East Asian Cinemas: Regional Flows and Global Transformations

262 Pages·2011·2.051 MB·English

by  Vivian P. Y. Lee (eds.)

East Asian Cinemas
Also by Vivian P. Y. Lee
HONG KONG CINEMA SINCE 1997: The Post-Nostalgic Imagination
East Asian Cinemas
Regional Flows and Global
Transformations
Edited by
Vivian P. Y. Lee
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Vivian P. Y. Lee 2011
Individual chapters © Contributors 2011
Preface © Yingjin Zhang 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-27767-0
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
East Asian cinemas : regional flows and global transformations /
edited by Vivian P.Y. Lee.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. M otion pictures—East Asia. 2. Motion picture industry—East
Asia. I. Lee, Vivian P. Y., 1966– II. Title.
PN1993.5.E19E275 2011
791.43095—dc22 2011004143
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgments xi
Notes on Contributors xii
Introduction: Mapping East Asia’s Cinemascape 1
Vivian P. Y. Lee
Part I Filmmaking, Film Industry, and the Film Market
1 Transnational Trajectories in Contemporary East Asian
Cinemas 15
Song Hwee Lim
2 Hollywood’s Global Strategy and the Future of Chinese
Cinema 33
Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao (Translated by Vivian P. Y. Lee)
Part II Genre and Transnational Aesthetics
3 Bicycle Thieves and Pickpockets in the “Desert of the Real”:
Transnational Chinese Cinema, Postmodernism, and the
Transcendental Style 61
Gina Marchetti
4 007 in Late Colonial Hong Kong: Technology, Masculinity,
and Sly Humor in Stephen Chow’s From Beijing with Love 87
Eric K. W. Yu
5 “Asia” as Regional Signifier and Transnational
Genre-Branding: The Asian Horror Omnibus Movies
Three and Three … Extremes 103
Nikki J. Y. Lee
6 J-Horror and Kimchi Western: Mobile Genres in
East Asian Cinemas 118
Vivian P. Y. Lee
v
vi Contents
Part III Screen Cultures and Identity Politics
7 Rethinking a New National Identity in Heisei Japan:
Neo-Conservatism and Japanese Cinema 145
Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau
8 Cinematic Imagination of Border-Crossing in Hong Kong
and the Pearl River Delta: Comrades, Almost a Love Story
and Durian, Durian 170
Tsung-yi Michelle Huang
9 In the Name of “Asia”: Practices and Consequences of
Recent International Film Co-Productions in East Asia 189
Ti Wei
Part IV Interviews: Filmmakers on Filmmaking
10 Framing Tokyo Media Capital and Asian Co-Production 213
Stephanie DeBoer
11 “Working Through China” in the Pan-Asian Film Network:
Perspectives from Hong Kong and Singapore 235
Vivian P. Y. Lee
Index 249
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 The comfort of strangers: lonely characters in Last Life
in the Universe 23
3.1 Xiao Wu 64
6.1 Toshio in The Grudge 2 126
7.1 Brother 154
9.1 The Promise 198
Tables
9.1 Main production details of the three films in question.
Compiled from the official websites of the three films,
www.mtime.com, www.truemovie.com, www.imdb.com,
www.taipeibo.com/#top, and other related press reports. 199
9.2 Leading characters and actors/actresses. Compiled from
the official websites of the three films and www.imdb.com. 202
9.3 Casting (lead characters). Compiled from the official
websites of the three films and www.imdb.com. 204
vii
Preface
Yingjin Zhang
In an era of globalization when deterritorialization and reterritori-
alization are taking place simultaneously at various geographical scales
around the world and when nation-states and transnational capital
have formed close partnerships and are radically reconfiguring the local,
regional, and global landscapes, the idea of “East Asian cinema”—with
or without a plural designation—would arguably be best conceptual-
ized as mutating and shifting, historically and geopolitically. On the
one hand, scholars, filmmakers, and even government policymakers are
increasingly aware of the limits of the previously dominant model of
national cinema and have actively sought joint ventures of recognizably
transnational varieties. On the other hand, given the unfailing empha-
sis on nation-states and regions implemented by both the international
film festivals and the international media distribution system, films are
still subject to a fundamentally essentialist standard and are frequently
treated as the representative of a particular nation, culture, and p eople.
Indeed, despite much talk about transnationalism, the nation still
looms large in film production and film scholarship in East Asia, and
it is not an aberration or paradox that the Chinese state is only too
eager to exercise its “soft power” in a global promotion of its “national
image” since China became the world’s second largest economy
in 2010.
It is against this backdrop of multi-directional tugs of war that I
see the current volume as an exciting new step forward in charting
the impact and potential of the growing transregional flows of media
products in Asia-Pacific. The term “Asia-Pacific” is chosen here because
the volume’s coverage extends beyond the conventional parameters of
East Asia (i.e. China, Japan, and Korea) to include places like Singapore
(a Sinophone and Anglophone media capital), which normally falls
inside Southeast Asia. The strict geographic or national designation, as it
turns out, is actually what the volume tries to problematize, as the con-
tributors have taken us across the national boundaries that often mark
the previous English-language scholarship on Asian cinema.1 The logic
of “trans” in transnationalism necessarily directs attention to border-
crossing issues. In this respect this volume moves current scholarship
viii
Preface ix
forward by tracing transnational and “translocal” (the latter a more
accurate term in many cases, as I have argued elsewhere)2 practices both
on and off screen and by investigating interrelated topics such as the
dynamic relationship between the region and Hollywood, the intra-
regional flows in Asia-Pacific, as well as comparative aesthetics at work
in transregional imagination.
As with other national or regional cinema studies, the global as
represented by Hollywood makes its presence visible everywhere, here
particularly in the cases of its recent remakes of Asian hits (as discussed
by Song Hwee Lim) and its long-term strategy of global domination
(as surveyed by Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao). The global also enters
the genre consideration, as Asian horror creatively engages aesthetic
representation and business strategies (illustrated in separate studies by
Nikki Lee and Vivian Lee), or as Stephen Chow resorts to screen parody
in his renegotiation with the local (Hong Kong), the national (Beijing),
and the global (the 007 series), which Eric Yu takes time to show. The
imbrication of the local and the global in Hong Kong is further explored
in relation to the Pearl River Delta in mainland China by Tsung-yi
Michelle Huang, who delineates distinct intra-regional flows as a new
development in cultural geography. Another transnational node is the
French connection in recent realist films from Hong Kong and main-
land China, which Gina Marchetti demonstrates through the lens of
comparative aesthetics. The idea of Asian or East Asian cinema has its
historical roots and its own share of identity politics (as illustrated by
Kinnia Yau’s study of Neo-conservatism in Japan through the war film),
and the current transnational turn inevitably complicates concepts
like “new Asian cinema” (as Ti Wei contends). Although East Asian
cinema may not constitute an entity with a clearly defined boundary,
it nonetheless boasts of a rich tradition and an innovative spirit, as
testified by a succession of new waves sweeping in turns across Japan,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and South Korea, and speaks elo-
quently to the interest of other national and regional cinemas around
the world.
Writing this preface has brought back my fond memory of the
two-day international symposium, “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on
East Asian Cinemas,” held at the City University of Hong Kong in
July 2008, which served as the basis of this volume and for which
I had the honor of delivering a keynote speech. I thank my hosts
Jonathan Webster and Zhang Longxi in Hong Kong and I commend
the convener/editor Vivian Lee and the contributors for successfully
turning conference papers into an exciting academic volume. This new