Iron Man 3: The Ironing

Interestingly (though from the point of Western media outlets, somewhat understandably), the unique suckitude of the Chinese version of Iron Man 3 (to the right is my proposed rendering for the China market one sheet, with the tag line When China said it needed Iron Man, I had no idea they meant...Man with Iron) is being blamed on the Chinese bureaucracy, despite the fact that IM3 is a Disney production, and not a Chinese co-production.

Why Disney did not take the co-production route for Iron Man 3 is something of a mystery; co-production would have entitled Disney to a bigger share of the Chinese box office—25%, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Since Iron Man 3 is doing record box office in the PRC, a certain chunk of change has been left on the table by Disney.

Apparently the upcoming China angle was presaged in the first Iron Man movie  with a reference—that I missed—to Mandarin’s insidious organization, the Ten Rings, and director Shane Black would be expected to deal with the China theme in this movie, before the franchise ran out of steam.

The Mandarin, the purportedly Chinese supervillain, is the slice of Orientalizing, Fu Manchu style bullshit one would expect from a comic book.  Emphasis on bullshit, from what I can see in Wikipedia (which is a treasure trove of Iron Man information, including a separate entry for the diabolical dragon Fin Fang Foom):

The Mandarin's late father was one of the wealthiest men in pre-revolutionary mainland China (and a descendant of Genghis Khan), while his late mother was an English noblewoman. Their son was born in an unnamed village in mainland China before the Communist revolution. The boy's parents died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his (paternal) aunt, who was embittered against the world and raised him with much the same attitude. Every last bit of the family fortune was spent obsessively training the Mandarin in science and combat, with the result that he was completely broke upon reaching adulthood. Unable to pay the taxes on his ancestral home, the Mandarin was evicted by the government.

So that’s why US anti-big government activists call themselves the Tea Party.  It’s all because the gummint took that tea-loving Chinaman’s house!  Just because his aunty forgot to file her income taxes for 18 years!

To be honest, I suspect the co-production issue was not a matter of Yellow Peril stereotyping.  

Apparently, Mandarin is one of your nobler supervillains, maybe not up there in the 70% right/30% wrong decile occupied by Mao Zedong, but all in all a wise, mighty, honorable, and--in contrast to his aunty--financially astute authoritarian who is perhaps the Communist Party’s secret beau ideal of the perfect Chinese strongman.

And, after all, Marvel, as part of its world-conquering (film) strategy, inserted the Chinese theme several years ago, and in Iron Man 3 came up with a movie the Chinese censors were happy to release to a mainland audience.

No, judging from the description of the comic book Mandarin: The Story of My Life, I suspect that the whole Mandarin/Oriental stereotyping/no co-production angle was viewed as a complex meta exercise by Shane Black, a sort of superhero Being John Malkovich :

In Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 by Matt Fraction, a new updated origin of the Mandarin is offered. Here, the Mandarin kidnaps a young up and coming film producer to tell his life's story. He relates the same story he once told Iron Man in Tales of Suspense of his English noblewoman mother and his schooling at the finest boarding schools in the land.

The director begins to learn that much of what the Mandarin says is contradictory and false with photos from this time staged (it is hinted that the Mandarin had used one of his own rings to make himself believe this tapestry of half truths) and discovers a different tale of the Mandarin's origins: The Mandarin was the son of a opium den prostitute who went on to become a powerful underworld figure before discovering the Ten Rings of Power in an alien craft …

Angered at the Mandarin holding his wife hostage, the director shoots the movie as he wishes not as the Mandarin dictates. The Mandarin denounces this telling of his past as lies and angrily destroys the cinema in which it was being shown, before having the director killed.

Later he regrets murdering the director, noting that he really did love his films. 

Everybody got that? 

Good luck trying to explain that to the China Film Bureau.

Better just forgo the co-production bennies, but show the Chinese there’s no hard feelings by helping them cash in on the can’t-miss Iron Man 3 boom with a hacktackular Chinese version.

According to reports, the much-touted Chinese version is actually four minutes of awkward and awkwardly inserted product placement footage, including the Chinese doctor guy awkwardly guzzling some Yili milk.  Perhaps Yili will get better traction from this appearance than it did in Transformers 3 (Chinese engineer guy awkwardly guzzles Yili milk just before he gets killed).

 Just to make sure consumers get the message (and Yili gets a decent return on the gigantic chunk of change it presumably threw at Disney and/or the Chinese), there’s an Yili commercial shown prior to the film in Chinese theaters.

Apparently, in the main feature, Yili milk is still only suitable for second-string Oriental talent, not Occidental stars, let alone spandex (or iron)-clad superheroes.  Elsewhere, Yili gets some facetime with the above-the-line talent:

As far as I can tell, the copy reads "It fills one out so one can fight for righteousness!", presumably addressing Yili's target market: anxious mothers who would feed their kids fortified Yili milk so that they are the proper size, either to fight for righteousness or join China's growing ranks of obese children.

Maybe that's why the Avengers seem to be fighting with Yili milk, instead of drinking it.

Photoshopped Iron Man 3 posters by China Matters

AP Delivers a F*ck You to Mo Yan and the PRC…at a Price

[Update: It is possible that AP’s visit to Liu Xia was facilitated by the regime.  For a possible precedent see Blind guy evades 100 captors and gets to Beijing just in time to give Hillary Clinton a headache.  However, the timing doesn’t seem right to me, as the reportage on Liu Xia detracted from the hoopla surrounding Mo Yan.  If this were a CCP strategem, I would think the more effective strategy would have been for Mo Yan and the PRC to claim their moment in the Nobel sun, then a few days later allow the focus to shift to Liu Xiaobo’s incarceration and what the new, ostensibly more hip and liberal regime of Xi Jinping might do about it.  Instead we get the framing of “posturing of pro-regime hack undercut by image of Nobely/nobly suffering spouse”.  If you want to tie yourself into conspiratorial knots, you could speculate that hardliners secretly orchestrated the visit to embarrass and anger the new leadership, thereby creating conditions for Liu’s continued detention.]

Judging by tweets and retweets, Mo Yan is in the bad books of Western journalists for failing to recognize that with the great privilege of the Nobel Prize comes great responsibility, at least the responsibility to demonstrate fealty to Western attitudes concerning intellectual freedom and to demonstrate solidarity with other winners who are not in a position to enjoy their prizes to the fullest…like Liu Xiaobo.

Mo’s statements supporting certain types of censorship as an order-maintaining public good were unfavorably bookended with reports of a journalistic coup: AP reporters somehow obtained access to Liu Xiaobo’s wife,  Liu Xia, who is held incommunicado in Beijing.

Human Rights Watch's Phelim Kine tweeted: Mo Yan's defense of #China #censorship appalling on same day of images of a traumatized, unlawfully imprisoned Liu Xia http://yhoo.it/11LTePa) 

But read the AP piece and see if you can spot the possible flaw in this bold effort in compare and contrast:

Stunned that reporters were able to visit her, Liu Xia trembled uncontrollably and cried as she described how absurd and emotionally draining her confinement under house arrest has been in the two years since her jailed activist husband, Liu Xiaobo, was named a Nobel Peace laureate.
In her first interview in 26 months, Liu Xia spoke briefly with journalists from The Associated Press who managed to visit her apartment Thursday while the guards who watch it apparently stepped away for lunch. Her voice shook and she was breathless from disbelief at receiving unexpected visitors.

…

Liu, dressed in a track suit and slippers, was shaken to find several AP journalists at her door. Her first reaction was to put her hands to her head and ask several times, "How did you manage to come up? How did you manage?"

Around midday, the guards who keep a 24-hour watch on the main entrance of Liu's building had left their station — a cot with blankets where they sit and sleep.

It is unlikely that the PRC regime decided to allow covert access to Mdme. Liu at this particular instance, thereby letting the international media rain on the parade of its preferred Nobelist, Mo Yan.  The AP's journalistic derring-do is unlikely to please Mdme. Liu’s jailers.

If the reporting concerning Mdme. Liu’s shock and surprise is accurate, she is very likely terrified that the AP reporters’ visit will lead to some retaliation against her: curtailment of the monthly visits to her husband, or possible removal to even less endurable detention outside Beijing.

Maybe Mo Yan is not the only one who is learning that a Nobel Prize brings with it unexpected and possibly unwanted responsibilities.

Maybe we’ll find out what kind of retaliation Liu Xia suffers…the next time there’s another Chinese Nobel Prize…whenever that happens.

Photo by AP's Ng Han Guan