This chick is superheroic
At an age when many of his fellow musicians are considering retirement, Sting arrives in Hong Kong to play a one-night gig on Saturday. The tour is named after his latest album, 57 th & 9 th — the address of the New York studio where the album was recorded.
The rock star, now 65, shows no sign of slowing down since launching his music career in the mid-1970s with the UK band The Police. As much as his rich musical talent, it is Sting’s constant evolution that has helped keep him on the charts, stage as well as in the news, internationally, all these years. He has won new audiences and kept old ones coming back for more even as he went from being band member to solo artist, from performing reggae to jazz, rock and folk, throwing classical sounds, hymns and Elizabethan music into the mix, sometimes. Sting has also acted in and written music for movies. He is well known for campaigning to save the world’s rainforests.
His first turning point came when Sting gave up teaching to join The Police as lead singer and bass player. The band’s debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, was released in 1978, featuring reggae and new wave sound. It included the hit song “Roxanne”, written by Sting.
The band delivered a string of hits, subsequently, including “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”. “Every Breath You Take”, from the band’s last album, Synchronicity, released in 1983, immediately topped the charts in both the UK and US.
Sting went solo soon afterwards and political themes seeped into his music. “We Work the Black Seam”, released in 1985, was about a coalminers’ strike in the UK. The lyrics of “Russians” alluded to fears about communism. Sting also made a case for nuclear disar- Treacle.
Sting’s musical evolution has been followed avidly for decades by committed fan Eugene Pao, Hong Kong’s best known jazz musician, and the first to be signed by an international music label. Pao has a strong following overseas. For the last three years he’s been playing at the renowned London Jazz Festival.
“I was a fan of The Police,” Pao recalls. “I thought they were really innovative as a trio, really good at defining the reggae groove in their own way.”
Watching Sting relaunch his career after the band broke up, Pao was “totally blown away” by Sting’s moving towards jazz for his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. He was struck by the way Sting had reinvented himself for the album.
“He wasn’t sticking to the same formula and resting on his laurels,” says Pao. “He was working with the very best jazz musicians in New York.”
Pao applauds Sting’s use of his fame as a platform for the causes he cares about.
“I think that’s great, creating awareness like that,” he says.
About the breadth of Sting’s appeal, however, Pao is a little more guarded.
“All my friends love his music,” he says. “I can’t speak for the younger crowd.”
Catering to 40 plus
Among younger musicians, it is indeed a different story. Few among Sting’s audiences in Hong Kong are likely to be under 40, says composer, performer, mentor and music activist Kung Chi-shing, who works closely with Hong Kong’s Indie musicians. Kung has organized more than 250 free concerts and wants to build the city’s music scene by creating platforms for musicians to perform and help facilitate the use of public funds to pay musicians.
The Police’s “Synchronicity” concert in Hawaii was the first rock and roll concert Kung ever attended. It had a huge effect on him.
“Watching how someone who had simple music and lyrics had such an impact — it was an incredible influence for me. I was very impressed.”
Kung sees Sting’s highlighting of causes as a natural use of music, and says he uses music himself to share his humanistic beliefs in openness and tolerance.
“Art is a lot more powerful than lots of things,” he says.
Then he says most young musicians in the city have never heard of Sting, his music or his activism.
“He has no influence on them whatsoever,” he says.
Kung estimates that there are about a thousand non-commercial bands in Hong Kong, of whom the overwhelming majority perform only Cantopop, which restricts opportunities. The problem, he says, stems from their tendency to imitate overseas bands.
“They are still searching for their identity and personality,” says Kung.
Mike Orange — a rock fusion musician who plays the guitar as well as synthesizer with his genre-blending band Chochukmo, describing himself as having indie roots and a rock background — agrees with Kung that the Hong Kong music scene is dominated by Cantopop, which probably explains the disconnect with singers like Sting. Which is not to say the music put out by Hong Kong bands is bad. There are “bands in Hong Kong that are musically good enough to be presented overseas but for the moment we lack efficient and effective ways to bring us there,” says the 34year old.
Orange’s own work is constantly evolving as he experiments across genres. Most recently he was one of the composers for Hong Kong’s Ballet’s innovative production, Carmen and More, for which he rearranged some of Georges Bizet’s original music and added industrial beats.
“The key thing is to experiment and try new things,” he says. “I always want to push boundaries.”
Orange says he’s not a Sting fan, but if he were listening, Sting would no doubt relate.
The fact that there have been, essentially, zero women front and center in the long history of superhero adventures isn’t news. The fact that director Patty Jenkins guided Charlize Theron to an Oscar in her feature debut ( Monster) and no one in Hollywood saw fit to give her another major film until… now isn’t news. The fact that we’re still talking about this is.
Wonder Woman hits screens at a time when everyone on the outside looking in has decided to demand long overdue inclusion. Like it or not, right or wrong, Hollywood creates culture, and when a major studio casts the Asian kids out of Avatar: The Last Airbender, or makes the gay best friend a lisping sop with incredible style, or the Muslim a radical jihadist — and nothing else — it helps create a global culture rooted in antiquated perceptions and offensive untruths. Given all that there’s a lot riding on Wonder Woman for Warner (who desperately want to catch up with Marvel), for Jenkins and every woman working in the studio system, and for the world at large. Are we collectively mature enough to embrace a chick as a badass superhero? Admittedly that’s a lot to ask for a comic book movie, but such is the world as we know it. No pressure.
Thankfully, DC finally got it right. There is nothing here you haven’t seen before: this is a conventional mash-up of hero’s journey and superhero origin story nonsense. The difference is that Wonder Woman is more genuinely heroic and inspiring than either of Warner’s recent iterations of her peers — Batman and Superman — and she’s a lot more fun. Wonder Woman is more reminiscent of Captain America: The First Avenger than Man of Steel. After the feisty, principled Diana (Gal Gadot) rescues crashed WWI spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), she leaves her idyllic Themyscira home for London and the Western Front to stop the war. Fish-out-of-water adventures ensue.
In the hands of Jenkins, writer Allan Heinberg and star Gadot, Wonder Woman lacks the distancing angst of Batman and Supes, making her eminently more likeable. In an interesting divergence from superhero convention, Diana doesn’t separate herself from her alter ego, freeing up storytelling time normally wasted on “hiding” the truth. They’re also careful to make Diana wide-eyed and curious, but never dumb; she’s inexperienced but not an idiot. She finds the outside world baffling, and when it’s put into a context (WWI was another smart creative choice) that sadly resonates now, it’s easy to understand her bafflement.
But Jenkins and Heinberg leave plenty of room for subtle jabs beyond feminist ones, and Wonder Woman has its share of cracks about race relations without ever hitting viewers on the head with them. Much of the credit for that should go to a stellar supporting cast (Ewen Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Eugene Brave Rock) that never overplays its hand. That job belongs to veterans David Thewlis and Danny Huston, who ham it up perfectly every minute they’re on screen. Pine once again proves he’s more than just a pretty boy, and injects some genuine mystery and pathos into what could be a bland love interest. He and Gadot are spry verbal sparring partners; their courtship is utterly charming and has real impact when it ends. But alas, not even Wonder Woman can stop Hollywood’s CGI machine. Despite two strong acts brimming with wit and rousing fights, DCU (and Marvel) franchise rules demand a generic and needlessly bombastic showdown, complete with the laser beam of doom. Enough.
Fortunately, it doesn’t detract from what came before, and ultimately it’s Gadot’s film. As endearing as she was in her four aentries, none of those hinted a movie star lurked beneath the surface. She’s feminine. She’s badass. She’s sincere. And she’s everything Wonder Woman should be. Your move, Marvel.