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Mirroring the real fists of fury

It was purely coincidental that I watched an old Bruce Lee classic at about the time Chinese mobs were wrecking Japanese property on the mainland. When I first saw Fist of Fury years ago, it was Lee's incredible martial-arts skills that struck me, not the film's underlying theme of hatred towards the Japanese.

This time, I hardly noticed the kung fu, struck instead by the graphic portrayal of Japanese occupiers as scum, and the fanatical thirst for revenge by a screen hero who has brought pride to Chinese everywhere.

It made me think about two things: why Chinese fury lives on so many generations after Japan shed its imperial past, and if Lee were alive today, would he still make a movie with such a blatant message?

People tell me that I take movie themes too seriously, pressing the point that they are not for real. But movies are for real. They mirror closely the sentiments of society and can whip up all sorts of emotions, turning half-truths into believable truths, and truths into lies that pander to gullible audiences. The old 'cowboy and Indian' movies are a good example of how studios can slur an entire ethnic group to tap into the prejudices of society. The 'injuns' were almost always the bad guys. American society at that time would not have tolerated an 'injun' screen hero riding into the sunset after teaching the white colonists a lesson, just like it took generations before Hollywood dared cast a black man as a hero. Even now, studios feel the need to cast a Caucasian sidekick alongside Chinese screen hero Jackie Chan to widen audience appeal.

The aftermath of the second world war gave Hollywood free reign to mock the Japanese and Germans, and during the cold war, film studios cast Soviets as evil and Chinese communists as sinister.

Cinema's reach is long, and it has the power to influence, or even brainwash, audiences. During the 'cowboy and Indian' film era, it was not unusual even for Asian audiences to clap when 'good guy' cowboys obliterated the bad guys. Today, it is not unusual for Asian audiences to side with a Caucasian hero in a film that, for example, paints North Koreans as bad guys, even though such audiences are closer ethnically, culturally and in appearance to a North Korean than a westerner.

Political correctness means film studios now have to tread carefully when dealing with African-Americans, Native Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and to a certain extent, Russians. But Hollywood still needs bad guys and continues to stereotype them from places that are out of favour with the US.

Aside from North Koreans, Hollywood's latest bad guys are Muslims and Arabs, which proves the point that movies mirror the sentiments of society. More than three years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, western animosity towards Muslims has barely subsided, which explains why Hollywood can ignore political correctness in equating the Muslim world with terror and tyranny, knowing that much of society agrees with such a portrayal.

Lee's Fist of Fury mirrored actual Chinese animosity towards the Japanese, and with that animosity still very much alive, he would easily get away with a blatant Japan-bashing movie today.

In his book Democracy and Populism, John Lukacs writes that in the democratic age, the world is governed not by the accumulation of wealth or goods, but by the accumulation of opinions. Politics, he says, now depends on what the masses are thinking, desiring, fearing and hating.

Cinema's original intent was to entertain. It still does that, but its mass appeal can also shape opinion, or pander to it. It is not hard for filmmakers to understand what the masses are thinking, desiring, fearing and hating - and it is easy for them to exploit those sentiments for profit or politics.

Michael Chugani is editor-in-chief of ATV English News and Current Affairs

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