‘Dancing With the Stars’ finale pulled in 24 million
The final couples share the excitement of the "Dancing With the Stars" finale. Photo credit: Adam Larkey/ABC
The finale of “Dancing With the Stars” drew the biggest audience Tuesday night and pushed Disney-owned ABC to victories in total viewers and the 18-to-49 age group.
The two-hour show averaged 24.1 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings released this morning. The audience grew to nearly 26.4 million in the last half-hour, when “Dirty Dancing” star Jennifer Grey was revealed as the winner. Disney Channel star Kyle Massey placed second, and Bristol Palin, daughter of former Gov. Sarah Palin, was third.
Here are the prime-time averages for the broadcast networks: ABC with 18.4 million, CBS with 14.6 million, Fox with 7.7 million, NBC with 6 million and The CW with 866,000 for reruns. CBS edged Fox for second in the 18-to-49 age group, which ABC won by a wide margin. ABC started its night with “No Ordinary Family,” which drew 7 million.
CBS aired “NCIS” with 18.8 million, “NCIS: Los Angeles” with 14.9 million and “The Good Wife” with 10 million. It was another twisty, first-rate episode for “The Good Wife.”
Guest star Carol Burnett was incentive to catch Fox’s “Glee,” which attracted 10.4 million fans. A new episode of “Raising Hope” entertained 5.6 million. A “Hope” rerun brought in 4.3 million.
Over on NBC, “The Biggest Loser” averaged 6.7 million over two hours. “Parenthood” charmed 4.5 million.
In Orlando, “Dancing With the Stars” was Tuesday’s biggest show, pulling in 335,300 viewers. “NCIS” placed second with 295,600. “NCIS: Los Angeles” was third with 209,800. Our other favorites were “Glee” with 120,400, “No Ordinary Family” with 111,100, “The Biggest Loser” with 103,300 and “The Good Wife” with 102,000.
‘Dancing With the Stars’: Who wins? Finale starts at 9 tonight
Derek Hough and Jennifer Grey won judges' raves for the paso doble Monday night on "Dancing With the Stars." Photo credit: Adam Larkey/ABC
The three finalists on “Dancing With the Stars” will perform two more dances tonight. Kyle Massey, Bristol Palin and Jennifer Grey will deliver their favorite dance from the season. Later, they will do another “instant dance,” performing a cha cha cha to music they receive after the show starts.
Here’s a reminder: The two-hour finale begins at 9 p.m. on ABC (WFTV-Channel 9 locally). The winner will be named close to 11 p.m.
“Dirty Dancing” star Grey earned the highest marks Monday. If she continues in that form tonight, she is likely to put some distance between herself and the competition. But the winner is determined by a 50/50 mix of judges’ scores and audience votes.
Did you have trouble voting? ABC issued a statement: “Due to a record amount of activity, some viewers reported experiencing difficulties registering their votes for the ‘Dancing with the Stars’ finale, which affected each finalist equally. The issue was promptly addressed.” The network also kept voting lines open until 11 a.m. this morning.
Christina Aguilera will perform on tonight’s show and promote “Burlesque.”
The winner will speak to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” at 12:05 a.m. tonight. Show host Tom Bergeron will be featured, too.
The three finalists will stop by “The View” at 11 a.m. Wednesday, also on ABC.
Who wins? I think Grey did the best work over the season, delivered the most dynamic dances Monday and won the admiration of many mature viewers. At 50, she could be the poster woman for the AARP generation. She pulled off moves more spectacular than those of 20-year-old Palin and 19-year-old Massey.
What do you think?
Shanghai Mourns Victims of High-Rise Fire
Thousands of Shanghai residents gathered on Sunday to mourn the victims of last week’s fire at Jiaozhou Road. Adam Minter has a thoughtful post on the mourning procession (as well as links for further reading) at Shanghai Scrap; Marta Cooper’s blog . . . in Shanghai has photos from the assembly. At the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report, watch a short video about Sunday’s gathering. On Twitter, users have been marking their thoughts on the fire and its aftermath with the hashtag #jiaozhoulu.
Below, comments on Sunday’s mourning procession from China Beatnik Sheila Melvin:
The Chinese micro-blogging universe is today filled with images of Shanghainese gathered outside the charred residential building in which more than 50 people died. Many of those gathered have come to lay flowers and hang banners; indeed, photos show that the entire area is blanketed with bouquets and the gatherings are clearly as much protest as mourning. Lots of blogs include images of mourners holding pictures of the dead as they walk past Shanghai Expo posters that proclaim “Better City, Better Life.” Bloggers are asking why there is still no official list of the dead; making all manner of comparisons to the “success” of the Expo and the failure implicit in this fire; and offering admiration to ordinary Shanghainese for coming out publicly to mourn. I think this is going to end up involving the arrest of a lot more than a few unlicensed welders. For those who are interested, China Daily ran what for it is a pretty thorough investigative story on the disaster and the widespread belief that its true cause is government corruption.
‘Dancing With the Stars’: Jennifer Grey sets the standard. Again.
Derek Hough and Jennifer Grey on last week's "Dancing With the Stars." Photo credit: Adam Larkey/ABC
“Our most-talked-about season,” Tom Bergeron said as the finals of “Dancing With the Stars” opened tonight. Yes, funny how a lighthearted dance contest morphed into a battlefield. I liked it better when it was a dance contest.
The three finalists — Kyle Massey, Bristol Palin and Jennifer Grey — have to perform four dances over two nights. They delivered the first two tonight.
In the first round, the couples reworked a dance they had performed earlier in the season. The show dubbed it the redemption round.
Up first were Massey and Lacey Schwimmer on the foxtrot. Earlier in the season, they had given the foxtrot a goofy ’70s flourish. This time around, Massey was surprisingly suave in a gold jacket. He was also more subdued than usual, and the dance was more traditional. Len Goodman, who tutored the couple in practice, said Massey had gone from messy to marvelous. Bruno Tonioli saw improved technique. Carrie Ann Inaba agreed, but wanted more exuberance in the next round. I’m with her. Scores: 27.
Then Palin and Mark Ballas went back to the jive. Earlier in the season, they started the routine in gorilla suits — a disastrous touch. In practice, Tonioli worked hard to push Palin out of her shell. His efforts paid off. Palin displayed more verve although her footwork still lacked pizazz. Tonioli, of course, took credit for the change. “Vast improvement,” Goodman said. Scores: 27 points.
Grey and Derek Hough came back to the paso doble, which they had messed up earlier in the season. In practice, Inaba urged Grey to deliver bigger movements. The results were grand and stylish, and Hough delivered one of his showiest performances ever on the show. Inaba embraced Grey and raved over her power. Goodman gave a rare standing ovation. “It was an evening in sultry Seville,” Tonioli babbled, adding that he never wanted this evening to end. “You end up frightening the children,” Bergeron kidded him. Scores: a perfect 30.
The first round to Grey.
Then it was on to the freestyle, and Schwimmer warned Massey that the couple with the best freestyle usually wins.
Dancing to “Tootsie Roll,” Massey started atop the judges’ table, did a cartwheel and showed off his backside through an energetic, rap-flavored routine. Goodman said he was no fan of “boogaloo” entertainment, but described it as great fun. “I loved every minute of it,” Tonioli said. Scores: 29, with 9 from Goodman.
In practice, Palin said she felt defeated, then started to learn Bob Fosse. How would a novice deliver the Broadway master? Palin and Ballas launched into a freestyle with a prison theme modeled on the Oscar-winning movie “Chicago.” Good, but it need more oomph. The judges said she aimed high but didn’t match earlier interpretations of such a well-known dance. Scores: 25, with 9 from the generous Goodman and 8 apiece from the others.
Grey ended the night with the most entertaining number, a rousing, rock ‘n’ roll workout for the 50-year-old actress. She was smoking. “Amazing,” Inaba said. “An irresistible force,” Goodman said, a nod to Grey’s general excellence through the season. Tonioli praised her versatility on two very different numbers. Scores: 30, perfection again.
Round two to Grey.
I see “Dancing With the Stars” mainly as a dance contest. On that score, Grey was the hands-down winner tonight.
The last show starts at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WFTV-Channel 9. The winner will be crowned close to 11 p.m.
“Life, it’s been said, is one big book…”: One hundred years of Qian Zhongshu
By Christopher Rea
“Men of letters love it when someone dies, since it gives them a topic for a memorial essay… ‘Commemorating the First Anniversary of So-and-So’s Death’ and ‘A Tri-Centennial Elegy’ are equally good topics.” — Qian Zhongshu, Fortress Besieged
????????????????????….“??????”?“????”???????? —???????
Headlines about China have been looking the same for some time now. “The China story” always seems to be political: labor riots and their suppression; sabre-rattling over Taiwan and cultural erasure in Tibet; catastrophic earthquakes and official ineptitude; internet censorship and jailed dissidents (the latest being Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo). Even ostensibly good news, such as the Chinese government’s investment in wind power, becomes yet another story about how China is going to eat our lunch.
These stories must be told, and the Chinese government’s feet must be held to the fire on many issues. Yet these stories collectively imply a “truth” about China that is equally misleading: namely that in China, politics is life.
This truism has become ingrained in Western views of Chinese culture. I was struck by this not long ago during a Canadian radio interview of the author Yu Hua when the host’s first question was whether or not Yu Hua was a “dissident.” A recent New Yorker article about China’s “most eminent writer” and former Minister of Culture, Wang Meng, set a similarly political agenda by asking whether Wang is a “reformer” or an “apologist” of the Communist Party. To be Chinese, as far as the West is concerned, seems to mean being for or against one’s government.
A more detached perspective is to be found in the writings of a man who might be called the best Chinese writer you’ve never heard of: Qian Zhongshu.
One hundred years ago today, Qian was born into a scholarly family in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Tutored in the classics from a young age, he went on to become modern China’s “foremost man of letters,” in Ronald Egan’s words, accumulating encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese and Western literatures, and putting it to use in his scholarship and creative writing.
A graduate of Tsinghua University, Qian studied European literature at Oxford and the Sorbonne before returning with his family to China in 1938 after the outbreak of war with Japan.
While teaching at various universities in southwestern China and Shanghai during the war, Qian composed a collection of essays, Written in the Margins of Life (1941); a collection of short stories, Human, Beast, and Ghost (1946); and a novel, Fortress Besieged (serialized, 1946-1947), as well as occasional poems and reviews, and a major work of poetry criticism. After the war he was recruited to teach at his alma mater in Beijing, but he soon transferred to an affiliated research institute and remained in China after the 1949 communist takeover, having turned down several job offers from abroad.
Qian Zhongshu’s fate in New China was, to a certain degree, similar to that of many Chinese intellectuals. He stopped creative writing, and his research was repeatedly interrupted by political campaigns. Unusually, due to his linguistic prowess, he was assigned to an elite group tasked with translating Mao’s poetry into English. He and his wife, the scholar-writer Yang Jiang, nevertheless suffered ideological criticism and, during the Cultural Revolution, were sent to rural Henan province for “re-education” and “reform” through agricultural labor. During the cultural thaw after Mao’s death, both resumed publishing and had their long-forgotten works “rediscovered” by the Chinese public.
This biography obscures the talent and self-possession that makes Qian’s literary and scholarly output during periods of war and political turmoil so remarkable. Widely read in modern and classical Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin, Qian pioneered a new model of comparative literature that drew out resonances in cross-cultural patterns of figurative language. In an early essay, for instance, he observes that just as the French word for “happiness” (bonheur) suggests that good (bon) things last no more than an hour (heur), so its Chinese equivalent kuaihuo implies that when one is happy one lives (huo) quickly (kuai). No mere purveyor of precious insights, Qian used such resonances as jumping off points for wide-ranging investigations of the human imagination.
These investigations are particularly striking for their urbane wit and Rabelaisian humor. In a language given to pithy idioms, Qian’s epigrams are in a league of their own. Hypocritical moralizing “is like doing business without capital—a veritable art.” Prejudice can be explained by the human heart’s anatomical position “not actually in the center, but to one side—and, most fashionably, slightly to the left.” Gravity accounts for why “lower-class people are so numerous and upper-class people so rare.” The English buzzwords a Shanghai businessman sprinkles in his Mandarin are like not gold teeth (which are functional as well as decorative), but rather “the bits of meat stuck between the teeth, which show that one has had a good meal but are otherwise useless.” All this from a writer who once dissuaded an over-eager fan by asking: “If you enjoyed eating an egg, would you bother seeking out the hen that laid it?”
In Qian’s fiction, such witticisms punctuate longer explorations of the human comedy. Fortress Besieged, one of modern China’s greatest novels, tells the story of a young man who, after several years of bumming around Europe, returns to China with a bogus, mail-order degree purchased from an Irishman. Back home, Fang Hongjian becomes entangled with two women, while trying to ward off conflicting demands from his elders, but he ends up alienating all of them and seeking refuge as a teacher at a no-name university deep in China’s interior provinces.
At this point, Qian’s satire of urban pseudo-intellectuals switches to picaresque adventure. Unlike much wartime fiction, however, our hero’s flight from Shanghai is motivated by a romance gone bad rather than the Japanese military threat. As with his later marriage to a colleague, Fang’s story is propelled not by the grand events of history but the petty cowardice of an intelligent and witty man who always ends up outwitting himself. Back in Shanghai, the newlyweds’ marriage quickly deteriorates and Fang ends up back where he started, bruised and alone. As a symbol of humans’ perpetual dissatisfaction with their lot, Fang’s fate strikes a deeper chord than the playful French proverb that likens marriage to “a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in; and those who are inside want to get out.”
While many of his fellow writers were penning anti-Japanese allegories, then, Qian, writing in occupied Shanghai, was depicting modern life as a comedy verging on the theater of the absurd. This detachment served Qian well through the indignities and deprecations of the Mao years. Countless Chinese writers kept their heads down and mouths shut in order to survive; only one completed a massive, multi-volume reappraisal of the Chinese literary canon, which the author self-deprecatingly titled Limited Views (1979-1980).
Indeed, if there is one recurring theme in Qian Zhongshu’s life’s work it is breadth of vision. In an early essay he likened near-sighted critics to flies buzzing from one pinch of garbage to the next, ironically praising them for their ability to find, like Blake, “a world in a grain of sand / And heaven in a wildflower.” Qian himself treated life like “one big book” and claimed to be content with merely jotting down “piecemeal, spontaneous impressions” in its margins. In fact, the panoramic vision we find in Qian’s “jottings” marks him as one of the twentieth-century’s great literary cosmopolitans. If he remains little known in the West, it is mostly because he wrote in Chinese.
Qian’s writings thus pose a challenge not just to overpoliticized views of China, but to the presumption that to be cosmopolitan is to play on the West’s terms. Living under three governments (Nationalist, Japanese, and Communist), Qian’s most “political” act was to establish his own autonomous republic of letters. Worldly and multilingual, he chose to live in China and write in Chinese. This is not to romanticize Qian as an “apolitical” author or, conversely, a patriot. The point is rather that he sustained an extraordinary degree of creative independence from his immediate circumstances. In Qian’s works, then, we find one “China” that rarely makes headlines.
Christopher Rea is assistant professor of modern Chinese literature at the University of British Columbia and the editor of Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays by Qian Zhongshu, which will be published by Columbia University Press in December. He is also the organizer of the workshop “Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang: A Centennial Perspective,” which will be held at UBC on December 10-12, 2010.
For more on Fortress Besieged, see Xia Shi’s essay, “From an Elite Novel to a Popular Metaphor.”
This week: ‘Dancing With the Stars’ names winner; ‘Skating With the Stars’ starts; Carol Burnett on ‘Glee’
Derek Hough and Jennifer Grey won perfect marks from the judges for this routine last week on "Dancing With the Stars." Photo credit: Adam Larkey/ABC
This week, the November sweeps period ends and television marks Thanksgiving with specials. A quick look at some important programs this week:
1. “Dancing With the Stars” wraps up another season. The celebrity finalists are Jennifer Grey, Kyle Massey and Bristol Palin. They perform two dances in the Monday show, which starts at 8 p.m. and runs till 9:11 on ABC. The winner will be announced in a two-hour show at 9 p.m. Tuesday. Christina Aguilera performs, and the three finalists will again perform two dances before the winner is named.
2. ABC tries to extend the “Dancing” formula to the ice with “Skating With the Stars.” The Disney-owned network gives the show a big start right after “Dancing” on Monday — note the odd start time at 9:11 p.m. The six celebrities are reality star Bethenny Frankel, Disney Channel star Brandon Mychal Smith, skier Jonny Moseley, “All My Children” actress Rebecca Budig, actress Sean Young and rocker Vince Neil. I’m thinking this show has the makings of a train wreck.
3. Calling all “Lost” fans: Jorge Garcia is a guest star on CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother” at 8 p.m. Monday.
4. In a stroke of inspired casting, TV legend Carol Burnett plays the mom of Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) on “Glee.” I’m so glad we’ll have the time together at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Fox.
5. Michael Nouri continues his guest role as Ziva’s father on “NCIS” at 8 p.m. Tuesday on CBS. And look for it to be one of the week’s most-watched programs.
6. “The Good Wife” features another strong guest cast, including Mykelti Williamson as an alderman, Ana Gasteyer as a judge and Elizabeth Reaser as Will’s latest admirer. The plot: Alicia (Julianna Margulies) learns some information about herself when reviewing wiretaps in a government case against the alderman. CBS promises that Orlando’s Scott Porter will be back this week as mystery investigator Blake. His scenes with Archie Panjabi as Kalinda have been outstanding. “The Good Wife” airs at 10 p.m. Tuesday on CBS — yes, CBS is not going to take a pass against the “Dancing” finale.
Coming for Thanksgiving night:
7. “Taylor Swift — Speak Now” gives the singer a chance to promote her latest album. NBC delivers the promotional push starting at 8 p.m.
8. ABC takes a look at Beyonce’s concert tour starting at 9:30 p.m. Jay-Z and Kanye West are guests.
9. Matt Lauer sits down with NBC’s “People of the Year” at 9 p.m. The selections include LeBron James and Kim Kardashian. And if you don’t like those names, keep in mind that Susan Boyle will sing.
10. The rescued Chilean miners attend “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute.” The program airs at 8 p.m.; Anderson Cooper hosts. The celebrity presenters include Kiefer Sutherland, Aaron Eckhart, Halle Berry, Marisa Tomei, Demi Moore, Jessica Alba, Kid Rock, LL Cool J, Renee Zellweger and Gerard Butler. Bon Jovi, Sugarland and John Legend will perform.
Cher helps ABC score a victory against CBS, Tom Selleck
Cynthia McFadden, right, interviewed Cher for ABC News. Photo credit: Ida Mae Astute/ABC
Boosted by “20/20,” which featured an interview with Cher, ABC was the favorite network of young adults Friday night.
The Disney-owned network squeaked by CBS in the 18-to-49 age group. But CBS remained the most popular network, by a wide margin, in total viewers.
CBS had the most viewers in each time slot: the canceled “Medium” with 7.3 million, “CSI: NY” with 10.2 million and “Blue Bloods,” the Tom Selleck crime drama, with 11.3 million.
ABC was second through the night with “Supernanny” with 4.1 million, “Primetime: What Would You Do?” with nearly 5 million and “20/20” with 6.8 million.
NBC offered “School Pride” (2.5 million), a “Dateline” interview with Prince Charles (5.8 million) and “Harmony,” a conservation film narrated by Charles (3.7 million). Fox offered a “House” repeat (3.4 million) and a new “Good Guys” (2.7 million). The CW aired “Smallville” (2.6 million) and “Supernatural” (2 million).
Here are the prime-time averages for the broadcast networks: CBS with 9.6 million, ABC with 5.3 million, NBC with 4 million, Fox with 3 million and The CW with 2.3 million.
Fox shifts ‘American Idol’: But where’s the fanfare?
The new team at "American Idol," from left: Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler and Ryan Seacrest. Photo credit: Michael Becker/Fox
One of the biggest TV stories this season unfolded Friday night, but Fox dumped the headline without fanfare. “American Idol“ is shifting nights in the new year.
Usually, networks treat bad news — such as a cancellation or an actor’s leaving a series — this way, putting out the headline late on a Friday so as to draw less press attention.
But moving “Idol” is a bold programming stroke by Fox. Not only will the show have new judges — Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler — but the performance show will play on Wednesdays. The results will be announced on Thursdays, where “Idol” will compete for viewers with “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS. Putting “Idol” on Thursday will bring Fox more lucrative movie advertising.
But where was Fox’s boldness in announcing the change?
The network had planned a conference call for reporters with “Idol” executive producer Nigel Lythgoe for Friday afternoon. Fox canceled the call at the last minute, and for good reason. The real news was coming later; the network announced the schedule change until after 10 p.m. Friday.
Fox’s midseason schedule also means new time slots for “Bones,” “Fringe” and “Kitchen Nightmares.” Another fall series, the low-rated “Running Wilde,” apparently has been canceled.
Fox announced the scheduling of “The Chicago Code,” a police drama from Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”); “Mixed Signals,” a romantic comedy; “Bob’s Burgers,” an animated comedy; and “Breaking In,” a workplace comedy with Christian Slater.
Fox will make many changes right after the network airs the Super Bowl on Feb. 6. An episode of “Glee” will follow the big game.
Here’s how the Fox lineup will look:
Mondays: “House” at 8; “Lie to Me” at 9. “The Chicago Code” moves into the 9 p.m. slot on Feb. 7.
Tuesdays: “Glee” at 8; “Raising Hope” at 9; “Mixed Signals” at 9:30. This schedule starts Feb. 8. “Glee” reruns will air in January, and the game show “Million Dollar Drop” will air at 9.
Wednesdays: “American Idol” two-hour season premiere on Jan. 19. Starting the next week: “Idol” at 8; “Human Target” at 9. Starting Feb. 16: two-hour editions of “Idol.” Starting April 6: 90-minute auditions of “Idol”; “Breaking In” at 9:30.
Thursdays: “Million Dollar Drop” at 8; “Bones” at 9. Starting Jan. 20: “Idol” at 8; “Bones” at 9.
Fridays: “Kitchen Nightmares” moves to the night on Jan. 21. Starting the next week: “Kitchen Nightmares” at 8; “Fringe” at 9.
Saturdays: “Cops” at 8; “America’s Most Wanted” at 9.
Sundays: Starting Feb. 13: “Simpsons” encores at 7; “American Dad” at 7:30; “The Simpsons” at 8; “Bob’s Burgers” at 8:30; “Family Guy” at 9; “The Cleveland Show” at 9:30.
MSNBC suspends Joe Scarborough two days for political contributions
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. Photo credit: NBC
MSNBC is going through a repeat of the Keith Olbermann suspension.
This time, Joe Scarborough will be suspended for two days from “Morning Joe.”
MSNBC President Phil Griffin issued this statement: “This morning Joe Scarborough informed me that he made eight contributions of $500 each to local candidates in Florida between 2004-08. In my conversation with Joe two weeks ago, he did not recall these contributions. Since he did not seek or receive prior approval for these contributions, Joe understands that I will be suspending him for violating our policy. He will be immediately suspended for two days without pay and will return to the air on Wednesday, November 24th. As Joe recognizes, it is critical that we enforce our standards and policies.”
MSNBC suspended Olbermann for two days after learning that he had contributed money to three candidates during the midterm elections. And Olbermann didn’t seek management’s approval, which violates company policy.
The Olbermann suspension became a sensation that boosted his ratings. But MSNBC drew ridicule for a policy that a lot of people see as out of date and silly. What will happen this time around?
Scarborough, a former Florida congressman, issued a statement:
“It was recently brought to my attention that I made political contributions over the past several years that are not consistent with MSNBC’s guidelines. These contributions were to close personal friends and family members and were limited to local races.
“Despite the fact that these races were local and not relevant to my work at MSNBC, I have been told they violated MSNBC guidelines.
“I recognize that I have a responsibility to honor the guidelines and conditions of my employment, and I regret that I failed to do so in this matter. I apologize to MSNBC and to anyone who has been negatively affected by my actions.
“I gave a number of $500 contributions to my brother and three longtime family friends. These contributions were nothing more than simple acts of friendship. I gained nothing personally, politically, or professionally from these donations.
“To be blunt, I had no interest in their campaigns other than being kind to longtime friends.”
China By the Numbers: The Chinese Professor and the Red Emperor
By Charles W. Hayford
Remember those jailbirds who know all of each others’ jokes? They don’t tell the whole joke, just shout out the number from the jokebook. Our public discourse on China has something of the same quality. Instead of shouting out a number, however, somebody “shouts out” a word or an image which evokes a whole China story. These stories can be persuasive, poetic, or insightful, but when we only “shout out” the number, then we don’t have the chance to examine the whole story. Painful facts or challenges to venerable beliefs can be papered over when the story is a misleading relic.
Working for the Chinese or Flunking the Chinese Professor?
In the recent U.S. elections, campaigns “shouted out” numbers for many classic China stories. As early as February, Steven Mufson and John Pomfret’s Washington Post article, “There’s A New Red Scare: But Is It So Scary?” responded to Sen. Lindsay Graham’s warning, “China’s going to eat our lunch.” Did nobody think to say that we had gotten our lunch at Panda Express anyway? But the stories continued. David Chen in the New York Times reported “China Emerges as a Scapegoat in Campaign Ads” and Jeff Yang posted “Politicians Play the China Card” on his National Public Radio blog, each with links to many examples. There were more Chinese flags, Chineesy music, and Chinese language than during any campaign in history. One candidate sarcastically thanked his opponent for creating jobs — in China. “Xie xie”, he said.
These stories resonate with long term Western worries about China’s size and seeming longevity (in fact, Chinese civilization did not start earlier than others, but has maintained continuity — or the myth of continuity). Americans have sometimes viewed China as a source of “cheap Chinese labor,” leading to immigration exclusion laws, and sometimes as home to millions of potential customers. If you want to see how these have worked out in popular TV shows, films, games, and comics, visit the website TV.tropes, a wiki devoted to “tropes,” which the site’s editors define as “devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.” Dozens of reader-contributed lists include “China Takes Over the World,” “Yellow Peril,” “Red Scare,” and even “Digging to China.” Too bad they don’t cover political ads and news media.
That’s because the sharpest example from the recent election was “The Chinese Professor,” presumably America’s first national political commercial in Mandarin. The sixty-second video, with English subtitles, was produced by Citizens Against Government Waste to attack federal deficits by dramatizing the China of the future.
The opening shot, captioned “Beijing China 2030,” shows a what looks like a business school classroom. There are casually dressed students and (amazingly!) Cultural Revolution Mao posters on the walls. Then we see the feet of the Chinese professor as he comes down a darkened runway, each step echoing ominously. He explains — in Chinese, remember — that the great empires of history collapsed one by one: the Greek, the Roman, the British… the American. The reason? Because “they turned their backs on their founding principles.” America fell because, in the midst of a recession, it relied on government stimulus spending, takeover of industries, big changes in health care systems, and massive debt. That, our professor concludes with a sardonic chuckle, “is why they work for us today.”
Jeremiah Jenne at Jottings from the Granite Studio debunked the ad as “Ignorant Incurious Certitude,” but James Fallows at the Atlantic called it “the first spot from this campaign season you can imagine people actually remembering a decade from now.” He allows that “if you know anything about the Chinese economy, the actual analytical content here is hilariously wrong” since three of the causes given for America’s decline have been crucial in the success of China’s anti-recession policy.
Alan Baumler’s Yellow Peril Mk 3 at Frog in a Well called “The Chinese Professor” an “updated Fu Manchu.” “Mk 3,” you of course know, is Mortal Kombat 3, the fighting game, and you will also doubtless recall the 1932 film, The Mask of Fu Manchu, in which the mad doctor schemes to find the sword of Genghis Khan and rouse all Asia to “wipe out the white race” and rule the world. Today’s version: “you will work for us.”
Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu. Image from imdb.
Certitude is impervious to facts, but sometimes ridicule helps. Jeff Yang’s NPR piece linked to a parody contest at Angry Asian Man. Fallows introduced a deadly funny animation by the Taiwan-based Next Media Animation in which a panda takes the role of the “Chinese professor.” The panda professor asks, “what makes a nation grow? Freedom?” He laughs. “No, it’s selling cheap crap to gullible foreigners… stealing technology from Steve Jobs.” Besides, he concludes, “we have motherf**cking pandas who can talk.”
Red Emperors or Communist CEOs?
The story which animates both Dr. Fu and the “Chinese Professor” is that of a once and future Chinese empire, the Middle Kingdom, returned from the dead. Other related “shout outs” also evoke an unchanging China. One is to call the People’s Republic a “New Dynasty,” “People’s Middle Kingdom,” or “Enduring Empire.” Another is to label the Chinese leader the “Red Emperor,” “People’s Emperor,” or even the classic “Emperor of the Blue Ants.” Other examples are here, here and here.
Recently even the London-based Economist, often a font of crisp good sense, published a lead editorial, “China’s Succession: The Next Emperor,” calling Xi Jinping a “crown prince” who was “anointed in a vast kingdom facing vaster stresses.” We are told not to think of a “self-confident, rational power that has come of age” but of a “paranoid, introspective imperial court.”
When a poet uses the metaphor “my love is a rose,” it’s not literal. We do not expect to see him with a watering can and pruning shears. He’s saying she’s sweet. Likewise, “emperor” and “dynasty” are one-word metaphors which, when used to start a discussion rather than cap one, are useful in sparking intuitive understanding and exploration. But used glibly, these words actually let China’s rulers off the hook. They become clichés which imply that there is no use discussing how the regime could become more responsive and effective since China is simply authoritarian by nature. Who could change “the China of 5,000 years”?
To be sure, Chinese themselves talk incessantly about emperors, courtiers, and dynasties. Xi Jinping is known as one of the Taizi Dang, or “Princelings Faction.” But what’s sauce for the oriental goose should be sauce for the western gander. Xi’s father rose in Chinese politics at about the time that George W. Bush’s father rose in American politics, but only young Mr. Xi called a “crown prince.”
I will also concede that Mao Zedong compared himself to Qin Shi Huangdi, who unified China and invented the title “Huangdi,” which we translate as “emperor,” and to Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Paradoxically, Mao admired both George Washington and Stalin as nation-builders, and as a revolutionary he destroyed the “feudal China” of the emperors, then boasted that he was a better poet than any of them. But no emperor built or destroyed on the scale that Mao did. In this, he is thoroughly modern.
Geremie Barmé wrestles with this conundrum in a classy essay, “For Truly Great Men, Look to This Age Alone — Was Mao Zedong a New Emperor?,” in Timothy Cheek’s A Critical Introduction to Mao (2010 — disclaimer: I have an essay there too). Barmé agrees that calling the Great Helmsman a “Red Emperor” is “careless essentialism” that promotes a “belief in an unchanging Chinese essence that pre-determines political or cultural behaviour.” On the other hand, he argues with supreme persuasiveness that to ignore the “imperial and the dynastic” in Mao’s China is to “blind ourselves to the persistence, reinvention, manipulation and limitations of tradition.” The trick, Barmé shows, is not to accept Mao’s imperial vocabulary at face value but to dig out what work Mao wanted the terms to do in a particular situation.
So what word should we use instead of “Red Emperor”? “New Great Helmsman” is way too Cultural Revolution. “Head Honcho” is out because it’s Japanese. The Mongol ruler of China was a “Khan,” but that’s another foreign word. “The Country’s Quarterback” wouldn’t fly in a soccer country. Nowadays, China seems one huge business conglomerate run by a Party CEO. Why not ditch the metaphors and stick to the actual title, “President of China”?
As I was finishing this piece, China Beat ran William Callahan’s review of John and Doris Naisbitt’s China’s Megatrends: The Eight Pillars of a New Society. Callahan points out that due to “the tight ideological control of the Chinese media” we cannot “easily separate ‘the facts’ from the narrative promoted by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department.” The narrative is shaped by the party-state’s “official formulations” (tifa ??), such as “emancipation of the mind,” “learn truth from facts,” “crossing the river by feeling for stones,” “scientific development and social harmony.”
The PRC’s tifa are tightly reined but sometimes the West’s free-range tropes also make it hard to discern “the facts.” The campaigns ads and commentaries raise real issues, but they refer us to stories which are dubious or even dangerous.
Charles W. Hayford is Visiting Scholar, Department of History, Northwestern University, and Editor, Journal of American-East Asian Relations. His piece “When Is a Farmer Not A Farmer? When He’s Chinese, Then He’s a Peasant” (Frog in A Well) argues that before 1949, the story in the word “peasant” was that China was “feudal” and in need of revolution.