Accidentally xenophobic.
I decided to review this novel after reading, just to showcase another xenophobic trash. It's not fully xenophobic, I ust have no idea if author themselves realized their actions what they wrote (at one point their praised Hollywood system and the star treatment, which showcased to me they know little about Hollywood at all), from another side they used a balck and white person for very stereotypical roles in one part. Speechless.
You won't know it's garbage, it didn't start like one but eventually you reach a certain point of the story and realize "wow, this is kinda racist" and the more you read the more confusing it becomes.
I wish authors would just stay in the lane of writing their small online novels, because stepping on others to highlight yourself just to condemn the same behavior in your writing is hypocritical. I'm surprised this story has a pretty high ranking on JJ. But I suppose many are okay with what they see.
The story is about Jian Yiyu. FMC comes from the apocalyptic world (at the beginning we know little about it, before FMC reveals that only few bases only in China survived in her world), she does not follow the usual script of starved ghost who survived famish and is not a foodie persona which is abundant in such articles, she is more open-minded and a bit childish about her curiosity about the world she now wants to experience, since her world lacked everything this peaceful time has. But she is not naive or gullible or stupid. The chance to film in a movie and a promise of expanding her worldview she agrees to shoot a movie, which lets her enter the entertainment industry this novel is about.
My main dissatisfaction with this novel (few actually). Objectification. Although it's the fault of the MTL, but if you took a shot every time the FMC is described as "sexy" you'd die of poisoning. Author tries to downplay it by making Jian Yiyu to choose only significant roles, which do not portray her as stupid bimbo or just use her for hype since her figure is so sexy~. But still uses so much time to describe her beauty. The problem of beauty in Asia (like anywhere else, but still) is known globally. Because of it I can't find a lot of redeeming qualities of Jian Yiyu outside of her beauty and body. Outside her personality that is ready to help which is good and love for life and innocence of kids she wants to protect, I have no idea what else to praise. She is always described by others how great she is, how stunning she is, that she is a great actress, but outside of her martial arts that ppl praised for 100 times, I haven't seen at least one good portrayal of her great acting. It's the classic example of tell, but don't show. She has some really good moments actually, but they drown in the praise at other times.
LOGIC. Yiyu openly uses her strength which is beyong normal and no one says a thing or doubts it. I bet you anything she'd be locked up in a second. Logic of many other things is to be desired.
Shallow. Characters, plot, quite everything is pretty shallow. Although it's an entertainment industry story, but surprisingly it's shallow overall. Dialogues, barrages, movie scripts are mentioned as ideas or never mentioned at all, variety shows are lacking etc. Also what author doesn't want to describe will be fast-forwarded. The writing style is mostly meh.
Xenophobia (accidental?). My biggest one. Did not start as such, but managed to touch upon racism and I have many questions. In several instances when other are racist and Yiyu has some cool comeback or smth, to showcase that she is above it. In short when authors decided to showcase how popular Jian Yiyu is with her virality she filmed in several blockbusters, one was about vampires (which again was "just a movie about vmpires" with no further details) where a main actress was racist towards Yiyu and used slurs, but not only to Yiyu. A black guy put a bomb in a car used for filming (head full of questions), which was directed at the main actress but detonated when Yiyu was filming (?), of course she and her super strength saved the day pushing the car far away where it blew up. So the guy did it because the actress was racist towards him (I mean.. come on) and he retaliated (that's a murder sir). Doesn't this remind you of stereotypes about black people? The main actress was fired, later when re-shooting happened she appeared again, was arrested for trespassing, but also was found in drug posession. I kid you not, this stereotype isn't even funny.
Auhor also tried to create a buzz online in her novel, but because they're so bad at dialogues it was just so random. Doesn't fully tell you the picture of how it really is.
Even a small detail how Jian Yiyu never liked eating Western food.
And also Yiyu expressed she doesn't want to have an English name and her original name has such a great meaning. That's great actually. I have no idea if Chinese will choose an English name nowadays, but I thought they used original names nowadays. Ppl butcher names of foreigners all the time, not China-exclusive. Easiest way to handle is to have introductory video with correct pronunciation.
Unoriginality. Author had no idea of their own I think. The plot of rifters movie might have been taken from somewhere since author later used basically existing movies to fill the gaps. The killer movie with ML basically has the vibe of John Wick. The Vampire movie, with no plot even mentioned. A zombie move, with no plot. Actor's name was Nolan Statham. A movie about superheroes that is decades old - basically Avengers (note: novel was written in '18, which marked the decade of Avengers, authors said that their novel superhero movies earned less and less and wanted to use Yiyu for buzz..as if she became some international celeb, but we all know that the last Avengers movies were box office hits, ironic).
Note: There is a scene of zombie movie promotion, large-scale prank with actors in zombie make-up. Yiyu told everyone to run and for some reason ppl panicked. I thought this was stupid, because I'm sure ppl will not run when seeing zombies, with Halloween culture of US, even me who sits an ocean apart knows that ppl won't think about an outbreak like her panicky ass. It's good she didn't hurt anyone for real. One actor got a concussion because of her, FMC for you.
The saving grace of this novel is the irony of self-criticism? I'm surprised how such authors can pour a lot out, but manage to criticize their own industry through and through. So confusing.
We all know that each country's entertainment industry is unclean. People use their positions to get benefits. A lot of exploitation happens. And author went hard on almost everything. Through several instances criticized a lot.
Another contestant on Dance with the stars revealed more and more and was more and more suggestive in her moves (again, sexy dances that made FMC famous in the first place), while Yiyu of course did not follow the "path of flesh" and danced with connotation.
This is the only worthy phrase of the entire novel to me that described the situation (but I doubt this one belongs to author too)
"She chose this method to attract and gain attention, which is very short-sighted. It will be difficult in the future for her to put on the clothes she took off so easily."
Of course it's all shallow and described how the career of this woman was ruined and she basically landed only notices where she needed to wear revealing clothes.
Through another actor and a child star they created a buzz around child stars exploitation. Tbh I feel like authors are naive when they create their main characters as if they came to this world to "fix all problems". If it wasn't for her who would expose those unscrupulous filming sets (no need to mention she managed to film several hours of footage being on that set like nobody noticed a girl with a phone, I bet she was a ninja).
Water armies and internet troll, discrediting someone's reputation. I forgot in which year they rectified Weibo for this reason, because it became truly unruly.
On another instance where the vampire movie needed investment author through Yiyu praised the Hollywood system, but criticised how home investors like to shove people in and change the script disregarding the result or original script that already took shape.
I put this under a question mark because you can throw dirty water in both directions. Doesn't excuse you. I just saw no need to ever mentioning the Hollywood movies and US at all. It didn't add anything, only worked in the opposite direction for me.
I think I read other more compelling stories that handled such instances better and were not so shallow.
I think I'm all over the place with this one. But I just don't want to go on a re-telling journay to pinpoint where I think things did not work. It just generally didn't work for me. And I managed to read like 52 chapters (out of 88).
It's one of those novels that started more or less promising, I liked that the FMC wasn't a naive girl who thought only about food. But later she participated more and more, everything was described in passing like a shallow puddle and did not matter at all. Plus the problematic content that could as well not exist at all. She got her portrayal with a halo around her head that is always right. She used strength to prove a point but not always was right, but it was never mentioned. The story wants her to be an actress but it also is all over the place and like a pipe dream. And because of the way it's written I got bored.
No comments:
Post a Comment