One Day in May…

Leehom shakes things up a bit with an out-of-left-field, major turn in direction: an ode to Chinese ethnic nationalism! Oh wait, he does at least one of these per album. Never mind.

But here’s the new song anyway, called “Open Fire (火力全開)”:

Because it is your typical dance track, it was immediately beset with accusations of plagiarism, particularly in taking ideas from this song by Ke$ha:

That, by the way, was my first ever encounter with Ke$ha, and I hope it will be my last. On the plagiarism charge, my first thought is that all these dance tracks pretty much sound the same anyway, but then I realized that I’m just being an old fuddy-duddy with no appreciation of the music of These Kids Today™. So I’ll say this: I’d bet my Mandopop collection that any similarity between the songs is entirely coincidental, because Leehom has too much experience (not to mention too much to lose) for it to be anything else. I don’t completely buy his claim that his song is just “so much of a breakthrough” that the accusations come from people who can’t understand the song; I think we all get it – we just get it and feel like we’ve heard it before. Personally, though, I was casting about for a Michael Jackson song on my first listen, so that shows how up-to-speed I am.

On the matter of the lyrics (which are, interestingly, 50-50 in Chinese and English, which really is new for Leehom), all I can say is: sigh. He’s right about some things – sometimes it feels like Asians in general and Chinese in particular are the last group it’s “okay” to be racist towards in the U.S. His “so many accusations of an Asian invasion” strikes a reasonable chord. The rest of it, though, is posturing. I mean, he’s an American kid whose very Americanized music has conquered Asia – is he really complaining about American cultural imperialism?

The album, which consists of two new songs and 28 of Leehom’s past hits, is due out September 30.

Edit: Boy, those huge-framed videos are annoying. But I think I’m just going to add new posts to push them down instead of wasting time trying to figure out how to adjust their size. Forgive me….

Edit2: Never mind, I just scaled them down by a fifth. Ignore that last edit.

Edit/Update 3: According to YesAsia.com, the pre-order version comes with an inflatable Music Man guitar. That must be a special, biodegradable, environmentally friendly inflatable guitar. I’d hate to be forced to conclude that the whole Change Me promotion was a gimmick. Of course, you might recall that there were some flaws in the execution even back when that album came out.

So, back to the subject of dodgy choices Comrade Wang makes in his film career. I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on his writing/directing debut, Love in Disguise (爱情通告), which I finally watched during my brief stint in China this summer. It is, by just about any measure, a pretty prosaic film. If you can endure the worst of the overacting in the first half hour or so, you might be able to get a few laughs in, though I warn you now some will inevitably be at Leehom’s expense.

First and foremost, let me express my extreme skepticism that Leehom himself would go see this film. I mean, if he didn’t co-write it, if he hadn’t directed it, and if he wasn’t starring in it – if it was just the latest release in Taiwan or China starring Liu Yifei and, say, our new professional actor friend Wu Chun – I cannot imagine a 35 year old man thinking this is the thing to see on a Saturday night. And what’s he doing making a movie he and his friends in all likelihood wouldn’t want to see?

My first problem stems from him being 35 (well, 34 at the time it came out)… and being in a role that has him disguising himself to infiltrate a Shanghai music school and developing a crush on a coed. It’s classic fan service – he’s playing out the fantasies his fans have in their heads on the big screen. But I have spent a disproportionate number of my days on college campuses, and the idea of a 34 year old pretending to be a young student to charm a pretty 19 year old kind of creeps me out.

The second issue is that most of the actors in the film – again, in the first half hour in particular, but Leehom for most of the piece – seem to subscribe to the Ella Chen school of overacting. Ah, Ella. I cannot tell you how many times people have told me that I should watch the Taiwanese drama Hana Kimi. I got so many promises that I’d love it that I actually bought it (in China, at least, so I didn’t spend much on it), despite my dislike for all things Fahrenheit/S.H.E. Between what a terribly wooden actor Wu Chun is, and what a painfully, desperately exaggerated performance Ella gives mugging for the camera, I’ve never gotten through more than a few episodes – and I watched those a few minutes at a time to endure them. It hurts to watch her act – you’re afraid she’s going to pull something, and you want to smack her, so you’re in serious danger of smacking your television and hurting yourself instead.* Well, that’s what the acting is like early in this movie.

Beyond that, the premise is so breathtakingly stupid I kept waiting – in vain – for the punchline.** Leehom and his band’s guitar player disguise themselves as goat herders from the totally made-up, faraway village of Dingzhou. But the characters in the movie aren’t really in on the joke – they dress up, even walk around with a live goat (!), express momentary doubt then become thrilled that no one can recognize them. We all can see how ludicrous it is that these people would accept this disguise, commit to using it, and then keep wearing it for weeks on end after enrolling in the Shanghai music school Liu Yifei attends. The problem is that they can’t seem to see it, which means that Leehom’s character is apparently someone with a sub-eighty IQ, and that makes him a lot less likable. The fact that no one recognizes him or questions the disguise, even when he sings (and this after they’d all gone to see his alter ego the pop star in concert), means that actually, EVERYONE in the movie is a blithering idiot. If you’re going to have your characters attempt something so outlandish, you have to at least let them recognize that it’s an absurd ploy.

And yet, for all that, they got me to laugh a few times. At the beginning it was embarrassed laughter at how far Leehom was willing to go for a chuckle, but there were a few good gags. The one I dreaded the most was in the preview: in classic Leehom fashion, while in disguise he hears people speculating that his pop star self is gay, and he gets all indignant denying it. Hey, he’s written two songs denying it, you had little doubt he’d work it into a movie at some point. But there was a twist – when he claims later to be able to get his pop star self to an event, everyone wonders how the lowly goat herder would have the pop star’s phone number. “Oh, he gave it to me – I met him in the bathroom,” he says, unthinkingly. “So he really IS gay!” a character squeals, and the payoff is perfect. Finally, finally, Leehom manages to poke a little fun at himself. If he had done more of that – and not just this wacky goat-herder nonsense – it could have been a much better comedy.

You do get used to his goat-herder garb, and while it doesn’t become easier to accept, it is at least easier to ignore. There are a few more funny bits, especially during the fan concert; the scenes of Leehom trying to go back and forth between being in the audience with the girl in one persona and being onstage in the other has been done too many times to be really funny, but having another person from his invented Dingzhou in the audience was worth a giggle, and Khalil Fong’s bewildered cameo absolutely killed me when he filled in with a confused, “I, ah, guess I’m the special guest?”

From there, though, it spiraled out of control into a painfully heavy-handed message about not losing traditional music in the pursuit of pop, and finding ways to incorporate the two. Seriously, it makes Beginning of the Great Revival look downright subtle, and when you can out-propagandize the Chinese Communist Party, it’s time to take a step back and consider easing up a bit on the lessons.

If you’ve seen any number of romantic comedies or – especially – East Asian Idol dramas, then you’ve seen it all before, but this has something on the Hana Kimis of the world: it’s mercifully short. I’ll go one step further, as well – I bought and listened to Leehom’s accompanying album, The 18 Martial Arts before I saw the movie and thought it just so-so. The movie acts as a great advertisement for the songs, though, and I found that I liked the whole album better after seeing the movie, even without being all that impressed by the latter. Maybe the problem is perspective: don’t think of it as a film, but as a 98-minute music video disguised as a film. Suddenly, it’s stunningly successful.

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* I have a second, altogether different issue with this one that ensured I would not like it, which is that Ella’s character is just plain dumb. She seems to go for female characters that are stupid, clueless, and helpless, devoid of self-esteem, and always opposite a handsome, male lead who’s smart and infinitely more capable. What a horrible example to be setting for the young women of East Asia.

** I’m choosing to ignore the whole “magical visions of butterflies” sub-plot here, because I found that even less comprehensible than the goat.

So last weekend I went to see The Beginning of the Great Revival, the new film about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Because, you know, I try to catch all the good propaganda in the theater, when it’s still fresh. (No, really; I saw The Founding of the Republic in the theater opening week, too. I have a penchant for being in China on big party anniversaries.) I hadn’t actually heard much about the film in advance – I mean, it’s not like I’m not sure what happened in China between 1911 and 1921; the big questions are really how they present it – so I just went in ready to enjoy the spectacle.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a surprise to see Leehom Wang playing a young, politically passionate Beida scholar. I mean, Leehom, dearheart, you’re American: you do realize that this is not just any old historical drama, right? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, he has cornered the market on ultra-nationalistic pop songs.

Still, I went home to investigate, and I was surprised to discover that there are actually two Americans in the film; Daniel Wu (whom I don’t know, since I don’t follow the Cantonese scene) played Hu Shih to Leehom’s Luo Jialun. I’ve done a quick and very dirty translation of the whole article below:

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In the movie The Beginning of the Great Revival, there are two Chinese Americans: one is Daniel Wu playing New Cultural Movement Leader Hu Shih, and one is Leehom Wang playing Cai Yuanpei’s student, Luo Jialun. Although the two men really suit their roles, pronouncing their lines became their biggest challenge.

In the film, Hu Shih goes from being 26 to 28 years old; in 1917 he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in the United States and returned to China to become a Beijing University professor, joined the staff of New Youth, selecting articles that opposed feudalism, promoting individual freedom, democracy and science, even promoting language reform through vernacular literature; he was a key figure in the New Culture Movement.

Director Huang Jianxin explained that when pondering the role of Hu Shih, the first person he thought of was Daniel Wu, aside from looking enough alike, his experience with studying abroad is similar to that of Hu Shih. After the technical staff did a comparison with pictures of Wu and Hu, the agreed that it’s a case of body and spirit lining up.

To prepare for this role, Daniel Wu bought the English translation of Hu Shih’s diaries in America. “Because he went to America, so many Americans know of him [ed. true, but not nearly enough...], and he wrote many English books. I can’t read Chinese, so I can only use these English books. He’s such an important person in our Chinese history and culture, like his recommendations to use vernacular Chinese, it was so important,” Daniel Wu mentioned in an interview.

In the film, there’s a scene where Beida students and teachers are having a heated discussion about the old and new culture. Acting as the advocate for the New Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhan, Hu Shih, etc. all rise up against the the “Conservative Party” leader Gu Hongming. Hu Shih has an extended monologue in this scene, but for Daniel Wu, having grown up abroad, this is a major challenge. He’s never been very good in Mandarin, and he found some of the specialized vocabulary of the Republican period quite difficult.

Huang Jianxin explained, “We gave Daniel Wu a script that was different from everyone else’s; his lines were all written out in pinyin. Often you’d find him hidden away in a corner carefully studying, it was quite hard for him.” When everyone else was resting, Feng Yuanzheng would help him out a lot. Because pinyin has no way of helping you determine where to break up the sentences, you’ve got Feng Yuanzheng there on one side acting every bit the teacher, demonstrating the lines to Daniel Wu, helping him get through each part.

When Luo Jialun was a student at Beida he was elected Beijing students representative, and he went to Shanghai to take part in the National Student Union founding meeting, supporting the New Culture Movement. In the May Fourth Movement, he printed a vernacular manifesto and even published the first piece to use the phrase “the May Fourth Movement” in the journal Weekly Review, a phrase we still use today.

Leehom Wang said about his role, “He is a very smart person, very cultured and very talented; when he spoke he was very convincing, very attractive; this part could be a huge challenge for me.” As a result, when filming the scene he was not only constantly practicing his Mandarin pronunciation but also constantly consulting others.

“I’m also a very passionate person, whether through music or through film, I always hope I can make the world a better place, a more perfect place; that could be similar to Luo Jialun,” he said.

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And what better place to start than with communist propaganda! Riiiiight. You know, as much as I love the idea of Leehom joining my profession even if only in film (Luo Jialun was, after all, a historian, and Leehom’s presence would certainly spice up some of my professional meetings), I think he might need to join Ashin in my remedial history classes for Taiwanese pop stars.

The punchline to this long article on how hard Wu and Wang worked to pronounce things correctly is that both guys (and most the non-mainland actors) had all their lines dubbed over by a more natural Mandarin speaker in the theatrical release. Oh well, better luck next time. Don’t you think that Leehom would make an outstanding Lei Feng?