My Problem with Watching Kung-Fu Panda in Turkish: Thoughts on a Global Hollywood

“You are almost ready to be entrusted with the secret ingredient of my secret ingredient soup. And then you will fulfill your destiny and take over the restaurant just as I took it over from my father who took it over from his father who won it from a friend in a game of mahjong.”

-Mr. Ping, Kung-Fu Panda

A few weeks ago, I was on a bus from Batman to Van and, to kill time during the 6-hour ride, I was flipping through the movies and television programs available on the bus’ TV system. Turkish buses have entertainment systems that are more advanced than those on most U.S. airplanes or buses. Some are equipped with satellite television while others feature a library of programs saved on a central hard-drive that you can start whenever you want. This bus was of the latter variety, and I found Kung-Fu Panda among the available movies. I had never seen the movie before, and I prefer cartoons to other programs when watching TV in another language because cartoons are generally easier to understand, so I flipped it on and started watching.

Now, I don’t speak enough Turkish to understand all the dialogue, but I was still able to follow what went on in the movie: lazy panda with dreams of becoming a kung-fu master accidently fulfills some prophecy about the coming of a great warrior, and thus is taken into the temple. At the same time, one of the most fearsome evil warriors escapes from his imprisonment, and so the master at the temple must train the panda to be a kung-fu master, despite his obvious lack of ability at the beginning.

All in all, it’s an enjoyable movie, and it certainly helped me pass the time during this voyage. However, while I was watching I couldn’t shake the feeling that relationship that existed between who this movie was about, who produced the movie, and who this movie was reaching, was troubling. I realized while watching this movie that problems arise when we allow the American film industry to mediate between non-American cultures and interpret these cultures for the rest of the world.

I’m not going to claim that Kung Fu Panda is racist in any way. First of all, I didn’t understand enough of the movie to make a claim about this subject, one way or another, and second of all, that’s not at all my aim in writing this. Besides, I doubt that actors such as Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan would agree to appear in a film that gravely misappropriates their culture.

This is the vision of China that the makers of Kung-Fu Panda spread throughout the world

My argument, however, stems from the basic problem that Kung Fu Panda is an American film, with an American producer, American directors,and four American writers, yet it is about Chinese culture. And needless to say, in a children’s movie, the object is never to paint an accurate portrayal of the culture in question. Instead, Kung-Fu Panda seems to represent an Americanized version of what China. It is a spunky, sassy, and action-packed world filled with animals, mysticism, and wonder. I believe this movie represents China as an American child would like to imagine it; indeed, it seems the writers knew their audience, and played to them well.

However, the problem we face is this: In today’s international film industry, we are never writing for our national audience anymore. A blockbuster film such as Kung-Fu Panda is now seen all over the world, interacting with local cultural mindsets everywhere it is shown. For example, Andrew Lam notes that the reaction to Kung-Fu Panda in China was disparate. Although some Chinese intellectuals claimed that the movie was horrific in the way it sought to sell Chinese culture back to its people, the film was wildly popular in China. He himself conjectures that this sort of cultural exchange between China and the U.S., whereby the U.S. holds up a fun-house mirror to China, may be a good thing.

Here in Turkey, however, I can’t be so optimistic. Very few foreigners live in Turkey. Outside of the major cities and universities, there are practically none. The current flow of refugees coming from Syria adds to the diversity in the southeast, but generally immigration does not seem to be incredibly common either. As a result, Turkey is quite ethnically homogenous. In fact, its one sizable minority, the Kurds, have been a topic of contention for many years, to say the least. Thus, Turkish people generally have little to know direct experience with other cultures. My guess is that the vast majority of Turkish citizens will never see China in person. Many have probably never met or talked to a Chinese person, and many never will.

And so, the problem I have with Kung-Fu Panda lies in the fact that, in the absence of direct experience with other cultures, movies and television shows become one of the main conduits through which people can learn about these cultures. I feel that this is likely the case in Turkey, as well as in other countries where common citizens are wealthy enough to go to the cinema, but not wealthy enough to travel extensively outside of the country. So, I fear that in these countries, viewers will fail to distinguish between the true cultural elements contained in films like KFP and the creative liberties taken by the film’s writers. By constructing an Americanized, romanticized vision of China and shipping it all over the world, we are unknowingly imprinting that vision onto other peoples’ ideas of what China is really like.

“But that’s ridiculous,” you’re probably saying as you watch a panda on stilts fight a power-hungry tiger for possession of a magical scroll, “there’s no way that anybody could think this is real.”

If you don't come from the culture depicted here, it can be hard to tell how much of this is accurate, and how much of it stems from American exoticization and romanticization

Well of course. I would guess that nobody in this world would believe that China is actually a place where pandas, monkeys, storks, and tigers fight using kung-fu and magic. However, Kung-Fu Panda bases itself on some true aspects of Chinese culture, and then supplements those realities with American stereotypes and far-fetched fantasy. When you are within the culture that produced the film, or the one that is predicted, it is much easier to know where reality ends and the creative liberties begin. When you are sitting on the outside, however, it impossible to know the difference and you will undoubtedly mesh the two in your mind.

And that is why I am unease about the size and power of Hollywood. In every country, you have your domestic cinema, to be sure, but from what I’m seen, these films are usually more… well… domestic in nature. So, if you’re going to movies and want to see something… exotic, well then, no matter where you are in the world, you’re probably viewing something that made by American hands, meaning that the foreign cultures you’re seeing have passed through an American lens before they reach you. At the most benign, it means that cultures have been simplified or romanticized during the film-making process. At the worst, you’ll end up watching a film filled with stereotypes Americans hold about the culture.

And this is how we portrayed the Middle East

So, if you want to learn about the China or Japan, we have some kung-fu and ninja fights that you’ll love! Want to know what French is like? One order of Ratatouille, coming right up! Let’s see… Scandinavia? So you want vikings, right? Yeah, I think we can do vikings. Oh, you want to see the Middle East… Would you like to see Aladdin? Or something a tad more… violent?

In short, the current system needs to change. American filmmakers need to be more conscious of whom their movies are ultimately going to, and what messages they send to these audiences. More importantly, the film industry must become much more international and multifaceted, either through the international emergence of other national cinemas (look for the emergence of Indian, Japanese, French, and German films onto this stage in the coming years) or the internationalization of Hollywood itself.

For an example of this, look no further than the movie franchise we've been discussing. As it turns out, the third installment of the Kung-Fu Panda franchise will be produced in China as a co-production between American and Chinese film studios. I consider this development to be a welcome change that gives Chinese artists much more influence over how their culture is percivied worldwide, but still consider it troubling that this sort of collaboration did not exist until two KFP movies had already been made. In general, this sort of international collaboration needs to become much more commonplace when films' storylines stray across national borders, or else moviegoers around the world will continue to be bombarded with American cultural ideals in the guise of messengers from other cultures.