The New Paper Column: Memoirs

“She’s sold her soul and betrayed her country. Hacking her to death would not be good enough.”

The above quote appeared late November in The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, Yahoo! News, and MSNBC, among other international media. Is it about a terrorist? Or a traitor caught selling national secrets? Or even just a defector badmouthing her birth country? No. It is about none of these things. It is about Zhang Ziyi, a China-born actress who took on a Japanese role in an American film.

Do not get me wrong. The casting of director Rob Marshall’s latest film adaptation Memoirs Of A Geisha is, at best, insensitive. The Japanese have their right to complain that, for a film about Japanese culture, none of the lead roles have gone to Japanese actresses. The Chinese also have their right to complain that, given Japan’s brutal occupation of China in World War II, Chinese actresses should not be playing sympathetic Japanese roles. Both countries naturally also have the right to complain that Memoirs is a deplorable American film that not only stereotypes Asian actors and actresses, but also Asian culture itself.

But while we should have the right to voice all of these complaints, let us not forget that Memoirs is not about a Chinese actress taking on a Japanese role in an American film. Memoirs is, in order of priority, an American film, starring Chinese actresses, about Japanese culture. It is a blockbuster aiming for ticket sales and Oscars, not a documentary aiming for cultural dialogue and Politics. If a Chinese actress had burned a China flag in Tokyo while pleading eternal allegiance to Japan, this column would be markedly different. But when Marshall himself has emphasized his careless-ness by saying repeatedly that “realism is not (his) chief concern” and that Memoirs “is really meant as a fable”, quarreling over whether Zhang Ziyi should be hacked into tiny little pieces for her participation is like quarreling over whether Jet Li should be castrated for playing an American’s collared Asian pet in the movie Unleashed.

Yes, Memoirs’ embarrassing situation might truly be the only one of its kind, if research gleaned from 47 websites has taught me anything. And yes, Memoirs’ casting director’s cultural cluelessness and general inability to differentiate one ‘yellow-face’ from another is insulting. And yes, Zhang Ziyi could have held out for another less controversial American debut. But this is Hollywood, baby. America’s dream factory is exactly what it is – the maker of two-hour dreams that are sometimes moving, sometimes boring, and sometimes shocking, but always, ultimately, only dreams that don’t really matter, because we know that they’re not accurate.

All that a Hollywood movie tries to be is entertaining. All that we want a Hollywood movie to try to be is entertaining. Blaming Hollywood for not being culturally attuned is like blaming a five-year old for not understanding Plato. In Hollywood, resemblance to reality is first and foremost only a bonus. If we really wanted realism, we’d skip Tinseltown and go straight to newspapers.

It is true that the West could do with a lot more education about the East. Memoirs is only the latest example. But it is also true that the East could stand to care a lot less about the West. And that depends on you and I to know what really matters, and what is just a silly inflammatory sentence spread into flames by flapping media.