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Kung fu pandas belong to the whole world
By Andrew Lam |
June 22, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
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IN the age of globalization there's a caveat that often rings true: "You know your culture is a big hit when somebody else is selling it back to you!"
Nowhere is this more obvious than the example of the run away box office smash hit, "Kung Fu Panda" and the sequel "Kung Fu Panda 2," which was just released. A wildly successful animation produced by Steven Spielberg about a bumbling panda who wants to learn kung fu, the movie became the biggest box office hit in China's history. And is sequel is well on the way.
If the Chinese are in awe as to how their own cultural heritage is being successfully repackaged by Hollywood, some artists and thinkers are rather peeved. The artist Zhao Bandi encouraged Chinese moviegoers to boycott the film. Kung Fu Panda films "twisted Chinese culture and served as a tool to kidnap the minds of the Chinese people," he wrote. "Don't fool our next generation with American 'fast food'.'"
Chinese moviegoers love "Kung Fu Panda" and want more of it. Which also set the Chinese blogospheres abuzz with soul-searching questions like "Why can't we produce such brilliant movies ourselves?" and "What is it about our society that creativity is so stifled?" and so on.
Those who find it upsetting that others are now successfully impersonating them have yet to come to terms with what follows the Information Age: the age of Appropriation.
Ours is a world in which traditions exist side by side for the picking. From religion to cuisine, medicine to music, dance to literature, all are available to the contemporary alchemists to re-imagine. Indeed, the energy that is fueling the major part of the 21st-century global village is that of the hybrid space in which re-invention is key.
Which beckons this question: If others reinvent your culture and sell it back to you, what is gained, and what is lost?
On the Food Network last year, Rachael Ray made Vietnamese pho soup and she got the recipe wrong. Besides calling it a Thai-inspired dish she used - gasp! - pork instead of beef, and didn't include fish sauce. Ray caused a stir among pho purists and this response from Vietnamese American chef and food author Andrea Nguyen: "Pho is in the dictionary ... I'm rather appalled that the producers of the Rachael Ray Show would do such an injustice to pho noodle soup."
Yet, a couple decades back, the soup itself was but the private cuisine of refugees. It certainly wasn't in the American English dictionary, nor taught on national television.
While it's understandable for those who grew up with pho to be upset at Ray, one can't help but wonder: Well, is the new recipe any good?
What is gained, if it's any good, is a new flavor, a new way of looking at a beloved classic. What is lost is, of course, a cherished tradition, a way of life altered by newness. But such is the recipe of invention, isn't it, that it entails a pinch of spontaneity, and a tablespoon of betrayal?
No one owns culture, after all, and the most popular tend to transgress borders, shedding old skin for rebirth.
Think about it: while a pho purist might be upset that his sacred broth is "perverted" by someone else, he himself has no qualms about eating his banh mi pate - the popular Vietnamese sandwich made of baguette, ham and pate that's been for generations the staple of the Vietnamese and is now sold in American cities. Never mind that the entire convention, with the exception of cilantro, chilies and pickle, is borrowed from Vietnam's former colonizers, the French, with whom many still have a love-hate relationship.
Besides, a culture that needs preservation may very well be a culture ready for the museum. Which is to say, yesterday's bold experiments are today's classics and what betrays today's tradition may very well find its place in tomorrow's sun.
And for that matter, some may be surprised to find that Chinese kung fu is not purely Chinese. For martial arts scholars, the 5th century figure, Bodhidharma, a monk from South Asia, looms large. Along with being the patriarch of Zen Buddhism, the ill-tempered but holy sage taught monks at the Shaolin Temple marvelous ancient yoga breathing techniques. Boddhidarma's disciples went on to invent a myriad of kung fu fighting styles.
The most creative people of our times seem to be those who can immerse in apprenticeship in others' cultures while retaining elements of their own. They are aware that nothing is meant to be etched in stone, but that new art demands appropriation, integration and reinterpretation.
With the Internet spreading world wide, and the world defined by mass movements, everything is available for renewal. It follows that, given the new cultural revolutions, the mute, lovable panda should stand on two legs, talking jive, and doing some kick-ass kung fu.
(Andrew Lam is author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, "Birds of Paradise" - a collection of short stories - is due out in 2012.)
Nowhere is this more obvious than the example of the run away box office smash hit, "Kung Fu Panda" and the sequel "Kung Fu Panda 2," which was just released. A wildly successful animation produced by Steven Spielberg about a bumbling panda who wants to learn kung fu, the movie became the biggest box office hit in China's history. And is sequel is well on the way.
If the Chinese are in awe as to how their own cultural heritage is being successfully repackaged by Hollywood, some artists and thinkers are rather peeved. The artist Zhao Bandi encouraged Chinese moviegoers to boycott the film. Kung Fu Panda films "twisted Chinese culture and served as a tool to kidnap the minds of the Chinese people," he wrote. "Don't fool our next generation with American 'fast food'.'"
Chinese moviegoers love "Kung Fu Panda" and want more of it. Which also set the Chinese blogospheres abuzz with soul-searching questions like "Why can't we produce such brilliant movies ourselves?" and "What is it about our society that creativity is so stifled?" and so on.
Those who find it upsetting that others are now successfully impersonating them have yet to come to terms with what follows the Information Age: the age of Appropriation.
Ours is a world in which traditions exist side by side for the picking. From religion to cuisine, medicine to music, dance to literature, all are available to the contemporary alchemists to re-imagine. Indeed, the energy that is fueling the major part of the 21st-century global village is that of the hybrid space in which re-invention is key.
Which beckons this question: If others reinvent your culture and sell it back to you, what is gained, and what is lost?
On the Food Network last year, Rachael Ray made Vietnamese pho soup and she got the recipe wrong. Besides calling it a Thai-inspired dish she used - gasp! - pork instead of beef, and didn't include fish sauce. Ray caused a stir among pho purists and this response from Vietnamese American chef and food author Andrea Nguyen: "Pho is in the dictionary ... I'm rather appalled that the producers of the Rachael Ray Show would do such an injustice to pho noodle soup."
Yet, a couple decades back, the soup itself was but the private cuisine of refugees. It certainly wasn't in the American English dictionary, nor taught on national television.
While it's understandable for those who grew up with pho to be upset at Ray, one can't help but wonder: Well, is the new recipe any good?
What is gained, if it's any good, is a new flavor, a new way of looking at a beloved classic. What is lost is, of course, a cherished tradition, a way of life altered by newness. But such is the recipe of invention, isn't it, that it entails a pinch of spontaneity, and a tablespoon of betrayal?
No one owns culture, after all, and the most popular tend to transgress borders, shedding old skin for rebirth.
Think about it: while a pho purist might be upset that his sacred broth is "perverted" by someone else, he himself has no qualms about eating his banh mi pate - the popular Vietnamese sandwich made of baguette, ham and pate that's been for generations the staple of the Vietnamese and is now sold in American cities. Never mind that the entire convention, with the exception of cilantro, chilies and pickle, is borrowed from Vietnam's former colonizers, the French, with whom many still have a love-hate relationship.
Besides, a culture that needs preservation may very well be a culture ready for the museum. Which is to say, yesterday's bold experiments are today's classics and what betrays today's tradition may very well find its place in tomorrow's sun.
And for that matter, some may be surprised to find that Chinese kung fu is not purely Chinese. For martial arts scholars, the 5th century figure, Bodhidharma, a monk from South Asia, looms large. Along with being the patriarch of Zen Buddhism, the ill-tempered but holy sage taught monks at the Shaolin Temple marvelous ancient yoga breathing techniques. Boddhidarma's disciples went on to invent a myriad of kung fu fighting styles.
The most creative people of our times seem to be those who can immerse in apprenticeship in others' cultures while retaining elements of their own. They are aware that nothing is meant to be etched in stone, but that new art demands appropriation, integration and reinterpretation.
With the Internet spreading world wide, and the world defined by mass movements, everything is available for renewal. It follows that, given the new cultural revolutions, the mute, lovable panda should stand on two legs, talking jive, and doing some kick-ass kung fu.
(Andrew Lam is author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, "Birds of Paradise" - a collection of short stories - is due out in 2012.)
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