(Lena Wong) Western/Eastern Influence

In my high school economics class, we watched an ABC 20/20 special hosted by anchor John Stossel called “Is America #1?” The hour-long feature explored the economies of India, Hong Kong, and the United States in an effort to discuss the effects of economic freedom on a country’s quality of life and overall wealth. That same year, we also read a book by Dinesh D’Souza entitled “What’s So Great about America,” which rallied patriotically about the merits of America’s politics and economy. I didn’t, by any means, go to high school in a conservative state – quite the opposite in fact. I’m from the Bay Area, California which, for the most part, is as blue as blue can go. Presenting us with these examples were meant to instigate thought; we were supposed to phrase D’Souza’s title as a question, not a statement. And though years have passed since then, it’s still a question I find myself trying to answer today.

In fact, at the very beginning of a course I took this semester called “What on Earth is World Cinema?” one of the questions we were asked was whether or not World Cinema was supposed to mean all film industries outside of Hollywood. As much as we tried to argue that we would look at world cinema objectively, it became very clear that our minds had a hard time wrapping around the idea of including Hollywood within the realm of world cinema. Instead, it seemed almost natural to watch films and compare them directly with Hollywood as though America’s film industry was the ruler by which all cinemas should be measured. Yet, the impact of foreign filmmakers on Hollywood has been vital to the industry’s growth in previous years. Just from Asia alone, America has imported everything from directors to movie plotlines, reworked it in an American context, and sold it as their own. Before there was The Ring, there was the Japanese Ringu, before The Departed there was the Hong Kong blockbuster Infernal Affairs, and before there was John Woo, the director of Mission Impossible III, there was John Woo, the director of A Better Tomorrow – the Hong Kong action movie that started it all. And though The Departed won director Martin Scorsese an Academy Award for Best Director as well as a whole host of other Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay-Adapted, and Best Editing, it did so with little attribution to the movie that had come before it. Many fans of the movies who posted their personal reviews on the internet stated that while it was by no means a necessity, featuring cameos by Infernal Affairs’ two stars Tony Leung and Andy Lau in The Departed would have been a nice way to pay homage to The Departed’s predecessor. But, instead, The Departed features an exchange with a Chinese triad in which the actors speak with very poor Cantonese. And in the aftermath of the The Departed’s gigantic box office success, Infernal Affairs has become a distant memory…so much so that it was incorrectly called a “Japanese” film during the Academy Awards. Thankfully, Scorsese corrected that in his speech.

Yet, it is, of course, hard to argue that the influence has purely been from the East to the West. Aside from the fact that the relative success of emerging industries has been complimented for creating blockbusters that could pass for Hollywood films (which in itself is a loaded statement), many American films make it to the top of box office charts in foreign countries. For instance, Korean film Shiri was considered to be a huge success not just because of its big-budget and for jump-starting the new Korean film wave, but because it was able to beat Stephen Spielberg’s Titanic in terms of viewers. Shiri brought in 6.3 million viewers, Titanic only 4.3.

So does all this mean America’s number one? Does it even begin to answer the question of “what’s so great about America”? I’d say no. And I don’t know if that’s an answer that can ever really be answered. Yes our country has incredible influence on the world around us, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re the best – and at the end of the day, who really cares?