This Mask Was Made In China
Notes on Seth Rogen's The Green Hornet (2011)
and
Meditation on the Aesthetics and Excesses of Failure
1.
Much of negative criticism that The Green Hornet (2011) has garnered typically attributes the failure of the film to its infidelity to the source material and the hegemonic standards that determine “good” (commercial?) film. Film critics questioned Rogen’s casting of himself as the Green Hornet, his tried and tired spoken-to-be-funny dialogue, his choice of director, Michel Gondry, and the film’s last-minute conversion to 3D spectacle/craze/commercialization. Most concluded that while the remake failed in totality some gems could found between the frames. One such gem was the character of Kato, who alone was, in one critic’s own paraphrased words, “worth the price of admission”.
Of course, no such consensus exists among Asian American cultural critics on the issue of Kato because the figure of Kato has come to signify the price of admission that Asian American actors must pay to represent "themselves". In this sense then, criticism of the remake by Asian American cultural critics focuses on the failure of Kato - in casting and characterization- in meeting the representational demands leveraged by Asian American cultural politics. Leading up the film’s production, critics had criticized the casting of Jay Chou – a Taiwanese singer of considerable cultural and economic capital – as a one-inch punch to “authentic” (Read: In Need of Work) Asian American actors who could better represent the role originally played by Bruce Lee. Moreover, there existed this anxiety that Chou’s limited grasp of English – which, as the producer of the film claimed, made Kato more “authentic”- would further perpetuate the stereotype of the silent kung-fu fighting Asian object that has so pervaded the American filmic imaginary.
This critique of the casting and characterization of Kato cannot be reduced to the singularity of this one film. Rather, it follows a genealogy of Asian American criticism and meta-commentary on Asian sidekicks that preceded the film. We can find these gems and meta-commentary in Frank Chin’s play “Chickencoop Chinaman” or Gene Yang and Sonny Liew’s recent contribution to the Asian American superhero anthology Secret Identities, “The Blue Scorpion & Chung”. However, despite the representational minefield that Kato has unwittingly come to represent (Boom!), he continues to occupy a particularly ambivalent presence in Asian American cultural politics.
This could be seen following the film’s release. Most negative Asian American critics fell surprisingly silent. Despite being played by a pop-star adored by millions of Chinese and perhaps thousands of Chinese Americans, despite Chou’s native language of Mandarin, despite all these hindrances to his “Asian American” authenticity, his Kato was… well… he was actually pretty badass. Much like the film critics previously discussed, Asian American cultural critics heralded Chou’s Kato for engendering positive depictions of Asian and Asian American males. Take for example, Jonathan Kim’s recent exhortations in the Huffington Post that Chou’s Kato should be considered as a breakthrough character for Asian AND Asian American male actors.[1] Kim’s claim is a rather anachronistic one: isn’t Chou’s “breakthrough” Kato a reprisal of Bruce Lee’s “breakthrough” Kato?
If we throw our interpretive lot with these critics, that Kato’s characterization and meta-story carries much of The Green Hornet, wouldn’t this conflict with our reading of Seth Rogen’s role in the production of the “failed” The Green Hornet? How can Rogen, a self-respecting “huh-ite” man, arbiter and author of the remake's script, willingly play second fiddle to Kato? Did he not read the source material?
First of all, which Seth Rogen are we actually talking about here? Are we talking about the white stoner man-child that he has come to typify in Bromances, the mentally deranged mall security officer in the surprisingly dark Observe and Report or Seth Rogen the Canadian-born comedian who is one of the co-writers of The Green Hornet’s script (played by himself in Funny People)? Of course, the answer is rather indeterminate and facetious, but the question is proffered in hopes to complicate the ways we interpret this populist film – its actors, creators, and literature- within its own political and cultural discourse. In turn, it hopefully shifts our own interpretive priorities of Kato from one of representation, to one of excess – that which eludes representation and that which representation excludes.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethink-review-the-green-_b_809097.html
Part 2 will focus on Seth Rogen and the Visual Rhetorics of Failure in The Green Hornet (2011)
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