China Film Journal

Director Ang Lee, perhaps frustrated and angered by the recent ban of Tang Wei and spate of criticism leveled against his movie, has reacted by publcily defending Tang Wei — as well a good director ought to, protege or not.

However, in so doing he made a statement that hasn’t gone over well in the blogosphere. He said that “not watching Lust, Caution would be shameful.”

Here is what the above article quotes Lee as saying:

　李安說：“戲中那些激情場面，是演技最精彩的部分。我教過無數演員，都沒有那麼高水準。這些是好私人的表演，是這部戲的重點，主導了整部電影，不去看才羞恥。” [emphasis mine]

The article then discusses Lee’s remarks in that typically specious avuncular “tsk, tsk” officialese tone that we all know so well, that patronizing tone mustered by those who will live to their last day without ever becoming aware of their own incorrigible mediocrity. The writer is the calm voice of reason, the artist is petulant and extreme. In a pluralistic society like China, everyone has different tastes and interests, no need to be saying what we should or shouldn’t watch, what is “shameful” and what is not. There’s no need to point out the doublespeak — in film and the arts, SARFT and their ilk reserve the final right to decide who’s on the pluralism party list and who gets bounced.

The article then claims that statemetns like Lee’s are sound-bytes that the attention-starved people in the movie biz do to get more publicity for themselves:

當前，影視界或藝術界的一些人，太急功近利或浮躁了。總喜歡發出一些“怪論”、“偏論”，或引起人們的注意，或顯示自己的與眾不同。其實，那不過是一種“很傻很天真很幼稚”的表現。

This is then criticized as being naive and immature. The author says that some artists (obviously meaning Ang Lee in this context) are so obsessed with “immediate profits and gains” that they have to make “strange and provocative statements” in order for that to happen. It seems highly ironic, the terms they use to describe this — “怪論” (strange arguments/statements) and “偏論” (biased/skewed/provocative arguments or statements) — because to us the best instance of such statements can be found by attending government press conferences, political meetings (Party Congresses), or maybe by bringing a mirror into wherever these writers work.

It’s not that we’re fans of Ang Lee’s movies, and even though he’s publicly pitted himself against the SARFT-Goliath, he’s no culture-hero. He is morally obliged, we think, to stand up and say something, but not everything he has said has been right, or even helpful. The issue of “shame” should never have come up in the first place, because that’s precisely how SARFT wants you to think about Lust, Caution. And they certainly don’t want you to notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand that editorials like this one use to distort the issue, making it about Ang Lee’s big mouth instead of about the real issue — China’s puzzling lack of a film-ratings system and the government’s anachronistic role as the cultural nanny of the general population.

This hypocrisy is gloriously displayed on the last line: “李安應為自己的話道歉”，這是許多網友的呼聲，不知我們的李大導演可否注意到？是否懂得“不敬人者，人恒不敬之”的道理？Roughly translated this means that Ang Lee ought to apologize for his own statements, doesn’t he know that ‘he who does not respect others will never gain the respect of others.” When is China going to start respecting artists and filmmakers, and more importantly, the general population as adult, mature, consumers of cultural products? If the Chinese government is not going to respect its own cultural producers, why should anyone in the world who gives a shit about art and culture respect the Chinese government?

Technorati Tags: ang lee, lust, caution, china, media, 媒體, 中國, 色戒, 李安