Global Masculinities and Manhood

8. Beyond Jackie Chan

8 Beyond Jackie Chan MURALI BALAJI In recent years, cultural theorists and other media scholars have noted the impact that globalization has had on media representations. For scholars such as Fiske (1997), globalization has had an empowering impact on audiences. He argues that “global capitalism has no choice but to recognize that it has to deal with multiple markets,” and as a result, the cultural industries “will have to stop claiming the national as their local and will have to be explicitly localized or denationalized” (Fiske, 1997, pp. 58,64). But Fiske’s celebration of the new global audience and the “eroding” power of the cultural industries overlooks an important point. The control over images is not in the hands of consumers, but tightly bound to the media producers. The production of images is controlled by multinational cultural industries whose primary task is to make money for their shareholders. While the production of these images might be shaped by various stages of cultural work, they are ultimately tied to the resources of the corporation (Ryan, 1992; Banks, 2007; Hesmondhalgh, 2007). Valuable cultural texts, as scholars such as Hesmondhalgh (2007) note, are produced, but they are of secondary importance to the corporations’ bottom-line imperative in the cultural production process. In an age of global media, cultural texts are being exchanged at increasingly rapid rates, yet the production of culture remains in the hands of a handful of corporate conglomerates (Bettig, 1996; McChesney, 2004). But cultural production is not just an economic process; it also an ideological one that is grounded in Western control of the cultural industries. Despite the fact that countries such as India and China produce thousands of cultural products that generate millions in revenues for local producers, their distribution remains in the hands of Western conglomerates such as Disney, News Corp., and Universal. As a result, representations of Asia and Asian identities continue to be controlled by a Western filter. More importantly , despite the globalization of media and the supposed celebration of multiculturalism, representations of Asian masculinity in film and television have, for the most part, remained Othered. While the West continues to be fascinated with Asia and the growing numbers of Asian women on screen, ranging from Gong Li, Lucy Liu, and Frieda Pinto in the movies and Padma Lakshmi and Ming Na on television, representations of Asian masculinity— shaped largely by both Orientalist constructs and the bottom-line considerations of Anglo-dominated media companies—are few and far between. The depictions of Asian men, particularly their masculine identities, are products of both ideology and economics. While postcolonial scholars such as Bhabha (1994) and Said (2003)argue that Asian masculinity in the media is a product of the former, an I-Other discourse, I believe that these representations are equally informed by economic considerations. As I have argued in my works on South Asian representations in the media, media companies seek to benefit from those images that are financially beneficial. In this chapter , I seek to show how and why presenting alternative and diverse images of Asian men in Western media run contrary to the interests of the media institutions charged with producing cultural texts. Negus (1998, 2004) argues that culture produces industry and industry produces culture. I would argue, however, that industry produces caricature. These caricatures not only benefit the corporations that produce them, but they serve to uphold a white patriarchal worldview, one where Asian men are either marginalized, vilified, or made into comic objects that serve as visual contrasts to hegemonicmaleness. Moreover, inanage ofmarketconsolidation, these representations are more impactful than ever before. Using the Rush Hour trilogy as a case study, I sketch out how Asian1 masculinity is Othered in order to conform to ideologies and the corporations’ pursuit of profit. t he Political Economy of identity Numerous studies on the media portrayals of Asian and Asian American masculinity have emphasized the marginalization and emasculation of Asian men in film and television. For example, Shek (2006) argues that Asian and Asian American masculinity “has been externally defined” and as a result, they “are then subordinated, as are other forms of masculinity, such as those among men of color, gay men and bisexual men” (p. 383). But Chan (2000) BEYOND JACKIE CHAN · 187 adds that the Asian masculinity advanced by Bruce Lee became “co-opted by the media industry into another stereotype of Asian men: the chop-socky, kung-fu fighting Asian...