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Ilforte-Kendi going woke was not on my 2026 bingo card. But then again, Ritchie Hanania leading the anti-Trump vanguard wasn't either. I guess I'm just bad at these things. An anti-forecaster.
Replying to some of your other comments here, why the obsession with Marvel and funko pops? American cultural exports and soft power extend way beyond that, and you know it.
Look at the top grossing movies of 2025. Ne Zha 2 tops the list with an impressive 2.2 billion, of which 50 million was from outside China. Second highest grossing Chinese movie, the battle at lake Changjin made just over 900 million and 890 million of that was domestic sales. Zootopia 2 grossed 1.7 billion with 1.3 billion of that from international markets. 8 of the top 10 grossing films are American.
Next - some significant fraction of Chinese can talk intelligently about the lakers or European football. How many Americans have heard of Lin Dan or Shi Yuqi? What about famous American musicians? Half of Tay-tay's death march was sold out international venues. Globally, do you think more people can describe the gist of the declaration of independence or Xi Jinping thought?
You can sneer at Marvel and other lowbrow entertainment exports, but I would bet the pattern replicates among 'elite' media as well if you could slice the data properly. Canada is so steeped in American culture they have to force Canadian TV/radio stations to play a certain amount of Canadian content.
Seriously, though. You should go back to making fun of teenage girls from San Francisco tweeting 'defund the police.' The crowd loves it. Make a patreon and gofundme, some Thiel acolyte with deep pockets will buy you a Trump Gold Card and you can come home to the motherland. It's gotta be better than inflation-land, unless you're really into dancing tango or something.
I think that's representative of the level of American cultural development. Ne Zha 2 is also representative of China (it's high production value slop).
Again. What of it? Are you saying that the Canadian pivot is because they've become fans of Lin Dan? My thesis is not that the Chinese soft power is very deep (though in some segments it's growing, and it'll help product sales etc.), it's that the popularity of your national media does not translate into political allegiance. That's not how the causality flows. America did not become the Shining City Upon a Hill and the leader of the strongest military alliance in history by producing popular media slop, it's just one of the many facets of their current eminence. Great Britain's greatest media days were after the British Empire collapsed. Hong Kong out-soft-powered all of China, their content was popular in the Mainland, they still got crushed and now they pitifully complain in the UK to stop the construction of the Mega-Embassy. It's all a very big attention sink, but a very minor factor, at the end of the day.
And indeed, an overwhelming superiority in cultural exports can even undermine you. What good did BLM protests in Chelyabinsk do for the USA? Brainrotten Russian teenagers may hunt for signs of racism at home, but they know where Saint Floyd perished, and won't buy into the more carefully curated myth of Jeans, Bubblegum and Freedom like their parents did. It's actually pretty hard to have both a vibrant and a propagandistically coherent cultural scene. The dividends on having everyone just use your memes, your frameworks, your critiques, live in your world, are… unclear to me. Something something master's tool master's house? Sorry, I'm not that Kendi yet.
What was your point again?
You have no idea how little this pitiful anklebiting attempt (or whatever it was) stings. I have no need to seek or beg or whore myself out, and I could come to the US any time I wanted, welcomed and accommodated, within the last 2 years.
Pleasuring the North American crowd is beneath me. I only talk of what I find interesting. Sometimes I get carried away.
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Not sure what you're trying to imply here. 50 million outside of China is quite impressive. Not as impressive as the Japanese or the Koreans, of course, but still. Even if that 50 million consist of 20 million overseas Chinese primarily in SEA, still.
The fact that you have heard of Lin Dan and Shi Yuqi (I have no idea who this is) is a win. I'm celebrating every win whenever I can. It's getting better, that's all I know.
And, I know Americans here care less about "jungle Asians" than us even, but they do like our cultural exports. It might be true that any good upright western nation do not like us or consume our cultural exports. But I consider dominating the SEA novel/drama/whatever slop that's getting created in the millions by uninspiring Chinese youth a major win. Not a historical anomaly either.
Whichever way you slice it, it just had minimal impact outside of China. 50 million USD for Ne Zha 2 versus 1.3 billion for Zootopia 2. Add up the international earnings for all the American offerings and it's more than 2 OOMs higher. Expressed as a fraction of earnings, 50 million of 2.2 billion is 2% of earnings, whereas the majority of the American films profit was overseas.
Yes, it is. I'm not out to trash Chinese culture or people, but I want to push back against American cultural exports being 'capeshit and funko pops.'
I played and watched a lot of badminton in the era when Lin Dan was a beast. Apparently Shi Yuqi is world #1 since Viktor Axelsen is aging out, but I've never watched him play. Growing up, most of my closest friends just happened to be Chinese.
Yes sure comparing ourselves to American it’s not that impressive. But consider this: I grew up in a time where your average Chinese laughs at you if you compare us to the Americans. What you listed here sounds pathetic to your people maybe, but sounds impressive enough to me.
But looks like we do have an agreement here that it’s getting better.
Sounds like you’ve had a very Chinese social circle and probably still do, given you play badminton. My wife tried to get me into it, but I just can’t handle the smell of the courts around me, that disgusting mix of rubber and BO. Hope you don’t have to suffer that.
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It interests me that Japanese and Korean cultural exports are very popular globally while Bollywood seems not to have quite made it. I would be interested in any theories why.
Possibly American occupation of a relatively small country led to more cultural meeting and greater feelings of familiarity. (India occupied by UK yes but India is much bigger and maybe less cultural impact long term especially after decolonisation.) But China buys American/Japanese stuff too.
Bollywood has a western fan club- the same people who really like fifties blockbuster productions. In other words, the feature length singing and dancing is just genuinely a lot less popular than Japanese exports or mass produced slop music and soap operas.
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