One: History, Identity and Postcoloniality in Recent Hong Kong and Taiwan Cinema", Span, nos 34/35, October, 1995, pp. 37-49. (Back)

9. Tony Williams, 1995, "To Live and Die in Hong Kong: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo", Cineaction, no. 36, February 1995, pp. 44-46. (Back)

10. I quote from memory, but the gist is correct. (Back)

11. Logan, op. cit., p. 72. (Back)

12. Altman, Rick, 1986, "A Semantic / Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" in Grant, Barry (ed), Film Genre Reader, University of Texas, Austin, 1986, pp. 26-39. (Back)

13. This idea is taken from Steven Neale in Neale, Steven, 1981, "Art Cinema as Institution," Screen, vol 22, no 1, pp 11-39, which examines the way in which Art Cinema has generally taken the latter option. (Back)

References

Altman, Rick, 1986, "A Semantic / Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" in Grant, Barry (ed), Film Genre Reader, University of Texas, Austin, 1986, pp. 26-39.

Chris Berry, 1995, "These Nations Which Are Not One: History, Identity and Postcoloniality in Recent Hong Kong and Taiwan Cinema", Span, nos 34/35, October, 1995, pp. 37-49.

Dannen, Frederic, 1995, "Hong Kong Babylon," from The New Yorker, August 7, 1995.

During, Simon, 1993, "Towards the Global Popular," in David Bennet (ed.) Cultural Studies: Pluralism and Theory, 1993, Melbourne University Literary and Cultural Studies.

Gunning, Tom, 1993, "Now You See it, Now You Don't: The Temporality of Cinema Attractions", The Velvet Light Trap, no. 32, Fall, 1993.

Logan, Bey, 1995, Hong Kong Action Cinema, Titan Books, London.

Neale, Steven, 1981, "Art Cinema as Institution," Screen, vol 22, no 1, pp 11-39.

O'Regan, Tom, 1992, "Too Popular by Far: On Hollywood's International Popularity," Continuum, vol. 5, no. 2, 1992, pp. 302-351.

Tony Williams, 1995, "To Live and Die in Hong Kong: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo", Cineaction, no. 36, February 1995.

Filmography

Armour of God, 1986, Jackie Chan

Hard-Boiled, 1992, John Woo

Project A, 1984, Jackie Chan

Rumble in the Bronx, 1994, Stanley Tong

Star Wars, 1977, George Lucas

True Lies, 1994, James Cameron