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3 Facing the Red Dragon

Hollywood’s 1997 Response to the Hong Kong Handover
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Remade in Hollywood
This chapter is in the book Remade in Hollywood
As a complement to my earlier examination of Hong Kong diasporic filmmakers’ deployment of cinematic visuality as a mode of cultural political intervention, this chapter turns its focus onto Hollywood’s response to the Hong Kong handover, by looking particularly at three films released in 1997: Jon Avnet’s Red Corner, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet, and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. While these films are clearly part of Hollywood’s continuing fascination with Chinese/Tibetan politics, culture, and spirituality — Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) and Little Buddha (1993) come quickly to mind — they also represent a strategically timed reaction to the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. Though these films do not directly depict the handover per se, they do address its political implications through their portraiture of Chinese ideological and military aggression and its disregard for human rights, a not-too-subtle index of what the West conjures as the terrifying political fate awaiting Hong Kong.1 In other words, Hollywood’s construction of the filmic imagery and political discourses in these films, to a certain extent, demonizes the People’s Republic of China.In her significant essay on this matter, “King Kong in Hong Kong: Watching the ‘Handover’ from the U.S.A.,” Rey Chow correctly, though maybe too categorically, characterizes these three films as constituting “a spate of China-bashing films” that “form part of the U.S. media’s concerted effort to attack China in the name of human rights.” These films are American pop culture’s contributions to a mediatized political discourse Chow calls the “King Kong syndrome”:[B]y posing as defenders of democracy and liberty, the U.S. media portrays Chinese events as crises that require not only vigilance but also intervention. Typically, such portrayals are dramatized — staged in palpably demonizing 3Facing the Red Dragon:Hollywood’s 1997 Response to the Hong Kong Handover
© 2009, Hong Kong University Press

As a complement to my earlier examination of Hong Kong diasporic filmmakers’ deployment of cinematic visuality as a mode of cultural political intervention, this chapter turns its focus onto Hollywood’s response to the Hong Kong handover, by looking particularly at three films released in 1997: Jon Avnet’s Red Corner, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet, and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. While these films are clearly part of Hollywood’s continuing fascination with Chinese/Tibetan politics, culture, and spirituality — Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) and Little Buddha (1993) come quickly to mind — they also represent a strategically timed reaction to the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. Though these films do not directly depict the handover per se, they do address its political implications through their portraiture of Chinese ideological and military aggression and its disregard for human rights, a not-too-subtle index of what the West conjures as the terrifying political fate awaiting Hong Kong.1 In other words, Hollywood’s construction of the filmic imagery and political discourses in these films, to a certain extent, demonizes the People’s Republic of China.In her significant essay on this matter, “King Kong in Hong Kong: Watching the ‘Handover’ from the U.S.A.,” Rey Chow correctly, though maybe too categorically, characterizes these three films as constituting “a spate of China-bashing films” that “form part of the U.S. media’s concerted effort to attack China in the name of human rights.” These films are American pop culture’s contributions to a mediatized political discourse Chow calls the “King Kong syndrome”:[B]y posing as defenders of democracy and liberty, the U.S. media portrays Chinese events as crises that require not only vigilance but also intervention. Typically, such portrayals are dramatized — staged in palpably demonizing 3Facing the Red Dragon:Hollywood’s 1997 Response to the Hong Kong Handover
© 2009, Hong Kong University Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. 1 Introduction 1
  5. 2 Visualizing Hong Kong 33
  6. 3 Facing the Red Dragon 57
  7. 5 Enter the Triads 105
  8. 6 Hollywood’s Sino-Chic 129
  9. 7 Chinese Supernaturalism 157
  10. Coda 175
  11. Notes 181
  12. Filmography 219
  13. Bibliography 229
  14. Index 245
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9789888052738-004

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. 1 Introduction 1
  5. 2 Visualizing Hong Kong 33
  6. 3 Facing the Red Dragon 57
  7. 5 Enter the Triads 105
  8. 6 Hollywood’s Sino-Chic 129
  9. 7 Chinese Supernaturalism 157
  10. Coda 175
  11. Notes 181
  12. Filmography 219
  13. Bibliography 229
  14. Index 245
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