Wham! 10 Days in China

They were like the Richard Nixon of pop acts. When they went to China, it was a bold career. In fact, the notoriety launched the American publicity campaign for George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the British duo billed as Wham! It was an expensive and hectic tour, but it accomplished it objective, breaking the band into the American market. Footage shot for the little-seen documentary covering their historic gigs have now been restored and repurposed into Mike Christie’s Wham! 10 Days in China, which releases tomorrow in theaters.

The group’s former manager makes it clear right from the start their Chinese concerts were all about the American publicity. It is important to understand how different China was in 1985. The notoriously closed nation was starting to open up. Glasnost had been proclaimed in the USSR one month prior. Optimism was breaking out internationally and would steadily build until the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Wham! performing in China was seen as a sign of the changing (for the better) times.

Michael and Ridgeley got the concept of using China as an international fame slingshot, but they did not enjoy it, judging from the tour footage. It probably did not help that they chose the wrong director to helm the behind-the-scenes documentary. “Angry Young Man” filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (who directed If… and O Lucky Man) broke his leg soon after arriving in China and took an even quicker disliking to the Wham! lads.

You can also see early tension within the duo when Michael bails on press events, leaving Ridgeley (who had far more contentious relations with the press at that stage of their careers) holding the bag. However, the 1985 Ridgeley seems to show genuine interest in the young Chinese fans who were only just discovering Western pop through special distributions of their current album (mostly on cassette, even though players were then scarce in the Peoples Republic).

For obvious reasons, only Ridgeley was available to add his recent commentary. However, he comes across quite graciously. Perhaps even more intriguing are the segments featuring young Chinese fans, who were inspired to pursue careers in popular music.

In fact, listening to them makes it blindingly obvious that Christie refused to connect some rather important dots. By and large, the majority of patrons for the Wham! concerts were roughly high school aged. That would put them in college when University students took the lead protesting Chinese Communist Party corruption and oppression during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Demonstrations. This age group essentially became China’s lost generation, when they were either killed or forced into exile as a result of the Party’s crackdown. Consequently, it seems reasonable to assume that in addition to future Chinese pop stars, many of those who attended the 1985 shows are now dead or permanently cut off from their families and homes.

Still, Christie recut Anderson’s often slanted footage into a compelling, well-balanced film. In some ways, it offers a sly commentary on fame and press-distortion. In light of subsequent events, casual listeners might forget Ridgeley constantly took much more flak than Michael, as the press’s designated “bad boy.” Christie also serves up generous servings of nostalgia, like the inside story of the pick-up soccer game with curious Guangzhou locals, immortalized in the American video for “Freedom.”

In some ways, the duo was in over their heads navigating the demands of international diplomacy, but their management identified an opportunity that they somehow managed to capitalize on. It is quite a pop culture story, even if Christie never fully explores the historical-geopolitical implications. Recommended as a fun 1980s flashback, Wham! 10 Days in China opens tomorrow (7/28) in theaters, including the AMC Empire in New York.