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.
