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I really don’t know what to make of this one. I mean, there’s the racial angle, the nationalism angle. And then there’s also the fact that we’re talking about the star of Rumble in the Bronx, and how his comments have already ignited a firestorm in Hong Kong and Taiwan (i.e. being taken really seriously). Then again, I guess we could expect a similar reaction if Arnold Schwarzenegger ever made comments like this. Wait, he did.

If you’re not already aware, Jackie Chan made the following comments to a group of Chinese businessmen last week:

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.”

He went on to say:

"I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

God forbid, right? Understandably, this hasn’t sat very well with many in China, particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan (though the media in mainland China hasn’t had very much to say about it; this is the same media that edited out all references to Taiwan in Ang Lee’s Oscar acceptance speech for Brokeback Mountain). The blogging community has already gone on to describe Chan as a fascist and a racist, some even going so far as to illustrate his point with images of Chinese torture victims, asking if this was the kind of control he meant.

Just to fully illuminate the issue, it’s best to mention that many interpret this as an act by Chan meant to curry favor with the ruling Communist Party, which recently banned his latest film, Shinjuku Incident for being too violent. Though Chan was an ardent critic of the government around the time of Tiananmen Square, he has remained fairly quiet in recent years.

Not having been to China, and being only vaguely familiar with the tensions that exist between the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (not to mention Tibet), I’m at something of a loss as to what this represents (though I have an aching feeling that it will come up again when that Red Dawn remake comes out; you know, the one where the Russians have been replaced by the Chinese). I can’t say exactly how we should react to this as Americans (that whole part of the world is kind of teetering on the brink right now as it is), but I have a fairly good idea of how we should react to it from an entertainment perspective.

If we’re going to criticize Chan for attacking the Chinese, we’re overlooking one basic fact: the guy’s Chinese himself. Not to, you know, take a stance on this issue, but he’d know better than I would. As the media seems to consistently forget whenever anything truly controversial is said by anyone with access to major media outlets (Don Imus, anyone?), what’s really at issue here is free speech. He can say whatever he wants, and it’s not our job to try and tell him that he can’t.

If, on the other hand, we collectively decide that Chan’s right, and that Chinese people need to be regulated by a stark, authoritarian government with little concern for civil rights (in contrast to the way it is now), we’d be making one of the primary mistakes of the affirmative action era, being that anything a member of a race says about that race needs to be accepted based solely on the fact of that person’s race (I refrain from the word ‘minority,’ because that’s not really the case here). It seems obvious, but try and find a major media outlet willing to contest it. What we, as Americans, have never really accepted is that people of races don’t always agree with each other, and in so many knee-jerk liberal attempts to avoid saying anything racist, the most racist presumption of all is made, which is that of homogenization. There’s no such thing as the ‘black opinion’ or the ‘Chinese opinion’ anymore. Again, it seems obvious, but see if you can find anyone saying it.

Chan has already responded, saying that the comments were taken out of context, but if I had to guess, I’d say that this is going to be another Imus situation. He’s effectively blacklisted for about six months, then comes back in full force after everyone has moved on to something else to be furious about. Let’s face it: it’s the American way.