Raymond Zhou

Rocker's sad show a lesson to media hounds

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-05-13 06:57

Would you be surprised by some erratic behaviour of a rock 'n' roll star?

Obviously, many were caught off guard when news of Dou Wei rampaging a newsroom became the entertainment story of the day.

On Wednesday afternoon, Dou, a member of a local band, marched into the office of The Beijing News and demanded to meet a reporter who recently wrote about him.

According to news reports, Dou Wei smashed a computer, a disk player and some windows. Later, he returned to set fire to a car that was parked outside of the building. The newspaper called the police and Dou was detained.

In Thursday's edition, The Beijing News said that the two articles Dou disputed were both based on interviews with him and people directly involved in the stories.

While rock singers are not known for their rationality, what Dou did was clearly out of line and beyond what is civilly and legally acceptable. He should have demanded an apology or filed a lawsuit if he truly felt he was defamed.

That said, one must admit that, in the larger scheme of entertainer-press relations, Dou Wei has been a victim of China's burgeoning and chaotic entertainment media.

Dou sealed his fate in 1996 when he married pop diva Faye Wong (Wang Fei). They divorced three years later, but his name is forever associated with hers.

Dou used to be a promising and talented singer in a well-regarded rock band. However, for years, his stardom has been in decline while his ex-wife reigns supreme in the public eye and is the target of relentless paparazzi even though she has not been active in the scene for quite a while.

It is almost a conspiracy that the nation's tabloids have got into the habit of portraying Dou as the failure and the sad contrast to his former wife's glory. Some reports use melodramatic terms like "wife leaving, kid separating" to describe his situation.

One could almost see the gloating and the smirking when they mention that Dou pays his other ex-wife 500 yuan (US$63) in monthly alimony and is paid only 200 yuan (US$25) for each gig.

A performer with such limited earning power will never get his name printed in the entertainment pages no matter what publicity stunt he employs. But Dou has pulled off the biggest feat of all and inadvertently became the reluctant Eddie Fisher to Wong's Elizabeth Taylor.

Dou should have learned to ignore the buzzing and rumbling of the gossip mill. Sadly, he is unable to remain aloof of what others say about him. As recently as last April, he was summoning reporters and sitting for interviews, during which he would make outrageous claims about people around him.

One thing is for sure: He is not cut out for life as a celebrity. He speaks his mind, which accentuates and exacerbates public perceptions of him that have been droned in and reinforced by media reports. In other words, he has turned himself into fodder for the ever-expanding celebrity machine.

Maybe there should be a school for celebrities - I don't know whether the Beijing Film Academy has courses on how to feed lines to the press that reflect glowingly on entertainers. People like Dou should receive training on deflecting damaging innuendos and not let a little bad publicity get on their nerves.

It is time that Dou sought psychiatric counselling. And it is also time that the nation's entertainment reporters leave alone those who do not want to be exploited by the glaring light.

Email: raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/13/2006 page4)