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Jackie Chan is famous for his glorious on-camera recklessness 岸 leaping
out of windows, crashing through walls and tumbling from rooftops for
the sake of his millions of global fans. Recently, however, he's made a
habit of performing a somewhat less crowd-pleasing stunt: Shooting off
his mouth.
The latest incident occurred last week, during an
otherwise mundane interview on Qiang Qiang, a popular talk show on Hong
Kong-based cable net Phoenix TV. After 15 minutes spent discussing
Chan's latest film, CZ12 ('Chinese Zodiac'), the conversation turned to
the action hero's reputation for fervent nationalism, which has prompted
criticism from some on the Internet.
'Chinese are dissatisfied
with many things, but you always say 'China is so good.' Now many people
on the net are displeased with you,' said the talk show's host, Dou
Wentao. In response, Chan pointed out that while China has many
problems, particularly with corruption, its ascent into global
prominence has occurred only over the last dozen years. 'If you talk
about corruption, does the entire rest of the world 岸 does America have
no corruption?＃America has the most corruption in the world!'
After
the statement was translated into English by China-watching blog
Ministry of Tofu, the Washington Post's Max Fisher penned a commentary
on Chan's 'anti-Americanism,' wondering how the star could 'square his
criticism of the United States with his long embrace of the American
film market.'
The article had the effect that anyone could have
expected, generating over a thousand comments and a firestorm of
social-media reaction, much of it decrying Chan's 'ingratitude' and
vowing to boycott his future creative output, in an uncanny echo of the
last time a scandal erupted around an Asian pop icon's bashing of
America.
There are notable differences between PSY's gaffe and
Chan's, however. PSY dropped his buzzbomb over a decade ago as a
relative unknown, driven by youthful passion and the prevailing
attitudes in his native country. Chan hardly has that excuse. He's
experienced enough to know that words have power, and he's famous enough
for his voice to carry as far as the Internet can reach, in every
language in the world.
So what could possibly explain Chan's
willingness to alienate fans and risk his hard-won reputation with
comments that, at the least, could be termed indiscreet? (It seems
excessive to call his statement 'anti-Americanism,' when Americans,
including action stars like Chuck Norris, regularly spout far harsher
charges against America's culture, society and government 岸 but it was
certainly poorly considered.)
I don't know for sure. But I can make a stab at guessing.
Back
in 1997, I wrote a book called I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action 岸
Chan's autobiography, and the first, and to this day only
from-the-icon's-mouth accounting of his humble beginnings and rise to
international stardom. I spent the better part of that year traveling
with him on and off, and listening to the anecdotes of his many-colored
life, from his birth to refugee parents in Hong Kong, to his Dickensian
years as a foster student at Master Yu Jim Yuen's China Drama Academy,
through his wild and woolly stuntman days, and finally his rocky (and
then rocketlike) rise to global superstardom.
If there was a
common theme across all of these many chapters, it's this: Chan's life
has been an ongoing, obsessive quest for self-definition. It's why by
the time he was an adult, he'd answered to a half-dozen different names,
from Chan Kong Sang ('Born in Hong Kong Chan') to Yuen Lo ('Yuen's
Tower') to Chan Sing Lung ('Becoming the Dragon Chan') to Fong Sing Lung
(after his father let slip the secret that their true family name,
obscured during wartime, was Fong); from 'Paul' to 'Jacky' to Jackie.
It's
why he has always surrounded himself with a tight, nearly impenetrable
circle of insiders, and why loyalty 岸 to him and from him 岸 is the
primary trait of all his closest relationships. And it's the reason why
he was Hong Kong's most ebullient cultural ambassador before 1997 岸 and
why now, after Reunification, he's transformed into The New China's most
fervent public advocate.
Chan's eagerness to belong was shaped
by a history of repeated abandonments, separations and betrayals, both
small and large. His parents, unable to care for him, signed him over at
a tender age to a master who had the right to punish him 'even to
death.' Then, after putting Chan through a decade of harsh training for
stardom on the Chinese opera stage, his teacher announced that there was
no longer a market for such skills, shut down the school and retired to
Los Angeles, leaving his students to fend for themselves with minimal
book learning and no adult supervision.
His early film years were
marked by repeated humiliation and disappointment. Living in the shadow
of the late, great Bruce Lee, Chan found himself forced to emulate
Lee's stoic screen image, with unconvincing and financially disastrous
results. (Even the nom d'ecran Chan chose for himself, 'Becoming the
Dragon,' reflects Chan's youthful aspirations to rise to Lee's heights.)
Breaking
free from the clutches of Lo Wei, the 'millionaire director' who would
later claim both Lee and Chan as proteges, Chan created the persona that
would endear him to millions: Both Everyman and Ubermensch, an ordinary
joe with extraordinary abilities hidden beneath his plain surface. But
while it served him well in Asia, where he became the biggest and most
bankable star of his generation, it did nothing to break him through to
the world's largest movie market, the U.S. The forays Chan made into
Hollywood 岸 the dull 'Big Brawl,' the clownish 'Cannonball Run' films,
the misguided 'Protector' 岸 again forced him into roles and contexts
that were ill-suited for his abilities and personality.
And
Chan's youthful interactions with American studio execs and members of
the U.S. media during that run, which ranged from dismissive to
condescending to straight-up racist, gave him a bad taste that he has
never quite been able to wash away.
In 1998, 'Rush Hour' gave
Chan the American success he'd long been seeking. But his experience on
the film also confirmed many of his suspicions about Hollywood: He has
privately expressed resentment over the fact that his costar Chris
Tucker's paycheck for the Rush Hour sequels 岸 $20 million and $25
million plus a portion of the gross for RH 2 and 3 respectively 岸 far
outstripped what he was paid, even though Tucker has had almost no
box-office success outside the RH trilogy, and even though Tucker risked
little more than a case of drymouth, while Chan put his fortysomething
body on the line in every other scene. (He still refers to the 'Rush
Hour' films as his 'least favorite movies.')
So Chan has a bit of
bitterness about America, how it treats foreigners, its sense of value
and its sense of values. Combine that with his lifelong desire to be an
acknowledged and appreciated member of his 'home team' 岸 channeled into a
self-appointed role as chief evangelist for The New China, a place that
is lifting itself up by its bootstraps, that's fixing its problems and
that's poised to shape the future of the world 岸 and you get a formula
for unpredictable blurts of an impolitic nature.
In 2004, Chan
called the election that gave independence advocate Chen Shui-Bian the
presidency of Taiwan 'pathetic' and an 'international joke.' In 2009, he
called for greater restriction of freedoms on China, pointing to Taiwan
and Hong Kong as examples of the 'chaos' that occurs when the people
are not 'controlled.' He has expressed support for China's censorship
policies, unleashing angry responses from Chinese Internet users.
And
yet, despite, or maybe because of his verbal eruptions, Chan's star in
China continues to rise. CZ12, by most accounts a mediocre addition to
Chan's canon, had a record opening weekend and continued to soar,
ultimately becoming China's second-highest-grossing domestic film ever,
with over $130 million in total box office.
If there's one thing that Jackie Chan has learned how to do in four decades of action, it's falling on his feet.
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Post By：2013/1/30 11:28:24
