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• 1 2018-12-03T18:53:09-08:00 Media Project 2 plain 2018-12-15T00:07:15-08:00

  For my media project, I decided to focus on the main characters of Kung Fu Hustle and how transnationalism, imagined communities, and common Asian stereotypes are incorporated into this classic Stephen Chow film. Originally, I was thinking about creating Tinder (or any dating platform) profiles for selective characters who resided in the Pig Sty Alley; however, this individual perspective would actually make it difficult to fully integrate how stereotypes are still affecting film and media culture nowadays. Therefore, I decided that I would change the presentation of my ideas from individual dating profiles into a character casting call, specifically for the Landlady, the gay tailor, and Donut (the breakfast man).
  
  First of all, one thing that really stood out to me while watching the movie this time was the multilingualism that was apparent in the undubbed version. Previously, I only remembered hearing Cantonese throughout the entire film; however, there are actually characters casted from mainland China who spoke Mandarin. At the beginning of the film, we see the landlord finishing up breakfast at the shop, and then using Cantonese to communicate with Donut, but Donut understood and responded immediately even though he spoke Mandarin. The reason why I’m paying such attention to this aspect is the fact that it is unrealistic for someone to be able to fully comprehend Cantonese, in a Cantonese community, and still decide to communicate in unaccented Mandarin. This aspect leads to the concept of transnationalism; since this was a collaboration between Hong Kong and mainland China, there were bound to be actors from both places, speaking their own languages. However, for the audience watching this movie undubbed, it would cause some confusion because it is something that is not often seen/heard in real life, and may threaten people’s view on the authenticity of the film. It also creates a split between Mandarin-speaking and Cantonese-speaking actors, separating them by the sinophone that they speak in. Although the construction of both languages leads to some spoken discontinuity, it was a necessary aspect of the film for transnational collaboration purposes. Secondly, not only am I able to give some information about the characters and what their imagined communities would be like, it is also possible to add in the talents’ imagined communities. Although these were imaginary and some overly exaggerated, it emphasizes the fact that these communities could extend to almost any category of descriptors. For example, we know that Chow casted the landlady partly because of the actress' cool habit and style of smoking, so an imagined community for the "Talent wanted" would be that they should be a habitual smoker.

  Lastly, with the use of a casting call, I wanted to emphasize the stereotypes that still permeate through the current media culture based on the norms of the Chinese society. At the beginning of the film, Sing brought his sidekick to Pig Sty Alley to scare them into giving them money, and we saw the use of his sidekick’s body image in effort to add comedy to that scene. In Asian films, it is still very much acceptable to make fun of characters based on their appearance and weight; it is almost a trend to have one oversized character who acts dumb and solely provides comedic relief. As another example, we see that there was also supposed to be the same effect for the minor character, Jane, the buck teeth woman. When we, as an American audience, observe this kind of humor, we still laugh along because it’s one of the easiest ways to connect with others in a comedy film. During the casting season, Stephen Chow specifically watched out for women who were on the heavier end and looked intimidating at first sight for the landlady role. So after this actress was casted, although she was not even the one auditioning, Chow told her to put on weight in order to fit this image he had in his mind of a stereotypical bossy landlady. She ended up gaining 30-40 pounds just for the film. Aside from appearance, there was also a stereotypical gay man in this movie, who was portrayed in a way that emphasized his femininity as abnormal, and almost creepy. With the over-exaggerated behaviors, it really made the effect of contrasting his image after he revealed his hidden kung fu skills.

  Producing this media project made me realize that it is a lot more difficult than I imagined to place all these concepts into words on paper. I had to somehow use exaggerated humor in my words in order to emphasize my point, and it may seem extremely offensive for people who are not aware of the context of this assignment. This revealed to me that these concepts, especially stereotypes, are interwoven so seamlessly into the production of a film that it is actually hard to grasp how and where they are exactly used. There were no particular technical difficulties for me, I just really struggled with coming up with characteristics for the characters and actors.