MCLC: challenges of making original content (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: sean macdonald <smacdon2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: challenges of making original content (1)
************************************************************

Thanks very much for this informative posting. These are some
important points here. I wonder how long Chinese producers, writers,
and animators will have to continue "learning" how to tell their own
stories. After all, it's not as if each and every Hollywood budget
heavy blockbuster shows a return does it? Isn't Hollywood magic just a
throw of the dice at the best of times?

I always think of the planet earth of Universal Studios as a sort of
metaphor for the construction of a global image making machine that
still thinks it is truly "universal." I think change is inevitable.
Think of the ramifications of an educational system that worked in
foreign literary and historical figures as part of the curriculum
since the early twentieth century so that at least educated Chinese
spectators had some sort of understanding or partial acceptance of the
national and ethnic Other as a potential "universal" protagonist.
Nowadays in the US, in Europe, and I am guessing certainly in
Austrailia and New Zealand, kids are growing up with more exposure
than ever before to Chinese culture, and that includes the imaginary
figures that populate cultural production. Martial arts films still
bring in audiences outside of China, so that's one genre at least.

That recent Blockbuster "The Avengers" is a franchise loosely adapted
from a residual print culture source material that most viewers in the
country that produced it do not even read. Maybe the Hollywood
Blockbuster is not some easily contrived formula that can be simply
pressed out like a can of Coke. But surely well-timed jokes, a
well-contrived plot, and an oddball bunch of characters with little
back story besides crackling "powers" and punches cannot dominate the
Universe forever.

All the best,

Sean