When news spread that Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was being pulled in China because of controversial scenes involving Bruce Lee, Chinese film fans reacted with collective disappointment, not support.
Many Chinese netizens said they backed Tarantino's freedom of artistic expression and hated to see another movie being "banned." The film was due to be shown in mainland China on October 25.
"Almost all the movies I planned to watch this year have been pulled," read a popular comment on China's Twitter-like Weibo.
2019 is a year of many political anniversaries in China, including the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Film insiders say four major movies, such as The Hidden Swordand The Eight Hundred, have been canceledso far this year, sparking claims of censorship.
According to The Hollywood Reporter,Tarantino's film about Hollywood in the 1960s wasn't pulled because of anything going on in China, it was "put on hold indefinitely" because Lee's daughter Shannon was upset by its portrayal of her father.
She had previously said that it was disheartening to see her father characterized as an "arrogant a**hole." An early review of the film called the representation of Lee, a martial arts icon decades after his death, "emasculating."
Writing on the Chinese review website Douban, filmgoers who had watched the movie outside China admitted feeling uncomfortable with Lee's portrayal as a blowhard who is easily beaten by a stuntman played by Brad Pitt.
But, they wanted to see the movie and said they were baffled by reports of Shannon Lee, an American citizen, appealing to the Chinese authorities to censor a Hollywood production.
"Just watched the movie, I felt the Bruce Lee scenes have little to contribute to the story arc. Could see why his family and fans would be pissed. But that doesn't mean you should take it to China's film authority and ask for censorship," said one comment on Weibo.
Tarantino, the director of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, has a cult following in China. The Chinese internet's surprising collective support for the director instead of Bruce Lee, an ethnic Chinese star, may also be a sign of Lee's relative fame on the mainland.
Around the world, especially in the US, Lee is still remembered as a unique film icon who shattered stereotypes and the "bamboo ceiling" with pioneering roles in the 1960s and 70s.
But Lee, who passed away in 1973, never gained that kind of explosive stardom in mainland China. At the peak of his fame in the 60s and 70s, mainland China was embroiled in the catastrophic Cultural Revolution.
Some of Lee's movies were smuggled to mainland China as bootleg VHS tapes in the 80s and 90s. Over the years, Lee has become a household name in the country, but his recognition came late and there is much less of the resonance he enjoys globally.
Most Chinese under 30 know Lee from The Legend of Bruce Lee, a 50-part TV series aired by state broadcaster CCTV in 2008, which Shannon Lee helped to produce.
"I don't think he was widely known in the country until then. It (the CCTV series) was part of the government's program to reclaim Lee as a Chinese hero," Matthew Polly, author of a biography of Lee, told Inkstone.
Lee was born in San Francisco in 1940 and raised in Hong Kong, before moving back to the US. Polly believes he never visited mainland China.
"In one of the many fictional parts of the show, he beats up a white guy at a tournament in California (never happened) and then turns to the crowd and shouts, "I am Chinese! I am Chinese!" Polly said.
"While Bruce was very proud to be Chinese, he was not a nationalist. He was also proud to be American and to be Eurasian. He was proud of every part of himself, to the point of cockiness, and refused to pick a side when asked," he added.
Although the series was a massive hit for CCTV at the time, the producers' efforts to rebrand Lee as a Chinese hero may not have been entirely successful, if netizen's reactions to the Tarantino film's apparent ban is any measure.
The director has reportedly refused to re-edit the film for it to be shown in China, the world's second-largest box office.
Bona Film, the movie's Chinese backer, has not replied to Inkstone's request for comment.
Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
