Zhang Yimou - Person of the Year 2008 Runnerup- TIME

I'm a big fan of China (political ideology aside) and Zhang Yimou's early work, but I really don't get TIME's selection of Zhang as
a runner-up for the 2008 Person of the Year (forgive the delay in this posting, I just came across the article).

My presumption without working in TIME's editorial office is that his selection went something like this: TIME felt someone from China should be a runner-up in 2008. But who? Then they ran down a list of names from China the average American will recognize and it came to about 10, most of them movie stars.

If anyone should have been recognized for 2008, it should have been the Chinese athletes, collectively. Their success in the gold medal count stands out as an accurate reflection of China's recent ascendance.

TIME'S article is oddly written by Steven Spielberg (who better than to write an accolade to the wonder of Zhang's Olympic Ceremony achievement than the man who withdrew from directing the ceremony over China's guns-for-oil trade in Sudan?). Spielberg dedicates a good part of the article's space toward discussion of Zhang's early years when he was truly an influential filmmaker.

Certainly, Zhang's perseverance through the Cultural Revolution and his early achievements in artistic directing are worthy of much admiration. I would have to concur with Spielberg in describing Raise the Red Lantern as Zhang's "magnum opus." I am also a fan the Chinese director's sentimental human interest stories, especially The Story of Qiu Ju, Not One Less and Happy Times. To Live–contrary to Zhang's Wikipedia entry as it now stands–was Zhang's "first epic," and it is a grand and moving film. His early films Red Sorghum and Ju Dou were gritty, depressing arthouse fair, but sensibly crafted.

Zhang's latest work, though, has been complete shit. Hero was a totalitarian apology that borrowed heavily from the style of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whose commercial success I presume Zhang was seeking to emulate (and indeed, Hero was a significant blockbuster in China, with heavy backing from the formerly antagonistic Chinese authorities). Spielberg forgets to add CP propagandist to the items listed in his biography.

Hero was followed up by House of Flying Daggers, starring Zhang Ziyi, the second of directory Zhang's two great muses (after Gong Li, the star of countless Zhang films). Zhang Ziyi is a capable and talented actress and the film contained fine action sequences and cinematographic strokes–but the plot was hopelessly muddled and never truly came together. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, Zhang's 2006 movie, has received little attention–I live in China, but I never heard of the film until researching this blog entry (I was aware that Zhang had done a film that supposedly returns to his early film styles–but no one I know has mentioned seeing the film and it has had no broad cultural resonance).

Zhang Yimou's most recent film, Curse of the Golden Flower (and this film truly is a curse) was ever-present at the time of its release–but it was noted more for the bosom-busting attire worn by Gong Li and the presence of Taiwanese crooner Jay Chou than cinematic achievement. The film is generally agreed to be a bust, pardon the pun, and I would have to say it's even worse–it's like watching a bad video game from the mid-80's, only one that drags on for several hours and in which you don't get to play. It's kitsch, and not cult kind of kitsch, more like Ronald McDonald kind of kitsch...

Well.

Lets get on to 2008 and the Olympic Ceremony (with only a few diversions left to ponder).

First, I have to disclose some bias on where I spent the Opening Ceremony. I was not one of those with Party (capital P) or corporate connections who made it into the Bird's Nest stadium, where the ceremony took place. Nor was I one of the people who paid hundreds of dollars to the people who had connections to get a ticket. I was one of the many thousands of people standing outside–unable to even catch a good glimpse of the fireworks because of police barricades that literally bisected the entire city in half and unable to partake informally in the celebrations because large public gatherings were not permitted during the Olympics unless they took place inside a stadium.

I did walk several miles in a sweltering mid-August heat to access transportation back to a friend's apartment (taxis and buses were completely logjammed anywhere near the Olympic Village) and catch the second half of the ceremony on TV. Later, I watched a pirated DVD of the early parts of the ceremony.

Now I suppose I should present in more detail my problem with TIME calling Zhang an anywhere-near "Person of the Year."

Person of the Year, as I perceive their criteria, is a designation for persons of great influence. China as a nation no doubt has had tremendous influence in the last year.

When historians look back on 2008, there is no doubt that they will identify Henry Paulson, another of the runner-ups, as man with influence–America's fiscal mismanagement has had reverberations across the globe and Paulson has been front-and-center on the Bush Administration's stumbling efforts to keep a lid on the mess.

The selection of Nicolas Sarkozy I'm a bit puzzled by. I don't want to dismiss it outright because my knowledge of European politics is embarrassingly slim, but I was not particularly convinced by the Tony Blair article, which mostly noted that Sarkozy is easy to get along with.

I think the jury is still out on whether Sarah Palin, the third runner-up, will have lingering influence–God I hope not. Her brand of folksy, no-nothing, common Joe brand of evangelical-Christian politics are hardly new–there is a man named George W. Bush who is walking out the White House door in a few days who ran on, and governed with, the same platform for the last eight years. Palin has been a big media story for the last six months, but if she isn't elected to national office in the future the water cooler stories about her hunting habits and Midwestern/Alaskan accent and pregnancy secrets and so on will be the minor sphere of niche historians.

The "Person of the Year," or runner-up, doesn't need to be nice person, either historically (as TIME has used the title) or in my estimation. Vladimir Putin is a thug masquerading as a politician, but I have no objection to TIME selecting him as its 2007 Person of the Year because I think the direction he has put Russia on will have lingering impact for many years to come, even beyond whatever years he has remaining as Russia's leader, officially or unofficially.

Barack Obama's selection as this year's "Person of the Year" is also undoubtedly a valid choice–he is not only the first black president in a country that began with slavery and segregation, but also a radical departure politically and philosophically from his immediate predecessor, Mr. Bush. Both men are arrogant in their own way–but Obama chooses to back up his self-reliance with wide consultations and old-fashioned book-learning, whereas Bush relied more on gut instinct, faith and a small consortium of secretive associates with heavy personal agendas. Obama now inherits a country in fiscal and ideological crisis, not to mention two wars, and how he handles that task will be as important to America as FDR's oversight of the New Deal, Ronald Reagan's approach to the Cold War, and other significant moments in history (I don't think FDR personally ended the Depression, nor do I think Reagan "won" the Cold War, but I do think the decisions both made at crucial times helped to gently steer the nation away from more dire situations that other leaders may not have been able to avoid)...

Getting back to the main subject: I have to be quite honest when say I am surprised by the decision to call Zhang's Opening Ceremony influential. Maybe I'm only in some fringe minority when I say this, but here is one problem I have with the 2008 Opening Ceremony: I I found it kind of boring. Yes, there were thousands of people participating in carefully orchestrated movement's, ala North Korea's Mass Games. But there was no life in it, no vibrancy. I've seen more life in a child running through a fountain on a sunny day. For me, watching the Opening Ceremony dancers was akin to watching someone try and do a tango wearing a Tin Man suit–the outfit may be heavy and expensive, but does it really represent the moment?

To a certain extent, it did. Beijing was pretty staid during the Olympics. Migrant workers were encouraged to leave the city, students were booted out, many foreigners were denied visas, DVD and nightclubs were temporarily shuttered, and a polite but pervasive police presence was spread across the city. I've been to university athletic competitions in China that had more spirit than the Olympics, with its half-empty stadiums, yellow shirt "volunteer fans," dismal concession food (Snickers and sausage? That's how you want to represent Chinese cuisine to the world?). So if boring and overhyped is what you want label the Olympics, then Zhang would be a not-inaccurate representation.

Just one problem. The Olympics did have one cool aspect: awesome performances by athletes from all over the world. Michael Phelps domination in swimming will certainly be remembered and discussed and shown on TV time and time again. China didn't have a signature face like that in these Olympics, but it did have a lot of stellar performances– enough to totally dominate the gold medal tally. The flagbearer for the Chinese team was Yao Ming, who could have been labeled a Person of the Year a few years ago for the basketball frenzy he unleashed on the world's most populous country. But in this recent Olympics, China's national basketball team was still decidedly mediocre and Yao was unable to lift them to medal status, making him a poor choice for a 2008 Person of the Year.

Liu Xiang, China's face of the Olympics and the subject of a monster New York Times Play Magazine article right before the Games, withdrew abruptly, walking out of the stadium only moments before his first heat was supposed to begin. So he has no 12 or 13 seconds of fame to be remembered by.

Guo Jingjing, on the other hand, is an advertising beacon (like Yao and Liu), consistent gold medal-winner, and she did perform to expectation in the game– but her personality is surly and unexciting, and she's not very well known abroad, far away from the South China gossip pages.

So who is there to represent China's Olympic Year? (A year in which China has been on top of the news generally, whether for the tragedy in Sichuan, food safety crises, or its rising strength in the world economy).

Hu Jintao is the nation's chief executive, but he is a faceless bureaucrat who rose to power, in my estimation, by not ruffling anyone's feathers. His theories of scientific development or whatnot are not coherent enough (or sufficiently implemented) for presentation as a template for the future of China.

Choosing a dissident as Person of the Year would feel ennobling, but it would also be a faulty–China's dissidents haven't had much influence in recent years, despite the heavy and constant attention they're given in the Western media.

In a recent Hong Kong poll, the sex-scandaled Edison Chen was designated as runner-up for Person of the Year (after Barack Obama). If notoriety were a criterion, that might be a good choice–but I don't think Chen will prove to have been significant for more than a brief period of lurid national fascination. Chen is China's Paris Hilton, only with more acting credibility. Unfortunately for the Canadian-born singer and pop star, he took his computer in for repairs at the wrong store and someone delved into his personal self-starring pornography collection. Chen and his (now-humiliated starlets) are hardly the first porn that's been seen in China, a country where the pirated DVD market isn't limited to copies of Shrek and Toy Story, local protestations of chastity to the contrary. So he may have been much discussed, but hardly representative of a new trend...

With those dismissals, I still feel there are many individuals in China who would have made a better candidate for the designation than Zhang Yimou, an aging starlet with a dress (the artiste) that no longer fits him.

The Opening Ceremony was not art, it was extravagance, and the two should never be confused (in this sense, Spielberg was a logical choice to write the TIME story on Zhang, seeing as his films have often confused the two).

The Opening Ceremony may or may not have been watched by three billion people (making it the Super Bowl multiplied), but I don't know how many of them it made a lasting impression on, other than Roger Ebert (who apparently was enraptured).

China has a rich history, worthy of recognition at a time like the Olympics, but I found the symbolism invoked by the Opening Ceremony more contrived than convincing. Maybe others felt differently, I don't know.

In any case, my personal feeling is that Zhang was a bit of a lazy choice, another celebrity name in TIME's celebrity-heavy 2008 Person of the Year roster (lets be honest: Sarkozy would not have been as close to the top of the list were it not for his wife switch, nor would Palin have been as prominent if she wasn't a former beauty pageant candidate. After all, Dan Quayle, Palin's intellectual peer, wasn't selected for any Person of the Year write-ups in 1988–and his ticket won).

If TIME wanted to make an easy choice, they should have awarded Person of the Year to The Chinese Athlete (generally). After all, China has risen from a country with no Olympic team a few decades back to a team to be feared in many, if not most, events. If it's China's moment, why not recognize it?

One more thought-provoking alternative–again, assuming a China selection (of course there are other worthy possibilities from countries across the globe)–would have been to select a volunteer from the Sichuan earthquake. Yes, there is no single volunteer that had a "world impact"... but the moving story of one volunteer (and there were many) could have been used to represent the many local who responded with assistance in the wake of the earthquake. These volunteers represent a tide, civic consciousness, whose legacy might very well endure long after Yimou's ceremony (with it's lip-syncing children, New Age music, and faux minority costuming) is rightfully buried at the bottom of the DVD bin.

Civic consciousness is China's future.