I didn’t realize a couple of weeks ago when I saw the anodyne children’s movie Kung Fu Panda that it would create such a stir in China.  The controversy, however, is not so much about orientalism, as I had anticipated, as it is about nationalism, which I guess I should have seen coming.   

     This WaPo article yesterday reports on a certain anxiety among some Chinese about why a Chinese film maker had not made this sort of movie.  For example:

Even an advisory body to China’s parliament debated why China hadn’t
been first with such a big hit using Chinese themes. “The film’s
protagonist is China’s national treasure and all the elements are
Chinese, but why didn’t we make such a film?” the president of the
National Peking Opera Company, Wu Jiang, told the official New China News Agency last Saturday.

Wu
was speaking at a meeting of the standing committee of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Committee, which in the end urged the
government to relax its controls to further open China’s cultural
market.

      Now I am all for more freedom of artistic expression in China, but is a kid’s move about a Panda important enough that a national political body should be debating it?   The fact that it is discussed at the CPPCC shows that either the representatives there don’t have much to keep them busy or that their nationalist insecurities are reaching new levels.  

      To my mind the problem lies in the construction of the Panda as a symbol of the Chinese nation.  Of course, Panda’s are ecologically particular to China (or are they found elsewhere in Southeast Asia?) and have a strong association with the geography of China.  But that does not mean that the image of a Panda anywhere at anytime should be taken as a symbol of China.  If a cartoon in Germany depicts a Panda in an embarrassing pose, should that be interpreted as an assault on the “Chinese people”?  Perhaps the artist is simply attracted to the physical features of the Panda, not its nationalist connotations.  If we make every picture of a Panda into a political statement we will very quickly have little to say to one another that is meaningful or humorous or fun. 

     I suspect that the makers of this movie foregrounded the Panda because of its appearance: fat, slow but cute.  They were not understanding or presenting it as “China’s national treasure,” and that is why they could make fun of it. The WaPo article shows that some Chinese commentators are of this view:

Chinese animated films tend to be more educational in nature and
heavy with significance, but short on entertaining detail, “Kung Fu
Panda” viewers say. Local directors would not have had the imagination
to make Po’s father a duck. Nor would they dare to portray a panda — a
cultural icon in China — as lazy and fat as Po when “Kung Fu Panda”
begins.

Foreigners who make cultural missteps are often accused of hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.

“If
you asked a Chinese to make this movie, the panda needs to be lovable
but in a perfect sense,” said Sun Lijun, a professor of animation at
the Beijing Movie Institute, in the July 10 issue of Oriental Outlook
magazine. “In the end, he would be so perfect he would be unlovable.”

     So, only if we let the Panda be a Panda can we have some fun with it.

     Roland has translated a Chinese blog post (original Chinese post here) that takes the analysis of Kung Fu Panda in another direction: discussing the universal values that it connects with.  What I like in this post is the recognition that certain themes and principles are common to most different cultures around the world.   And then the writer takes it a bit further to suggest that “Chinese values,” which themselves are particular expressions of broader universal values, are obstructed from extending more broadly around the world because of political interference and anxiety:

But we must admit that whenever we speak of universal values, we often
feel that they are very western.  That is because these values were
nurtured from western culture and that is why they are familiar.  Due
to problems of state power and influence, the values nurtured by eastern
cultures (and especially Chinese values) are not known or accepted by the
west.

     Yes.  This implies that globalization is not simply “westernization,” though it may often feel that way to people outside of the “West.”  Rather globalization is the multi-direction movement of cultural images and practices everywhere.  Of course power is implicated in those flows, but power does not make globalization a uni-directional phenomenon.  If the PRC state allowed for greater freedom of cultural expression and exchange, “Chinese culture” would move out into the world more widely.  A prerequisite for this kind of outcome, however, is a prior willingness to let go of the idea of controlling the definition of “Chinese culture.”  Power-holders and cultural conservatives are obsessed (not just in China but everywhere, the US included) in stage-managing the presentation of national cultural.  They always fail at this, because cultural expression always finds ways around political obstacles, but they work hard at it and, in the process, succeed in quashing some artists and works of art for some period of time.  They can slow and distort the process of cultural expression but they cannot control absolutely the production and circulation of ideas and images that contradict or diverge from their desired representation of the “national culture.”

     I think that “eastern” culture (I really do dislike the gross over-generalizations of “east” and “west”), in spite of the self-wounding obstructions of state power-holders, flows quite extensively  into and around the west right now.  And this is not simply the view of someone who teaches ancient Chinese thought.  Feng Shui, Tai Chi, Chinese medicine, Taoism, Buddhism…. the list could go on.  All of these, and many more, facets of “Asian” culture (“Asian” is little better as a generalization than “eastern”)  are present in the US today.  Yes, they may be present in forms that have been changed and adapted to local circumstances, but culture, anywhere and at all times, is constantly transforming.  

    I obviously believe that ideas from China can have a broader and more significant impact on American life.  And that will happen best when it is allowed to happen naturally, as people want it to happen (or not), not when politicians and political parties try to manipulate it for their own interests.  

     Perhaps the nervous cultural commissars in Beijing should listen to the obvious Taoist message of Kung Fu Panda (am I the only one who has commented on the Taoist themes of the movie?):  when it comes to the production and circulation of cultural products – do nothing and nothing will be left undone.