Eastern Masculinity Meets Western Audiences: A Study on the Representation of Masculinity in A Better Tomorrow as Opposed to Rambo

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Hollywood in 1980s produced action films with heroic protagonist who would eventually achieve victory against all odds, and American audience loved them. The representatives of such films would be First Blood(1982), Rambo：First Blood Part Ⅱ(1985) and the third sequel in 1988, and the protagonist, Rambo, represented the personification of macho masculinity and became the darling of Hollywood action films. On the other hand, a few years later in the late 1980s, Hong Kong produced a series of films called romantic gangster thriller or so-called Hong Kong noir. They are often called romantic 'hero' films after the original, Chinese title of A Better Tomorrow(John Woo, 1986). Despite the fact that American film audiences in general have a notorious antipathy to foreign-language films, John Woo’s hero films succeeded in attracting them, to some extent. Eventually, the director gained fame as an auteur in action genre, and a bootleg video market for his films was established.

This essay tries to find out how John Woo’s hero films attracted American audiences in his films, in terms of Eastern-Chinese, to be more precise ways of representing masculinity. By examining, comparing and contrasting the first two Rambo films and the first two A Better Tomorrow films, each as the representatives of Hollywood action films and Hong Kong hero films, I would unveil how Eastern, to be more precise Chinese, and Western concepts and representations of masculinity differ, and how the representation of masculinity finds the common ground with the American or Western standards of masculinity and stands out at the same time.

First of all, the essay examines the ways the protagonists of A Better Tomorrow like Chow Yun-fat wearing raincoat and sunglasses are portrayed in comparison with Stallone exhibiting muscular body. Rambo expresses raw masculinity focusing on the muscular male body, but A Better Tomorrow draws attention on the face and facial expression of the characters. Close-up, the efficient device to force the audience to have a hard look at what is shown on the screen, is used on the muscular body parts in Rambo and on interpreting the facial expressions in A Better Tomorrow. The fact that A Better Tomorrow expresses only dressed, tamed male may be interpreted as consuming the images of Asian male, which is undersexed or desexualized, thus Western male audiences could accept the film series without feeling threatened. Slow motion and long takes with music are used in the battle scenes of A Better Tomorrow to emphasize the importance of emotions the main characters share, which is solemn and tragic feelings as they try to defend friendship, loyalty and honor. On the other hand, Rambo’s body in close-ups makes the audience to concentrate on the fragmented body rather than the emotive feelings, thus to materialize and to desire his body as a sexual object.

The cultural and psychological backgrounds are also different. Rambo inherits individualism, which is found in the tradition of mythical heroes of the West, and it fits to the film’s theme：the individual’s struggle against an unjust system. On the other hand, the protagonists in A Better Tomorrow put the highest values on the brotherhood, not a literal but figurative one bound with loyalty and honor. Wide shots place the protagonists in the same frame and symbolize the brotherhood of enduring and struggling through all the hardships together. The roots of such brotherhood can be found in Chinese cultural sentiments that values heart and emotive feelings among people rather than reason or principles, and in the Chinese classic literature, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Lastly, but not least, the common factor between Rambo films and A Better Tomorrow sequels seems not only interesting but also meaningful. It is nothing but the fact that so-called love interests or physical affection with females do not exist. It is just like the lonely hero walking into the sunset in Western genre or Batman who has problems being in a serious relationship with a woman. In short, John Woo’s romantic gangster films share Hollywood’s strategy to deny the hero's relationship with females and to focus on the male hero. And, by doing so, they efficiently moderate and deliver unfamiliar concept of Eastern masculinity represented by brotherhood in male community.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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