I have taught intercultural communication and film, both separately and together, for more than two decades in the US and Hong Kong. I have always been interested in the ways that culture functions in and around film, the ways that film crosses cultural boundaries, and the implications of those crossings. It is necessary to examine the role that culture plays in the production and consumption of film precisely because it is a subject that presents many more questions than answers.
Culture can be operationalized as a form of mass psychology, not inclusive so much as exclusive. It is how culture survives through time; a framework of behaviors that repeat across generations. Certainly no culture is static, but culture does not invite or embrace change. Such a sentiment is antithetical to culture. At its most basic, and most influential, it tells us what is right and wrong, or good and bad. Culture is “the struggle over meaning.” Culture, perhaps because it is something we are subjected to from birth, is capable of instilling moral or philosophical points about which we either refuse or are incapable of negotiation. A Chinese student once said to me they could understand logically that the national origin of kimchi was unimportant, but it was a ‘red line’ to which they instinctively responded. More accurately, it was a response they had been acculturated into, which is likely the reason why the student waited to speak to me privately instead of speaking up in a classroom full of Chinese students.
Stuart Hall noted that media by necessity has ideological structure; a narrative must make sense to its intended audience using a framework that the audience understands and accepts. It follows that stories, or narratives, must adopt a cultural perspective. The narrative must be constructed in a way that makes cultural sense to its intended audience. It should also be noted that narratives, especially film narratives, often rely on conflict as a narrative driver. Hollywood doesn’t make films about two people being happily married for fifty years unless one of them is a vampire or an art thief. A film about a family vacation where everyone gets along has no market appeal.
Ideology is “profoundly embedded within a culture as codes. It operates as structures of language and social formations which constitute a reservoir of themes which in turn give meaning to particular events” (Makus). Film narrative often relies on some form of conflict, and that conflict has a cultural logic. The resolution of that conflict must also follow a cultural logic. If the resolution incorporates multiple cultural logics, it impedes or prohibits resolution for one or both cultures. “Live Free or Die” is acceptable as a slogan on a New Hampshire license plate, but using it to explain or defend the Nat Turner slave revolt will bring a very different result. So too would branding the Minutemen of the American Revolution ‘cop killers.’
As Stuart Hall asserts, no ideology “is ever wholly logical or consistent. . . . Ideologies which attempt to remain consistent while explaining a changing historical reality, are subject to severe stretch and strain” (p. 36). In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz’s final words are “We train young men to drop fire on people… but their commanders won’t allow them to write ‘fuck’ on their airplanes because it’s ‘obscene.’”
The central conflict in the animated Kung Fu Panda is that the protagonist does not want to assume responsibility for his family’s restaurant; he wants to choose his own life. Such a narrative aligns closely with American individualist culture. The narrative resolution of Kung Fu Panda inherently chooses which culture is ‘right’ and by extension which is wrong.
Kung Fu Panda was released in 2008, the year the Summer Olympics were hosted in China for the first time in their history. Three other Hollywood films set in China were released that year. In The Forbidden Kingdom, a young white man is magically transported to a mythical ancient China in which everyone speaks English; he becomes the ‘king of Kung Fu’ (the Chinese title of the film) and saves China from destruction. He also gets the (Chinese) girl. The Children of Huang Shi is loosely based on a true story about a white man who saves a group of Chinese orphans during WWII (Chow YunFat has a white girlfriend, but she’s a morphine addict). In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a white man saves China and the world from destruction at the hands of a demonic reincarnated emperor (his son gets the Chinese girl). It seems only logical to ask how and why these narratives are assumed to appeal to Chinese audiences.
Hollywood, and much of its American audience, seem to struggle with accepting or admitting that all movies are made for specific groups. It is not unusual to read that Spike Lee makes ‘Black films,’ but why is no one willing to say, or concede, that Wes Anderson makes ‘white films’? Why are Black Panther or Shang Chi thought of as ‘ethnically specific,’ but the remainder of Marvel films aren’t?
In its formative decades, Hollywood only told monocultural narratives, and usually told them to a single culture. Film was segregated, in both production and consumption. African-American filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams could, or more accurately could only, make movies for a guaranteed and specific, if limited market, who could find themselves represented in film. When Hollywood desegregated, American film remained largely monocultural; non-white films were given short shrift as they didn’t have the same ‘mass market’ appeal. The end of segregation brought not inclusion but marginalization, rationalized as a business concern. But that is hardly the fault of those who made or consumed them as much as those who created a segregated market in the first place.
Several segments of the American film audience know that not all movies are made for them, and accept it in return for having some movies that are made for them. 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians was a milestone in cultural representation for Asian Americans. In places like China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, the film was met with lukewarm indifference, because ‘Asian’ (there are fifty countries in Asia, including Iran and India) representation is not an issue in those film industries. But for Asian Americans, it was an opportunity to feel seen, centered, and valued.
A larger segment of the American film audience seems to struggle with the idea that ‘their’ films are ethnically categorizable. These may be the same people who wonder why Black History Month is necessary without realizing or admitting the inherent, profound whiteness of American history. Part of whiteness is its vigorously guarded invisibility, its resistance to being named/placed (McIntosh). Hollywood, like America, doesn’t want to admit its centrism. As Adorno once said, “To speak of culture was always contrary to culture.”
Sean Tierney
Sean Tierney earned his MA and PhD in Intercultural Communication at Howard University. He lived and worked in Hong Kong from 2005 to 2022, teaching at several universities andpublishing scholarly research. He appeared in a number ofHong Kong and Chinese filmsand created aYouTube channelreviewing Chinese-language films. He has written for several websites onfilm,popular culture, andpolitics.
