I recently rather enjoyed the (3-D) experience of watching Kung Fu Panda 2, so it was with some dismay that I learned, from Jacques Mandelbaum's film review, that it might be an anti-American film. (Of course the Le Monde reviewer puts in in a more neutral light.)
Il est vrai que ce dessin animé invite à être compris comme une métaphore de la lutte sino-américaine pour la suprématie mondiale.
Can it be true?! That this cartoon "prompts to be understood as a metaphor for the China-US struggle for world supremacy"?! Or at least for a China-US struggle proper?!
If that's the case, the heroes of the movie (Po, the Furious Five, the master — all of them wise, honest, and upright — and the whole populace that they are determined to protect — all of them innocent and virtuous) can only be the Chinese, while the bad guys with their evil designs — and with superior firepower — can only be the Americans…
Is this what it's come to? American, and Western, artists and filmmakers giving China's communist dictatorship the image of poor innocent victim fighting for justice, while Western Republicanism and Democracy is to be the destroyer of the peaceful status quo?
The more I think about it, the more there seems to be some truth to it or, certainly, the more it seems that that is how the movie will be perceived among Chinese spectators… As for the Tibetan occupation, saber-rattling over Taiwan, and China's threats to its neighbors, along with the genocide of tens of millions of citizens, those are facts are conveniently left to the side…
(Below is another type of movie that seemingly is not made in Hollywood anymore — check out the Peter Sellers speech about the monstrous Americans at 0:45-0:55)
