Remarks:
My favourite David Bowie song. In 1983 it went to #9 across the Anglosphere (weighted average). It is his remake of the 1977 Iggy Pop song of the same name that they wrote together in a castle in France. Nile Rodgers produces, Stevie Ray Vaughn plays lead guitar.
The video was shot in Chinatown in Sydney, Australia. It was banned in several countries because of the love scene at the end.
This is the video, by the way, that beat out Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for Best Male Video at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. And that was after David Bowie had openly criticized MTV for being racist. Which brings up:
Is “China Girl” racist?
In 1983, Bowie said of the “China Girl” and “Let’s Dance” videos:
“They’re almost like Russian social realism, very naive. And the message that they have is very simple – it’s wrong to be racist! [laughs] … I mean, these are little movies, and some movies can have a point, so why not try to make some point. This stuff goes out all over the world; it’s played on all kinds of programs. I mean – you get free point time!“
And Niles Rodgers says about the stereotyped riff that opens the song:
“David was either going to hate this so much he would fire me, or he was going to get the comedic value of writing this silly little poppy thing.”
Bowie loved it instantly.
It is that hipster racist satire thing: use stereotypes to make fun of stereotypes. Ha ha. The trouble is that many will not “get the comedic value”, but just have their racism confirmed.
And I am not so sure Bowie himself completely gets it. Like:
- He does that thing that racist White people think is funny, and in the video he thinks it is funny too: pulling up the corner of his eyes (at the 1:12 mark). She did make fun of his nose, but it is not the same thing.
- In concert he has used a mock Chinese accent for “Oh baby, just you shut your mouth.” (See the 3:20 mark in this video from 2002.)
- The song brings up Marlon Brando, but in “Sayonara” (1957) Brando’s girlfriend was Japanese not Chinese.
- The woman the song was written about was neither Chinese nor a girl: KueLan Nguyen, a Vietnamese French woman Iggy Pop had a short affair with.
“China” seems to have a triple meaning: she is from China (which seems to mean East Asia stereotyped as “China”), she is addictive like “China White” (heroin), she is fragile like china (porcelain).
Geeling Ching, who played the title character, is proud of the video and says its message is “quite clear”. She is a Chinese New Zealander who at the time was a model and waitress in Sydney. She had been a Bowie fan since his Ziggy Stardust days. She dated Bowie afterwards but hated the lack of privacy. She said the whole thing was like living in someone else’s dream.
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Welcome to Asian American History Month 2016
- songs, the 1980s
- Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar
- In memoriam: David Bowie
- Carl Douglas: Kung Fu Fighting – more on that stereotyped riff
- More Nile Rodgers:
- Asian women
- racist jokes
Lyrics:
Oh, oh, oh, little China girl
Oh, oh, oh, little China girl
I could escape this feeling, with my China girl
I feel a wreck without my, little China girl
I hear her heart beating, loud as thunder
Saw the stars crashing
I’m a mess without my, little China girl
Wake up in the morning where’s my, little China girl
I hear her heart’s beating, loud as thunder
Saw the stars crashing down
I feel a-tragic like I’m Marlon Brando
When I look at my China girl
I could pretend that nothing really meant too much
When I look at my China girl
I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
Plans for everyone
It’s in the white of my eyes
My little China girl
You shouldn’t mess with me
I’ll ruin everything you are
You know, I’ll give you television
I’ll give you eyes of blue
I’ll give you a man who wants to rule the world
And when I get excited
My little China girl says,
Oh baby, just you shut your mouth
She says, shhh
She says, shhh
She says
She says
Sources: mainly Rolling Stone (1983), Songfacts (2016), Daily Mail (2016).
742
I’ve always loved that song but I’ve also always felt uneasy about it. Thanks for the post.
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The “Let’s Dance” era Bowie was Bowie at his coked-out nadir. The album is insipid and uninspired. I was a huge Bowie fan back in the day and was eagerly anticipating this record. The first time I heard it, I felt like I did when I was a kid looking at the corpse of a beloved Aunt or Uncle at a funeral home showing. My feelings about this record have only gotten more negative with further listenings.
The album would be a deflated, post-flatulence corpse were it not for the heroic efforts of Nile Rodgers to breath some life into the beast — and make no mistake, any life in that record is 100% Nile Rodgers. In a way this is a testament to the genius, or at least the dogged determination, of Nile Rodgers. Nobody else would have been able to get so many miles out of this dog.
The song “China Girl” is a recycled joint that was first recorded by Iggy Pop on “The Idiot”. Iggy’s version is about a scrillion times better. The irony drips from Iggy’s version, leaving no mistake that its intent was to skewer western racism and imperialism. The last line in the tune, the “ssshhhhh….”, Iggy utters it once, perfectly. Bowie repeats it thrice, failing to nail it each time.
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Is this a re-run?
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Reblogged this on Mixed American Life.
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Kiwi, nothing you said has any basis in reality, and nothing of it can be deduced from the post…
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From the description, don’t think I can even stomach watching the video. I don’t get why people today still think pulling the corners of their eyes up is acceptable.
@ Kiwi
On the one hand, I can understand the feeling that she should have known what she was getting into. On the other, I think it’s rather easy for East Asian people to get brainwashed in western countries. Due to the model minority, they think they’re accepted by white people. Especially if they’ve never experienced anything overt, it seems to me they’re more willing to let all the covert things slide, fetishism included. Or they’re so desperate to be honorary whites, they put on the blinkers when it comes to white people’s racism, thinking that will get them the acceptance they want. Maybe her relationship with David Bowie finally woke her up? I don’t know.
I didn’t realise the full extent of racism’s influence on my life until I was 20ish. I wish I had known when I was younger, but I guess that’s what happens when you have a white, racist mum and an immigrant Chinese father who feels he can laugh at and brush off racism as `silly white people!’ because he grew up surrounded by people who looked like him.
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Well, Kiwi, for one: nothing implies she had a white fetish. Nothing. For two, nothing implied Bowie had an Asian fetish, either. For three, she never complained about being racially objectified. For four, nothing in your original post could be derived from either the video or the blog post, still. “Openly objectified and mocked her race”? No, tried to make an anti-racist video (and failing, I completely agree; China Girl has always seemed problematic to me).
But if you have some info that at least vaguely hint at her having a white fetish, or him having an Asian fetish, please do present it.
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///But if you have some info that at least vaguely hint at her having a white fetish, or him having an Asian fetish, please do present it.///
All I know is that David Bowie had married Angie Bowie (White British female). The marriage became strained when Angie caught the singer in bed with Mick Jagger (White British male). Bowie then left to Berlin, where he had an affair with Romy Haag (Dutch White transsexual). In the 1980s, he dated Geeling Ching, (Chinese female from New Zealand), after which he married Iman (Somalian Black female) in 1992.
I do not know if Bowie had an Asian fetish. But if he had, it was by far not the only one.
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