Encounter Chinese Cinema

Chinese cinema seems as ubiquitous as any other China products. It is very easy to see them at any movie theater or when one watches cinema online. The obvious reason, I believe, has something to do with the size China trade has that its movies are enabled to permeate almost the entire globe. Information gathered from economy news corroborates. China is said to be the first economic powerhouse in 2050 taking over America while India follows in the third taking over Japan.

Today might be construed as the time for Chinese movies. And if the economic trends the indicator, we can imagine how the world is silently moving towards more Chinese movie times in its everyday living.  Especially in the next decades, the planet may be a biosphere in which Chinese is something people embrace without any objection. I mean, people generally as some are going to grapple with the new reality and some others reject it altogether. 

Something very significant is the fact that Chinese people are already in most populations in the world. Ask anyone doing business in premier cities outside China, they would confirm this naked truth. Some tourists would be keeping pictures they took in some China towns around the world. Many others would live with made-in-China products from sunrise through sundown. It is then sufficient to say that Chinese is a lived experience a great number of people would acknowledge.

In this essay, I would like to expand the economic perspective much deeper into the interstices of human life experiences. I would use the troupe ‘encounter’ as something much more important than any external forces like economy may or may want to accomplish. Basically, my thesis says that when people have been familiar with a presence, no matter how foreign it might be, they would be inclined to accept even something as fluid and invasive as movie streaming.

Life Experiences are the Key

If we consider everyday life experiences a breeding ground for reception, considering its being ever-present, Chinese goods including Chinese movies may have to some extend been undergoing ‘mutations’ into a complex of idea. As such, Chinese is thus something neurologically preconditioned. As much as it sounds hyperbolic, some people might be assumed to have already been taken into the custody of Chinese encounter. They tend to be more positive about a ‘yellow presence’, foreign in the nationalistic terms but, familiar in memory and personal engagement.

Of course, the brain is not a computer memory, it is so much more. Nevertheless, there is a way of measuring up the capacity to experience with such a technological term. When you are basically installed with such a comfort for experiencing something, you can practically run any other related software of experience and keep increasing their values on the same platform.

Approaching the experience this way is very important to the reception of Chinese cinema. As most people are probably aware of, any movie is all but an illusion that becomes organic in the mental processing of the viewers. Any sequence is in fact structured in form of still images that are ordered and made to obey the scenario and especially the way the director interprets their internal relationships.

Up to this point, movies are first and foremost a foreign invasion into the dynamically stable structure of inner processing (life experiences). They are not a reality that one really sees and decides on its meaning. Even the most soft-spoken filmic message is still a form of external idea infused with some visual excitement. Therefore, when movies are shot in a certain way beyond entertaining per se, the eyes of a Chinese movie director is basically Chinese despite its claims of being, for instance, universal. These particular eyes make the movie Chinese and enter viewers’ mind to offer some specific ways of looking, feeling, thinking and perceiving truth of something with something else.

What is this something else if none other than so-called Chinese encounter?  People are being presented with what it takes to be Chinese in the contemporary world. That this is how Chinese believe when looking at this particular something. Take for instance, White Vengeance, a film directed by Daniel Lee who superbly wove each element of storytelling and filmmaking. A closer examination would instantly reveal that it is loaded heavily with beliefs that most non-Chinese should be questioning. How could the fate of millions be decided upon the board of Xiangqi (Chinese strategy board game)? How could those warring kings’ military strategists justify their so-called benevolent advices that are basically merciless killings as the mandate of heaven?

And, no, this is not a self-criticism movie! This is about what Chinese believe in their beliefs on history, power, betrayal and love at its purest expression.

Towards A More Critical Encounter

We wonder then how many viewers were nervous in their seats seeing excessive killings and noblesse go handy with the will of God. Or were they are justly comfortable as the film is played out through the grandeurs of cinematic artistry incomparable with many other films? 

This line of thinking begs a question, a big one. Is Chinese as an encounter good or bad to the world? Is Chinese encounter enabling or disabling? If you push this kind of question to a NATO Commander, the answer would probably be prompt and clear. It is absolutely too much to bear.  So, please skip the chief from the burden. Instead, allow people as common as movie goers and globe trotters into the picture as they would probably be a better yardstick to say about the encounter in more refreshing words.  

What I want to say that Chinese as an idea to encounter comes in multi colors. Ideology aside, Chinese as engaged in some movies is full with novel ideas that make possible ever-renewing and structuring of cognition and affect through the cinematic encounter it may offer. These novelties become meaningful as far as the viewers have taken them seriously. It is true that some viewers might be taken captive of the filming that scenes that magnify the truths of some foreign beliefs being injected without any resistance or filtering. If that is the case, Chinese is truly an invasion and some people need to rethink of their cinematic experience. 

Fortunately, there is another layer of life experiences, much more complex and powerful, that people might activate to operate their filmic platform throughout the Chinese encounter. Such platform has been set up and empowered with so many non-Chinese grains of everyday experiences that Chinese is just a percentage. Accordingly, as something foreign, Chinese is  taken critically and reprocessed creatively. The experience becomes an act of bold blending. And this active mixture of sites of encounter is precisely what provides possibilities of integrating Chinese into one’s personal experiences. 

The final results would be a renewed or a series of renewed platforms that can ran more various encounters simultaneously. And that is surely meaningful and tasty.