BEIJING -- "Kung Fu Panda" treats the revered martial art of kung fu in a creative way, it's culturally sensitive, it makes China look good, it's fun, witty and engaging, and people are lapping it up. It's got pandas. So why can't we do it here in China, top Communist cultural mandarins are asking?
Since it opened nationwide on June 20th, the pic has passed the 100-million-yuan ($14.5 million) threshold in the box offices at Chinese cinemas, a major milestone for a Hollywood film that looked like a sure-fire controversy in the home of both kung fu and pandas. By Wednesday, the amusing tale about an overweight panda-cum-noodle chef who aspires to be a kung fu master had taken in $16 million.
Cue some serious hand-wringing by a panel of the nation's top cultural advisers.
"The film's protagonist is China's national treasure and all the elements are Chinese, but why didn't we make such a film?" said Wu Jiang, president of China National Peking Opera Company and a key member of the Second Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC).
The success of the pic has fed into a broader debate about why China has failed to match its growing economic and political significance with real cultural muscle.
But "Kung Fu Panda" seems to have caused ructions even at senior levels. And significantly, the committee agreed to recommend to the government that it should "relax its control in order to accelerate the reform and opening up of the cultural market and to enhance China's cultural influence in the world."
The Chinese government keeps a tight grip on movie production and distribution – numerically most movies made in China have been stodgy propaganda pics and the more daring Chinese movies that make it to the Western festival circuit are generally unlikely to play widely in Chinese theaters.
The general belief is that a panel of censors can act as artistic arbiters on a movie too, hence the head-scratching and general bafflement when Chinese children shun domestic animation skeins in their droves in favor of Japanese toons or "Spongebob Squarepants".
"There is no secret ingredient," the body decided, just as the Jack Black-voiced "Po" character realizes in the movie.
Wu compared it to "Mulan," Disney's 1998 pic based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, a girl who disguised herself as a man to fight on the battlefield for her father and country. This was widely reviled in official circles in China, mostly because it was not made by Chinese.
Lu Chuan, a leading Chinese helmer, said in his blog that "Kung Fu Panda" was a challenge to the Chinese film industry to make a film as good.
"From a production standpoint, the movie is nearly perfect. Its American creators showed a very sincere attitude about Chinese culture," he wrote.
Writing in the China Daily, Lu said the government was stifling the creativity of China's filmmakers. He told of how he had abandoned attempts to make a toon for the Olympics because of government interference.
"I kept receiving directions and orders on how the movie should be like. The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity," he said.
The Chinese are hugely proud of kung fu and they also love their national symbol, the giant panda, so it is a tribute to the DreamWorks Animation movie that it managed to address these two big issues sensitively.
But for a while it looked like the film might not get a screening at all. The performance artist Zhao Bandi, best known for carrying around a toy panda and using panda images in his work, including clothes designs for panda prostitutes and panda concubines, called for a boycott of the film. He said it was in poor taste and disrespectful to victims of the 12 May earthquake in which 90,000 died or are missing, and an example of foreigners profiting from Chinese cultural imperatives. His xenophobic remarks prompted a huge backlash online from Chinese fans of the movie.
However, the remarks from the CPPCC Standing Committee do not suggest that a wave of success is coming anytime soon.
Committee member Sun Zhonghuan bemoaned the fact that few domestic firms were willing to sustain the huge risk of making the pic. He said its budget of $130 million compared unfavorably with the $1.43 million spent on your average Chinese movie.
"It's not that we could not produce such a film, but we lack an integrated industry base. In other words, we might have the ideas, but we lack the structure to realize them," he said.
Sun called for drafting state policies to support cultural creativity, respect talent and create a social atmosphere conducive to innovation.
CPPCC Standing Committee member Chen Jianguo, producer of a local sudser about a Tang Dynasty (618-907) emperor, said the reason Chinese historical TV dramas did poorly was because foreigners were often too ignorant of China's history to understand, presenting an obstacle to global sales.
"We know little about foreigners' views and expectations of the Chinese culture. We should study their viewing habits and psychology. If we can find common points of interest, our cultural products will have greater success," said Wu.
Tian Congming, former prexy of the state-run news agency Xinhua, cited the international popularity of Sun Tzu's classic text "The Art of War" as an example of worldwide interest in Chinese culture.
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