The harder you try, the higher is the standard you’re judged against. This is just like an Asian mom who gets angry when you get 98 on your test score, but not if you get 80.
@@Laossutra Setting the right expectation. If you are expected to be brilliant, any little mistake will disappoint the person placing that expectation on you. If you are expected to fail, any little success will surprise and maybe delight the person that doesn't expect you to achieve much. So over-hyped movies tend to get trashed harder than expected money-grab movies.
I think a good example of this working the other way is Fullmetal Alchemist. It avoided the cultural uncanny valley by highlighting a niche aspect of Western culture (namely various forms of Medieval Esoteric Hermeticism and early 20th century warfare), and as such became one of the most successful Japanese media in the West.
I have a funny anecdote about how the Cultural Uncanny Valley can indeed apply to interactions between the diaspora of a single ethnic group. I'm a Malaysian Chinese and went to the UK for to study. I joined a society for Chinese students, though naturally, the vast majority of their members were British Chinese. I distinctly remember feeling weirded out by them, and must admit I did not walk away with a favorable impression of them. In contrast, when I interacted with Japanese students, I'd say I tended to get along better with them despite the obvious cultural differences between us. In retrospect, my expectations of what being Chinese were were solely based off my experience as a Malaysian Chinese and those small differences that the British Chinese had were a betrayal of those expectations. On the other hand, I did not have as many expectations when interacting with the Japanese students and ultimately, that just made for more favorable impressions between us.
I feel you man. Im an overseas Chinese and whenever travelling to Mainland China I felt strange all the time. Local Chinese couldnt grasp the concept of an Asian not behaving like the other Asians they see everyday.
Same with Filipinos. Many Filipinos find Filipino-Americans and Filipino-Europeans to be too open, too white, too obsessed with "representation" without a feel for how normal people interact. When Tagalogs hear Tagalog spoken in a broken way, we appreciate it when it's foreigners, but Filipinos tend to treat Filipino-Americans, who don't speak the language, like they're Americans not Filipino, since being Filipino is just an adjective, not really who they are.
Dude I’m chinese american and you basically describe people’s impression of me all the time when i go to china. it’s actually hard sometimes to summarize why im like just slightly off to them. my chinese is too good to be a foreigner, and too trash to actually be chinese. if i say i’m from america, most of them will think i only study there, but didn’t grow up there. it takes a fair bit of explaining. if i say i’m from guangzhou where my mom is from, they think my mannerisms and mandarin aren’t typical of a person from there.
Just one thing to notice, in an overall excelent video, is that plenty of Japanese-Brazilians did try to enter the manga market, but only truly succeeded, the one from No Game, No Life, who was mostly raised in Japan and truly dived headfirst into the Otaku culture before writing an topic about whose culture he knew first hand, while still having clear diaspora ideas and perceptions.
There were a few Brazilian singers of Japanese ancestry which became somewhat popular in Japan, but a large number are actually Brazilian-japanese-japanese in that they are actually "return migrants" rather than trying to produce for Japan from Brazil. In that sense, they are in a different place where they are a double diaspora, and are in fact immigrants in Japan not Japanese immigrants in Brazil. That is a different albeit not less interesting situation.
Will when use Mulan as an example... Disney's Mulan: Finding love and one self, and then you will overcome all the bullshit that have nothing to do with you... Chinese's Mulan: Face your destiny, put on your armor, sharpen your sword, time for WAR!! For you will be remembered for your bravery and glory...
Also, quite a number of Chinese production Mulan explore the cruelty of wars (even the old Disney Mulan cartoon show a scene on this). In the Mulan played by Zhao Wei, Mulan got PTSD during the war. The story of Mulan, is not meant for 'honouring' your ancestor. It is meant to show the love of a daughter to her father, thus she took up her family responsibility to serve the kingdom. It's the story of sacrifices and loyalty. The latest Disney Mulan live action treat the war solely as the self-discovering trope for Mulan.
The key difference also demonstrated in 2020 Mulan and many Chinese ideas of Mulan: Mainland Chinese recognizes Mulan as effectively a historical war narrative or about a soldier, while 2020 can't differentiate between historicals and martial arts fantasy.
@@danshakuimo She is no Princess, She is a General... If you want a Princess and General at the same time, go for Princess PingYang. Or if you want a High Prestress, Queen, Warrior and General all mix together, go for FuHao then. And Fuck Disney!!
@@RambutanLaw Zhao Wei's Mulan is my favourite. That movie shows the inner conflict between duty and feelings, femininity and violence so well. And Mulan becoming mentally and physically broken by 12 years of war makes her sacrifice for her father all the more meaningful.
As a Malaysian Chinese and history enthusiast, I agree that Kingdom is pretty Japanese in their description of Qin, this is a really interesting topic as I've found out that overseas Chinese are more interested in non-Chinese descriptions of China than the ones in the mainland
To be fair, I argue a lot of Mainland Chinese media also doesn't make a lot of things accessible to the outside. Particularly if you are a history buff or into various mainland Chinese media, the amount that is actually available and translated to is shockingly few, which means the diaspora are basically almost left to fend off for themselves, and it's a problem even today that I don't see but the most miniscule of improvements I'm afraid.
It's one of my main gripes with Shang-Chi. They should have doubled down on him being Chinese-American, and dealt with the pull of expectations from your heritage, and from your own sense of identity. Instead, they kept promoting him as a "Chinese" character, and was ultimately incredibly...standard.
I don't think Shang Chi even appealing to most overseas Chinese. It's a meh film. They're too keen to show it's Asian everywhere and they're the main characters. So much focus into that, they ended up forgetting the story.
Tony Leung was really the only reason for me to watch the movie. The bit I disliked the most was the similarity of the Black Panther group fight near the end.
As someone from Spain, Coco pretty much nailed the Southern-Europe/Latin America family bonding stuff. ... But then they botched some other things because they went too overboard with them. The grandma didn't hit people with a spoon, as the directors found out that mothers actually hit people with a slipper here. So, they went overboard with it, and exaggerated the grandma going completely nuts about the power of her slipper, and how she would do "slipper kung-fu" against her kids. It's okay, we got it. It's our cultural thing, I guess. It might be very different for an Anglo, but here it's just a normal part of everyday life when you were a kid. Everyone got slapped with mom's slipper a few times, yes. And it would be funny as a minor gag, but it is so overdone that it feels like a North American character who is crazy about hot-dogs, or a Texan who always talks about guns, and basing 1/3 of the character's personality off that mild trait like that seems kinda off.
Coco was wildly successful in Latin America, though. Also, we are not all Mexicans so it was exotic to most of us too, though I say that as a Brazilian not a Spanish-speaker.
The interaction between John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone films are an interesting example of repackaging themes and plots from foreign countries and selling them back to each other. It is also telling how popular Kurosawa remains in the US vs Japan.
Interesting facts as you mentioned Cooking Manga. Stephen Chow was a big fan of Mr Ajikko when he was a young and his movie "God of Cookery" was his love song to that anime and Manga, there was a "Chinese cooking arc" in Mr Ajikko where they went to Hong Kong to do a competition. I really loved Chinese Cooking boy (Chuuko Ichiban), my dad who is a cook say he understand the principle of the stuff they talk about. I think the artist even went to China to study how Chinese cooking was made. Talk about Slamdunk! ironically Captain Tsubasa was hugely popular in Brazil, France and Italy and even inspired alot of future successful Soccer Player to take up football/Soccer as their sport.
@@KathyXie Probably due to the Uncanny Valley I think. I remember in Captain Tsubasa manga, there was a spin off series set in Italy where Aoi Shingo play for Inter Milan, there was alot of social commentary too, like the blatant Racism towards Asian playing Soccer, in reality which is not tolerated in FIFA and will get that club punished, at least not in surface level.
Spaghetti Western, particularly Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name Trilogy, is an example of successfully crossing the cultural uncanny valley. The soundtrack from the films has become part of the iconic Western soundtrack even though it was made by Italians. I think it had a lot to do with what you mentioned at the end about highlighting parts of another culture they've overlooked.
I am Chinese American and I believe many of us think about things from an individualist western perspective, even though we are very familiar with our cultures of origin. In your example of The Farewell, I would add that it wasn't only unpopular in China because it depicts a cultural phenomenon everyone is already too familiar with. I think it was also unpopular because it centers on the feelings of Awkwafina's character rather than on the mental and emotional health of the grandma. While many of us in the west would praise Awkwafina's character for staying true to her values, I believe many Chinese people would see her behavior as selfish- as she cannot handle the feeling of being responsible for a lie. So the same reason it appealed to Chinese Americans because of representation of another Chinese American who is struggling with feelings of self, identity, and guilt, it also left Chinese viewers unsatisfied with a main character who seems to center her own feelings of guilt and shame over the well being of her grandma
I wonder if Mainlanders also hide terminal illnesses from younger people in their 30s or 40s (or even 50s and 60s). The assumption that terminally ill people don’t want to know about their terminal illnesses is not universally true, especially for young people. If I had cancer, I definitely would want to know about it, either to get treatment if it’s still in the early stage, or to make the most out of my time being alive. If I was older, then I would probably just want to live out the rest of my life in peace, although knowing or not knowing about my impending doom probably wouldn’t matter that much anyway. But everybody’s different.
I'm not good at English, I watched the video with translation software, so there may be something wrong with my understanding. But I want to point out a few minor issues 1. The military system of the Qin Dynasty originated from the military merit system of the Warring States Period before the Qin Dynasty. Therefore, in theory, the image of a soldier in the Qin Dynasty should be a few heads tied around his waist. The Qin army in Zhang Yimou's film is a very artistic expression (there were no stirrups in the Qin Dynasty). 2. In the movie of Black Panther, Wakanda, the prototype is the god of the Native Americans (Sioux). And their coming-of-age ceremony is that the young man is half buried in the soil and goes to sleep, and Wakanda will incarnate as a wolf, bison, or other great beast into the dream, which means that Wakanda accepts him and he becomes a true warrior ( After drinking the prototype of heart herbs). The black panther is a variant of the leopard, which is often distributed in Southeast Asia and other places. The distribution of black panthers in Africa does not seem to be as much as in Southeast Asia. 3! ! ! ! ! ! Few people in China like the movie "The Great Wall". The original concept of "The Great Wall" came from Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures. The film has seven screenwriters but none of them are Chinese, not even Asian. It is said that when Zhang Yimou gets the script and asks for a revision, what he can save is not to let Matt Damon and the heroine go to bed and kiss. (Because this plot is so fucking stupid in China). So even though the director of "The Great Wall" is Chinese. Funded by Chinese companies. There are Chinese filming locations. Most of the actors are Chinese. But the screenwriters, costume designers, art designers, styling designers, producers, supervisors, assistant directors (assistants) and other staff are mostly foreigners or even white. So The Great Wall is an Asian with a white soul. 4. The live-action version of Mulan is also garbage. The animated version is great. Although the animated version talks about the issue of gender equality. But in the live-action version, Mulan will use superpowers that only men can master, and after the war is over, her sister is happy that she was arranged by her parents to marry someone else. What is gender equality? Especially the verse about rabbits, which is meant to be that although male and female rabbits are different when they look closely, they can't see any difference when they run. (Although men and women can tell the difference if they look closely, it is difficult to tell them apart when they are at work or fighting) The animated version is that men should learn the strengths of women, and women should learn the strengths of men, In the live-action version, women are as strong as men, and ordinary women (supporting characters, such as her sister) should accept their destiny. 5. I think whether the cultural horror valley occurs or not depends on whether the producer has seriously studied the culture. Even if a serious producer uses the wrong cultural content, the audience will realize that he deliberately used the wrong content for the plot or other content. . And perfunctory people will only put together what looks interesting. It's like having surgery to connect the foot to the arm. Look how perfect. (shit)
Cannot agree more to the embarrassingly zero mentioning and researching into the early science efforts in China! Love the idea!! Have this wish to see something like this for decades ever since found out how overlooked and deliberately buried back in teen age time. Thank you for pointing that out. Feel happy to hear it from others.
The problem is that the West considers the "Asian scientist" a insulting stereotype. Even though multiple Eastern countries WANT this in their films. Not just China and Japan. Thanks for nothing baizhuo.
@@dubuyajay9964 I’m not very familiar with this insulting stereotype. Even if it’s so prominent, does that mean we cannot change it? If it’s true, isn’t it exactly the reason we should do what cool history broad recommended? Remember any stereotype only true if you let it.
@@xixixuxuxuxi No, no. You're not a Baizhuo. I'm referring to the buffoons running Hollywood. They talk about how they're "Progressive" all the time but constantly show their double standards when they think no one is paying attention. And yes. I am trying to point out that being a "smart scientist" is a good thing, but Hollywood thinks it's not because Asian scientists are "overdone." Like I said, double standards.
The talk of the localization changing a lot of things and getting good reception is very interesting because usually, in the West, dubbing and localization is associated with bizarre changes such as the infamous 4Kids dubs. I wonder if there is an Asian equivalent to the Western community of people who say "only subs" or if that's a uniquely Western thing to be obsessed with when it comes to cartoons and anime.
There are diehard anime fans in South Korea who believe anime characters must speak Japanese only. They say that if Japanese characters speak Korean, the "magic" of anime will be weakened. As a guy who love American animations, I also hate Korean dubs too. Since it will get rid of all sorts of intersting accents of characters and it will ruin many "songs" of the show. Adventure time's korean dub wasn't able to handle the songs well.
More isolated instances, but there are some equivalents Some Chinese in the mainland find dub voice acting sounding clunky and awkward whenever it tries to imitate the original Japanese audio too much (though I argue "anime voice acting" sounding awkward is an universal problem nowadays, even in Japan) And of course there's many gripes about certain localizations having to censor things at best in the subtitles or at worst cutting minutes of scenes out. But Censorship in China is just one of those things basically Nobody in China is happy with already...
I’m glad you pointed it out about separate cultures of the same ancestry. This even happens between immigrant families. President Dutuerte was almost universally disliked in FilAms who are born in America but almost the opposite was true even among the native born who are now living in America. This is why Asian Americans can’t ever get away with claiming to speak on behave of Asians.
Hey dude, great video. I honestly never thought about it this way, but it does make sense. If you wanted to see something like your culture, you'd just go to your culture. I think it'd be cool to see a video doing the opposite. East/Souteast Asianmedia being made about Western culture and experiencing Cultural Uncanny Valley in the West. I think a good example of this is Earthbound. While the series experiences massive cult popularity in the West now, when the first game finally made it stateside in 1995, it was nothing short of a catastrophic failure despite being an ENORMOUS success in Japan. I think it may be due to this same phenomenon. The game is heavily written and portrayed like a Japanese perspective of American culture and it definitely feels like a parody as an American. Yes it had a gross out marketing campaign and yes it was very expensive, but gross out marketing was just a thing in the 90's everywhere and gaming was seen as expensive in general in the day. I think the issue is it rarely appealed to American kids. Think about it. You start the game to find out that you're a normal boy living in suburban America (OK Eagleland but it's just parody America). You have a hard working dad, a stay at home mom, and a younger sister. You love baseball and adventure. This screams America. Then the game throws you with a talking bug from the future, cops beating up a kid, and magical centers of the Earth. Not to mention all the weird stuff later on in the game like Mr. Saturn and Master Belch. On top of that, it was an RPG, which, while a massively popular genre of games in Japan at the time, was a very small genre in America where platformers and adventure games were king still. I think this oddly faithful interpretation of America in a genre Americans didn't like much made it weird to most that played it and prevented the game from becoming popular until many years later. I think it's especially noteworthy that the two games with the most dead set on the America parody, Mother 1/2, are hyper popular in Japan while the third game that isn't remains much less popular where as the American fanbase especially finds it the best game by far. I think the success of things like FF7 just two years later later proves that it wasn't just "America hates RPGs". FF7 went a lot more Japanese and a lot more fantasy than Earthbound and became a lot more popular and I think it may be because it managed to totally dodge Uncanny Valley
Many people usually stop at their own comfort zones. Millenial overseas Chinese are typically just Chinese in name and ethnic association. For one, most of them can't speak Mandarin (I am one of them), and they don't actively pursue further understanding of the language let alone the culture. I readily admit that I don't know how to determine "auspicious day" let alone which lunar date to observe so we need to set up fruit offerings on the altars. I never really cared until I found "Three Kingdoms" (2010) drama produced by Mainland China. When Cao Zhi cited "qi bu shi", it was immediately familiar, because I was taught that poem in local Mandarin class. Yes, since 2001, we have electable Mandarin class in Indonesia. This doesn't mean I am not interested in foreign depiction of ancient China or Indonesia. For me, Kingdom is a great series that I follow quite religiously, I even paid money for it. Looking at the comments of how the eventual loser and snob general Li Xin's comments by the manga's fans really shows how much knowledge of history average people really has. This greatly affects their acceptance of certain stories. Plus, there is this famous Japanese game "Dynasty Warriors" series, made by Koei Tecmo, which is then crossed over with their own Sengoku-themed game called "Samurai Warriors" and dubbed "Warriors Orochi". It is weird to see them crossed over and pitted as equal, but since this is fantasy and also include immortal beings like Nuwa, Fuxi, Susanoo, Dodomeki, and various other Japanese kamis and Chinese deities, it is fine I guess. The latest installation even included Greek and Norse gods plus a French hero. What doesn't work is that Three Kingdoms period was around 200-300 AD (a lot of people simply don't know when do this stories happen), while Sengoku era Japan started in the 1500s. That is almost 1,200 years apart. But modern perspective is really skewed, it only took 60 years, from Wright Brother's flyer I (1903) to Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (1964), and today we are so used to gigantic 20 years old Airbus A380 taking off to the skies. Could you imagine F-22 fighting Mitsubishi Zero or Fokker Triplane? That's probably how historians imagine Takeda Shingen clashed swords with Liu Bei. That's 1,200 years of advancement from Liu Bei to Takeda Shingen, while it only take 40 years from Zero-sen to F-22. Having more knowledge really do change your perspective drastically. Our knowledge about mainland China is also very limited. But through game / flight sim modding community, we get to know the mainland youths, creative and seemingly on their own. They produce quite a lot of top quality contents, they even put out nifty hardware hacks to modify your Flight Sim gear to be more realistic. It is not that they aren't receptive towards foreign stuff. The failure of Avatar: The Last Airbender is really confusing, however it is not that "cultural uncanny valley" plays a big factor for the massive success of Total War: Three Kingdoms by British video game maker Creative Assembly. Now that's China, a diverse nation that absorbs you and quite open. Then there is Japan, a nation comfortable in its own Galapagos syndrome. If the west have their own idea about Asia, the same can be said for Japan about others. You can try to find "western food" in Tokyo, a supposedly global metropolis to experience how Japan "interpret" the rest of the world. For Japan, their ramen is "Chinese food" and their curry rice is "western food" (since curry was introduced to them by British sailors). That's what makes them really unique.
You'll be surprised if you went and studied in China. They're nothing like what our ancestors taught us! Of course cultural revolution is also the reason. But that's not only that!
I love the idea of a Cultivator vs Engineer story. I also really like the idea of a Cultivator who incorporates gunpowder weaponry into their martial arts.
There's an exception, a 2005 Korean Political TV drama "The Fifth Republic" is an internet phenomenon in Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan. Despite the cultural difference between Koreans, Japanese and Chinese, that TV drama is still immensely popular nowadays, some netizens even making memes from it.
Apparently The Never Ending Story (the book, not the movie) was really popular in Japan. I'd be curious to see how that relates to the content of the book. The book seemed like it combined a bunch of western and eastern imagery and symbolism, so I'm curious how Japanese people might perceive it with regard to the cultural uncanny valley concept.
Cultural and historical accuracy is important when it comes to both western and eastern historical dramas. What bothers me the most is when the creator or director bashes a lead character or adds something modern to the character or story... After that it can't be taken seriously or enjoyed. For western examples: King Louis the 16 in the Marie Antoinette movie or William Of Orange in that tv show. There is no evidence those guys were gay whatsoever. The world was very different back then. Though yet again this all comes down to propaganda in either book form or film is worldwide thoughout history and culture. The Last Airbender and Kung Fu Panda are merely fantasy world entertainment. If one becomes distracted by the imperfections it becomes unenjoyable. Creativity is the elixir.
Lmao, King Louis XVI gay? The man didn't bed Marie Antoinette because he had a disease that made erections extremely painful and unpleasant. It wasn't until the was in his 20's that he got an operation that cured it, but the damage was already done tho
Well sorta like how Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kinda flopped in China but become a huge success in rest of the world. Reason is that they were deconstruction of Chinese Wuxia genre. Also Kingdom might not be so popular but the Sangokushi by late Mitsuteru Yokoyama is really popular in China as Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga tend to use alot of Historical facts for his historical mangas. One of my favorite Hollywood made movie set in Chinese culture is actually Big Trouble in Little China. John Carpenter really managed to take up the Wuxia style and did alot of research how the fight is. My less favorite is actually "Sleeping Dogs", for some reason it try to look like Hong Kong, but on the same time doesn't feel like Hong Kong at all.
@@lampad4549 Wuxia style, at least back in the 80's Carpenter did make sure Big Trouble feel like a Hong Kong wuxia action, compared to other crap that Hollywood spurned out at the time. Like those Ninja B-movies or their attempts to make a martial art movies.
Good video and the comment section is also full of interesting additions. I barely read the comments on youtube anymore because it's either boring and full of people not adding anything or just bots. When people are actually sharing their experiences, viewpoints, and asking each other questions you know you've touched on something interesting + relatable and done it right!
I feel cultural uncanny valley is why Asian immigrants really have a hard time connecting with western Asian diaspora or Asians who are Russians or Central Asian. Our mannerisms, morality, assumptions are western, but if we do not have non-Asian faces this would not be an issue but since we have Asiatic faces, Asian from China, Japan, Korea have a hard time with us. I get weird looks cause I always ask for forks since I don't use chopsticks in restaurants lol
Damn... I know (and have seen) pretty much all the reference media you use here (except for the Onmyoji game)... Now I feel old. Well... Great video as always.
Personally, I don’t think that the “white savior” outrage was the main reason why The Great Wall failed in western countries (sounds more like complaints from a loud minority), but rather that the film is just… bad. It’s like you said with the Mulan remake (and I’ll be paraphrasing here): a polished turd is still a turd.
As an american who is in no way a part of any east asian cultural diaspora: I really enjoy Kingdom, I've been reading it for a while now. Its a fun story and I don't mind the historical inaccuracies, but then again I haven't been steeped in stories about Qin for my whole life like I imagine Chinese audiences are. It's interesting to hear about these sorts of things, I'm trying to imagine what the equivalent would be for me!
IMO as an American it's especially interesting because I feel like we just don't have that equivalent idea of cultural historical epics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Basically all the popular historical media is about European medieval history or occasionally Rome. Yeah there are decently successful movies about American history like The Patriot or the various moderately successful Civil War movies, but it's not really a big thing compared to modern settings or 20th century stuff. So it's hard to imagine having like a portrayal of the American Revolution that feels "wrong" (other than completely altering the history) bc I've hardly seen it depicted in media in the first place to form a stereotypical impression. Maybe that's part of why Hamilton was so big...
Fascinating discussion, incisive analysis! It would be interesting to note if there are different responses to these "valleys" from different age groups, i.e., do children, teens, young adults, and old adults have different reactions to these movies and mangas? As a westerner interested in eastern culture and history, I really appreciate your work!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Total War: Three Kingdoms also very popular in China despite media and video games adaptions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms being extremely oversaturated in China?
There actually aren't a lot of modern Three Kingdoms games outside of what Koei makes, and even then Koei's RoTK series is the only option for a serious Grand Strategy 3K game. Total War had the advantage that 1. its a pre-existing popular franchise 2. Goes for a markedly different style than RoTK 3. Most importantly, is a game that simulates parts of 3K that Koei never did; Most importantly real-time rank-and-file battles using troops hewing closer to the Han Dynasty and the time period than Koei's in-house abstract medieval Song->Ming-dynasties aesthetic. Total War Three Kingdoms did have its own cultural uncanny valley as it went on tho, and they're actually quite numerous to be listed fully. Let's just say it was odd for a game based on Three Kingdoms, where things such as certain important characters or aspects like Xun Yu or gate passes in battles got patched in way later in the game's life cycle. And also the translation is a hit-and-miss without mods to fix them (Plus how a game series that supposedly closer to the history foregoes using Han dynasty's characteristic red-and-black lacquerware aesthetic in lieu of an ink brush one. Not as egregious, but still odd)
Chinese love games and every Chinese related games are popular in China. The Chinese in China never lack of good and amazing stories from novels, tv shows or movies. They just lack of "Games" about China/Chinese setting.
i'm not really a fan of my own culture's media but i know not every time indonesia is portrayed in foreign media it shall be all about jakarta or bali. rooting for a hollywood movie set in bekasi or an anime set in gorontalo (edit): also mind gamelan musics. sundanese, javanese, balinese, and _malay_ gamelan sounds distinct
your idea of that scientist in the Song dynasty... already a web novel.... Protagonist's consciousness time travelled to the Song dynasty with all his memories of the last few hundred years of modern ideas and knowledge. still ongoing but pretty awesome series.
I think part of Avatar the Last Airbender's unpopularity in Asia is because it wasn't that popular initially in the west more so than the uncanny valley. It actually fits in with Kung Fu Panda and Dragonball as being unrealistic since there are the jokes about how the cast don't understand what a regular bear is. Its large following was generated overtime since it was marketed as a kid's show while having complex themes and fans either were exposed to it as youths or watched it as adults looking for that complexity. A similar show in the west would be Batman The Animated Series from the 90's. If you're looking for silk punk style story I recommend the successor series to Avatar the Last Airbender, Avatar Korra, which is even more thematically complex and set in a romanticized steampunk Hong Kong in the early 1900's. It deals with nationalism amongst the nations and how in a post-war world you can have brothers who are respectively a fire bender and an earth bender as well as the politics of non-benders. Or Ken Liu's Dandelion Throne series. The first book is basically Fall of Qin/Chu-Han Contention but with battle kites and airships, presented similarly to a greek epic like the Iliad. Second book is even better since it goes into uncharted territory and goes into reverse engineering weapons for warfare. That series is an interesting mix of Asian and Western classical story telling in a hybrid way.
A Lot of anime based in medieval times includes alot of fantasy elements so like its easy for people from those places to get into without being put off
There's a Taiwanese puppet yanxia show that really popular in Japan atm. Even thought it's laced with chi and martial art shenaningan that japanese wouldnt digest, the japanese audience in the end love the concept very much.
I think this was my reaction to Kara Tur. Initially, I have gripes on aznsrepresent's take on it and decided to have a look...then I began to find some issues. Like ignoring the poor organization issues and inconsistency (like say Shou/Fantasy China having no swordplay then having an image of two swordsman), trying to decipher their "chinese-coded terms" (either misspelling, alternate terms that wasn't use now, or both...plus using Japanese terms in not Japanese areas) or annoyed at lack of Guan-Dao polearm and Jian sword. If it was a separate RPG with 1E rules or stand-alone, it is fine but got into a consistency issue when they put it in high-magic Forgotten Realms (that or someone didn't bother to ask Ed Greenwood for review or something) instead of low-magic swords-and-sorcery Greyhawk and Blackmoor. I mean even Warhammer's Nippon and Cathay did a better job even though it was three paragraphs (plus like OA, dropped out of production) and a tongue-in-cheek parody of pseudo asian settings. And I think WoTC had doubts on the setting in 2003 since Kara-Tur is based on Samurai movies, cheap Kung Fu movies, and maybe some orientalist fictions in 1980's but 2000's audience had more exposure to high-budget martial arts movies, Avatar the Last Airbender, Legend of Five Rings (which WoTC's Oriental Adventure used, plus maybe trying to use their newly-acquired license as well), and even anime (like Naruto, Dragon Ball, and other fantasy anime). Interestingly, many Kara-Tur players do hate Anime despite many of it being more suited to post 2E's "high-magic heroic fantasy" (in contrast to 1E's low-magic sword and sorcery fantasy) like DnD did published Book of Nine Swords for anime-craze and widely coined as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic".
I've noticed that Japanese media set in other countries is often very loose regarding the historical accuracy of clothing and armor. It looks wrong to me. But, non-Japanese media set in Japan probably often looks wrong to Japanese people, too.
if you see mangas like bokkou by mori hideki it portrays qin era warring states china so well the chinese made a live action movie on it. i like those kind of gritty and realistic depiction of war and ancient times over the kingdom style of high fantasy driven aesthetics
Being Mexican and a mesoamericanist archaeologist, this really rung a bell with a lot of Hollywood chicanno productions about mexico or mesoamerican history, that are aimed mostly at "latino" audiences that currently reside in the states as opposed to us.
A great example of cultural uncanny valley in american cinema were the old Spaghetti Westerns. I live in the western U.S. and for some reason they just never felt American to me. I still love them but the way they portray are culture just always seem off somehow, not to mention their disregard for historical accuracy. I just accept them as part of the western mythos and love them for it.
Interestingly enough while not "silk punk", the chinese anime Scissor 7 (called Killer 7 in china) already features fights and plotlines between a technologically advanced faction and a Wuxia faction, and is extremely entertaining, and at least popular enough in china to warrant 3 seasons.
People here in the west have forgotten their history. Before Christianity youd find that the beliefs etc of my ancestors the Celts wasnt that much different to some from Asia. The balance of male & female principles etc. Though it does deem interest in our own culture has returned w/ a good chunk of the population.
I'm curious as to where you think this would fall for something like Chinese mythology or similar topics where there is a cultural context behind it, but like Greek culture in the West, it has shifted so much in how some of those figures are viewed nowadays. Would you say that there is a different kind of Cultural Uncanny Valley to that?
Personally I have never understood the hate for "white savior". I meant it's the same in isekai story(even good one) the protag is a stranger that try to save a strange land & there is always a period where he learn & appreciate the new world(if not, there is no reason to care enough to save it)
I suppose that "White Savior" is reminder of the arrogant colonial era literature, where a white man would save and civilize the "native savages". Therefore it can be seen as cringe or objectionable by the westerners nowadays.
@@fraktaalimuoto No, because this is "me too" era. White saviour actually pretty common in eastern literature at least in this past decade and they never hate it. Actually if you go to Manwha and Manga site its full of them. Just put "isekai" tag and you can get them. Dancing with wolves and Avatar are box office hit but its long time ago.
Not sure that I would consider 2020 Mulan to be avoiding the cultural uncanny valley. The comments on Douban all recognize it as a Western Hollywood "strong womyn protagonist" film that just happens to have some Chinese window dressing applied almost intentionally to look as ugly as possible.
Though tbh I wanna see Wuxia (less Qigong and cultivation, more Quanfa and the likes) where martial artists travelled outside the Central Plains and study other culture's Quanfa. Perhaps traveling down south to SEA or West to India and Iran.
dammit, I loved great wall! the idea that people thought it was a white savior movie is hilarious. the soundtrack and pageantry was so over the top. so awesome. that said, ngl, I would have been much happier if they had excluded matt damon's character, or had him more of an outsider chronicler like antonio banderas in 13th warrior, like have him be more the guy in over his head that comes into his own towards the end.
I know the feeling. Gus from "Breaking Bad" allegedly being Chilean. Damn the character is badass we wish he was Chilean but there's no way with that non-existant Spanish, the look (ethnicity) for that time and age is highly unlikely but lucuma and a COATI? That's to be taken seriously if you want to pinpoint his real background. The good thing that the show did was that no one was able to prove his birth place, real name, nothing. So placing Gus arriving from Santiago, Chile in 1986, being involved with the military dictatorship, as implied, makes a LOT of sense.
This probably also goes reverse for when Japanese media feature European settings, especially European fantasy settings. As for Isekai and similar genres it always feels a bit off. Like the artstyle compared to European and America cartoons featuring medieval European settings. The cityscapes for lack of other terms still look Asian. While not that bad in other regards, I found it pretty terrible in Ascendency of a Book Worm. Simply the shape of the town and buildings looked off. The same goes for the typical Tolkienesque fantasy canon, which has different flavours in Asian media.
Brilliant video mate. I would be curious to know your opinion about the representation of chinese culture in the upcoming Warhammer Total War 3 through the Cathay faction.
As much as I love Shang Chi, people seem to forget that the world is very used to seeing films based off of Asian civilizations. The reason Black Panther blew up as a cultural phenomenon, was due to a multiple number of factors. One of which being, there are almost 0 mainstream films or games about African civilizations (Egypt usually being the only one, and having a very Eurocentric representation post colonization). Globally the biography flick, historical drama, science-fiction and fantasy genres in mainstream films, tv & games is dominated by White and Asian themes, sometimes Native American or Middle Eastern. But never African. Racist stereotypes in the world especially in the “west” tend to dominate peoples views of peoples of African descent. Namely that Blacks were incapable of creating civilizations, religions, law, philosophy, swords etc. With that being said, for most people in the world, their ethnic groups tend to branch into two identities: mainland & immigrant populations. Example: Ethnic Japanese vs Japanese Brazilian. But for peoples of African ethnicities, its far more complicated. For example: Yoruba of Nigeria (The Yoruba are one of many ethnic groups/empires within Nigeria’s colonial drawn borders. Nigeria isn’t an ethnic group or ethno-state) vs Yoruba American vs Afro-Brazilian or AfricanAmerican. Race-based-hereditary-enslavement of the Atlantic Slave Trade and how African ethnic groups responded to it, helped create entirely different African descent ethnic groups across the Atlantic in North & Latin America. While a Ethnic S. Korean & Korean-American are not culturally identical, a Korean American isn’t an entirely different ethnic group from mainland South Koreans. But an AfricanAmerican is a completely different ethnicity, than a Yoruba or a Yoruba American, although they share a strong genetic/cultural connection. The clue is even in the naming, when people say “Asian American” or “White American” they are referencing not to ethnic groups but races. Entire races of people from the European & Asian continent whom for the most part, had the luxury of being able to bring their specific languages, religions, & ethnic identities to the nations of the Americas. When people say “African American”, “Afro Brazilian”, Haitian etc, they are referring to not just race, but “new” ethnic groups, made from the forced melding of so many kidnapped mainland west-African ethnic-states of peoples. Most “Asian Americans” know & have a strong connection with their respective ethnic identities, they are not a swirl of different ethnic groups from across the Asian continent, transformed-a-new. Neither an African-American or Jamaican would call themselves an Akan American, for two reasons. They’re ancestry is made up of so many different African ethnic groups not only of the Asante Empire, & (as one aspect as a result) they are different ethnic groups, not simply extensions of the Akan or any other west-African ethnic group in general. Asians vs Asian Immigrants, or Europeans vs White Americans (Italian Americans, Swedish American, Polish Americans etc) is nothing like African Chattel-Enslaved Diaspora groups (Afro-Latino/Hispanic ethnic groups, Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups, the AfricanAmerican ethnic group etc) vs African Immigrants or indigenous Africans. Hopefully I explained that well enough. 😅
Here's a joke. A Malaysian Chinese and a Mainlander met. They have a conversation. It lasted 4 hours and only 4 sentence invovled. This is just to show that we have localised very far for almost a century. We differ from culture, slang and lifestyle. Heck I can't even understand what the heck the Northerners are talking about when I went to China. Yeah sure we use the same Chinese language and grammar but to the western audience for reference, it's like a Australian talking to a Scottish with a heavy Scottish accent.
This but with Vikings for me honestly. I cringe when I hear the characters try to sound Scandinavian and when they do the whole "leather-clad matcho viking raider" thing I just cant watch it lmfao. It just feels strange, get the same feel with games like assassins creed valhalla and for honor, shit that clearly just "wear" the culture instead of living it. There is a reason why the most liked character in vikings here in Sweden is floki, because it's a Swedish actor and he pulls off those minute details like prenounciation. (Ofc the other nordic actors also do a good job but this was from the Swedish context) With that said tho, I dont think we should gatekeep directors to only make movies about their own cultures either. We should instead make sure that things are researched well and treat the culture with respect. (You know things like not placing the temple of Uppsala on a mountain despite uppsala being one of the flatest places in Sweden)
I know exactly what you mean, here in France we have connections to Scandinavia through Normans who are partly descended from settlers from the viking era. I could never contain my cringe whenever I would hear my Norman friend talk about Vikings and say stuff like how -5°C was "invigorating for a Norse"... At this point the fantasy viking has become as much of a cultural tourist trap as the samurai
Wait. There is a Marvel Villain who might be different but interesting the moment mentioned tech mogul. The Mandarin. The Comic version not the Joke Live Action version. He's Comic version was ment to be a Rival to Tony Stark. He's effectively a More Magical Version of Tony Start when it come to creations.
Keep in Mind Even though Ghost Of Tsushima was developed in the west it was published by Sony and developed as a Playstation exclusive two brands that dont get anymore Japanese
My man had to point out the fact that WoW wasn't the disaster it is today. He has been keeping up with eh news coverage. Everything is all over the place.
It's funny that people accuse The Great Wall of "white man savior" when the guy is something like halfway between a hero and a sidekick. Yes he's front and center in the story and yes he uses whaling as inspiration to capture a live tao tei, but the balloons, black powder, and strategies were all the work of the Nameless Order's higher ups. Heck, he isn't even the one to get in the final kill, just makes an opening for it. My biggest problems with it were 1) it was kind of generic as far as fantasy action flicks go (uncanny valley?) and 2) WHAT THE HELL WAS THE IDEA OF THE CRANE CORPS?!
Now that u mention it... I just realized, did the total war shogun and three kingdoms games actually received well in their respective countries or was it also uncanny...?
Games and TV shows/movies are different things. Games let people immersive into it and have unreal and fun or crazy experiences. (unlike Manga/Anime/TV/movies when you're just passively following and watching things). So no matter how crazy, how unreal, and how inaccurate the history or the original story behind the game, people will buy it. Because it's supposed to let us have fun.
I'm writing a *Journey to the Old West* story. It will never see the light of day, of course, because WASP Karens would cancel it into oblivion. But it's a nice exercise.
I know there was some white savior criticism for the great wall…but come on…is it actually a good movie? Lots of movies will be criticized for one thing or another, but a good movie will have more praise drown out the criticism…i feel like if it was actually good, people wouldn’t remember it for a white savior trope.
I had a similar sense of...maybe not betrayal but definitely disappointment with ATLA. The title and core concept of the Avatar suggested Indian influence, and the introduction with Inuit- and Tibetan-inspired peoples seemed promising to me. However, as the show went on, I guess the writers found their niche in the landscape of the uncanny valley and just stuck to China and Japan. The only obviously Indian inspiration afterwards was Guru Pathik who was massively stereotypical, a random brown guy with an Indian accent who is a guru talking about chakras when there was no indication of other gurus or chakras in general. It also rubbed me the wrong way when the live-action movie came out and some of the biggest criticism was about the pronunciation of names being more Asian-sounding rather than an American butchering of them, as well as the decision to make the Fire Nation more Indian-inspired. The movie had obvious flaws, but those weren't them. As the previous video about ATLA went, the ending of ATLA and even Legend of Korra catered massively to a Western audience. A Hindu or even a Buddhist avatar is clearly there to do righteous violence against an evil in the world (Kalki and Maitreya are notably prophesized to descend to earth with a sword!) and the political messaging against any form of government besides USA-style liberal democracy was also jarring for me who still held some notion of it being pan-Asian in inspiration. But like it's said in this video, the writers started playing it safe for their American audience I suppose. Not that all this is that big of an issue for me. It is just strange and disappointing. China and Japan at least have their own fantasy media markets, but for India, it's mostly Bollywood and other local cinema which doesn't specialize into fantasy or scifi very much, let alone work on episodic or series formats; they just hope to get a blockbuster by cramming every genre into one film. If you want to get Indian media made outside of India but still Indian in inspiration, you're out of luck since Hollywood and others haven't progressed beyond stereotypes and tropes very much. Which is why to me things still feel like they're in or nearby the "cultural uncanny valley" and is disappointing.
Playing it safe for a children's audience (as they should have in this case); they're not going to have the 12-year-old main character in a kids' show murder the bad guy no matter where its influence comes from.
The harder you try, the higher is the standard you’re judged against. This is just like an Asian mom who gets angry when you get 98 on your test score, but not if you get 80.
I don't understand, what is that mean?
@@Laossutra Setting the right expectation. If you are expected to be brilliant, any little mistake will disappoint the person placing that expectation on you. If you are expected to fail, any little success will surprise and maybe delight the person that doesn't expect you to achieve much. So over-hyped movies tend to get trashed harder than expected money-grab movies.
Not just Asian. Jewish too. “Mom! I got a 98 on the math test!” “What happened to the other two points??”
@@jeffreyschweitzer8289 "Y'know your cousin Ari would've gotten 100 on that test..." but in the thickest Jewish Mom from NY accent.
@@GogOnMagog haha my son’s name really is Ari
I think a good example of this working the other way is Fullmetal Alchemist. It avoided the cultural uncanny valley by highlighting a niche aspect of Western culture (namely various forms of Medieval Esoteric Hermeticism and early 20th century warfare), and as such became one of the most successful Japanese media in the West.
I have a funny anecdote about how the Cultural Uncanny Valley can indeed apply to interactions between the diaspora of a single ethnic group.
I'm a Malaysian Chinese and went to the UK for to study. I joined a society for Chinese students, though naturally, the vast majority of their members were British Chinese. I distinctly remember feeling weirded out by them, and must admit I did not walk away with a favorable impression of them.
In contrast, when I interacted with Japanese students, I'd say I tended to get along better with them despite the obvious cultural differences between us.
In retrospect, my expectations of what being Chinese were were solely based off my experience as a Malaysian Chinese and those small differences that the British Chinese had were a betrayal of those expectations. On the other hand, I did not have as many expectations when interacting with the Japanese students and ultimately, that just made for more favorable impressions between us.
I feel you man. Im an overseas Chinese and whenever travelling to Mainland China I felt strange all the time. Local Chinese couldnt grasp the concept of an Asian not behaving like the other Asians they see everyday.
Same with Filipinos. Many Filipinos find Filipino-Americans and Filipino-Europeans to be too open, too white, too obsessed with "representation" without a feel for how normal people interact. When Tagalogs hear Tagalog spoken in a broken way, we appreciate it when it's foreigners, but Filipinos tend to treat Filipino-Americans, who don't speak the language, like they're Americans not Filipino, since being Filipino is just an adjective, not really who they are.
Yo I'm Malaysian too. And i love avatar. Granted I'm malay
Dude I’m chinese american and you basically describe people’s impression of me all the time when i go to china. it’s actually hard sometimes to summarize why im like just slightly off to them. my chinese is too good to be a foreigner, and too trash to actually be chinese. if i say i’m from america, most of them will think i only study there, but didn’t grow up there. it takes a fair bit of explaining. if i say i’m from guangzhou where my mom is from, they think my mannerisms and mandarin aren’t typical of a person from there.
It may also be because British people are hard to get along with regardless of where you're from.
Just one thing to notice, in an overall excelent video, is that plenty of Japanese-Brazilians did try to enter the manga market, but only truly succeeded, the one from No Game, No Life, who was mostly raised in Japan and truly dived headfirst into the Otaku culture before writing an topic about whose culture he knew first hand, while still having clear diaspora ideas and perceptions.
There were a few Brazilian singers of Japanese ancestry which became somewhat popular in Japan, but a large number are actually Brazilian-japanese-japanese in that they are actually "return migrants" rather than trying to produce for Japan from Brazil. In that sense, they are in a different place where they are a double diaspora, and are in fact immigrants in Japan not Japanese immigrants in Brazil. That is a different albeit not less interesting situation.
Will when use Mulan as an example...
Disney's Mulan: Finding love and one self, and then you will overcome all the bullshit that have nothing to do with you...
Chinese's Mulan: Face your destiny, put on your armor, sharpen your sword, time for WAR!! For you will be remembered for your bravery and glory...
Also, quite a number of Chinese production Mulan explore the cruelty of wars (even the old Disney Mulan cartoon show a scene on this). In the Mulan played by Zhao Wei, Mulan got PTSD during the war. The story of Mulan, is not meant for 'honouring' your ancestor. It is meant to show the love of a daughter to her father, thus she took up her family responsibility to serve the kingdom. It's the story of sacrifices and loyalty. The latest Disney Mulan live action treat the war solely as the self-discovering trope for Mulan.
The key difference also demonstrated in 2020 Mulan and many Chinese ideas of Mulan:
Mainland Chinese recognizes Mulan as effectively a historical war narrative or about a soldier, while 2020 can't differentiate between historicals and martial arts fantasy.
I mean we consider her a Disney Princess in the West even though she's technically not even a princess in the story at all.
@@danshakuimo She is no Princess, She is a General...
If you want a Princess and General at the same time, go for Princess PingYang.
Or if you want a High Prestress, Queen, Warrior and General all mix together, go for FuHao then.
And Fuck Disney!!
@@RambutanLaw Zhao Wei's Mulan is my favourite. That movie shows the inner conflict between duty and feelings, femininity and violence so well.
And Mulan becoming mentally and physically broken by 12 years of war makes her sacrifice for her father all the more meaningful.
As a Malaysian Chinese and history enthusiast, I agree that Kingdom is pretty Japanese in their description of Qin, this is a really interesting topic as I've found out that overseas Chinese are more interested in non-Chinese descriptions of China than the ones in the mainland
Chad 韓非子。
To be fair, I argue a lot of Mainland Chinese media also doesn't make a lot of things accessible to the outside.
Particularly if you are a history buff or into various mainland Chinese media, the amount that is actually available and translated to is shockingly few, which means the diaspora are basically almost left to fend off for themselves, and it's a problem even today that I don't see but the most miniscule of improvements I'm afraid.
I'm watching from Kalam valley...
@@kalamvalleyvlog where are you from
Japanese manga sells a lot in china
It's one of my main gripes with Shang-Chi. They should have doubled down on him being Chinese-American, and dealt with the pull of expectations from your heritage, and from your own sense of identity. Instead, they kept promoting him as a "Chinese" character, and was ultimately incredibly...standard.
I don't think Shang Chi even appealing to most overseas Chinese. It's a meh film.
They're too keen to show it's Asian everywhere and they're the main characters. So much focus into that, they ended up forgetting the story.
As a Chinese.. I can say they were trying too hard to make the movie "Chinese" 😂 story is fine but their packaging kinda weird to me.
Tony Leung was really the only reason for me to watch the movie. The bit I disliked the most was the similarity of the Black Panther group fight near the end.
As someone from Spain, Coco pretty much nailed the Southern-Europe/Latin America family bonding stuff.
... But then they botched some other things because they went too overboard with them. The grandma didn't hit people with a spoon, as the directors found out that mothers actually hit people with a slipper here. So, they went overboard with it, and exaggerated the grandma going completely nuts about the power of her slipper, and how she would do "slipper kung-fu" against her kids.
It's okay, we got it. It's our cultural thing, I guess. It might be very different for an Anglo, but here it's just a normal part of everyday life when you were a kid. Everyone got slapped with mom's slipper a few times, yes. And it would be funny as a minor gag, but it is so overdone that it feels like a North American character who is crazy about hot-dogs, or a Texan who always talks about guns, and basing 1/3 of the character's personality off that mild trait like that seems kinda off.
Coco was wildly successful in Latin America, though. Also, we are not all Mexicans so it was exotic to most of us too, though I say that as a Brazilian not a Spanish-speaker.
The interaction between John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone films are an interesting example of repackaging themes and plots from foreign countries and selling them back to each other. It is also telling how popular Kurosawa remains in the US vs Japan.
Interesting facts as you mentioned Cooking Manga. Stephen Chow was a big fan of Mr Ajikko when he was a young and his movie "God of Cookery" was his love song to that anime and Manga, there was a "Chinese cooking arc" in Mr Ajikko where they went to Hong Kong to do a competition.
I really loved Chinese Cooking boy (Chuuko Ichiban), my dad who is a cook say he understand the principle of the stuff they talk about. I think the artist even went to China to study how Chinese cooking was made.
Talk about Slamdunk! ironically Captain Tsubasa was hugely popular in Brazil, France and Italy and even inspired alot of future successful Soccer Player to take up football/Soccer as their sport.
Moero! Top Striker set in Italy wasn't successful in Italy, people just though it was a copy of Captain Tsubasa
@@KathyXie Probably due to the Uncanny Valley I think.
I remember in Captain Tsubasa manga, there was a spin off series set in Italy where Aoi Shingo play for Inter Milan, there was alot of social commentary too, like the blatant Racism towards Asian playing Soccer, in reality which is not tolerated in FIFA and will get that club punished, at least not in surface level.
Spaghetti Western, particularly Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name Trilogy, is an example of successfully crossing the cultural uncanny valley. The soundtrack from the films has become part of the iconic Western soundtrack even though it was made by Italians. I think it had a lot to do with what you mentioned at the end about highlighting parts of another culture they've overlooked.
I am Chinese American and I believe many of us think about things from an individualist western perspective, even though we are very familiar with our cultures of origin. In your example of The Farewell, I would add that it wasn't only unpopular in China because it depicts a cultural phenomenon everyone is already too familiar with. I think it was also unpopular because it centers on the feelings of Awkwafina's character rather than on the mental and emotional health of the grandma. While many of us in the west would praise Awkwafina's character for staying true to her values, I believe many Chinese people would see her behavior as selfish- as she cannot handle the feeling of being responsible for a lie. So the same reason it appealed to Chinese Americans because of representation of another Chinese American who is struggling with feelings of self, identity, and guilt, it also left Chinese viewers unsatisfied with a main character who seems to center her own feelings of guilt and shame over the well being of her grandma
I wonder if Mainlanders also hide terminal illnesses from younger people in their 30s or 40s (or even 50s and 60s). The assumption that terminally ill people don’t want to know about their terminal illnesses is not universally true, especially for young people. If I had cancer, I definitely would want to know about it, either to get treatment if it’s still in the early stage, or to make the most out of my time being alive. If I was older, then I would probably just want to live out the rest of my life in peace, although knowing or not knowing about my impending doom probably wouldn’t matter that much anyway. But everybody’s different.
No to Grandma shaming
Loving the mixture of history and analysis of asian culture within multiple forms of media!
I'm not good at English, I watched the video with translation software, so there may be something wrong with my understanding. But I want to point out a few minor issues
1. The military system of the Qin Dynasty originated from the military merit system of the Warring States Period before the Qin Dynasty. Therefore, in theory, the image of a soldier in the Qin Dynasty should be a few heads tied around his waist. The Qin army in Zhang Yimou's film is a very artistic expression (there were no stirrups in the Qin Dynasty).
2. In the movie of Black Panther, Wakanda, the prototype is the god of the Native Americans (Sioux). And their coming-of-age ceremony is that the young man is half buried in the soil and goes to sleep, and Wakanda will incarnate as a wolf, bison, or other great beast into the dream, which means that Wakanda accepts him and he becomes a true warrior ( After drinking the prototype of heart herbs). The black panther is a variant of the leopard, which is often distributed in Southeast Asia and other places. The distribution of black panthers in Africa does not seem to be as much as in Southeast Asia.
3! ! ! ! ! ! Few people in China like the movie "The Great Wall". The original concept of "The Great Wall" came from Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures. The film has seven screenwriters but none of them are Chinese, not even Asian. It is said that when Zhang Yimou gets the script and asks for a revision, what he can save is not to let Matt Damon and the heroine go to bed and kiss. (Because this plot is so fucking stupid in China).
So even though the director of "The Great Wall" is Chinese. Funded by Chinese companies. There are Chinese filming locations. Most of the actors are Chinese. But the screenwriters, costume designers, art designers, styling designers, producers, supervisors, assistant directors (assistants) and other staff are mostly foreigners or even white. So The Great Wall is an Asian with a white soul.
4. The live-action version of Mulan is also garbage. The animated version is great. Although the animated version talks about the issue of gender equality. But in the live-action version, Mulan will use superpowers that only men can master, and after the war is over, her sister is happy that she was arranged by her parents to marry someone else. What is gender equality?
Especially the verse about rabbits, which is meant to be that although male and female rabbits are different when they look closely, they can't see any difference when they run. (Although men and women can tell the difference if they look closely, it is difficult to tell them apart when they are at work or fighting)
The animated version is that men should learn the strengths of women, and women should learn the strengths of men,
In the live-action version, women are as strong as men, and ordinary women (supporting characters, such as her sister) should accept their destiny.
5. I think whether the cultural horror valley occurs or not depends on whether the producer has seriously studied the culture. Even if a serious producer uses the wrong cultural content, the audience will realize that he deliberately used the wrong content for the plot or other content. . And perfunctory people will only put together what looks interesting. It's like having surgery to connect the foot to the arm. Look how perfect. (shit)
Pleasantly surprised to see a clip from The Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂).
午马's performance was pretty awesome and has left a pretty strong legacy.
Cannot agree more to the embarrassingly zero mentioning and researching into the early science efforts in China! Love the idea!! Have this wish to see something like this for decades ever since found out how overlooked and deliberately buried back in teen age time. Thank you for pointing that out. Feel happy to hear it from others.
The problem is that the West considers the "Asian scientist" a insulting stereotype. Even though multiple Eastern countries WANT this in their films. Not just China and Japan. Thanks for nothing baizhuo.
@@dubuyajay9964 curiously, how do you know I’m a baizuo? Where did you learn this term from?
@@dubuyajay9964 I’m not very familiar with this insulting stereotype. Even if it’s so prominent, does that mean we cannot change it? If it’s true, isn’t it exactly the reason we should do what cool history broad recommended? Remember any stereotype only true if you let it.
@@xixixuxuxuxi No, no. You're not a Baizhuo. I'm referring to the buffoons running Hollywood. They talk about how they're "Progressive" all the time but constantly show their double standards when they think no one is paying attention. And yes. I am trying to point out that being a "smart scientist" is a good thing, but Hollywood thinks it's not because Asian scientists are "overdone." Like I said, double standards.
The talk of the localization changing a lot of things and getting good reception is very interesting because usually, in the West, dubbing and localization is associated with bizarre changes such as the infamous 4Kids dubs. I wonder if there is an Asian equivalent to the Western community of people who say "only subs" or if that's a uniquely Western thing to be obsessed with when it comes to cartoons and anime.
Pretty sure Japan doesn't mind Japanese dub of western work at all.
There are diehard anime fans in South Korea who believe anime characters must speak Japanese only. They say that if Japanese characters speak Korean, the "magic" of anime will be weakened.
As a guy who love American animations, I also hate Korean dubs too. Since it will get rid of all sorts of intersting accents of characters and it will ruin many "songs" of the show. Adventure time's korean dub wasn't able to handle the songs well.
@@bloodmure1 what if it's an adaptation of a Manhwa?
Subs are a standard anyway in Chinese-language media so no debates there 😅
More isolated instances, but there are some equivalents
Some Chinese in the mainland find dub voice acting sounding clunky and awkward whenever it tries to imitate the original Japanese audio too much (though I argue "anime voice acting" sounding awkward is an universal problem nowadays, even in Japan)
And of course there's many gripes about certain localizations having to censor things at best in the subtitles or at worst cutting minutes of scenes out. But Censorship in China is just one of those things basically Nobody in China is happy with already...
I am tempted to pick up your challenge. Perhaps you can make it a competition to see who can do the best Chinese steampunk/gunpowderpunk story.
I’m glad you pointed it out about separate cultures of the same ancestry.
This even happens between immigrant families. President Dutuerte was almost universally disliked in FilAms who are born in America but almost the opposite was true even among the native born who are now living in America.
This is why Asian Americans can’t ever get away with claiming to speak on behave of Asians.
Overall, you've made a great contribution to cross-cultural understanding. Now you just have to expand it into a PhD thesis!
Hey dude, great video. I honestly never thought about it this way, but it does make sense. If you wanted to see something like your culture, you'd just go to your culture.
I think it'd be cool to see a video doing the opposite. East/Souteast Asianmedia being made about Western culture and experiencing Cultural Uncanny Valley in the West.
I think a good example of this is Earthbound. While the series experiences massive cult popularity in the West now, when the first game finally made it stateside in 1995, it was nothing short of a catastrophic failure despite being an ENORMOUS success in Japan. I think it may be due to this same phenomenon. The game is heavily written and portrayed like a Japanese perspective of American culture and it definitely feels like a parody as an American. Yes it had a gross out marketing campaign and yes it was very expensive, but gross out marketing was just a thing in the 90's everywhere and gaming was seen as expensive in general in the day. I think the issue is it rarely appealed to American kids.
Think about it. You start the game to find out that you're a normal boy living in suburban America (OK Eagleland but it's just parody America). You have a hard working dad, a stay at home mom, and a younger sister. You love baseball and adventure. This screams America. Then the game throws you with a talking bug from the future, cops beating up a kid, and magical centers of the Earth. Not to mention all the weird stuff later on in the game like Mr. Saturn and Master Belch. On top of that, it was an RPG, which, while a massively popular genre of games in Japan at the time, was a very small genre in America where platformers and adventure games were king still. I think this oddly faithful interpretation of America in a genre Americans didn't like much made it weird to most that played it and prevented the game from becoming popular until many years later.
I think it's especially noteworthy that the two games with the most dead set on the America parody, Mother 1/2, are hyper popular in Japan while the third game that isn't remains much less popular where as the American fanbase especially finds it the best game by far.
I think the success of things like FF7 just two years later later proves that it wasn't just "America hates RPGs". FF7 went a lot more Japanese and a lot more fantasy than Earthbound and became a lot more popular and I think it may be because it managed to totally dodge Uncanny Valley
Many people usually stop at their own comfort zones. Millenial overseas Chinese are typically just Chinese in name and ethnic association. For one, most of them can't speak Mandarin (I am one of them), and they don't actively pursue further understanding of the language let alone the culture. I readily admit that I don't know how to determine "auspicious day" let alone which lunar date to observe so we need to set up fruit offerings on the altars.
I never really cared until I found "Three Kingdoms" (2010) drama produced by Mainland China. When Cao Zhi cited "qi bu shi", it was immediately familiar, because I was taught that poem in local Mandarin class. Yes, since 2001, we have electable Mandarin class in Indonesia.
This doesn't mean I am not interested in foreign depiction of ancient China or Indonesia. For me, Kingdom is a great series that I follow quite religiously, I even paid money for it. Looking at the comments of how the eventual loser and snob general Li Xin's comments by the manga's fans really shows how much knowledge of history average people really has. This greatly affects their acceptance of certain stories.
Plus, there is this famous Japanese game "Dynasty Warriors" series, made by Koei Tecmo, which is then crossed over with their own Sengoku-themed game called "Samurai Warriors" and dubbed "Warriors Orochi". It is weird to see them crossed over and pitted as equal, but since this is fantasy and also include immortal beings like Nuwa, Fuxi, Susanoo, Dodomeki, and various other Japanese kamis and Chinese deities, it is fine I guess. The latest installation even included Greek and Norse gods plus a French hero. What doesn't work is that Three Kingdoms period was around 200-300 AD (a lot of people simply don't know when do this stories happen), while Sengoku era Japan started in the 1500s. That is almost 1,200 years apart.
But modern perspective is really skewed, it only took 60 years, from Wright Brother's flyer I (1903) to Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (1964), and today we are so used to gigantic 20 years old Airbus A380 taking off to the skies. Could you imagine F-22 fighting Mitsubishi Zero or Fokker Triplane? That's probably how historians imagine Takeda Shingen clashed swords with Liu Bei. That's 1,200 years of advancement from Liu Bei to Takeda Shingen, while it only take 40 years from Zero-sen to F-22. Having more knowledge really do change your perspective drastically.
Our knowledge about mainland China is also very limited. But through game / flight sim modding community, we get to know the mainland youths, creative and seemingly on their own. They produce quite a lot of top quality contents, they even put out nifty hardware hacks to modify your Flight Sim gear to be more realistic. It is not that they aren't receptive towards foreign stuff. The failure of Avatar: The Last Airbender is really confusing, however it is not that "cultural uncanny valley" plays a big factor for the massive success of Total War: Three Kingdoms by British video game maker Creative Assembly. Now that's China, a diverse nation that absorbs you and quite open.
Then there is Japan, a nation comfortable in its own Galapagos syndrome. If the west have their own idea about Asia, the same can be said for Japan about others. You can try to find "western food" in Tokyo, a supposedly global metropolis to experience how Japan "interpret" the rest of the world. For Japan, their ramen is "Chinese food" and their curry rice is "western food" (since curry was introduced to them by British sailors). That's what makes them really unique.
You'll be surprised if you went and studied in China. They're nothing like what our ancestors taught us!
Of course cultural revolution is also the reason. But that's not only that!
I love the idea of a Cultivator vs Engineer story. I also really like the idea of a Cultivator who incorporates gunpowder weaponry into their martial arts.
It's similar in reverse, when Asian cultures do western properties they can seem strange.
There's an exception, a 2005 Korean Political TV drama "The Fifth Republic" is an internet phenomenon in Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan. Despite the cultural difference between Koreans, Japanese and Chinese, that TV drama is still immensely popular nowadays, some netizens even making memes from it.
Apparently The Never Ending Story (the book, not the movie) was really popular in Japan. I'd be curious to see how that relates to the content of the book. The book seemed like it combined a bunch of western and eastern imagery and symbolism, so I'm curious how Japanese people might perceive it with regard to the cultural uncanny valley concept.
Falkor's design was based on East Asian Dragons rather than the Western ones
Cultural and historical accuracy is important when it comes to both western and eastern historical dramas. What bothers me the most is when the creator or director bashes a lead character or adds something modern to the character or story... After that it can't be taken seriously or enjoyed. For western examples: King Louis the 16 in the Marie Antoinette movie or William Of Orange in that tv show. There is no evidence those guys were gay whatsoever. The world was very different back then.
Though yet again this all comes down to propaganda in either book form or film is worldwide thoughout history and culture.
The Last Airbender and Kung Fu Panda are merely fantasy world entertainment. If one becomes distracted by the imperfections it becomes unenjoyable.
Creativity is the elixir.
Lmao, King Louis XVI gay? The man didn't bed Marie Antoinette because he had a disease that made erections extremely painful and unpleasant. It wasn't until the was in his 20's that he got an operation that cured it, but the damage was already done tho
@@philipus. True. I frickin hate that that Marie Antoinette movie.
Well sorta like how Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kinda flopped in China but become a huge success in rest of the world. Reason is that they were deconstruction of Chinese Wuxia genre.
Also Kingdom might not be so popular but the Sangokushi by late Mitsuteru Yokoyama is really popular in China as Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga tend to use alot of Historical facts for his historical mangas.
One of my favorite Hollywood made movie set in Chinese culture is actually Big Trouble in Little China. John Carpenter really managed to take up the Wuxia style and did alot of research how the fight is.
My less favorite is actually "Sleeping Dogs", for some reason it try to look like Hong Kong, but on the same time doesn't feel like Hong Kong at all.
what research hardly anything in that movie is accurate?
@@lampad4549 Wuxia style, at least back in the 80's Carpenter did make sure Big Trouble feel like a Hong Kong wuxia action, compared to other crap that Hollywood spurned out at the time. Like those Ninja B-movies or their attempts to make a martial art movies.
Good video and the comment section is also full of interesting additions. I barely read the comments on youtube anymore because it's either boring and full of people not adding anything or just bots. When people are actually sharing their experiences, viewpoints, and asking each other questions you know you've touched on something interesting + relatable and done it right!
The development & spreading of early gunpowder arms sounds cool to me
Thank you for this video. Please do more videos about this topic. There is a lot of material and this kind of nuances.
I love the in depth perspective on this challenging subject.
That's actually pretty fun to learn about the Different of each other Cultures between such a Close Neighbor Country.. 👌
I feel cultural uncanny valley is why Asian immigrants really have a hard time connecting with western Asian diaspora or Asians who are Russians or Central Asian. Our mannerisms, morality, assumptions are western, but if we do not have non-Asian faces this would not be an issue but since we have Asiatic faces, Asian from China, Japan, Korea have a hard time with us. I get weird looks cause I always ask for forks since I don't use chopsticks in restaurants lol
A random Japanese Brazilian made No Game No Life though. But I get it, as an isekai, it doesn't need to have a rock solid grasp of Japanese culture.
Random Japanese Brazilian? He moved to Japan at age 7. He is far more a Brazilian immigrant in Japan than a random Japanese Brazilian.
Damn... I know (and have seen) pretty much all the reference media you use here (except for the Onmyoji game)... Now I feel old. Well... Great video as always.
Personally, I don’t think that the “white savior” outrage was the main reason why The Great Wall failed in western countries (sounds more like complaints from a loud minority), but rather that the film is just… bad. It’s like you said with the Mulan remake (and I’ll be paraphrasing here): a polished turd is still a turd.
As an american who is in no way a part of any east asian cultural diaspora: I really enjoy Kingdom, I've been reading it for a while now. Its a fun story and I don't mind the historical inaccuracies, but then again I haven't been steeped in stories about Qin for my whole life like I imagine Chinese audiences are.
It's interesting to hear about these sorts of things, I'm trying to imagine what the equivalent would be for me!
IMO as an American it's especially interesting because I feel like we just don't have that equivalent idea of cultural historical epics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Basically all the popular historical media is about European medieval history or occasionally Rome. Yeah there are decently successful movies about American history like The Patriot or the various moderately successful Civil War movies, but it's not really a big thing compared to modern settings or 20th century stuff. So it's hard to imagine having like a portrayal of the American Revolution that feels "wrong" (other than completely altering the history) bc I've hardly seen it depicted in media in the first place to form a stereotypical impression. Maybe that's part of why Hamilton was so big...
People also seem to cut some slack for the cultural uncanny valley in the alternate history genre.
Fascinating discussion, incisive analysis! It would be interesting to note if there are different responses to these "valleys" from different age groups, i.e., do children, teens, young adults, and old adults have different reactions to these movies and mangas? As a westerner interested in eastern culture and history, I really appreciate your work!
Dude an early-gunpowder show about an inventor would be SO FUCKING COOL
This are some valid and interesting ideas about Asian representation in the media.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Total War: Three Kingdoms also very popular in China despite media and video games adaptions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms being extremely oversaturated in China?
Well that maybe because it allow to ply it instead of watch it.
There actually aren't a lot of modern Three Kingdoms games outside of what Koei makes, and even then Koei's RoTK series is the only option for a serious Grand Strategy 3K game.
Total War had the advantage that 1. its a pre-existing popular franchise 2. Goes for a markedly different style than RoTK 3. Most importantly, is a game that simulates parts of 3K that Koei never did; Most importantly real-time rank-and-file battles using troops hewing closer to the Han Dynasty and the time period than Koei's in-house abstract medieval Song->Ming-dynasties aesthetic.
Total War Three Kingdoms did have its own cultural uncanny valley as it went on tho, and they're actually quite numerous to be listed fully. Let's just say it was odd for a game based on Three Kingdoms, where things such as certain important characters or aspects like Xun Yu or gate passes in battles got patched in way later in the game's life cycle. And also the translation is a hit-and-miss without mods to fix them
(Plus how a game series that supposedly closer to the history foregoes using Han dynasty's characteristic red-and-black lacquerware aesthetic in lieu of an ink brush one. Not as egregious, but still odd)
Chinese love games and every Chinese related games are popular in China. The Chinese in China never lack of good and amazing stories from novels, tv shows or movies. They just lack of "Games" about China/Chinese setting.
Love this, so much interesting information! Thank you
Wow, I'd really love to see that kind of show you suggested at the end!
i'm not really a fan of my own culture's media but i know not every time indonesia is portrayed in foreign media it shall be all about jakarta or bali.
rooting for a hollywood movie set in bekasi or an anime set in gorontalo
(edit): also mind gamelan musics. sundanese, javanese, balinese, and _malay_ gamelan sounds distinct
You know, this analysis works super well for martial arts as they spread across cultures too.
your idea of that scientist in the Song dynasty... already a web novel.... Protagonist's consciousness time travelled to the Song dynasty with all his memories of the last few hundred years of modern ideas and knowledge. still ongoing but pretty awesome series.
Name?
Awesome explanation as always, Stay cool CJ!
I can't be too hard on them. They're clearly trying. But I can't get over how "themepark-y" Asian-esque settings feel in western media.
I think part of Avatar the Last Airbender's unpopularity in Asia is because it wasn't that popular initially in the west more so than the uncanny valley. It actually fits in with Kung Fu Panda and Dragonball as being unrealistic since there are the jokes about how the cast don't understand what a regular bear is. Its large following was generated overtime since it was marketed as a kid's show while having complex themes and fans either were exposed to it as youths or watched it as adults looking for that complexity. A similar show in the west would be Batman The Animated Series from the 90's.
If you're looking for silk punk style story I recommend the successor series to Avatar the Last Airbender, Avatar Korra, which is even more thematically complex and set in a romanticized steampunk Hong Kong in the early 1900's. It deals with nationalism amongst the nations and how in a post-war world you can have brothers who are respectively a fire bender and an earth bender as well as the politics of non-benders.
Or Ken Liu's Dandelion Throne series. The first book is basically Fall of Qin/Chu-Han Contention but with battle kites and airships, presented similarly to a greek epic like the Iliad. Second book is even better since it goes into uncharted territory and goes into reverse engineering weapons for warfare. That series is an interesting mix of Asian and Western classical story telling in a hybrid way.
A Lot of anime based in medieval times includes alot of fantasy elements so like its easy for people from those places to get into without being put off
There's a Taiwanese puppet yanxia show that really popular in Japan atm. Even thought it's laced with chi and martial art shenaningan that japanese wouldnt digest, the japanese audience in the end love the concept very much.
This very educative thank you for this what I love your channel it's so simple and authentic
I think this was my reaction to Kara Tur.
Initially, I have gripes on aznsrepresent's take on it and decided to have a look...then I began to find some issues.
Like ignoring the poor organization issues and inconsistency (like say Shou/Fantasy China having no swordplay then having an image of two swordsman), trying to decipher their "chinese-coded terms" (either misspelling, alternate terms that wasn't use now, or both...plus using Japanese terms in not Japanese areas) or annoyed at lack of Guan-Dao polearm and Jian sword. If it was a separate RPG with 1E rules or stand-alone, it is fine but got into a consistency issue when they put it in high-magic Forgotten Realms (that or someone didn't bother to ask Ed Greenwood for review or something) instead of low-magic swords-and-sorcery Greyhawk and Blackmoor. I mean even Warhammer's Nippon and Cathay did a better job even though it was three paragraphs (plus like OA, dropped out of production) and a tongue-in-cheek parody of pseudo asian settings.
And I think WoTC had doubts on the setting in 2003 since Kara-Tur is based on Samurai movies, cheap Kung Fu movies, and maybe some orientalist fictions in 1980's but 2000's audience had more exposure to high-budget martial arts movies, Avatar the Last Airbender, Legend of Five Rings (which WoTC's Oriental Adventure used, plus maybe trying to use their newly-acquired license as well), and even anime (like Naruto, Dragon Ball, and other fantasy anime). Interestingly, many Kara-Tur players do hate Anime despite many of it being more suited to post 2E's "high-magic heroic fantasy" (in contrast to 1E's low-magic sword and sorcery fantasy) like DnD did published Book of Nine Swords for anime-craze and widely coined as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic".
The gunpowder thing versus traditional stuff sounds like the Last Samurai.
I... really want to see what it would have been like if it was on the other side of that valley.
I've noticed that Japanese media set in other countries is often very loose regarding the historical accuracy of clothing and armor. It looks wrong to me. But, non-Japanese media set in Japan probably often looks wrong to Japanese people, too.
if you see mangas like bokkou by mori hideki it portrays qin era warring states china so well the chinese made a live action movie on it. i like those kind of gritty and realistic depiction of war and ancient times over the kingdom style of high fantasy driven aesthetics
Gunpowder silkpunk fiction! Engineers vs kung fu rivalry! This would be awesome. Someone please make this
19:30 Thinking of the Water Margin. Pitting Ling Zhen versus Gongsun Sheng, would be interesting
This gunpowder idea is cool, somebody should do it
Being Mexican and a mesoamericanist archaeologist, this really rung a bell with a lot of Hollywood chicanno productions about mexico or mesoamerican history, that are aimed mostly at "latino" audiences that currently reside in the states as opposed to us.
Well explained.
A great example of cultural uncanny valley in american cinema were the old Spaghetti Westerns. I live in the western U.S. and for some reason they just never felt American to me. I still love them but the way they portray are culture just always seem off somehow, not to mention their disregard for historical accuracy. I just accept them as part of the western mythos and love them for it.
Interestingly enough while not "silk punk", the chinese anime Scissor 7 (called Killer 7 in china) already features fights and plotlines between a technologically advanced faction and a Wuxia faction, and is extremely entertaining, and at least popular enough in china to warrant 3 seasons.
People here in the west have forgotten their history. Before Christianity youd find that the beliefs etc of my ancestors the Celts wasnt that much different to some from Asia. The balance of male & female principles etc. Though it does deem interest in our own culture has returned w/ a good chunk of the population.
Oh snap, you just made me imagine an anime about the Gallic Wars or Boudicca's revolt, which both seem like they could be amazing.
Forgotten their history as celts? You mean 2000 years ago then?
I'm curious as to where you think this would fall for something like Chinese mythology or similar topics where there is a cultural context behind it, but like Greek culture in the West, it has shifted so much in how some of those figures are viewed nowadays. Would you say that there is a different kind of Cultural Uncanny Valley to that?
awesome videos as always
Personally I have never understood the hate for "white savior". I meant it's the same in isekai story(even good one) the protag is a stranger that try to save a strange land & there is always a period where he learn & appreciate the new world(if not, there is no reason to care enough to save it)
Probably just random baizou who have no Idea how Chinese movie industry evolve in the last decade.
I suppose that "White Savior" is reminder of the arrogant colonial era literature, where a white man would save and civilize the "native savages". Therefore it can be seen as cringe or objectionable by the westerners nowadays.
@@fraktaalimuoto No, because this is "me too" era. White saviour actually pretty common in eastern literature at least in this past decade and they never hate it. Actually if you go to Manwha and Manga site its full of them. Just put "isekai" tag and you can get them.
Dancing with wolves and Avatar are box office hit but its long time ago.
@@yulusleonard985 I am just saying why many western people *may* cringe on the subject. It is older issue than internet.
@@fraktaalimuoto Yes that is correct from an African diaspora and many native cultures life experience.
Not sure that I would consider 2020 Mulan to be avoiding the cultural uncanny valley. The comments on Douban all recognize it as a Western Hollywood "strong womyn protagonist" film that just happens to have some Chinese window dressing applied almost intentionally to look as ugly as possible.
Wuxia vs Engineering in the Jianghu?
Why am I reminded of Volcanic Age (화산전생)?
Oh, did someone come up with that idea too? LOL!
Nice idea, but better make sure it didn't came out with something like "Guan Gong Vs Alien (1976)". haha
Though tbh I wanna see Wuxia (less Qigong and cultivation, more Quanfa and the likes) where martial artists travelled outside the Central Plains and study other culture's Quanfa.
Perhaps traveling down south to SEA or West to India and Iran.
So interesting, thank you so much!
dammit, I loved great wall! the idea that people thought it was a white savior movie is hilarious. the soundtrack and pageantry was so over the top. so awesome. that said, ngl, I would have been much happier if they had excluded matt damon's character, or had him more of an outsider chronicler like antonio banderas in 13th warrior, like have him be more the guy in over his head that comes into his own towards the end.
My biggest problem with Kingdom is the historically inaccurate equipment, I have yet to see a single Ji dagger axe and there is a dearth of crossbows.
I know the feeling. Gus from "Breaking Bad" allegedly being Chilean. Damn the character is badass we wish he was Chilean but there's no way with that non-existant Spanish, the look (ethnicity) for that time and age is highly unlikely but lucuma and a COATI? That's to be taken seriously if you want to pinpoint his real background.
The good thing that the show did was that no one was able to prove his birth place, real name, nothing. So placing Gus arriving from Santiago, Chile in 1986, being involved with the military dictatorship, as implied, makes a LOT of sense.
waiting on movie studios to hire CJ for the "Wuxia v. Alchemists" franchise
This probably also goes reverse for when Japanese media feature European settings, especially European fantasy settings. As for Isekai and similar genres it always feels a bit off. Like the artstyle compared to European and America cartoons featuring medieval European settings. The cityscapes for lack of other terms still look Asian. While not that bad in other regards, I found it pretty terrible in Ascendency of a Book Worm. Simply the shape of the town and buildings looked off. The same goes for the typical Tolkienesque fantasy canon, which has different flavours in Asian media.
Brilliant video mate. I would be curious to know your opinion about the representation of chinese culture in the upcoming Warhammer Total War 3 through the Cathay faction.
That would be great.
Has anyone ever done “reverse localization” where you translate the localized dialogue back into English?
As much as I love Shang Chi, people seem to forget that the world is very used to seeing films based off of Asian civilizations. The reason Black Panther blew up as a cultural phenomenon, was due to a multiple number of factors. One of which being, there are almost 0 mainstream films or games about African civilizations (Egypt usually being the only one, and having a very Eurocentric representation post colonization). Globally the biography flick, historical drama, science-fiction and fantasy genres in mainstream films, tv & games is dominated by White and Asian themes, sometimes Native American or Middle Eastern. But never African. Racist stereotypes in the world especially in the “west” tend to dominate peoples views of peoples of African descent. Namely that Blacks were incapable of creating civilizations, religions, law, philosophy, swords etc. With that being said, for most people in the world, their ethnic groups tend to branch into two identities: mainland & immigrant populations. Example: Ethnic Japanese vs Japanese Brazilian. But for peoples of African ethnicities, its far more complicated. For example: Yoruba of Nigeria (The Yoruba are one of many ethnic groups/empires within Nigeria’s colonial drawn borders. Nigeria isn’t an ethnic group or ethno-state) vs Yoruba American vs Afro-Brazilian or AfricanAmerican. Race-based-hereditary-enslavement of the Atlantic Slave Trade and how African ethnic groups responded to it, helped create entirely different African descent ethnic groups across the Atlantic in North & Latin America. While a Ethnic S. Korean & Korean-American are not culturally identical, a Korean American isn’t an entirely different ethnic group from mainland South Koreans. But an AfricanAmerican is a completely different ethnicity, than a Yoruba or a Yoruba American, although they share a strong genetic/cultural connection. The clue is even in the naming, when people say “Asian American” or “White American” they are referencing not to ethnic groups but races. Entire races of people from the European & Asian continent whom for the most part, had the luxury of being able to bring their specific languages, religions, & ethnic identities to the nations of the Americas. When people say “African American”, “Afro Brazilian”, Haitian etc, they are referring to not just race, but “new” ethnic groups, made from the forced melding of so many kidnapped mainland west-African ethnic-states of peoples. Most “Asian Americans” know & have a strong connection with their respective ethnic identities, they are not a swirl of different ethnic groups from across the Asian continent, transformed-a-new. Neither an African-American or Jamaican would call themselves an Akan American, for two reasons. They’re ancestry is made up of so many different African ethnic groups not only of the Asante Empire, & (as one aspect as a result) they are different ethnic groups, not simply extensions of the Akan or any other west-African ethnic group in general. Asians vs Asian Immigrants, or Europeans vs White Americans (Italian Americans, Swedish American, Polish Americans etc) is nothing like African Chattel-Enslaved Diaspora groups (Afro-Latino/Hispanic ethnic groups, Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups, the AfricanAmerican ethnic group etc) vs African Immigrants or indigenous Africans. Hopefully I explained that well enough. 😅
Here's a joke. A Malaysian Chinese and a Mainlander met. They have a conversation. It lasted 4 hours and only 4 sentence invovled.
This is just to show that we have localised very far for almost a century. We differ from culture, slang and lifestyle. Heck I can't even understand what the heck the Northerners are talking about when I went to China. Yeah sure we use the same Chinese language and grammar but to the western audience for reference, it's like a Australian talking to a Scottish with a heavy Scottish accent.
Is Bioware's Jade Empire cultural uncanny valley?
what was that movie you showed at 18:54? Looks pretty epic
Yay… mention Malaysian Chinese😆
This but with Vikings for me honestly. I cringe when I hear the characters try to sound Scandinavian and when they do the whole "leather-clad matcho viking raider" thing I just cant watch it lmfao. It just feels strange, get the same feel with games like assassins creed valhalla and for honor, shit that clearly just "wear" the culture instead of living it. There is a reason why the most liked character in vikings here in Sweden is floki, because it's a Swedish actor and he pulls off those minute details like prenounciation. (Ofc the other nordic actors also do a good job but this was from the Swedish context)
With that said tho, I dont think we should gatekeep directors to only make movies about their own cultures either. We should instead make sure that things are researched well and treat the culture with respect. (You know things like not placing the temple of Uppsala on a mountain despite uppsala being one of the flatest places in Sweden)
I know exactly what you mean, here in France we have connections to Scandinavia through Normans who are partly descended from settlers from the viking era. I could never contain my cringe whenever I would hear my Norman friend talk about Vikings and say stuff like how -5°C was "invigorating for a Norse"... At this point the fantasy viking has become as much of a cultural tourist trap as the samurai
Wait. There is a Marvel Villain who might be different but interesting the moment mentioned tech mogul.
The Mandarin. The Comic version not the Joke Live Action version.
He's Comic version was ment to be a Rival to Tony Stark. He's effectively a More Magical Version of Tony Start when it come to creations.
Keep in Mind Even though Ghost Of Tsushima was developed in the west it was published by Sony and developed as a Playstation exclusive two brands that dont get anymore Japanese
My man had to point out the fact that WoW wasn't the disaster it is today. He has been keeping up with eh news coverage. Everything is all over the place.
It's funny that people accuse The Great Wall of "white man savior" when the guy is something like halfway between a hero and a sidekick. Yes he's front and center in the story and yes he uses whaling as inspiration to capture a live tao tei, but the balloons, black powder, and strategies were all the work of the Nameless Order's higher ups. Heck, he isn't even the one to get in the final kill, just makes an opening for it. My biggest problems with it were 1) it was kind of generic as far as fantasy action flicks go (uncanny valley?) and 2) WHAT THE HELL WAS THE IDEA OF THE CRANE CORPS?!
Now that u mention it... I just realized, did the total war shogun and three kingdoms games actually received well in their respective countries or was it also uncanny...?
They provide a new medium/genre for the culture (RTS). Just like Koei's dynasty warrior (which become its own "warriors" genre now).
Games and TV shows/movies are different things. Games let people immersive into it and have unreal and fun or crazy experiences. (unlike Manga/Anime/TV/movies when you're just passively following and watching things). So no matter how crazy, how unreal, and how inaccurate the history or the original story behind the game, people will buy it. Because it's supposed to let us have fun.
Maybe some people thought Avatar is about Indian Hindu mythology.
Terrific stuff. I'll argue the new stars wars did that to me. Looks right, but feels ewww, get away from me.
I'm writing a *Journey to the Old West* story.
It will never see the light of day, of course, because WASP Karens would cancel it into oblivion.
But it's a nice exercise.
I know there was some white savior criticism for the great wall…but come on…is it actually a good movie? Lots of movies will be criticized for one thing or another, but a good movie will have more praise drown out the criticism…i feel like if it was actually good, people wouldn’t remember it for a white savior trope.
I had a similar sense of...maybe not betrayal but definitely disappointment with ATLA. The title and core concept of the Avatar suggested Indian influence, and the introduction with Inuit- and Tibetan-inspired peoples seemed promising to me. However, as the show went on, I guess the writers found their niche in the landscape of the uncanny valley and just stuck to China and Japan. The only obviously Indian inspiration afterwards was Guru Pathik who was massively stereotypical, a random brown guy with an Indian accent who is a guru talking about chakras when there was no indication of other gurus or chakras in general.
It also rubbed me the wrong way when the live-action movie came out and some of the biggest criticism was about the pronunciation of names being more Asian-sounding rather than an American butchering of them, as well as the decision to make the Fire Nation more Indian-inspired. The movie had obvious flaws, but those weren't them.
As the previous video about ATLA went, the ending of ATLA and even Legend of Korra catered massively to a Western audience. A Hindu or even a Buddhist avatar is clearly there to do righteous violence against an evil in the world (Kalki and Maitreya are notably prophesized to descend to earth with a sword!) and the political messaging against any form of government besides USA-style liberal democracy was also jarring for me who still held some notion of it being pan-Asian in inspiration. But like it's said in this video, the writers started playing it safe for their American audience I suppose.
Not that all this is that big of an issue for me. It is just strange and disappointing. China and Japan at least have their own fantasy media markets, but for India, it's mostly Bollywood and other local cinema which doesn't specialize into fantasy or scifi very much, let alone work on episodic or series formats; they just hope to get a blockbuster by cramming every genre into one film. If you want to get Indian media made outside of India but still Indian in inspiration, you're out of luck since Hollywood and others haven't progressed beyond stereotypes and tropes very much. Which is why to me things still feel like they're in or nearby the "cultural uncanny valley" and is disappointing.
We'll get our true pan-Asian film someday. Tan Chui Mui's Barbarian Invasion (2021) already did it for at least Southeast Asia.
Playing it safe for a children's audience (as they should have in this case); they're not going to have the 12-year-old main character in a kids' show murder the bad guy no matter where its influence comes from.
@@milic5749 there is still plenty of killing and death in the show though. Hell, the first few episodes are about genocide
I love Kingdom, even if it might not be exactly 100% historically accurate XD
Like "the sound of music", which gets most things wrong.
Review 万国志 Wings of the World too when you have the time. :)
Just have fun.