Hollywood’s cultural exports are falling off due to a lack of innovation, as it keeps recycling the same old IPs

由于缺乏创新，好莱坞的文化输出正在减少，因为它一直在重复使用相同的旧IP。

The Hollywood press has been up in arms this week about Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid performing poorly in East Asian countries, such as China and South Korea.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film “grossed a mere $3.6 million in its first 10 days of release in China” and another “$4.4 million through June 4” in Korea, which insiders cited by the site claim is due to the casting of black actress Halle Bailey in the lead role.

本周，好莱坞媒体对迪士尼真人电影《小美人鱼》在中国和韩国等东亚国家的糟糕表现表示强烈不满。
据《好莱坞报道》报道，这部电影“在中国上映的前10天仅获得360万美元的票房”，而在韩国“截至6月4日的票房收入为440万美元”，该网站援引内部人士的话称，这是因为黑人女演员海莉·贝莉出演了女主角。

In essence, the implied reason why the movie is doing poorly in these markets is because consumers there are racist. And, indeed, other sites did cite some pretty nasty remarks. But the specific quotations mentioned by The Hollywood Reporter make a (very American) mistake of lumping East Asians together as though they are the same – because they only quote hateful comments from South Korea, not China. To be sure, it would not be surprising if some of these comments existed on Chinese social media, but they were not cited specifically.

从本质上讲，这部电影在这些市场表现不佳的隐含原因是那里的消费者是种族主义者。事实上，其他网站确实引用了一些相当难听的言论。但是《好莱坞报道者》提到的具体引用犯了一个(非常美国化的)错误，把东亚人混为一谈，好像他们是一样的——因为他们只引用了韩国的仇恨言论，而不是中国的。可以肯定的是，如果中国社交媒体上存在这样的评论，也不足为奇，但这些评论并没有被具体引用。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The reaction to this story has been about what you’d expect: Black people being angry at these countries, and their people, for what is allegedly out-and-out racism. It is very typical of the American media to race bait and sow division among minorities, e.g., Black Americans and Americans of Asian descent, instead of promoting intersectional solidarity. But it also misses the obvious reason why this film, and so many others from Hollywood of late, haven’t done well in Asia.
For an American media consumer, it is evident that the quality of cultural exports has fallen dramatically in recent years. This is not just some nostalgic yearning on my part, but a careful observation of the fact that Hollywood is not producing any new intellectual properties (IPs) but is just regurgitating the same stories over and over again. It seems like we have a new Marvel movie every few months, with the typical fan service of packing in as many superheroes as possible, and then some Disney live-action of a classic animated movie.

人们对这个故事的反应和你所预料的一样:黑人对这些国家和他们的人民感到愤怒，因为所谓的彻头彻尾的种族主义。美国媒体以种族为诱饵，在美国黑人和亚裔美国人等少数族裔之间制造分裂，而不是促进跨界团结，这是非常典型的。但它也忽略了一个明显的原因，为什么这部电影，以及最近好莱坞的许多其他电影，在亚洲表现不佳。
对于一个美国媒体消费者来说，很明显，近年来文化出口的质量急剧下降。这不仅仅是我的怀旧之情，也是我仔细观察到的一个事实:好莱坞并没有制作任何新的IP，而只是一遍又一遍地重复同样的故事。似乎我们每隔几个月就会有一部新的漫威电影，伴随着典型的粉丝服务，尽可能多地加入超级英雄，然后是一些迪士尼经典动画电影的真人版。

Take the example of the live-action Mulan, which actually portrays a Chinese setting and is based on a Chinese fable. As Forbes reported at the time of its release in September 2020, this was one of Disney’s worst-performing remakes in China. Chinese people didn’t clamor to theaters just to see a Chinese-American face as the lead character. In fact, they clearly have little regard for such shallow forms of “representation” and found the narrative lacking.
Look at how Black Panther: Wakanda Forever performed in China, too. The first movie in the series did well. However, many people rightly pointed out that the politics reflected in the movie were problematic. The main antagonist, Killmonger, reclaimed stolen African artifacts from what was portrayed as the British Museum, and fought against the CIA, with one agent – a “good character” – portrayed by a white man. Think about that: The bad guy in a Black-centric movie about Africa is actually the person who most reflects the struggle of Black folks around the world. It’s ridiculous.

以真人版《花木兰》为例，它实际上是以中国寓言为基础，以中国为背景。正如《福布斯》在2020年9月上映时所报道的那样，这是迪士尼在中国表现最差的翻拍片之一。
中国人不只是为了看一张华裔美国人的脸当主角而去电影院。事实上，他们显然不重视这种肤浅的“表现”形式，并发现叙事的缺失。
看看《黑豹:永远的瓦坎达》在中国的表现吧。这个系列的第一部电影票房很好。但也有不少人指出，电影中反映的政治是有问题的。主要的反派，基尔蒙格，从大英博物馆收回了被盗的非洲文物，并与中央情报局进行斗争，其中一名特工——一个“好人”——由一名白人扮演。想想看：在一部以黑人为中心的关于非洲的电影中，坏人实际上是最能反映世界各地黑人斗争的人。这太荒谬了。

Watching American entertainment these days, which, admittedly, I rarely do, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Our films are the same cycle of boring and overdone IPs, anything novel is just watered-down brain rot. Movies that portray the military and use military hardware have to have their scxts approved by the Department of Defense. And our television, which I most often watch during the National Football League season, is sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, the automobile industry, the defense sector or Wall Street. It’s no wonder our cultural exports are dying.

这些天看美国的娱乐节目，老实说，我很少看，我不知道该笑还是该哭。我们的电影都是千篇一律无聊的和过度制作的ip，任何新颖的东西也都只是被淡化了的过度迷恋。描写军队和使用军事装备的电影剧本必须得到国防部的批准。我们的电视节目，我最常看的是国家橄榄球联盟赛季，是由制药工业、汽车工业、国防部门或华尔街赞助的。难怪我们的文化出口正在消亡。

On the contrary, we can see that new film industries have developed all over the world in recent decades – especially in South Korea and China, both of which are becoming cultural titans in their own right. Consumers in the Asian market don’t have to succumb to recycled American garbage anymore because they’ve reached parity with Hollywood and, less encumbered by the not-so-ideal material conditions in the States, have the creative freedom to make things suitable for their respective audiences.
So this is not about race particularly. There are certainly people who have said nasty things about Halle Bailey, which defies the most basic logic since mermaids are mythical creatures and can be portrayed in any way one imagines. This is obviously regrettable. But just because those voices are prominent does not mean they are the majority. The reality is that folks in Asia – and, of course, all over the world – don’t want to keep replaying the same thing over and over again. Can you really blame them for that? Hollywood should try creating new and imaginative IPs that people around the world might identify with.

相反，我们可以看到，近几十年来，新的电影产业在世界各地都得到了发展，尤其是在韩国和中国，这两个国家都在凭借自己的实力成为文化巨头。亚洲市场的消费者不必再屈从于回收的美国垃圾了，因为他们已经达到了与好莱坞同等的水平，而且较少受到美国不太理想的物质条件的阻碍，他们有创作自由，可以制作适合各自观众的东西。
所以这不是种族问题。当然有人会说海莉·贝莉的坏话，这违背了最基本的逻辑，因为美人鱼是神话中的生物，可以用任何一种想象的方式来描绘。这显然是令人遗憾的。但是，仅仅因为这些声音很突出，并不意味着他们就是大多数。现实情况是，亚洲人——当然还有全世界的人——不想一遍又一遍地重复同样的事情。你真能因此责怪他们吗?好莱坞应该尝试创造新的、富有想象力的IP，让全世界的人都能认同。