There was an interesting conversation on my Mastodon CDrama group yesterday. We are currently having a watch party of Mysterious Lotus Casebook, and Neon shared an interesting conversation thread about the racism in the wuxia drama. There was also this article, Ethnonationalism in Mysterious Lotus Casebook.

To be honest, my reaction was, “…what?”

I’ve actually read the article before, and my initial reaction was, I have no idea what to think of it. I mean, it’s an interesting theory and good on you that you’re thinking about racism of the Han people and all, but the claim that “these undercurrents promote CCP narratives of Han supremacy and justify the genocide, erasure, and forced assimilation of non-Han identities” makes me go … eh, where is your reference papers and sources thank you? And please don’t send me the US newspapers.

Anyway, I won’t go much into this, as I’ve expressed this multiple times on my blog about this thorny issue.

I am glad that more people from the West are enjoying more Chinese entertainment these days, but judging from my brush ups with some of them on Reddit etc, it doesn’t seem that they’ve taken pains to learn more about the Chinese people beyond what is spouted in their media. Please visit China, talk to Chinese people and really get to know them before making these judgement calls. Eh, but nobody listens to me. (PS I’ve visited China about 3x, and lived with housemates from China. So I’ve had some exposure.)

I don’t want to go more into this as it tends to attract swarms of commenters lecturing me about the goodness of liberalism and democracy when I don’t really, honestly care. I’m glad you love them though. 👍

I’m also a little tired that I can’t escape this craziness when enjoying my CDramas. It’s so tiresome.

Anyway, the issue with Mysterious Lotus Casebook is that the baddies are these people from a wiped-out kingdom. They practice the darkest sorcery. I agree that at times it went over-the-top with the depiction of their evilness, but I never took it as the entire race is evil, but this faction that supports the revival of the long-dead kingdom is. The show actually mentioned one Nanying descendant who actually fought bandits to protect the people, for one. Simply put, there’s good and bad in any nation, and this nation was led by royalty that practiced dark sorcery.

Kinda like the Sith, ya know?

So, I did not take the article too seriously, though I agree that there’s a thread where strangers are viewed with distrust by China for a long time. (I mean after the Opium wars and the century of humilation, can you blame them?) But during the Tang dynasty, there were foreigners who served in the government.

The crux of this article is that I’d like to remind people that ethnonationalism and cringe-worthy depictions of foreign nations is not unique to Chinese entertainment.

I couldn’t forget that first episode of S**ting Stars where our lead male character, a popular Korean actor, went to Africa to offer aid, and he was, of course beloved by the unwashed African children for his generosity. There were mud huts, lack of technology – ya know, the usual “Africa is backwards and need charity” depiction we see on TV.

I was reading Campucino, a newsletter from a Cambodian who shares about the happenings in Cambodia. In her latest issue, she talked about eagerly watching The Creator because it depicted a famous Cambodian landmark. (The film was shot there.) Warning, some spoilers below:

Now, for the part which made me want to get up from my seat and leave the theatre, the part where a floating village was nuked mercilessly. It was a part that was filmed in Cambodia. This scene evoked a very strong emotion in me and I was angry because I saw this before, in a documentary in which the US bombed us with 2.7 million tons of ammunition between October 1965 and May 1975. Keeping my bias in check, I left the movie with this question: Why is it that Asians are often portrayed as either backward, evil, or both, which then gives the West a justification to treat us with blind inhumane violence?

– #64 Karma Police, Campuccino

Ya know, my enthusiasm to watch this show has soured somewhat.

I suppose I can write an essay about how Hollywood depictions like are the subconscious, dying gasp of an empire bent on reinforcing and maintaining its hegemony by keeping down the brown people.

Or something.

But I won’t because it’s a film and I never take entertainment that seriously.

I still remember that scene on the first episode of 24. I was so excited that Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas twin towers appeared … only for the pan out to a run down shanty town where people were running around in pointed straw hats at the bottom of the KLCC twin towers.

I would like to assure that, while we may have some shanty towns, we don’t run around in straw hats. Also, there are literally no shanty towns around KLCC, unless you want to count the less shiny and skyscrapy Kampung Baru, in which the residents will be royally pissed if you paint them that way. This is how the area around KLCC looks like:

I guess what I’m saying is, this is more of a humanity problem than a specific-country problem. China has silly censorship pro-CCP stuff in their entertainment. Hollywood likes to depict us Asians as terrorists and living in shanty towns, and Africa still has muddy huts and need a handout.

We all need to do better.