Wham – “10 Days in China” – a fascinating look at an epic and successful marketing stunt

A spirit of resourcefulness and originality unshackled from conventional wisdom can be characterized as delusion, naivete, and being wildly unrealistic. None of this deterred Simon Napier-Bell (the ambitious manager of British pop duo Wham) as he engineered one of the greatest moments in pop music history – namely, getting Wham to be the first Western pop group to perform in Communist China in 1985. This news story, in turn, led to the doors being flung wide open for Wham to musically conquer America – the world’s single largest consumer market for recorded music and hence the ultimate prize for musicians aspiring for true global ubiquity and stardom. “Wham – 10 Days in China” captures the key moments of the pop duo navigating the realities of what it meant to be the first Western act to perform in China. With the exception of a few missed opportunities, the documentary movie is largely a success.

The most significant triumph of this movie is its ability to capture the mix of unbridled joy, curiosity, and confusion of the Chinese people as they experienced a cultural novelty with no visual template to model their response on. The greatest manifestation of this is the young boy that runs to a consumer electronics store and asks the staff to play the Wham album “Make it big” for him. This scene captures a vivid imagery of a boy locked in a different era (one characterized by curbs and censorship) from that of the rest of the world – and this is something that will feel quite alien for modern China’s younger generation. One of the most blistering assessments of this reality is made by Wham’s frontman George Michael in a scene in which he is getting a massage.

The movie does not shy away from the fact that everyone on Wham’s broader team had absolutely no illusions about the China project having NOTHING to do with China. China was a marketing gimmick, a media story, and a potent means to an end. Undoubtedly a marketing stunt for the ages. But it is impossible to deny the impact it had on Chinese locals with creative aspirations. The movie captures interviews with Chinese pop stars and DJs whose aspirations were shaped entirely by the sheer star power of George Michael on stage – both in Peking, and Guangzhou.

Clearly, the movie’s most goosebump-inducing moment is the live performance of the hit single “Careless Whisper” with an extended saxophone solo introduction. This is the moment when the viewer is likely to realize the lost musical treasure that is George Michael.

For all its merits, the movie does have a couple of key missed opportunities. First, the movie sheds absolutely no light on how and why Simon Napier-Bell (Wham’s manager) formed an alliance with the Communist Youth Organization to make the China concerts happen. The success of this marketing stunt hinged on Napier-Bell’s alliance-building abilities and foresight on which of the alliances was going to be the path of least resistance. In fact, there is a scene in the movie where Wham member Andrew Ridgeley is asked this question specifically in a press conference and he responds with an evasive and half-baked “because we’re in China” answer (sounding visibly annoyed at the question for reasons that are not remotely obvious). Sometimes, success can come from being visible in relatively uncompetitive arenas and to the extent that China’s insulation from the world was used as a backdoor approach to American success, Wham’s “Live in China” endeavor is a smashing success and one whose underlying philosophy can be mirrored in different industries and cultural contexts. Hence, having no sense of what Napier-Bell did to orchestrate this is an omitted teaching moment that this movie could have delivered.

The second missed opportunity stems from the vastly different audience reactions to Wham’s concerts in Peking and Guangzhou. What was it about Guangzhou that facilitated a far more animated and enthusiastic reaction to Wham on stage relative to the comparatively restrained reaction of the audience in Peking? It is also worth noting that the security staff in Guangzhou was far more permissive of the audience jumping out of their seats and dancing. What was structurally different between Guangzhou and Peking that led to the former feeling relatively more free? The movie does point to the fact that some of the audience members were familiar with Wham’s music because their local radios caught the airwaves from Hong Kong (which was a British colony at the time) – where Western pop music radio was very much a part of life’s sonic backdrop.

The final scene where a slim and trim Andrew Ridgeley is seen climbing up the Great Wall of China alone and reflecting on what he and his best friend George Michael had pulled off years ago in China is one of the movie’s most poignant moments. Andrew indicates that George Michael never returned to China and passed away not truly grasping the significance of the long-lasting legacy of the China marketing gimmick. It is yet another reminder of a life cut short and the fragility of mortality. It is a sadness that permeates any commentary or retrospective look at George Michael. George Michael, after all, was the “boy beyond his years” who never got to reach the chronological age that his lyricism was often associated with.

It goes without saying that a deeper dive into the mechanics of this marketing gimmick would make a stellar follow-up documentary, but until that happens, this trip down nostalgia lane should be an exhilarating watch for most.

STAR RATING: 4 out of 5 stars