Representations of China in the Movie the Forbidden Kingdom Essay

The Forbidden Kingdom (Rob Minkoff, 2008)1 is an American martial arts attempt film co-starred by Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The film tells the story of a capital of Massachusetts boy Jason, who is a big kung fu fan, is given the mission, as a traveler, of return the staff to the Monkey King so as to free him from the statue in which he has been trapped by the hold out Warlord. With the help of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, Jason not only fulfills his mission in the end by defeating the Jade Warlord, exactly also masters kung fu and develops to a brave and responsible soldiery.The mental picture was sure-fire and popular, attracting large audience2, due to the reason, as far as I look it, that it meets the wattern audiences expectation of china. The movie is full of stereotypes of China and Chinese, reflecting the orientalisms attitudes from the double-u, especially from America ( twain written and directed by Americans) in this case.Orientalism, as studied in Edward Saids book Ori entalism (1978), is an academician term used to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the eastside, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries3, later adopted by America later on the WW.In such a man-made possibleness, eastward is depicted as a less-civilized, strange, brutal and inferior entity to the West, and the West is not only dened as the diametric opposite of the East, but also as its protector and its c atomic number 18r (Khatib, 2006 64). Whats more, to the West that the Orient is something to be feared or controlled (Khatib, 2006 65). All these ideas of Orientalism can be sensed or found in the movie The Forbidden Kingdom, which makes this movie a advocator of American Orientalism towards China.The movie begins with a dim, disorganized pawn shit owned by a shaky, weak and old Chinese man Hop, who clings tightly to his specie and sells kung fu DVDs to Jason, the boy who is treated and bullied like an alien by his peers because of his enthusiasm towards kung fu. Hop is later attacked by the bullies who forces Jason to lead them to steal money from him. This opening of the story sets the main attitude about China by showing the typical stereotype that white people hold towards Chinese a totally different Other, whose living style (the messy shop) and traditions (kung fu) are far beyond the understandings of the West, also with the characteristics of being sickly weak and well-fixed to attack or take advantage of, often become the bum of violence.When Jason is sent to the ancient China to fulfill his mission, what he experiences also applies to the theory of Orientalism exotic Chinese water-mountain sceneries, extraordinary and dazzling kung fu skills, brutal killing by the army, vicious women (White-haired Witch), wicked Jade Warlord with darkened eye shadow, submissive women (concubines of Jade Warlord) etc. All of these images give a udience an impression that China is an exotic yet less civilized territory, waiting to have her destiny changed by this American boy. As a result, the dominant motive oer the East (China) of America is subsequently delivered by the screenwriter, i.e. the chaos brought by the Jade Warlord is sack to be ceased by the Traveler Jason, rather than someone from China herself, for example, the haughty power of the Heaven, the emperor butterfly. Such plot indicates the attitude that the East (China) is unable to be independent she needs the West (America) to dominate and have authority over her.The fear of the East from the West can also be comfortably detected in this movie. The Heaven is temporarily given by the Emperor to the Jade Warlord to govern, which means the whole china is under his control. But his power grows so fast and powerful that, according the American screenwriter, someone from the West needs to suppress this evil rise, and this time, Jason again, the ultimate messen ger in this movie to carry out the Americans will in Orientalism. being far away from China, western people get images of China mainly from what is available in the media. However, what is presented is only small or even lead astray information about China. Although Orientalism is viewed as false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the (Middle) East4, it is still applied in media and proved by Western governments immediately in order to remain the power over the East in spheres of politics, economy and culture. We should hold an alert and critical attitude towards such information, laborious to go beyond what is presented, so as to get to know the hearty image of the East.