International Law

Time Magazine and Zhang Yimou

By Stan

I took a couple of days off last week and am just getting back to the blog today. For some reason, I can’t take anything too seriously, as you will no doubt see in any other lame posts I manage to pump out this evening.

First up is Time magazine, telling us that Zhang Yimou was a runner-up for Person of the Year. I had to read the article, because I couldn’t figure out why he was in the running to begin with. Turns out it was the Olympics opening ceremonies. No, really.

Zhang told China’s story to a watching world. He created arguably the grandest spectacle of the new millennium, and it was viewed by nearly one-third of the world’s population. With this work, Zhang obtained a stature shared by very few peers.

Is this serious or did some editorial from The Onion somehow escape? Look, I enjoyed the opening ceremony, although I did not think it was as good as the reviews in the press. However, for the sake of argument, let’s say the show was the grandest spectacle of the past eight years, blah blah blah. So what?

The guy put on a good show. Give him an award or something for good shows, fine, but consider him for Person of the Year? Gimme a break. The rest of the article, which highlights his career, is also a bit overblown:

Zhang also brought the actress Gong Li to prominence, casting her in starring roles in six of his films. Together they are credited with introducing sensuality and eroticism to Chinese cinema.

I will not go where this quote wants me to go. Suffice it to say that it would be an easy, tasteless joke. But that sort of thing is no fun if it’s too obvious.

I think the standards over there at Time are slipping. If they wanted to give an award to a ground-breaking filmmaker, I have my own candidate.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on December 22, 2008 (boomark / email).