Significance of Hollywood in Influencing Chinese Filmmaking since the 1980s - Essay Example

Significance of Hollywood in influencing Chinese filmmaking since the 1980s s Submitted by s: Introduction Cinema in China has been experiencing a series of institutional reformations since the mid-eighties to address the demands of the market created by the Chinese government (Zhang, 2012, p. 162). The consequence has been the devolution and commercialization of the film industry that had been previously subsidized by the state. Competition with blockbusters that had been imported for the local market share has inspired some of the filmmakers in China to turn to Hollywood as a source of inspiration. This has led to an imitation of the big-budget and high tech entertainment ideas that are synonymous with Hollywood. The resultant increase in local entertainment fare has created countrywide romanticism among the cultural detractors as well as some industrial practitioners as they prefer a cinema that is characterized by more cultural importance. Filmmaking in China is therefore trapped between economic ambitions in order to capture the local market that is occupied by imports especially from Hollywood and cultural ambitions to create films that have Chinese physiognomies. The present tension between nationalism and commercialization is similar to the events of the development of the Chinese cinema between 1922 and 1931 when competition from Hollywood shadowed the local screens. The irregular interaction between nationalism and commercialism is especially prominent during the periods when Hollywood dominates (Rojas and Chow, 2013, p. 554). In some instances hostile, while facing threats from Hollywood, nationalism supports the protection of China’s cultural identity through safeguarding its domestic cultural market. Conversely, commercialization provides a strategic solution for regaining market share through the production of popular entertainment cinemas. When considered from this point of view, nationalism assists in justifying the growth of commercialization, but the latter ultimately motivates the rebirth of nationalism. This is the case of the first and most current entertainment cinema waves from China that is characterized by vigorous interplay between nationalization and commercialization that is evident in its industrial practices and Chinese genres. The film industry in China has gone through a functional transition and a number of institutional reformations. Film was redefined in 1984 to become a cultural instead of an institution that carries propaganda meant to reinforce party ideologies. The ramifications of this functional reformation have been both positive and negative since the studios enjoys more independence, but they no longer qualify for significant subsidies from the government regardless of the fact that they remain overburdened. Numerous filmmakers in China have subsequently directed their focus towards television since its capital is more accessible and the industry has higher profits. Hollywood influence Development in the film industry made Hong Kong the dominant cinema in Eastern Asia while at the same time awakening interest from the west (Yau, 2004, p. 78). Maximizing on the decreased by persistent kung fu movie subculture, Jackie Chan along with films such as Peking Opera Blues, produced in 1986 built a cult following when The Killer had restricted but prosperous release in the US opening the floodgates. Through the nineties, the Westerners who had an eye for alternative culture developed into commonplace sights in theatres and video shops in Chinatown, and progressively, the firms became increasingly accessible to the mainstream video markets and in some instances mainstream theatres. Western detractors together with film scholars also started taking the film industry in China seriously while making numerous key figures and films components of their standards of world cinema. From then on, a new vocabulary for global action cinema was defined in China with the assistance of a new generation of filmmakers from North America. Reservoir Dogs by Quentin Tarantino was greatly inspired by City on Fire while Kill Bill was predominantly a martial arts homage that borrowed for Yuen Woo-Ping as an actor and a fight choreographer. Desperado that was produced by Robert Rodriguez in 1995 and its sequel Once Upon a Time in Mexico mimicked the visual bearings that were used by Woo. The Matrix trilogy by the Wachowski brothers that were produced between 1999 and 2003, which were action blockbusters about science fiction borrowed from Woo and employed some actors from Hong Kong behind the scenes. As a result of the newly found international awareness associated with films from China, especially Hong Kong during the eighties and nineties, along with a recession in the industry in the nineties, most of the leading actors in the film industry moved to Hollywood. In Hollywood, they were offered budgets and payments that were higher than what they were offered by the companies in Hong Kong. John Woo went to Hollywood after Hard Boiled, which was produced in 1992 and Face/Off became the breakthrough that established his exceptional style when he went to Hollywood. The public along with critics found this effort greatly popular as it grossed more than two hundred and forty million all over the globe while Mission: Impossible that premiered in 2000 grossed more than five hundred and sixty million all over the world. After these two films, Woo has been trying to revisit the successes he achieved in the eighties and the early nineties. After more than fifteen successful years in China’s cinema industry and several attempts to enter the US market, Rumble in the Bronx by Jackie Chan that was produced in 1995, eventually brought him to recognition in the US (Zhu and Rosen, 2010, p. 196). After that, he made a number of highly prosperous films for US studios like Rush Hour in 1998 and Shanghai Noon as well as their corresponding sequels. While he made films for US studios, he still made films for studios in Hong Kong that were every so often set in Western states like Australia and the Netherlands among others. As a result of his huge popularity in the US, the films were typically released in the US, which is a rare occurrence for Chinese Films, and usually attract a huge audience size in terms of numbers. Since the mid-nineties, the Chinese film industry has been facing a severe decline and box office takings and the number of locally produced films has radically decreased. Imports from America currently dominate in a manner they have never done before. This catastrophe along with increased interaction with cinemas from the West has perhaps been the key recent effects on the cinema industry in China. Enticing the domestic and regional youth audiences away from the productions made in Hollywood remains a continuous concern. Action movies are predominantly presented by young-looking Cantonese pop music idols that have been enhanced through digital effects and other ways. This trend is given by the decline of a past generation trainers in martial arts. Reforms to the Chinese film industry The film reforms that took place in the eighties emphasized on distribution and exhibition, previously CFC was acting as the monopoly distributor buying prints from studios and passing them to the distributors at the provincial level where box office revenues would be collected. Even though the provisional distributors were not required to pay for the prints, they shared revenues with the CFC and thus usually asked for more prints so that they could widen screenings and ultimately get more share. So that the burden in CFC could be reduced, the state needed local distributors to make payments for the extra prints while at the same time allowing the local distributors and exhibitors to get a larger share (Zhu, 2003, p. 71). In the years that followed, there was a relaxation of the price system and prices for tickets were permitted to increase in some of the bigger cities. These measures granted the exhibitors and distributors more financial independence with the hope that they would encourage some audiences to go back to the theatres. Nonetheless, the reforms in the eighties did not address inefficiency and unproductivity of the system that was owned by the state, while the lack of capital for production had a severe effect on the quality and quantity of films. In the early nineties, there was a financial crisis in the film industry where box office receipts and audience attendance experienced sharp declines and numerous film units were riddled by debts. In the nineties, the main goal of the economic reform was pushing the transition to socialist market economic model from the previous planned economy model. As far as film was concerned, focus was on production and individual studios embraced both local and international private co-production as a measure of reform in order to deal with the issue of capital shortage in the early nineties. In 1984, the state had withdrawn government financial aid to studios while paying for only the expensive films that carried propaganda. In the emergent self-responsibility structure, the studios were forced to look for financial investment elsewhere in a cultural market that was becoming increasingly competitive. Co-productions with international or local investors in the non-film sector were the only available means of collecting money. This is because at the time, only sixteen studios that were owned by the state were permitted to produce films and if the international or domestic investors had interests in film business, they were required to attach studios, purchase the studio logos or the licenses for production. Nonetheless, these measures were not able to make the film industry become more profitable. In regards to international co-production, the only thing that studios were able to collect was licensing fees through the provision of cheap labor as well as facilities. In the same manner, in the case of international co-production with the local private capital, studios had a constant management fee (Zhou, 2007, p. 88). So that more invests could be absorbed, there was another regulation in 1995 whose introduction enabled 13 studios at the province and city levels to embark in production of feature films. It also encouraged the private enterprises to take part in investment and if their investment was more than seventy percent, then the investors were allowed to become the co-producers after being permitted by the film Bureau. 1996 saw the lowering of this standard by thirty percent and merging with Television media was also an important measure embraced by the studios with the aim of increasing profits to match those realized in Hollywood. The television industry was associated with more audience compared to theatre and it was rich with numerous amounts of revenues from advertising. Through selling copyrights to television stations, the cinema channel developed into a significant source of revenue for the film industry and numerous studios in the provincial level started merging with the domestic television stations to come up with television and film production centers. So that various investment resources could be cultivated, there was an invitation that was issued in 1997 that granted the production of feature films licenses to film studios and television stations in districts. The importation of blockbuster movies from Hollywood resulted in a rise in the revenues realized from box office while at the same time shaping the mode in the film industry in China (Zhao, 2008, p. 162). As from 1994, some of the big-budget films in Hollywood were imported into China since the hi-tech spectacular audio and visual effects had considerably inspired the desire for audiences to go to the cinemas again. The big success of Hollywood movies allowed filmmakers in China to recognize the importance of big budget movies. In 1995, an investment in four films that were considered high cost increased to record levels in the history of the Chinese cinema industry with most of the investments coming from private capital. In the process of the reform towards a market economy, the government maintained stringent censorship controls. Conversely, special funds were allocated for studios to come up with ten high quality propaganda films every year between 1996 and 2000. The revenues of the films were guaranteed through unrestricted viewing under the organization and sponsorship of the Chinese government (Latham, 2007, p. 185). The result of this was destruction of low budget entertainment films that contained vulgar sex and violent content. Additionally, punitive treatment in the regulatory and censorship system was put in place to prohibit some of the illegal activities of young directors that entailed screening and shooting films overseas. The nineties reform that put emphasis in production resulted in international co-production, mergers with televisions, big budget productions and private investments but the crisis in the film industry in China remained severe. Box office receipts and the number of films that were released declined suddenly at the turn of the twenty first century and thus could not be solved by simple reforms of the means of distribution or the manner in which they were produced. In regards to the influence of Hollywood on the Chinese film market, it can be argued that Hollywood blockbusters have had a mixed impact in China. Conversely, the declining interest of Chinese audiences in cinema from the nineties was revived through Hollywood productions that were high styled. At the same time, however, movies made in Hollywood threatened the filmmaking in China even though the US mainstream distributors did not distribute any films that had been made in mainland China. Studies have focused on blockbusters made in China as a response to the globalization of Hollywood productions with emphasis on the environment in Chinese cinema that had an effect on the emergence of films like Hero and what the success of these movies implied for the future of film in China. These movies demonstrated that it was possible to have Chinese blockbusters in the West. China had been seeking to make changes since the eighties and at the same time, Hollywood, which had already established a global presence, was on the periphery of cinema in China prior to the mid-nineties. From the early nineties, three main forms of cinema could be identified in China including artisan/cultural, which were usually proscribed by the state, state-sponsored films, which are old and mainstream and not popular with the masses as well as new mainstream entertainment, which is commercial and imitate Hollywood productions in terms of style. The most globally acclaimed filmmaker in China, Zhang Yimou, stated that he was seeking ways of making Chinese films more significant to audiences all over the globe. Zhang sought to create culturally explicit and technically refined films that would be appealing to domestic and international audiences especially in the west, in light of the global and local strategies used by Hollywood. In terms of the relationship between Hollywood and China, some studies have considered the struggle of Hollywood against the restrictions of the Chinese government as well as censorship that was experienced after the mid-nineties. In order to boost domestic movies, screening of foreign movies is strictly regulated in China with a quota system that allows only twenty foreign movies to be produced each year while the revenues are shared between the cinemas and the studios. These aspects neatly encapsulated the hopes, doubts and dissatisfactions of Hollywood studios in the manner they dealt with China. There is ready market in China but the interference from the Chinese government in the industry, often considered as subjective and inscrutable and illogical continually prevents Hollywood from reaping profits as forecasted. Additionally, China has stringent regulations on which movies can be viewed in Chinese cinemas, and similar to the internet, all the movies must pass through vigorous censorship before the Chinese masses can access it. Conclusion One of the problems with the recent Chinese blockbuster films is predominantly the shallow content they carry behind an appealing disguise of audiovisual treats along with star performance and innovative digital special effects. Customarily set in China particularly in the ancient times, the films attempt to achieve too many aspects at the same time including spectacular architecture and landscapes, flamboyant settings and costumes as well as exceptional martial arts skills among others such as attractive bodies and faces. Usually, a cliché romantic triangle is slotted in to the narrative that also contains little or no logic in its development and a lot of dull dialogue. The screens are dominated by sex and violence, however, ancient myths are not able to camouflage the recent ideology of the involvement of the blockbusters with the ruling power along with its imperial ambition and profligacy. Oddly, what has been similarly spectacular as the recent box office records of the Chinese blockbusters is their prevalent condemnation that is evident in the Chinese audiences. The viewers who get disappointed vent their anger through the internet while detractors show their satisfaction through various media sources. Blockbuster films have developed to become countrywide media occurrences in the new century, as they are a source of entertainment and an invitation to the audiences to take part in public debates. In the same manner as Hollywood films, the Chinese blockbuster fills draw a lot of attention, and their exhibitors and producers receive the publicity crave. Bibliography Latham, K. 2007, Pop culture China!, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, Calif. Rojas, C. and Chow, E. 2013, The Oxford handbook of Chinese cinemas, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Yau, C. 2004, Filming margins, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Zhang, Y. 2012, A companion to Chinese cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA. Zhao, Y. 2008, Communication in China, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham. Zhou, Y. 2007, Capitalizing Chinas media industry. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. Zhu, Y. 2003, Chinese cinema during the era of reform, Praeger, Westport, Conn. Zhu, Y. and Rosen, S. 2010, Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Read More