East Asian Cinemas: Regional Flows and Global Transformations

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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–27767–0

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 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. ISBN 978–0–230–27767–0 (hardback) 1. Motion 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 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Figures and Tables

vii

Preface

viii

Acknowledgments

xi

Notes on Contributors

xii

Introduction: Mapping East Asia’s Cinemascape Vivian P. Y. Lee

1

Part I Filmmaking, Film Industry, and the Film Market 1 Transnational Trajectories in Contemporary East Asian Cinemas Song Hwee Lim

15

2 Hollywood’s Global Strategy and the Future of Chinese Cinema Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao (Translated by Vivian P. Y. Lee)

33

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 Gina Marchetti 4 007 in Late Colonial Hong Kong: Technology, Masculinity, and Sly Humor in Stephen Chow’s From Beijing with Love Eric K. W. Yu 5 “Asia” as Regional Signifier and Transnational Genre-Branding: The Asian Horror Omnibus Movies Three and Three … Extremes Nikki J. Y. Lee 6 J-Horror and Kimchi Western: Mobile Genres in East Asian Cinemas Vivian P. Y. Lee

v

61

87

103

118

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Contents

Part III Screen Cultures and Identity Politics 7 Rethinking a New National Identity in Heisei Japan: Neo-Conservatism and Japanese Cinema 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 Tsung-yi Michelle Huang 9 In the Name of “Asia”: Practices and Consequences of Recent International Film Co-Productions in East Asia Ti Wei

145

170

189

Part IV Interviews: Filmmakers on Filmmaking 10 Framing Tokyo Media Capital and Asian Co-Production Stephanie DeBoer

213

11 “Working Through China” in the Pan-Asian Film Network: Perspectives from Hong Kong and Singapore Vivian P. Y. Lee

235

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 reterritorialization 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 conceptualized 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 emphasis 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 people. 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 contributors 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 bordercrossing 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 intraregional 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 mainland 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 eloquently 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

x

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project will encourage its readers to rethink East Asian cinema not as a catalogue of snapshot profiles of individual national cinemas but as a vibrant synergetic field of cooperation and contention where new initiatives are launched, new ideas are created, and new possibilities are imagined. San Diego, November 2010

Notes 1. Books on Asian cinema are usually distinguished by national or regional focuses, as is the case with an earlier work: John Lent, Asian Film Industry (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). Despite the increasing emphasis on the global, the format is still preserved in three recent publications: Anne Tereska Ciecko (ed.), Contemporary Asian Cinema: Popular Culture in a Global Frame (New York: Berg, 2006); Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham (eds), Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006); and Tom Vick, Asian Cinema: A Field Guide (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). For new efforts at border-crossing scholarship, see Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: British Film Institute, 2008); Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008); Yomi Braester and James Tweedie (eds), Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). 2. Yingjin Zhang, Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010).

Acknowledgments This collective volume is inspired by the papers presented at “CrossCultural Perspectives on East Asian Cinemas”, an international symposium held at the City University of Hong Kong, July 3–4, 2008. The editor gratefully acknowledges the contribution of all the speakers who generously shared their knowledge and ideas during this two-day event. Special thanks are due to our keynote speaker Yingjin Zhang, Zhang Longxi and Jonathan Webster, whose support and participation were instrumental to the success of the symposium. The intellectual exchange at the symposium was greatly enriched by the presence of Joe Cheung, Gordon Chan, Michelle Yeh, and Ning Jingwu at the “Filmmakers on Filmmaking” seminar, which facilitated a productive and stimulating discussion on the current developments of the Chinese-language film industry. I am indebted to Daisy Ng, who co-hosted the seminar and generously assumed the daunting task of consecutive translation for the speakers, and Bonnie McDougall, whose concluding remarks brought the program to a fruitful end. The participation of filmmakers Iseki Satoru, Ichiyama Shozo, Ueda Makoto, Joe Cheung, and Man Shu Sum in the interviews presented in Chapters 10 and 11 has also ensured that industry perspectives are duly reflected in this volume. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at CityU for their friendship and moral support, and the Palgrave Macmillan editorial team, in particular Catherine Mitchell, Christabel Scaife, and her successor Felicity Plester for their patience, understanding, and professionalism at every stage of the publication.

xi

Notes on Contributors Stephanie DeBoer is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her teaching and research interests include Japanese and Chinese language film and media, inter-Asia cultural studies, and global media studies. Her article, “Co-Producing Cross-Border Action: Technologies of Contact, Masculinity, and the Asia-Pacific Border,” is forthcoming in an anthology from Hong Kong University Press. A recent recipient of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC/JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship, she is currently writing a manuscript on Asia Pacific film, television, and media co-productions from the second half of the twentieth century. Tsung-yi Michelle Huang is currently Associate Professor of Geography at National Taiwan University. Her work on cinema, literature, cultural studies, and global cities has been published in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Narrative Theory, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, and Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies, among others. In 2004 her book Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai was published by the Hong Kong University Press. She received an Academia Sinica Research Award for Junior Research Investigators in 2005. Nikki. J. Y. Lee received her PhD in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has taught at the Yonsei University and Korea National University of Arts. Her research interests cover transnational East Asian cinemas, and South Korean cinema and popular culture. She has published several articles on Korean films and directors such as “Localized Globalization and a Monster National: The Host (2006) and the South Korean Film Industry” in Cinema Journal. She is co-editor of a forthcoming title, The Korean Cinema Book (British Film Institute/Palgrave MacMillan). Vivian P. Y. Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997: The Post-Nostalgic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her articles on Chinese cinemas have xii

Notes on Contributors xiii

appeared in academic journals and anthologies including Scope, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and Chinese Films in Focus II, Chris Berry (ed.) (British Film Institute, 2008). Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (University of Hawaii Press, 2006), co-editor of Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film (Wallflower Press, 2006), and founding editor of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. He recently completed a book manuscript entitled Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness, and a co-edited volume, The Chinese Cinema Book (BFI/Palgrave Macmillan), will appear in 2011. Gina Marchetti teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, at the University of Hong Kong. In 1995, her book, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (University of California, 1993), won the award for best book in the area of cultural studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. Her recent books include Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS, The Trilogy (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), and Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and the New Global Cinema, co-edited with Tan See-Kam (London: Routledge, 2007). Ti Wei is Assistant Professor of the Department of Communication and Technology of the National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan. He received his PhD from the Department of Social Sciences in Loughborough University, UK, with a research thesis on globalization and Chinese cinemas. His most recent English article, “How did Hou Hsiao-Hsien change Taiwan cinema?—a critical reassessment,” is published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. He is currently writing on the political, economic, and cultural-aesthetic aspects of the international co-production of film. Zhiwei Xiao is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Marcos. His research focuses on Chinese film history. Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau is Associate Professor at the Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her recent publications include Interrelations between Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Investigation of the Roots of the Asian Film Networks (The University of Tokyo Press, 2007), and “Nostalgia and Anticipation: A Case Study of Contemporary Japanese Melodrama,” Asian Cinema, 2008.

xiv Notes on Contributors

Eric K. W. Yu received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He taught literature and cultural studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Dong Hwa University before he joined the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Chiao Tung University of Taiwan. He was previously the Director of the NCTU Film Studies Center. His research interests include comparative literature, travel writing, and film. He is currently completing a book on popular film genres. Hong Yin is Professor of Film and Television Studies and Director of the Center for Film and Television Studies at the Tsinghua University in China. He is the author of seven books and editor of six collections of essays. His work has also appeared in numerous academic journals in China and abroad. Professor Yin is also a senior advisor to various CCTV programmes and other independent TV dramas in China. Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at University of California, San Diego, USA. His English books include The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (1996), Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998), China in a Polycentric World (1998), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai (1999), Screening China (2002), Chinese National Cinema (2004), From Underground to Independent (2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), and Chinese Film Stars (2010).

A Note on Name and Romanization This book uses conventionally established Romanization systems for Asian characters as far as possible. For names of filmmakers, actors, and internationally known people, it follows the version in general circulation rather than the standardized English format, e.g. Chen Kaige and Kim Ji-woon rather than Kaige Chen and Ji-woon Kim.

Introduction: Mapping East Asia’s Cinemascape Vivian P. Y. Lee

The global popularity of films from East Asia has drawn critical attention to the overlapping territories of national and transnational cinemas. The phenomenal success of East Asia’s popular cultural products in capturing Asian and Western markets has prompted critical rethinking of the epistemology of “Asian culture” and the geopolitical importance of the region as an intermediary between the local and the global.1 Meanwhile, an expanding body of critical writings on non-Western national cinemas has shown that filmmaking has been a site where indigenous aesthetic traditions are brought into productive dialogues with Western norms. In the last ten years or so, the cinemas of East Asia, if not Asia as a whole, have been the subject of numerous books and anthologies. Whether focusing on specific national cinemas or adopting a more “pan-Asian” and transnational approach, these works have underscored the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary thrust in contemporary scholarship.2 To this must be added the increasing attention to the interconnections between cinema and the political economy of the region’s cultural industries and mass media.3 To the extent that “East Asian cinemas” denotes a regional configuration of film art and practices, the term is also infused with the cultural politics and imagination of “East Asia” as an “idea in process,” for, as Hunt and Leung argue, East Asian cinemas’ “mutating currencies of transnationality” indicate a globalism more complex and unstable than “Hollywoodization” or “Americanization”.4 Rather than designating a homogenous, free-standing regional cinema, this understanding of East Asian cinemas refers to a mutating network of film practices at the intra- and inter-regional levels. It also means that the cinemascape of East Asia is engaged in the geopolitics and the conflicting national discourses that make territorial and ideological claims on the “region”. 1

2

Introduction

Locating East Asia The “idea” of Asia as a more or less homogenous cultural space— supported by claims of shared cultural traditions and historical experience—has lent itself to conflicting ideological and political agendas among nation states. The discourse on Asianism or pan-Asianism has a long history dating back at least to the age of imperialism, when the notion of “civilization” became central to the construction of Western hegemony over the non-West.5 Between the two World Wars, one main thrust of Asianist discourse was its anti-West agenda, as former colonies started their nation-building projects at full speed. By the 1970s, a new regionalism devoted to economic and social development came to the fore of the national agendas of many Asian countries.6 Asianism, therefore, has never been a homogenous term with a fixed spectrum of meanings. Rather, as Taizo Miyagi suggests, it is “a trend that tied together the various [political, social, and cultural] impulses.”7 The global realignments of economic and political power since the 1990s have ushered in a new phase of Asianist discourse. “Asia” as a political and cultural imaginary comes to represent conflicting values and aspirations both at the level of intra-regional competition and in the race for economic and political pre-eminence in the global system of nation-states.8 Commenting on the new Asian regionalism, Leo Ching calls it “a geographic reality and a constructed discursivity that is both spatialized in its transnational deterritorialization and yet reterritorialized in specific configuration bounded by historically invented geography.”9 Ching cautions against the deceptiveness of an Asian identity mediated by cultural images: the “Asiatic imaginary,” he argues, is an impossibility precisely because “Asianness” has nowadays been turned into a commodity in the still pervasive “relations of unequal exchange and domination” among the world’s nation-states.10 The country under considerable critical spotlight in this ongoing debate on the Asia imaginary is, not surprisingly, Japan, although its long history of economic and cultural hegemony in the region has since the late 1990s been challenged by China and South Korea. While the eagerness of Japan to “re-enter” Asia after World War II has manifested mostly in economic terms, in the realm of popular culture Japan’s “consumption of Asia” (that is, images of cultural otherness) constitutes another center of gravity in the complex interplay of Japan’s post-war identity crises and a nostalgic yearning for an “Asia” on which the nation projects its longing for lost dreams.11 Yet cultural traffic among East Asian societies does not happen on a one-way street. Chua Beng-huat argues that the very concept of an East Asian Popular Culture

Vivian P. Y. Lee 3

encompasses the production and consumption of cultural products at different locations where these activities take place, as well as the disjunctive economic, political, and social relations among producers and audiences in their respective localities.12 Audience positioning is thus a “situated” phenomenon involving active participation, and provides a key to understanding the role of popular culture in fostering new affiliations and mutual identification in East Asia.

The national and the regional in East Asian cinemas A key arena of cultural production in East Asia involving multiple localities of production and consumption is cinema. The worldwide success of contemporary East Asian films and the internationalization of the region’s film industries have been a heated topic in academic discussion in the last few years. With the exception of Japan, cinema arrived in Asia at a time when many Asian nations were besieged by grave domestic crises and foreign intrusions.13 The development of local (national) cinemas also coincided with Japan’s rise to a major imperial power in the region. Japan’s colonization of Taiwan (1895), annexation of Korea (1910), and finally full-scale invasion of China (1937) marked the darkest moments of this chapter of “shared history” of these nations, leaving behind still-open wounds in the respective national psyches. The decades that followed the end of World War II saw the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the “retreat” of the KMT regime to Taiwan (1949), the separation of Korea into North and South (1945), and the economic take-off of Japan in the 1970s followed by the rise of the “four little dragons” (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) in the 1980s, which also marked the beginning of China’s rise to world-power status in the wake of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). On the culture front, East Asia’s “soft power” is mainly felt through its popular cultural products and a dynamic visual culture, such as Japanese manga, “modern romance” TV dramas, anime and horror films; Hong Kong action films; Chinese martial arts and costume drama films; Korean blockbusters and the so-called Hallyu or Korean Wave;14 an emerging Asian “auteur cinema”; and more recently regional co-productions evincing a self-conscious “pan-Asian” awareness. The deepening integration of regional markets, consolidation of industry structure, and intra-/inter-regional collaborations have created an unprecedented occasion for a reconfiguration of these “cultural empires”. This latter portion of “shared history” demarcates that politically sensitive yet culturally and economically versatile space in which films are produced, distributed, and consumed.

4

Introduction

The “regional” as a critical framework thus has to mediate the tensions arising from the differential power relations, historical memories, and local realities that are still structured, partially if not wholly, on the basis of “nation” (or what Yingjin Zhang calls “nation-people”15) in a broad sense. Writings on national cinemas have generally focused on the cinematic representation/contestation of the nation or nation-state, and the negotiation between indigenous traditions and what were considered “modern” cinematic codes in the evolution of a national cinema. Chinese cinema scholarship has produced a fascinating account of how these various positions are argued, debated, rethought, and revised, particularly the controversy over the exact meaning of the “nation” and the “national” when applied to Chinese or any non-Western cinema in today’s globalized world.16 In the early 1990s, the “New Korean cinema” came into being against a long history of political repression and state interference. Beginning with the political democratization in 1992, the massive program of commercialization and globalization orchestrated by the state and large multinational corporations (chaebols) has given rise to the phenomenon of “record-breakers” or Korean blockbusters.17 Turning to Japan, the country’s relatively earlier admission to international (art) cinema through the works of luminaries such as Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro, and Kurosawa Akira has meant that Japanese cinema studies in the West have produced a substantial body of literature, from an aesthetically-oriented, neo-formalist mode of inquiry to ideological and political critique.18 As Davis and Yeh point out, the “national cinema” model cannot adequately address the region “as an interconnected whole that is susceptible to global political fluctuations and multinational capitalism.”19 While East Asia “remains a differentiated, conflicted region” rather than a homogenous whole,20 government policy and structural changes in the last decade have also brought about further regional consolidation and internationalization of the film industries. In this connection, cinema as a cultural industry subject to the vicissitudes of economic globalization/ regionalization and national policy regulations provides yet another critical angle from which to reconfigure the field of East Asian cinemas. In their discussion of “Northeast Asian regionalism,” Berry, Liscutin, and Mackintosh caution against the unequivocal embrace of “culture” as a means for individual liberation and empowerment that is written into official cultural policy statements: postures on internationalization, cultural exchange, and globalization may not only be about the promotion of a harmonious world order.

Vivian P. Y. Lee 5

They are also about projecting one’s own national prestige, presence, and influence through a jockeying for position in a regional and global market structured by relative strength of economic—now linked to culture—and/or political power. … Regionalism is far from minimalizing or eradicating marginalizations and oppressions. … As part of globalization in the twenty-first century, it replicates, reproduces, and regenerates them, if in slightly different form.21 One of the more visible impacts of economic globalization on East Asia’s film industries is the industry-wide shift toward co-production, which has become a dominant mode of practice in the mainstream commercial cinema. While co-production in Asia has had a long history dating back to the 1940s,22 since the late 1990s, co-produced films have gained a stronghold in the Asian film market. As Stephen Teo notes, successful “pan-Asian” films are able to invoke a sense of “universality” through the manipulation of setting, costume, characterization, and narrative.23 Far from being culturally innocent, this universality is the result of commercial and ideological calculations. No doubt co-productions can mobilize a diverse range of cultural, financial, technical, and artistic resources in the production of mega-blockbusters across national boundaries. However, it is also true that a majority of the recent co-productions are primed for the China market, while more and more films labeled “pan-Asian” are effectively “pan-Chinese” in terms of language, cast, and content. Economics and cultural power, after all, are important denominators in the co-production enterprise. All this points toward new questions and new possibilities in our understanding of East Asian cinemas as a concept “in process” without losing sight of the “differentiated, conflicted” nature of such a configuration. This observation makes a case for an analytical framework that recognizes the productive tensions between the local/national and the regional/global: it is informed by the inherent instability and contingence of the very “idea” of East Asia and its multifaceted cinematic traditions and cultural imaginations, as well as more recent changes in the global and regional political economy. Instead of imagining one regional cinema, it attends to pre-existing and emerging traits, patterns, practices, and relations of production and consumption, especially those whose nuanced connections have not yet been fully accounted for. While cultural policy and economic globalization can blur and redraw the boundaries of any national or regional cinema, in the new global order cinema can still afford to be a powerful means of (popular) cultural imagination and identity articulations whose material origins

6

Introduction

remain the local realities and experiences, where the regional and the global obtain tangible form and substance. This volume of essays aims to bring into dialogue different ideas of East Asian cinemas, seen as a polysemic site of textual, contextual, aesthetic, and ideological inquiry and critical reflection.

Themes and chapters The chapters in this book are organized into four thematic clusters, but the scope and arguments of the individual chapters are not necessarily bounded by this framework; more often than not issues and questions overlap, and some of them can be productively juxtaposed. The two chapters in Part I, “Filmmaking, Film Industry, and the Film Market,” look at how globalization has brought about new patterns of migration and adaptation among filmmakers and film industries. Song Hwee Lim’s “Transnational Trajectories in Contemporary East Asian Cinemas” traces the careers of Asian directors and sheds light on lesser noticed dimensions of their transnationalism. Encompassing prominent figures such as Ang Lee, John Woo, Wong Kar-wai, Jia Zhangke, Hou Hsiaohsien, Tsai Mingliang, and numerous emerging talents from Southeast Asia, Lim’s analysis maps out four transnational trajectories in their careers, namely Hollywood remakes, intra-Asian borrowings aimed at a mass audience, translingual filmmaking, and intra-Asian intertextuality, the latter two being more auteurist in their orientation. In Chapter 2, “Hollywood’s Global Strategy and the Future of Chinese Cinema,” Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao trace the historical trajectory of Hollywood’s expansion into the Chinese and Asian markets and reflect on how economic and cultural policy, industrial infrastructure, and ideology have both shaped and constrained the development of China’s national cinema, and how China can effectively position itself in the global competition for cultural markets. Part II, “Genre and Transnational Aesthetics” puts together four chapters on film aesthetics and film genres in a transnational context. Gina Marchetti’s “Bicycle Thieves and Pickpockets in the ‘Desert of the Real’: Transnational Chinese Cinema, Postmodernism, and the Transcendental Style” maps out a contour of Chinese cinematic realism in a close-reading of two films by Patrick Tam and Jia Zhangke through the prism of the “transcendental style.” Originally used by Paul Schrader in his study on Bresson, Dreyser, and Ozu, the transcendental style “uses the mimetic properties of the film image to point beyond the ‘real.’” Through a comparative textual analysis of Tam’s

Vivian P. Y. Lee 7

After This Our Exile and Jia’s Xiao Wu with reference to their common source of inspiration, Bresson’s Pickpocket, Marchetti traces the nuanced influences and shared philosophical and aesthetic insights among the Chinese and French filmmakers, so far an underexplored subject in critical discussions of these films, if not Chinese cinema in general. Transnational parody in action comedy is the theme of Eric Yu’s chapter, “007 in Late Colonial Hong Kong: Technology, Masculinity, and Sly Humour in Stephen Chow’s From Beijing with Love.” Yu recasts Stephen Chow’s 1994 action comedy in the context of the so-called Bondmania in 1960s Hong Kong, when the then crown colony was swept by James Bond movies and started producing its own versions of secret agents on screen. Yu’s reading of Chow’s parody of the Bond-prototype raises questions about the “cultural politics involved in fashioning a Chinese Bond in a late British colonial context,” which is to be distinguished from Anglo-American Bond parodies such as Casino Royale (1967) and the Austin Powers films. Genre identity and genre mobility are the concerns of the last two chapters of this part. In “‘Asia’ as Regional Signifier and Transnational Genre-Branding: the Asian Horror Omnibus Movies Three and Three ... Extremes” Nikki Lee discerningly problematizes the generic label “Asian horror” in the production and marketing of Three (2002) and Three … Extremes (2004), two pan-Asian omnibus films that serve as “models” for intra-regional and transregional projects. Lee argues that as a “brand-cum-genre,” Asia Extreme conflates the regional signifier “Asia” with both horror and extreme cinema and “reconfigures” the identity of Asian genre movies brought together under one brand. Vivian Lee’s chapter, “J-Horror and Kimchi Western: Mobile Genres in East Asian Cinemas,” examines the process of transcultural adaptation in Shimizu Takashi’s US remakes of his own Juon series and Korean director Kim Ji-woon’s self-reflexive citations of the Western in The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. Tracing the hybrid generic origins of horror and the Western and their creative transformation in these films, she argues that these genre films belong to a new “global vernacular” through which the “lingua franca” of popular cinema is no longer the uncontested property of Western (American) cinema. Part III, “Screen Cultures and Identity Politics,” revisits the conflicted zone of cultural identity and national history in cinematic representations. In Chapter 7, “Rethinking a New National Identity in Heisei Japan: Neo-conservatism and Japanese Cinema,” Kinnia Yau elucidates the origins of Neo-conservatism in contemporary Japanese politics and culture and how it has impacted film production in Japan. Her analysis of post-1990 war-related films and the filmmakers and stars associated

8

Introduction

with Neo-conservative ideology reveals that Neo-conservatism will continue to influence Japanese politics, and will continue to “make its presence felt in Japanese cinema.” While at the core of Japan’s Neoconservatism is the imagination of a new national identity, the very notion of a “regional identity” has become a floating signifier in the cultural traffic between Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. In Chapter 8, “Cinematic Imagination of Border-crossing in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta: Comrades, Almost a Love Story and Durian, Durian,” Michelle Huang considers the aspirations and ambivalences of Hong Kong’s integration with the Pearl River Delta region at different phases of the ex-colony’s political transition. Her reading of the two films reveals the “myriad emotions and feelings evoked by border-crossing” and opens up “a window through which to see the (im)possibility of a regional identity of Hong Kong and the PRD.” The politics of national and regional identity continues to inform Ti Wei’s analysis of panAsian co-productions in Chapter 9, “In the Name of ‘Asia’: Practices and Consequences of Recent International Film Co-productions in East Asia.” Wei’s analysis of the contexts of production and film narratives of a selection of East Asian co-productions complements the discussion on transnational filmmaking and pan-Asian cinema in the foregoing chapters by drawing attention to issues of cultural power in the economic game of regional co-productions. Wei’s discussion sheds light on the relationship between cultural capital, cultural power, and the creation of an imaginary “Asia” on screen removed from the realities and experiences in the region. These reflections also resonate with some of the questions raised in the interviews with filmmakers in Part IV, the final part of this volume. Film scholarship sometimes has to face the dilemma of creating a self-reflexive mirror insulated from the material realities and practices of filmmaking. The interviews presented in Part IV, “Interviews: Filmmakers on Filmmaking,” are intended partially to bridge the gap between academic scholarship and the “realpolitik” of the filmmaking world from the perspective of some of its “insiders” who have been actively involved in co-productions in Asia. In both Chapters 10 and 11, a critical introduction is followed by the author’s interviews with filmmakers working across the region. In “Framing Tokyo Media Capital and Asian Co-production,” Stephanie DeBoer puts together her interviews with prominent Japanese producers on Asian co-production from the vantage point of Tokyo, a leading “media capital” where “competing discourses” on co-production come into play. As such, these interviews “offer discourses to be interrogated” and also “suggest

Vivian P. Y. Lee 9

frameworks for approaching the ideologies and formations” that constrain collaborative work “across national or local, regional, and global networks.” To the extent that “media capitals” are “multifaceted yet deeply perspectival entities,” the views from Tokyo can be interestingly juxtaposed with those from Hong Kong and Singapore, two filmmaking cities trying to gain a foothold in the fast-expanding China market. In “Working Through China in the Pan-Asian Film Network: Perspectives from Hong Kong and Singapore,” Vivian Lee speaks with veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Joe Cheung Tung-cho, and Man Shu Sum of Raintree Pictures in Singapore, on the latest developments in China’s film industry, the impact of co-production on local films, and their personal experiences in working in, with, and through, China. Hong Kong and Singapore are two key players in the pan-Asian co-production network with deep historical and cultural links to China, and their respective futures in the growing Sinophone film market deserve closer attention. It is hoped that these interviews can complement the academic scholarship in the foregoing chapters in sketching a more “panoramic” vista of the contemporary East Asian cinemascape. The idea of this edited volume originally came from a two-day symposium entitled “Cross-cultural Perspectives on East Asian Cinemas” held at the City University of Hong Kong in July 2008. Additional chapters were subsequently received from colleagues who were not able to attend the event in Hong Kong. The editor would like to take this opportunity to thank all the contributors for their great effort, without which this project would not have been possible.

Notes 1. Iwabuchi (2002); Chua Beng-huat (2004). 2. David Bordwell, Donald Richie, and Noel Burch on Japanese cinema are among the most-quoted names in Japanese cinema scholarship. The “national” cinemas of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (a “proto-nation” according to Chu Yingchi (2003)), have received due critical attention since the 1980s, as reflected in the burgeoning of “Chinese cinemas” scholarship worldwide. Studies on contemporary Korean cinema have flourished since 2000; see, for instance, Julian Stringer (2005); Hyanjin Lee (2000), Contemporary Korean Cinema; and Francis Gateward (ed.) (2007), Seoul Searching. Examples of a regional/transnational approach include Anne Ciecko (ed.) (2006); Iwabuchi et al. (eds) (2004); Chua and Iwabuchi (eds) (2008); Davis and Yeh (2008); and Hunt and Leung (2008). See also Morris, et al (eds) (2005) on the transnational influence of Hong Kong action cinema. Cf. discussion below. 3. See Berry et al (eds) (2009). 4. Hunt and Leung (2008), 5, original italics.

10 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Introduction Duara (2001), 99–121. Morris-Suzuki (1998); Miyagi (2006). Miyagi (2006), 3. From Japan’s post-war endeavors to re-embrace Asia as a nostalgic reflection of its past to Korea’s (we may also add China and Taiwan in this category) struggle to assert its identity vis-à-vis a still powerful ex-colonizer ( Japan), and from the formation of APEC and ASEAN to the emergence of the “Chinese sphere of influence,” the region—and the world—seems to be witnessing a major reshuffle and realignment of power along regional lines. Ching (2000), 237–8. Ibid., 243, 257. Iwabuchi (2002), 548–51. Chua (2004), 211–12. “In Japan, film arrived as a commercial product … there was thus no Japanese essence awaiting liberation by a few individual directors” (Donald Richie (2005), 10). This historical experience with the quintessential form of Western cultural modernity was very different from that in China and Korea, where cinema was quickly politicized and seized upon as a means for advancing national struggles. See, for example, Zhang Yingjin (2004), Chinese National Cinema, Chapters 2 and 3. Also spelled as “hanryu” ( Japanese) and “hanliu” (Chinese). Initially a term coined by Mainland audiences to describe the unexpected “invasion” of Korean TV dramas and cultural products in China the 1990s. It has been taken up as shorthand for this cultural phenomenon in the region. See, for example, Lee Keehyeung (2008), and Fang-Chi Irene Yang (2008). Zhang Yingjin (2004), 5–7. Zhang Yingjin (2004) and Berry and Farquhar (2006) adopt a flexible model to account for the relationship between cinema and the national, locating the national within transnational networks or “projects” in which “a variety of regional, national, and local specificities impact upon each other in various types of relationships ranging from synergy to contest” (Berry and Farquhar (2006), 5). Lu and Yeh (2005) favor the term “Chinese-language film” to emphasize the geopolitical and cultural diversity of Chinese cinema. For a discussion on the phenomenon of the blockbuster film from Korea and China, see Chris Berry (2003), “‘What’s Big About the Big Film?’: ‘DeWesternizing’ the Blockbuster in Korea and China,” in Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, 217–29. Aesthetic ingenuities alongside culture-specific subject matter is at the centre of many influential works on Japanese film, such as David Bordwell’s Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (1988), Donald Richie’s Ozu (1974) and A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001/2005), and Noel Burch’s To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (1979). More recent studies have shown an increased interest in cultural and ideological analysis, see n. 13 above. Davis and Yeh (2008), 1. Ibid., 8. Berry et al. (2009), 15. For a discussion of the history of Asian co-productions, see Yau (2003). Also discussed in Teo (2008). Teo (2008).

Vivian P. Y. Lee 11

Bibliography Berry, Chris (2003) “‘What’s Big About the Big Film?’: ‘De-Westernizing’ the Blockbuster in Korea and China,” in Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, London: Routledge, 217–29. Berry, Chris and Mary Farquhar (2006) China on Screen: Cinema and Nation, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Berry, Chris, Nicola Liscutin, and Jonathan D. Mackintosh (eds) (2009) Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Bordwell, David (1988) Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, London: BFI; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Burch, Noel (1979) To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, London: Scolar Press. Ching, Leo (2000) “Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capitalism,” Public Culture, 12:1, 237–8. Chu, Yingchi (2003) Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland and Self, London and New York: Curzon. Chua Beng-huat (2004) “Conceptualising an East Asian Popular Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 200–21. Ciecko, Ann (ed.) (2006) Contemporary Asian Cinema: Popular Culture in a Global Frame, Oxford; New York: Berg, 2006. Davis, Darrell and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (2008) East Asian Screen Industries, London: British Film Institute. Duara, Prasenjit (2001) “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” Journal of World History, 12:1, 99–121. Gateward, Frances (ed.) (2007) Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema, Albany: State University of New York. Geller, Theresa L. (2008) “Transnational noir: style and substance in Hayashi Kaiyo’s The Most Terrible Time of My Life,” in Leo Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, 172–87. Hunt, Leo and Leung Wing-Fai (eds) (2008) East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London: I. B. Tauris. Iwabuchi, Koichi (2002) “Nostalgia for a (Different) Asian Modernity: Media Consumption of ‘Asia’ in Japan,” Positions, 10:3, 543–73. Iwabuchi, Koichi and Chua Beng Huat (eds) (2008) East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi, Stephen Muecke and Mandy Thomas (eds) (2004) Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lee, Hyanjin (2000) Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Miyagi, Taizo (2006) “Post-War Japan and Asianism”, Asia Pacific Review, 13:2, 1–16. Morris, Meghan, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-kiu. (eds) (2005) Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (1998) “Invisible Countries: Japan and the Asian Dream”, Asian Studies Review, 22:1, 5–22. Richie, Donald (1974) Ozu, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Richie, Donald (2005) A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, revised edition, Tokyo, New York, and London: Kodansha International. Stringer, Julian and Chi-Yun Shin (eds) (2005) New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press. Teo, Stephen (2008) “Promise and Perhaps Love: Pan-Asian Production and the Hong Kong-China Interrelationship,” Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, 9:3, 341–58. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting (2003) “Shaws’ Japanese Collaboration and Competition as Seen Through the Asian Film Festival Evolution,” in Wang Ain-ling (ed.), The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 279–91. Zhang, Yingjin (2004) Chinese National Cinema, New York and London: Routledge.

Part I Filmmaking, Film Industry, and the Film Market

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1 Transnational Trajectories in Contemporary East Asian Cinemas Song Hwee Lim

In the introduction to their 2008 edited volume, East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, Leon Hunt and Leung WingFai cite the example of the South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s monster movie, The Host, as “one of the most talked-about ‘crossover’ films of 2006” that seemed destined for, “if not Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonsized global success, then at least cult acclaim” (2008: 1).1 We now know, according to an interview with Bong on the New York Magazine’s blog, Vulture, published on March 12, 2010, that the film is supposedly being remade by Hollywood, and that although Bong has nothing to do with it, he will be happy whether the film is good or trash (Ebiri 2010). Judging from this evidence of yet another Hollywood remake of an East Asian blockbuster, Hunt and Leung’s earlier claim that cinema from East Asia “has arguably never had a more visible presence in the West than it does at present” remains valid in the year 2010 (2008: 2). Of course, as the name of the blog indicates, Hollywood does behave like a vulture in relation to other cinemas, devouring their cultures for its own profit and moving from one dish to the next wherever it finds a new exotic flavor. In recent years, Hollywood taste has swiftly moved from various East Asian cuisines (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong) to new dishes such as India’s Bollywood and new technologies such as 3-D. However, some tastes are here to stay, like the Chinese and Indian takeaways scattered across towns and cities in the West, and East Asian cinemas, as the current remake of The Host indicates, seem set to become a more permanent fixture on Hollywood’s menu. The phenomenal penetration of East Asian cinemas into the Hollywood scene began at the start of the new millennium with Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) receiving ten nominations and winning in four of the categories at the 2001 Academy Awards, and climaxed when 15

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Martin Scorcese finally won, at his sixth nomination, the Oscar for Best Director in 2007 for the film The Departed (2006), a remake of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002–3). It can be argued that it is not just Scorsese who has benefited from the injection of Asian cinema in his career, but rather that the American film industry has recently been given a new breath of life through this transpacific traffic. From action thrillers to horror films, East Asian cinemas have excited critics who marvel at their ability to beat Hollywood “at its own game” (Cousins 2004: 20). So successful have these East Asian films been in their own nations and regions that Hollywood has not only sat up and taken notice by remaking them but is also increasingly inviting their directors to remake these films in and for Hollywood. The Ring series by Hideo Nakata, the master of Japanese horror, is a famous example, with Nakata’s first instalment, Ringu (1998), remade by Gore Verbinski as The Ring (2002), but with Nakata himself directing the Hollywood remake of Ringu 2 (1999) as The Ring Two (2005). Similarly, the Pang brothers (Oxide and Danny), Hong Kong filmmakers based in Thailand, have had one of their films remade by Hollywood (The Eye, 2002; Hollywood version directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud in 2008) and another (Bangkok Dangerous, 1999) remade by themselves in Hollywood (2008), with the Hollywood versions keeping intact the original English titles, clearly capitalizing on the popularity of the East Asian titles. Moreover, this transpacific traffic has resulted in the transplantation not just of films but also of directors such as John Woo who, in the tradition of European émigré directors making similar journeys dating back to the early to mid-twentieth century, have enjoyed a second career making English-language films in Hollywood. Hollywood, however, is not alone in capitalizing on the popularity of East Asian genre cinemas. In fact, film industries within East Asia have also been reaping the benefits of drawing inspiration from and collaborating with each other, their intra-Asian trajectories providing another transnational dimension to this picture. One genre in particular stands out as a prime example: wuxia (martial arts). Following the global phenomenon that is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, making wuxia films or their corollary, historical epics, has suddenly become fashionable again. Zhang Yimou, the mainland Chinese director, is most prolific on this new cinematic bandwagon, churning out Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) in quick succession. The wuxia-cum-historical-epic genre has also spread to neighboring South Korea, with films such as Musa (Kim Sungsu, 2001, starring the ubiquitous Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi), Duelist

Song Hwee Lim 17

(Lee Myung-se, 2005) and The Restless (Cho Dong-oh, 2006). Even Bollywood has been inspired to take on the genre with Chandni Chowk to China (Nikhil Advani, 2008). Other notable genres that have undertaken such intra-Asian journeys include comedy, such as Hong Kong’s Shaolin Soccer (Stephen Chow, 2001), remade as the Japanese Shaolin Girl (Katsuyuki Motohiro, 2008), and horror, with Japanese cult director Takashi Miike’s more famous film, The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001), being based on a less well-known Korean film, The Quiet Family (Kim Ji-woon, 1998). These films, whether they are transpacific remakes or intra-Asian reimaginations and regardless of their box-office success or failure, have enjoyed a high profile both regionally and globally owing to their commercial nature and generic character; they have also attracted substantial scholarly attention (Hunt 2003; Lo 2005; Marchetti and Tan 2007; Chan 2009). These trajectories, however, should not obscure us from other kinds of transnational filmmaking activities that, taken together, form a more complete and complex picture of the state and status of East Asian cinemas in the world today. In this chapter I would therefore like to focus on two other transnational trajectories in contemporary East Asian cinemas namely, translingual filmmaking and intra-Asian intertextuality, which I shall map out in the following sections. I will conclude the chapter by highlighting key issues that emerge from these different transnational trajectories in contemporary East Asian cinemas.

Translingual filmmaking Transnational trajectories often entail a switch in the use of language or the deployment of multiple languages, and this is a trait that has marked East Asian cinemas’ flight beyond their regional boundaries. While dependence on language may be less pronounced in genre films that draw on their own conventions in mise en scène, characterization and narrative structure to bridge the gap in their transnational flights, this cannot be said of genres such as drama, especially if they are set in distinctively culturally specific contexts. When Ang Lee directed his first English-language film, Sense and Sensibility, in 1995, much was made of his ability in crossing linguistic and cultural barriers to deliver a film that could be classified as an English heritage film. More than a decade on, however, it has become commonplace for directors from East Asian cinemas to habitually traverse into the territories of transnational and translingual production, with the range of foreign languages

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used extending from English to include French and Japanese. I will examine, in this section, the translingual careers of selected East Asian directors, separating them and their works into two broad categories: ventures into Hollywood and commissions by Japanese and French institutions. An early indicator of the potential global reach of East Asian directors was The Hire, a collection of eight short films commissioned by the car manufacturer BMW between 2001–2 as promotional material released on the World Wide Web, of which three were directed by Chinese filmmakers, namely, Ang Lee’s Chosen (2001), Wong Kar-wai’s The Follow (2001), and John Woo’s Hostage (2002).2 While the choice of the eight directors may seem eclectic, in the case of the Chinese filmmakers contributing to this project, it signals a wider recognition of the various forms of their successes hitherto, ranging from art-house auteurs with crossover appeal (Wong) to those who have already commanded big-budget movies in Hollywood (Lee and Woo). More importantly, it illustrates that, in the process of globalization and the promotion of a global product, the national, cultural, and linguistic specificities of these directors no longer become a barrier but instead can be seen as an exotic transnational appeal because difference, in this context, connotes a sense of cosmopolitanism, “with-it-ness,” and coolness in the logic of late capitalism. With a brief to feature BMW cars in the films The Hire is essentially a series of commercials posing as collective filmmaking project, and it acknowledges if not demonstrates the commercial potential of these directors, especially in the genre of action thrillers involving car chases. In a similar vein, Hollywood has been courting East Asian directors, particularly those with a track record of making popular genre films that have achieved box office success in East Asia. John Woo is one of the first contemporary East Asian directors to have made the transpacific journey, thanks partly to American connoisseurs of cult East Asian films such as Quentin Tarantino acting as a “gatekeeper” (Hunt 2008) for the influx of East Asian influences into Hollywood. While Woo’s early career in Hollywood seems to consist of reproducing the kind of cop thrillers that cemented his reputation in Hong Kong cinema as star vehicles for Jean-Claude van Damme in Hard Target (1993) and John Travolta and Nicholas Cage in Face/Off (1997), Woo hit the big time, in 2000, with the blockbuster, Mission Impossible II, starring Tom Cruise. Unlike other East Asian directors such as those specializing in Japanese horror (the aforementioned Nakata, and Takashi Shimizu of Ju-on fame) or the Pang brothers who make the occasional films in Hollywood, Woo’s career is

Song Hwee Lim 19

unique in that his transpacific move has relocated him as a Hollywood resident who has also directed US television drama, and a 16-year gap separates his last Cantonese-language film, Hard Boiled (1992), and his recent return to Chinese-language filmmaking with Red Cliff (2008). While his assimilation into the Hollywood machine might have been East Asian cinemas’ loss, there is no question that Woo’s ability to gain a foothold in the US has paved the way for other transpacific filmmaking trajectories from East Asia. The transition to making English-language films in the US by directors who are more art-house in their orientation, on the other hand, has not always been as smooth, with the notable exception of Ang Lee. Lee is remarkable not only for bringing an art-house sensibility to American filmmaking with films such as The Ice Storm (1997) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), he also managed, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to make Chinese-language film a mainstream phenomenon in the American film market, while his all-American blockbuster, Hulk (2003), remains a notable failure in his illustrious career to date. It should be noted, however, that Lee completed his film education in the US and is schooled in the American film idiom. This cannot be said of other East Asian directors such as the Chinese fifth generation director Chen Kaige whose 2002 film, Killing Me Softly (starring Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham), was universally panned upon its release. More recently, Hong Kong new wave cult director Wong Kar-wai suffered a similar fate with My Blueberry Nights (2007), which featured jazz singer Norah Jones’s debut in film acting. If the English language is indeed a global lingua franca, the linguistic barrier for East Asian directors making English-language films may not have been a tall one to begin with, especially given the British colonial legacy in Hong Kong and the American neo-colonial presence in East Asia, particularly in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea from the end of World War II to the Cold War period. A different kind of postcolonial dynamic (and linguistic crossover) is evident in the Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien’s involvement in a transnational project initiated for the centenary of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu in 2003 by Shochiku Studio.3 Hou’s Japanese-language film, Café Lumière, not only echoes Ozu thematically by dealing with inter-generational familial relations but also weaves the complex (post)colonial relationship between Taiwan and Japan into its narrative. The latter strand of the film’s narrative is achieved by designating the protagonist, Yôko (Yo Hitoto), as a writer researching on the composer Jiang Wenye (Koh Bunya in Japanese, 1910–83). Jiang was born in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation

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period (1895–1945) and traveled to Japan in the 1920s to study music. He moved again to China where he taught composition at the Beijing Normal University from 1938 and suffered during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) owing to his Taiwanese/Japanese background (Wu 2008: 175, 180n3). Hou has previously broken new grounds in Taiwan cinema by touching upon the taboo subject of Taiwan’s turbulent history under the rule of the Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) government in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation period, such as the February 28 incident in A City of Sadness (1989) and the “white terror” period in Good Men, Good Women (1995).4 The invitation by Shochiku Studio has allowed Hou to reflect upon another chapter in Taiwan’s history and to demonstrate that the triangulated relations between China, Taiwan, and Japan throughout the twentieth century up until today are as complex as Jiang Wenye’s multiple identities and transnational career. Café Lumière marks the beginning of a new kind of transnational filmmaking in which East Asian auteurs are increasingly valued, following two decades of winning top awards at international film festivals, by cultural institutions beyond their region for their artistic achievement rather than commercial appeal. More recently, Hou and Tsai Ming-liang, the Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director, dominated the limelight of two major art institutions in Paris, both auteurs having already enjoyed critical acclaim for their films in France. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2006, the Musée d’Orsay invited four directors to make a film each, the brief being that at least one scene in each film had to be shot in the museum (Klawans 2008). This time, the transnational trajectories seemed to have been two-way traffic, in which directors from Taiwan and France used the opportunity to pay homage to each other’s filmmaking tradition. Hou’s Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) is a take on Albert Lamorisse’s Red Balloon (1956), whereas Olivier Assayas, who had long been preoccupied by Taiwan New Cinema and made a TV documentary on Hou as early as 1997, described his own contribution to the project, Summer Hours (2008), as his “most Taiwanese film” (Marques 2008: 6).5 Across the River Seine, Musée du Louvre, in its first film commissioning initiative, chose Tsai to make a film in its premises. Famed for his affinity to François Truffaut and The 400 Blows (1959), Tsai expresses his admiration for the French New Wave director in Visage/Face (2009) by casting Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jeanne Moreau, and Fanny Ardant, all of whom have had close working and personal relationships with Truffaut (Wu 2009). The transnational journeys of Hou and Tsai to the very heart of world-renowned art institutions in Paris

Song Hwee Lim 21

confirm their status as world-class auteurs and cinematic visionaries who, in the words of Catherine Derosier-Pouchous, head of the Louvre’s audiovisual program, “will rethink the meaning of cinema in the 21st century” (Robertson 2006). In mapping the transnational trajectories of these East Asian directors’ foray into translingual filmmaking, whether the films are commercial ventures or art-house projects, it is important not simply to assume that it is primarily (if not solely) East Asian cinemas that stand to benefit from such cross-cultural traffic in the form of “Western recognition,” thus reinforcing a form of Eurocentrism. Such Eurocentric tendency is not uncommon among Western critics and scholars as “[c]asual references by Asian filmmakers to European cinema are usually taken up as a grand statement of their bowing in the shadow of a greater influence and heritage that unfortunately gives weight to the Eurocentric impulses of many critics and even scholars” (Needham 2006: 372). Indeed, given the presence of Western military might and the prevalence of Orientalist discourses in East Asia for more than a century, it can be argued that many in the region have internalized an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West to the extent that any success on the Western front, from cinematic and literary prizes to sporting and economic triumphs, is invariably regarded as the highest form of validation. However, as the example of Scorsese in the introduction of this chapter demonstrates, it is no longer the East that is forever emulating its “superior” Western counterpart under a developmentalist logic of modernity; rather, the veteran Hollywood director may have a thing or two to learn from the Hong Kong upstarts, as the West increasingly looks to the East for inspiration to reinvigorate its flagging creative imagination. On the other hand, the commissioning of two Taiwan directors by Parisian museums in their inaugural filmmaking projects can be better appreciated as a kind of cinephilia that acknowledges and pays homage to each other’s cinematic achievements. It also serves to underline cinephilia as a transnational imaginary that has historically underpinned the filmmaking practice of many auteurs. As Assayas reflects in an interview for Summer Hours: I’ve always felt like a sort of Taiwanese director working in France. When I started making movies, the preoccupations of Hou Hsiaohsien and Edward Yang affected me, resonated with my own. Later I became interested in the work of Wong Kar Wai and Tsai Mingliang. They are more my family than French cinema of the time, that of directors starting back then, with whom I had little in common

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in the generational sense. … As strange as it may seem, with my Chinese friends I felt I could have, symbolically, the dialogue I had been deprived of here. (Marques 2008: 6) Assayas’s statement recalls the sentiments of the Nouvelle Vague directors who found little in common with their preceding generation of filmmakers, dismissing their films as “le cinéma de papa,” and who looked to Hollywood as their family and friends with whom they could conduct a more meaningful cinematic dialogue. In the case of Assayas, his sense of alienation has been toward his own generation of French filmmakers, whereas he has found affinity in his contemporary counterparts in East Asia, at a time when Hou and Tsai have been making their own cinephilic nods to French New Wave directors.6 The commissioning of Hou and Tsai by Parisian museums is thus not so much two-way traffic as reverse traffic—with French institutions making the transnational journey to Taiwan—that completes a cinephilic cycle between the cinemas of France and Taiwan.

Intra-Asian intertextuality Assayas’s statement can equally be applied to an intra-Asian context in which transnational filmmaking in contemporary East Asia has taken the form of thematic and aesthetic intertextuality. Rather than declaring admiration for past European masters or drawing inspiration from Hollywood productions, a younger generation of directors in East Asia have, like Assayas, chosen to affiliate themselves with selected East Asian cineastes who have acquired an undisputed auteur status within world cinema. This intertextuality within East Asian cinemas arguably heralds a new era that moves away from the East–West binary that has dominated intellectual discourses throughout the twentieth century; instead, it re-orientates our attention to intra-Asian cultural exchanges, though the geopolitical histories of the region present different sets of power dynamics to be negotiated. In this section I will focus on some aspects of thematic and aesthetic features that, while not the sole properties of East Asian cinemas, can nonetheless be identified as their defining features of the last two decades. If loneliness is, as Hamid Naficy suggests, an “inevitable outcome of transnationality, and it finds its way into the desolate structures of feeling and lonely diegetic characters” (2001: 55), East Asian cinemas, especially the auteurist strand within them, have almost been equated

Song Hwee Lim 23

with a cinema of solitude and loneliness. Tsai Ming-liang, dubbed the “poet of solitude” (Rapfogel 2004), produces films in which lonely characters wander aimlessly in a ruinous urban landscape, deprived of human contact and communication, drowned in their isolated states of quotidian existence. The lonely characters in Wong Kar-wai’s films are always searching for love, betraying an innate sense of alienation that can only be fulfilled, or so they presume, by the (false) promise of love and coupledom. Even genre films such as those by the South Korean director Park Chan-wook are led by characters in extreme circumstances of loneliness, confined in a cell for fifteen years without any explanation in the case of the protagonist in Oldboy (2003) or blocked out of the outside world by deafness and muteness like the protagonist in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). The intertextual thematic construction of this cinema of loneliness is achieved, in many cases, by introducing characters who are displaced from their homelands and thus feeling dislocated in a foreign land whose language and culture are alien to them as much as they are alien to the diegetic setting. The sense of alienation experienced by these diasporic characters is so despairing that it sometimes drives them to acts of suicide. Thai filmmaker Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Last Life in the Universe (2003; Figure 1.1) features a Japanese character, Kenji

Figure 1.1 The comfort of strangers: lonely characters in Last Life in the Universe

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(Tadanobu Asano), who works as a librarian at the Japan Foundation in Bangkok. The opening sequence of the film sees the obsessively tidy Kenji preparing to hang himself in his rented apartment, only to be interrupted by an unwelcome visitor (his brother), whose casual remark reveals that this is not Kenji’s first attempt at ending his life. In a similar scene in Singaporean director Royston Tan’s 4:30 (2005), Jung (Kim Young-jun), a Korean migrant worker in Singapore, attempts to hang himself in the kitchen of his rented flat, though this is played to some comic effect as he comes tumbling down with the weak support of the railings on which the rope hangs. Both of these characters, like those in Tsai’s Vive L’amour (1994) and Wong’s Chungking Express (1994), find temporary solace in the comfort of strangers: Kenji develops a relationship with a Thai woman he first encounters when contemplating suicide while perched on a bridge; Jung embraces an equally lonely boy, Xiao Wu (Yuan Xiaoli), his landlady’s barely teenage son, and leaves marks of tears on his white T-shirt. Xiao Wu, in turn, is also a diasporic character from China who has been left to fend for himself in Singapore while his mother is busy with business activities in Beijing. The title of Tan’s film, 4:30, is partly attributed to a rumor that the suicide rate at this time is the highest (Tan, n.d.), and the film devotes much of its screen time to Xiao Wu’s many attempts at finding a connection with Jung, an obsession borne in no small part out of loneliness. Pen-Ek and Tan belong to a new generation of filmmakers emerging from Southeast Asia whose films exhibit not just thematic but also aesthetic affinity to established East Asian auteurs and who locate their filmmaking tradition within East Asia.7 Both films mentioned above are imbued with a sense of stillness, reflected in the static long takes of their cinematography and the slow pace in which the narratives unfold, reinforcing the alienation and loneliness that threaten to suffocate their characters. Xiao Wu in 4:30 is seemingly a younger version of Tsai’s alter ego of loneliness, Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng). Those familiar with Tsai’s oeuvre will readily pick up intertextual references in Tan’s film: Xiao Wu ironing his shirt in the living room recalls Miao Tien doing the same in The River (1997); Jung turning in his sleep unknowingly to embrace Xiao Wu, who is hiding in Jung’s bed, shares a similar plot element and visual composition as a scene toward the end of Vive L’amour. In fact, such intertextual borrowings are not limited to the cinematic: the scene featuring Xiao Wu pretending to surf on an ironing board is reminiscent of a Sony Ericsson commercial starring another transnational East Asian star, Kaneshiro Takeshi, who has appeared in Wong’s

Song Hwee Lim 25

Chungking Express.8 This intra-Asian intertextuality emerges not only in transnational filmmaking but is also a transmedial phenomenon. While Tan’s film borrows freely from and pays homage to other East Asian cultural products, Pen-Ek’s film is an intra-Asian collaboration that arises from mutual appreciation between East Asian filmmakers, crossing borders from Thailand (Pen-Ek) to Japan (Asano and Takashi Miike) and involving the unclassifiable Australian-born cinematographer Christopher Doyle who has worked extensively with directors both East and West. According to Pen-Ek in an interview: “Every time Doyle, Asano and I met at festivals we said we should work together” (Clarke 2004: 17). The film also features a cameo role by the cult Japanese director Miike who “took a liking” to Pen-Ek from their first encounter and treated him “like a brother” (ibid.). While such collaboration may not always be easy—Doyle and Pen-Ek apparently “fought every day on the set” owing to different working styles (ibid.: 18)—there is clearly individual cultural capital to be gained from a collective effort that draws from the “coolest” filmmakers in East Asian cinemas: “hanging out” with the cool can only make one appear even more cool.9 Such a collaboration also helps to foster a transnational aesthetic so that the cinematography in Last Life in the Universe, given Doyle’s famous long-term work with Wong Kar-wai, cannot but bring to mind Wong’s films in a circuit of signature symbols, signs, and styles. Similarly, the casting of Asano (star of Miike’s 2001 film, Ichi The Killer), cameo roles by Miike and Sato Sakichi (screenplay writer of Ichi The Killer), and the appearance in the Japan Foundation library of the poster of Ichi The Killer all draw attention to the connectivity between Pen-Ek’s film and the Japanese yakuza gangster genre, lending the film another layer of intertextual references that are not only transnational but also decidedly intra-Asian. Just as we should address issues of Eurocentrism in mapping the transnational trajectories of East Asian directors into translingual filmmaking in Hollywood and Europe, we should not pretend that an unequal power dynamic within East Asia that might impinge upon intra-Asian cinematic collaborations does not exist. My earlier discussion of Hou’s Café Lumière highlights the postcolonial dynamic between Japan and Taiwan; a similar dynamic (though expressed very differently) is evident in films dealing with South Korea’s experience of Japanese colonization (2009: Lost Memories, Lee Si-myung, 2002) and China’s experience of its war with Japan (Devils on the Doorstep, Jiang Wen, 2000; City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan, 2009). Elsewhere, Hong Kong cinema leading up to the end of British rule and the handover to the People’s Republic

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of China in 1997 has shown a preoccupation with the legacy of colonialism and ambivalence toward its new master. Moreover, unequal power relation also exists within a nation-state so that, for example, a Chinese Malaysian filmmaker, given the suppressed status of the Chinese population in Malaysia, may align his or her filmmaking with the umbrella label of “transnational Chinese cinema” rather than with the national cinema of Malaysia. Chinese-language films by Chinese Malaysian directors such as Tan Chui Mui and James Lee have more in common with those by Tsai Ming-liang and Wong Kar-wai than they do with Malay-language cinema; their cinematic trajectories are inevitably transnational and intra-Asian rather than merely located within the national milieu (Raju 2008: 71–2). Indeed, if James Lee has been called by his fellow Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammad “Malaysia’s Tsai Ming-liang” (ibid.: 71), it only serves to highlight that Tsai’s own intra-Asian trajectory has obscured his Malaysian Chinese status owing to his career being based in Taiwan and generally being referred to as a Taiwan director. In this context, should we regard a Taiwanese director who draws upon intertextuality with Tsai as one that circulates within Taiwan national cinema or a transnational one? In a clear intertextual reference to Tsai, Detours to Paradise (2008) by Taiwan director Rich Lee features Yang Kuei-Mei as an ex-movie star and her appearance in a poster of Tsai’s The Hole (1998) hangs on her living room wall. Lee’s film also shores up a different set of intra-Asian power dynamic, this time economic, as its protagonists are two migrant workers from Indonesia and Thailand. It contains another intra-Asian intertextual element in the form of the actor Banlop Lomnoi, previously known for his role in Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2004 film, Tropical Malady. The common language between the two main characters is Mandarin, though Thai and Indonesian are also spoken in the film, highlighting the multilingual aspect of transnational filmmaking.

Conclusion I have mapped out, in this chapter, four transnational trajectories in contemporary East Asian cinemas. I began by identifying the trends of Hollywood remakes of East Asian films and of intra-Asian re-imaginings of genre films that aim at a mass audience. Proposing that more attention should be paid to other trajectories of transnational filmmaking, I proceeded to delineate the states of translingual filmmaking and of intra-Asian intertextuality that are more auteurist in their orientation.

Song Hwee Lim 27

It remains for me, in this conclusion, to draw out some key issues that emerge from these transnational trajectories. With regard to the phenomenon of Hollywood remakes of East Asian genre films, profit is undoubtedly the main driving force. For Bliss Cua Lim, Hollywood’s remaking of Asian horror film represents “the convergence of both regionalist discourses on the ‘pan-Asian film’ and globalist profiteering of Asian commercial cinema as at once culturally specific and culturally neutral, hence immensely appealing to audiences worldwide” (2007: 112). Gary Xu has also written on Hollywood’s new production strategy of “outsourcing” to East Asia and the role played by intermediaries such as Roy Lee, dubbed the “king of remakes,” who seemingly has no particular interest in Asian horror films beyond the profit margin (Xu 2008: 192, 195). While this phenomenon may not necessarily be a case of unidirectional exploitation by a neo-colonialist Hollywood, one nevertheless has to ask what do East Asian cinemas stand to gain from this transpacific traffic and if a win-win situation is at all plausible. As Roy Lee reveals, as it is relatively cheap to make films in East Asia, the Hollywood remakes are attractive to East Asian directors as they could potentially recuperate their production costs merely through the sale of remaking rights of their films, leading to East Asian filmmakers knocking at his door with their scripts and videos (ibid.: 195). The slippery slope in this, however, is that Hollywood might go one step beyond “outsourcing” by establishing studios in East Asia to make East Asian films as test cases or first proofs for what are ultimately destined to be Hollywood products. Bypassing East Asian filmmakers who might already be making their films with a “built-in ‘remaking mentality’” (ibid.), this strategy could rob East Asian cinemas of some of their agency and turn their industries into laboratories for future Hollywood hits. If Hollywood remakes circumvent the linguistic issue by turning East Asian films into American products, intra-Asian collaboration in generic films often cannot escape the thorny issue of linguistic translatability. The expectation of linguistic authenticity among East Asian audiences is usually so high that any hint of linguistic impurity is deeply frowned upon. One of the reasons for the less-than-enthusiastic reception of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon among Chinese-speaking audiences was the jarring Mandarin accents on the soundtrack, which range from what is regarded as standard Beijing to Cantonese, spoken by the main cast, who variously hail from China (Zhang Ziyi), Taiwan (Chang Chen), Hong Kong (Chow Yun-fat), and Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh). However, rather than highlighting the contingent construction of Chineseness, the

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hybridity of the Chinese language and its myriad dialects, and the multiplicity of Chinese nationhood (the notion of which is always already transnational given the geopolitical realities of three different Chinese polities in the twentieth century), the effect of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on its Chinese audiences seemed, instead, to have been an affirmation of linguistic purity, cultural hegemony, and ideological orthodoxy. This linguistic issue is exacerbated in the case of Chen Kaige’s Chinese-language wuxia film, The Promise (2005), with the Japanese and Korean actors uttering their Mandarin dialogues with numerous errors in pronunciation and intonation, drawing much unintended laughter from Chinese-speaking audiences. The Promise epitomizes one of the perils of transnational filmmaking, that of linguistic authenticity, and the Japanese cult B-movie director Seijun Suzuki resolved, if somewhat implausibly, this tricky issue by making the character played by Zhang Ziyi in his film, Princess Raccoon (2005), a raccoon spirit, thus justifying her speaking in both Japanese and Mandarin.10 As for translingual filmmaking, Hou’s Café Lumière and Flight of the Red Balloon as well as Tsai’s Visage may pose challenging questions about national cinema and film historiography given that they are all (co-)produced by studios and institutions beyond Taiwan and are not made in any of the Chinese languages. Can they claim to be part of Taiwan cinema or will they be included in Japanese and French film histories, and in what discursive terms? This set of questions could similarly be posed for the English-language films of John Woo, Ang Lee, and other East Asian directors who have made films in Hollywood. Meanwhile, Tsai’s career, whilst firmly located and recognized in Taiwan cinema, may struggle to find a place in the historiography of Malaysian cinema, even though his 2006 film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, is set in Kuala Lumpur and includes dialogues in Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, and Bengali. To recall Amir Mohammad’s description of James Lee as “Malaysia’s Tsai Ming-liang,” will Tsai be acknowledged in Malaysia not only as “Taiwan’s Tsai Ming-liang” but also as “Malaysia’s Tsai Ming-liang”? Finally, intra-Asian intertextuality deserves more examination so that we not only account for the thematic and aesthetic aspects of these transnational filmmaking activities but also more fully consider the crossfertilization of cast and crew (especially stars), the inter-penetration of media industries (film, television, and pop music), the possible formulation of a new East Asian (or what Bliss Cua Lim calls “pan-Asian” in the quote above) identity and discourse, and how these transnational cultural flows with economic imperatives might help to reconfigure

Song Hwee Lim 29

geopolitical realities. East Asian cinemas could contribute greatly to the emerging field of transnational film studies as their transnational trajectories continually cross national borders, capture regional imaginations and conquer global markets. Intertextuality in contemporary East Asian cinemas demonstrates convincingly that transnational filmmaking is no longer an anomaly within a national cinema’s output but is increasingly the norm by which cinema operates today, from production and direction to distribution and reception. Indeed, transnationalism is often woven into the very fabric of a film’s narrative, aesthetic, star body, and mode of address. I began this chapter with the current Hollywood remake of a Korean film; I shall conclude by referring to a Korean film, Kim Ji-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), a parody of Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti Western classic, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and to the metaphor of food. If Leone’s film was made at a time when Hollywood’s annual production of Westerns was experiencing a precipitous drop whereas the Italian film industry was second only to Hollywood thanks to increasing US-Italian co-production (Bondanella 1999: 253–4), Kim’s “kimchi Western,” in playing with a classic Hollywood genre (albeit spiced up as Italian food), reverses the traffic in Hollywood’s remaking of East Asian cinemas, a trend that can be traced to the “Pad Thai Western” film, Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng, 2000). More importantly, it bespeaks the confidence of emerging East Asian cinemas and perhaps also the waning of Hollywood’s grip on the global film market today. In tracing the multiple and complex transnational trajectories in contemporary East Asian cinemas, I hope to have addressed their different impact, both regional and global, as well as the economic, socio-cultural, political, and ideological functions they may serve. I hope also to have highlighted the unequal power dynamic—within East Asia and between East Asia and the West—that both underpins and impinges upon these various forms of transnational filmmaking activities. I am particularly mindful not to set up contemporary East Asian cinemas as a form of resistance to a presumed Hollywood hegemony, and would follow Rey Chow in seeing some cinematic productions (her object of study is cultural translation) in both East and West as “full, materialist, and most likely equally corrupt, equally decadent participants in contemporary world culture” (1995: 195). I therefore also wish to avoid an overarching proposition about East Asian cinemas’ transnationality, and would rather trace closely the steps of each trajectory, each itinerary. It is only through a thorough materialistic approach that we might be able to determine if each instance of transnational filmmaking in

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contemporary East Asian cinemas could be termed the good, the bad, or, indeed, the weird.

Notes I would like to thank Jake Bevan and Jeffery Tan for sharing their vast knowledge of contemporary East Asian cinemas with me. This chapter grew in part from an undergraduate module on East Asian cinemas that I have been teaching at the University of Exeter, and I thank students on the course who have helped me shape my ideas, especially the class in academic year 2008–9. 1. While East Asian cinemas usually refer to cinemas from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, I will include in this discussion, as Hunt and Leung (2008: 5–6) have done, cinemas from southeast Asia, particularly Singapore and Thailand. 2. The other five films are Joe Carnahan’s Ticker (2002), John Frankenheimer’s Ambush (2001), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Powder Keg (2001), Guy Ritchie’s Star (2001) and Tony Scott’s Beat the Devil (2002). All films star Clive Owen as the driver of a BMW car. 3. Another director involved in this project is Abbas Kiarostami, whose contribution is the dialogue-free Five: Five Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ozu (2003), which consists of five static long takes by the sea. 4. The February 28 incident refers to a confrontation, begun on that date in 1947 between the Taiwanese people and the KMT regime, that led to a violent crackdown by the troops, with an estimated death toll ranging from a thousand to more than a hundred thousand (Wachman 1994: 98–9). The KMT subsequently imposed martial law on Taiwan on May 19, 1949, and the period lasting until the 1960s, during which an unknown number of intellectuals and political dissidents were arrested, is known as the “white terror” (Chao and Myers 1998: 50–2). 5. The other two directors chosen for this project are Raoul Ruiz and Jim Jarmusch, though I cannot find any information on whether they have made the films. All films in this project (are scheduled to) star Juilette Binoche. 6. In his segment, The Electric Princess House, in the portmanteau film, Chacun son cinéma, commissioned by the Cannes Film Festival to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary in 2007, Hou pays tribute to Jacques Demy and his The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Tsai’s What Time Is It There? (2001), featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud and The 400 Blows, is a famous homage to Truffaut. 7. By referring to the Thai filmmaker as Pen-Ek rather than Ratanaruang, I follow the convention described by Brian Ruh in which the given name rather than the family name is used on subsequent references (Ruh 2008: 151 note 3). 8. The commercial can be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kWjkGBJULDE (accessed July 10, 2009). 9. “Hanging Out” is the title of Roger Clarke’s short article on Pen-Ek, in which he talks about the director’s “new hip status” (Clarke 2004: 16). 10. There is yet another peril in transnational filmmaking, as I have discussed elsewhere (Lim 2007), when Hollywood decides to set a film in East Asia but

Song Hwee Lim 31 all the characters are made to speak mainly in English, disregarding ethnic differences and geopolitical tensions between China and Japan in the process, as has been done with Memoirs of a Geisha (Rob Marshall, 2005).

Bibliography Bondanella, Peter (1999) Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, new expanded edition. Northam: Roundhouse Publishing. Chan, Kenneth (2009) Remade in Hollywood: The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chao, Linda and Myers, Ramon H. (1998) The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan, Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press. Chow, Rey (1995) Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema, New York: Columbia University Press. Clarke, Roger (2004) “Hanging Out” and “The Thai Luck Club”, Sight and Sound, August, 16–18. Cousins, Mark (2004) “The Asian Aesthetic”, Prospect, November, 20–5. Ebiri, Bilge (2010) “Mother Director Bong Joon-ho on the American Host Remake: ‘If It’s Trash, I’ll Still Be Very Happy,’” New York Magazine Blog: Vulture, March 12. Available online at http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/03/ mother_director_bong_joon-ho_o.html (accessed May 20, 2010). Hunt, Leon (2003) Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger, London and New York: Wallflower. —— (2008) “Asiaphilia, Asianisation and the Gatekeeper Auteur: Quentin Tarantino and Luc Besson”, in Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 220–36. Hunt, Leon and Leung, Wing-fai (2008) “Introduction,” in Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1–13. Klawans, Stuart (2008) “Un Ballon Est un Ballon,” The Nation, April 28. Available online at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080428/klawans (accessed July 10, 2009). Lim, Bliss Cua (2007) “Generic Ghosts: Remaking the New ‘Asian Horror Film,’” in Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam (eds), Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and New Global Cinema: No Film Is An Island, Abingdon: Routledge, 109–25. Lim, Song Hwee (2007) “Is the Trans- in Transnational the Trans- in Transgender?” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 5: 1, 39–52. Lo, Kwai-cheung (2005) Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong, Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Marchetti, Gina and Tan, See Kam (eds) (2007) Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and New Global Cinema: No Film Is An Island, Abingdon: Routledge. Marques, Sandrine (2008) “About Summer Hours: Interview with Olivier Assayas,” Press Kit by MK2. Available online at http://medias.unifrance.org/medias/ 78/144/36942/presse/dp-anglais-l-heure-d-ete.pdf (accessed July 10, 2009). Naficy, Hamid (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

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Needham, Gary (2006) “Ozu and the Colonial Encounter in Hou Hsiao-hsien,” in Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham (eds), Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 369–83. Raju, Zakir Hossain (2008) “Filmic Imaginations of the Malaysian Chinese: ‘Mahua Cinema’ as a Transnational Chinese Cinema”, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2: 1, 67–79. Rapfogel, Jared (2004) “Taiwan’s Poet of Solitude: An Interview with Tsai Mingliang,” Cinéaste, 4 (Fall), 26–9. Robertson, Campbell (2006) “Arts, Briefly,” The New York Times (December 13). Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/arts/13arts.html?_ r=2 (accessed July 10, 2009). Ruh, Brian (2008) “Last Life in the Universe: Nationality, Technology, Authorship,” in Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 123–37. Tan, Royston (n.d.) “Director’s Statement,” 4:30 Official Website. Available online at: http://www.zhaowei.com/430/synopsis.html (accessed July 10, 2009). Wachman, Alan M. (1994) Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization, Armonk, New York, and London: M. E. Sharpe. Wu, Amber (2009) “Louvre-Inspired Film Up for Golden Palm,” Taiwan Journal, 26: 20. Available online at http://taiwanjournal.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=51079& CtNode=122 (accessed July 10, 2009). Wu, I-fen (2008) “Remapping Ozu’s Tokyo? The Interplay between History and Memory in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière,” Asian Cinema, 19: 1, 172–81. Xu, Gary G. (2008) “Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood,” in Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 191–202.

2 Hollywood’s Global Strategy and the Future of Chinese Cinema Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao (Translated by Vivian P. Y. Lee)

The rise of capitalism, the emergence of multinational corporations, and the arrival of the information society paved the way for the emergence of the global economy. In the words of Anthony Giddens, we are living in a new “world system.”1 In this system, capitalist countries led by the US enjoy hegemonic power over the political, economic, and cultural resources of the world. Since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China also has to abide by a new set of rules set by the big players in global market. As far as the American film industry is concerned, globalization has brought into being a deterritorialized, temporally and spatially compressed economic system through which Hollywood conquers the world film market. As a cultural manifestation of American economic power, Hollywood is bound to have a deep impact on Chinese cinema, and its influence will infiltrate other arenas of social, political, and cultural life. This is especially true if we understand cinema as a cultural product and a symbolic system that maintains a nuanced and complexly symbiotic relation with the system of values and culture of a nation.2 Understandably, Hollywood’s challenge to the Chinese national cinema will go hand in hand with the promotion of American products, lifestyles, beliefs, and values as a kind of Americanized “global taste” in China. This also explains why the expansion of Hollywood into the domestic film industry has coincided with the rise of “anti-Hollywood” criticism. Critical discourse on “Hollywood and Chinese cinema” therefore finds its way into the discourse of the political economy. These recent developments prompted our present study of the political, cultural, and economic role of Hollywood in the US’ globalization strategy, and China’s position in Hollywood’s global expansion since the early decades of the twentieth century. It will also examine Hollywood’s 33

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business strategies in China and the prospect of Chinese cinema in the age of globalization. Our ultimate goal is to contemplate a strategic position to confront the challenge of globalization. “Confronting Hollywood,” in this connection, can be regarded as a contextually and theoretically informed subject of inquiry in the discourse of globalization in China today.

Planet Hollywood: Cinema and the US global strategy The latter half of the twentieth century marked the decline of imperialism and colonial rule in many former colonized nations. A new world order characterized by modernization and the global flow of capital and information began to emerge. The rise of multinational corporations and transnational information and cultural industries further weaken the boundaries between nation-states, giving rise to an unprecedented, integrated world system in which advanced capitalist countries increasingly rely on their economic and cultural supremacy to access resource-rich markets in the developing world. More importantly, the creation of profit coincides with the rise of the ideology of consumption that characterizes the “post-colonial condition” of many developing countries. Originally founded upon the ideals of the free market and free competition, the world system has developed into a system of inequality due to unevenness in the distribution of political and economic power. Some Western scholars have suggested that the world today is made up of three kinds of nations and areas: (1) the “core states” (the US, the European Union, and Japan) possess a kind of trans-regional power; (2) “peripheral areas” include those developing countries that occupy a “dependent” position, and are considered powerless regions; and (3) “semi-peripheral areas,” which are mid-way in the power struggle between the core states and the peripheral areas. The supremacy of the core states is founded upon the exploitation of the other two areas. Whereas the semi-peripheral areas can exploit the peripheral areas, the latter seek opportunities to surpass the former to get closer to the centre of power. The uneven power network of trans-regional power and powerless regions thus becomes a site of struggle dominated by the “core states.”3 As the leading economic power among the core states, the US remains unchallenged in its global supremacy. In the last few decades, the US has continued to increase its influence in world affairs. US military power has remained virtually unrivalled since the disintegration of the USSR in the 1980s. Many international agencies, such as the WTO,

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the World Bank, and even the United Nations are in various degrees subject to US influence. All this fosters the “superpower” mentality of US diplomacy. The cultural industries, especially the film industry, have always played a central role in the global strategy of the US. When “culture” is turned into an industry, its economic and cultural functions become intertwined. The export of cultural products creates new markets and profits; at the same time, cultural values are also exported through the medium of the commodity. In turn, the propagandistic effects of cultural commodities accelerate the expansion of overseas markets. This explains the importance of culture in the global strategy of the US, and the special status of the cinema in this strategy. As early as the 1930s, the American government was already making use of cinema and popular culture to expand the nation’s political, cultural, and economic influence worldwide. Ever since the time of the First World War, the US has promoted and exported its films, television programs, pop music, and pop culture to the world. Film became an important means for the Roosevelt administration to promote the democratic image of the US during the Second World War.4 Media technology and the media industry are descendents of liberal capitalism, which came into being after the Industrial Revolution. A century-long history of development in the West, especially in the US, means that the West will always take the lead in the world’s mass media production. This uneven distribution of media power is assisted and perpetuated by the rise to prominence of a number of transnational media giants backed by powerful state-machines since the 1980s. Between the East and the West, the North and the South, and developed and developing societies, the uneven flow of media information is becoming more obvious. In Taiwan, for example, imported films by Hollywood’s eight major studios accounted for 70 percent of the total box office revenue since 1990s; American pop music took up 60 percent of the total sales of CDs; 95 percent of the country’s 4.5 million cable TV users subscribe to channels operated by multinational companies; and more than 60 percent of the advertising business went to multinational advertising firms (sole operators or joint ventures).5 In 1997, income from video rentals in the US totaled 9.6 billion USD, and quite a number of leading figures in the entertainment business made it to the Fortune 500 list. In 1998, the biggest export sector in the US was the film, television, and music industry, which reported 60 billion USD in total export earnings. These figures propelled the GDP ranking of the film and television industry from No. 11 in 1985 to No. 6 in 1998.

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Cinema is one of the most international media industries and the history of the American film industry aptly reflects its global character. Hollywood producers were already setting up offices in overseas markets in the 1910s. During World War I, an international film marketing network began to take shape around American cinema, overtaking conventional strongholds such as France, Britain, and Germany.6 From 1919 onward, overseas box-office estimates were factored into Hollywood’s production budgets. Since the 1930s, one-third to one-half of the film industry’s total revenue came from overseas markets. Arguably, the two World Wars and their aftermath contributed to the global hegemony of the American cinema that has remained unchallenged ever since. The speed with which the American film industry adapts to technological changes, such as the use of sound in the 1930s, also accounts for its global success. (Today this global hegemony is evident in the increasing supply of English-language films or English-subtitled films from non-English speaking countries.) By 1995, American films accounted for over 75 percent of box-office revenues and 70 percent of satellite and cable TV screenings in Europe. Hollywood’s presence in Canada, Latin America, Australia, and the Asia-Pacific region cannot be overstated. Even in Hong Kong, a city nicknamed “Hollywood in the East,” Hollywood productions have shaken the foundations of the local film industry in the last 15 years. At the turn of the twenty-first century, average annual box-office takings of American films stood at 7.5 billion USD in China alone, in addition to another 6 billion USD from other overseas markets. According to some statistics, in the early 1990s Hollywood productions accounted for less than one-tenth of the world’s 4000 productions, but they accounted for 70 percent of the world’s total box-office revenue.7 It can be said that this global presence is the result of half a century’s effort to internationalize American cinema. What seems more uncanny is that in many places American cinema is no longer seen as “American” cinema, but “cinema” per se. As one critic remarks, American popular culture does not even look like it is imported.8 Indeed, there is some truth in saying that we are becoming a “Hollywood Planet.”9 The globalization of the American cultural industries, however, has met with resistance. Dissonant voices in post-World War I Europe saw the onslaught of Hollywood films as not only a crisis of the cinema, but also a crisis of civilization.10 During the 1970s and 1980s, the global hegemony of American culture was a common target among critics of cultural imperialism in the West. Soon after the announcement of the “New International Economic Order” by the UN, UNESCO proposed the

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“New World Information and Communications Order” in 1974. These initiatives reflected a general desire for the establishment of a new international information and communication order of exchange in which developed and developing nations and regions East and West can participate as equals. At the same time, the challenge posed by American cultural supremacy, capitalist consumerism and global modernity to national and cultural identity and traditional value systems continued to provoke new debates and criticisms. More recently, more institutionalized forms of resistance have been implemented in Canada, the EU, and many Asian countries such as South Korea and China to put in check the advance of American culture, especially Hollywood films in domestic markets. Filmmakers and social activist groups have joined hands in lobbying their governments to censure American cultural exports. When South Korea reduced the ratio of domestic films to imported films in 1998 from 28 percent to 15 percent, Im Kwoktae, director of the critically acclaimed film Sopyonje (1993), shaved his head and protested in front of the American Embassy in Seoul. In France, Gérard Depardieu set fire on Hollywood films in the Place de la Concorde. In Taiwan, pioneers of the New Taiwan Cinema Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Cheng Kuen-hou persistently opposed the monopoly of the local film market by Hollywood imports. All this reflected a commonly held belief that the export of American culture leads to the imposition of American values and way of life on indigenous societies, so much so that knowledge of local culture will eventually be replaced by icons of American culture such as McDonald’s, Coca Cola, and the Titanic. Echoing Wallerstein’s analysis of powerful “core states” and powerless “peripheral areas,” Yip Wai-lim argues that the “Hollywood-style” cultural export is a kind of cultural colonialism: “the First World makes use of cinema (most conspicuously in China), television, education programs, and aggressive marketing and advertising campaigns emphasizing “the West is the Best” to create a new language. It is an internationalized symbolic system generated by commodities and consumption that replaces the traditional social order.” On the other hand, the “unconsciousness of the indigenous peoples and the loss of local cultural memory are precisely what the colonizing culture aims to do.”11 The pattern of inter-state competition in the future very likely will be determined by the creation and circulation of information. As Sue Curry Janson remarks, the debate over an impending “age of information” or “information society” prompted by commercial and military interests has become an important site of political, cultural and

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economic struggle.12 Thus, controlling the mass media is synonymous to advancing the political and economic interests of the state. Confronted by the encroaching power of the West, many developing nations have resorted to cultural nationalism as a critical response. This is based on an understanding of cultural difference and territoriality that cannot be erased by the global flow of commodities. Cultural nationalism is thus likely to be a potent rival to globalization in the inter-state struggle in the near future. Given the relatively unchecked development of consumerism and liberal capitalism today, it would be more realistic to view cultural nationalism as a moderate counter-force that can hold back some of the less desirable impact of globalization by putting pressure on multinational corporations to accommodate to the aspirations of local communities. In China, it is an urgent task to have a more holistic understanding of Hollywood’s global strategy, and how Chinese cinema should position itself to face the challenge of Hollywood. These reflections can be situated on the broader horizon of China and Chinese culture’s response to globalization.

“A Virgin Diamond Ore”: Hollywood’s vision of the Chinese film market Due to the size of its population and economic potential, China is the most eyed-upon country in the global economy, hence its strategic importance to the unilateral policy of the US. According to an international affairs specialist, China, Russia, and India, the three most populated countries in the world, have been striving to maintain their unique political and social order as a check and balance against the US. Indeed, the economic progress in these three countries has significantly narrowed the gap between them and the US in the twenty-first century, which also means they can form an alliance and exercise collective bargaining power in objecting to US policy. Understandably, US diplomacy in the twenty-first century is adjusting its focus from Europe to Asia, especially China, India, and Russia.13 This is reflected in the US government’s detailed statistical research on the wealth and consumption power of the middle class in the Asia Pacific. More importantly, to many observers, Asia has become a “new territory” to revitalize the ailing economies of the West.14 For this reason, the US was eager to facilitate China’s accession to the WTO once China had agreed on the necessary conditions. This is a two-way street: China is an indispensable partner to the US in the new world economic order, just as the new world economic order is indispensable to China’s future development. Charlene

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Barshefsky, the US’ trade representative in China from 1997–2001, reiterated at a press conference that China’s accession to the WTO would protect and consolidate the economic interests of the US, since this trade agreement was important to the development of the US–China relationship and the future of the world economy.15 Cinema was a high-priority item on the agenda of the numerous rounds of negotiations, and China’s stringent import quotas and restrictions on foreign joint-venture investments were the prime targets because the US had always wanted to increase its film export and theater ownership in China. On November 15, 1999, China and the US reached a bilateral agreement on trade issues, and the Chinese government agreed to allow foreign companies to establish joint-venture video and recording businesses in China with local partners in the first year of China’s entry to the WTO. The share of foreign partners was initially capped at 49 percent. Companies with foreign ownership of over 50 percent would be allowed to build and operate theaters after the first three years. During this period, China’s total annual foreign film import quota would be set at 20, to be increased to 50 thereafter. The significance of this agreement is reflected in an official announcement by the US in which China’s willingness to implement liberalization measures was described as an unprecedented breakthrough that would benefit not only the US but the film industries in Europe, Canada, and other trading partners. 16 So far, China has been relying on regulatory measures such as the import quota system and minimum screening hours for domestic films to protect its national film industry. Under the current arrangements, Hollywood can only export up to 30 films to China every year, which yield an annual box-office return of about 50 million USD. This certainly is a meager figure compared to the total overseas revenue of 10 billion USD. According to a news release from Twentieth Century Fox, American investors generally receive 12 percent of Hollywood’s box-office in China, compared to 50 percent in other countries.17 Granted, ideological and institutional constraints have not discouraged Hollywood studios from doing business in China, which, after all, consists of one-fifth of the world’s population. Up to the end of 1998, China had over 330,000 film and multimedia production companies, which generated a production value of 13.3 billion RMB. The film and television industry alone employed 300,000 personnel, and China’s television network has a nation-wide coverage of 91.6 percent and 77 million cable subscribers. Yet, compared to the US and other advanced countries, China’s cultural industries are short of capital,

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technologically backward, and relatively small in size. In the same year, the US recorded a 60 billion USD revenue from cinema, television, video, and music production. Taken together, they became the biggest export sector, while cinema alone contributed 12 billion to the total earnings. In 2000, the total box-office figure in the US exceeded 7 billion USD, of which 430 million USD went to Star Wars: Episode 1. Back in China, the theater-to-population ratio is approximately 1:120,000 (compared to 1:8600 in the US). In 1999, China recorded 450 million cinema ticket entries, which translates to one entry every three years per capita. The overall box-office takings of domestic and foreign films (about 100 in total) were less than 0.1 billion USD (0.81 billion RMB in 1999), approximately 1.5 percent of those of the US. In China, the GDP per capita of the film industry was less than 3000 RMB, and the average worker’s income was less than 300. In the same year, of all the 102 domestic films, less than 20 percent made profit; 20 percent managed to break even and the rest recorded losses. These figures explain why, in the eyes of Hollywood, the Chinese film market is described as more than a gold mine—it is a virgin diamond ore. A market with a potential 1.3 billion audience is certainly irresistible. To develop its film industry, China has to import huge amounts of screening and audio systems, and the US will be its chief supplier. It is also anticipated that China will soon become the world’s second-biggest film market, surpassing Europe (annual box office 4.4 billion USD) and Japan (1.6 billion USD). In future, it is likely that one in every four films produced in the US will be made for the Chinese and Asian markets.18 In order to gain a stronghold in China, the big studios in Hollywood began to establish offices in China staffed by returning overseas Chinese graduates. In 1999, Twentieth Century Fox held a reception of a delegation led by top officials from the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT). In 2000, Warner Brothers sponsored another visit by a film industry delegation. At the same time, big studios such as Miramax, Paramount, Warner, Universal, Disney, and DreamWorks began to formulate their China marketing strategy from considerations of subject matter, casting, and audience profile to market research. According to Miramax CEO Larry Gleason, 55 percent of the revenue of American films comes from overseas, and since China is the most populated country in the world it is clearly in the interest of Hollywood to go to China. Gleason’s view is representative of the general perception in Hollywood nowadays. As China is playing a more active role in the global economy, so is Hollywood in China’s film market. China’s WTO membership also

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opens the door for Hollywood films. One possible outcome is that Hollywood will not only bring to China its “blockbusters,” but also a whole range of political and economic infrastructure that has helped made Hollywood a global power. Before we can contemplate the future of Chinese cinema, it is therefore important to first consider Hollywood’s strategy in China.

The “Second Europe”: Hollywood’s China strategy China is undergoing a very complex process of political and economic transformation. The Open Door policy remains the guiding principle in modernization projects and economic reforms. When it comes to political reform, the state upholds the formula of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”; hence, the economy and the political system remain two separate spheres. The separation between economics and politics creates three major hurdles for Hollywood studios: firstly, they are constrained by the Chinese government’s regulatory measures; secondly, there exists a gap between Chinese history and culture and Hollywood’s film culture; finally, the Chinese film market is still in a versatile and disorganized state. Hollywood filmmakers are not unaware of these tangible and intangible hurdles, and they have come up with effective strategies to maximize their chances of success in China. These strategies include: (1) utilizing the political influence of the US to gain market access; (2) investing in production, distribution, and exhibition to consolidate American productions’ market share; (3) employing local talents in production, acting, and art design to cater to the tastes of Chinese and Asian audiences; and (4) nurturing a potential market for Hollywood films through the promotion of auxiliary products. These strategies have been profitably employed throughout the history of Hollywood’s overseas expansion, and China, being the “second Europe,” is another “brave new world” in the blueprint of Hollywood’s cultural and economic expansion. The US government has been the vanguard of Hollywood’s global ambitions. Its main function is to create favorable conditions for production, distribution, and exhibition. The MPPDA (Motion Picture Production and Distribution Association, established in 1922) worked closely with the US government to promote American films overseas. The MPEAA (Motion Picture Export Association of America), a postWorld War II entity, was established to oversee Hollywood’s international trade matters. These public bodies had the strong backing of the Ministry of State and the Department of Commerce in trade

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negotiations with foreign countries. Studios were also provided with economic and market data collected by US officials overseas.19 The postCold War years saw a further integration of the film industry into the US’ unilateral policy. Cinema entered the list of issues in international trade negotiations with Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and South Korea. The main concerns are intellectual property rights and the opening up of the film market of the target countries. There are also well-known cases where the US used political and economic sanctions to gain access to foreign markets, for instance the lifting of the screening quota in South Korea, using political pressure in settling copyright issues in Taiwan, and using economic pressure to settle trade and cultural disputes with Canada and France. In the future, the US is likely to further its demands for China to open up its film market and to improve its copyright legislation. Hollywood will remain an active player in the US’ globalization strategy and it will become a powerful force in China. One effective strategy of gaining access to a foreign market is investing in joint ventures and co-production. This has been a proven success in Europe and Canada. In China, co-production has become a popular means for Hollywood studios to integrate the Chinese film industry into their production system, thereby “Hollywoodizing” both the films and the audience. Investing in theaters is also an effective means for capturing the local market. Recent US ventures include Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Universal. Even Kodak has entered into an agreement with the Shanghai Film and Television Group to build a new theater in Shanghai. According to David Sanderson, Managing Director of Kodak’s Greater China office, among the world’s top five most promising countries for filmmaking, China is the best of the best. In order to gain the support of the Chinese authorities in building theaters in big cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou, Kodak has proposed to show both foreign and domestic films in its theaters.20 Apparently, active investment in exhibition is an integral part of Hollywood’s China strategy. Just as Former MPAA Chairman Jack Valenti said in an address to the US Congress, building new theaters would boost Chinese demands for American movies.21 Hollywood’s global appeal can be attributed to its ability to absorb and integrate diverse cultural resources into its productions. Hollywood films are very often a hotchpotch of cultural traditions, ethnicities, histories, and landscapes dressed up by carefully designed commercial and political re-packaging. Such re-packaging serves the dual purpose of energizing the American cinema with new and “exotic” elements, and of encouraging foreign audiences’ cultural identification with the

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characters and the story. As far as China is concerned, Chinese production and acting talents have been recruited to work on mainstream productions. These include directors John Woo, Ang Lee, Tsui Hark, and Chen Kaige, cinematographer Gu Changwei, and movie stars Joan Chan, Chow Yun-fat, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi. Cashing in on their fame and star power in the Chinese-speaking world, Hollywood filmmakers successfully create an exotic, Oriental allure in these “China content” films to attract old and new audiences in both the US and the Chinese-speaking world. These films also generate substantial profits in other Asian markets. In 2000, four out of the top ten films selected by the Time magazine were directed by Chinese directors. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (a Warner Brothers production) set the stage for a new martial arts cycle. The internationalization of this “Oriental appeal” thus serves as an alibi for Hollywood’s “American-ness,” enabling this “dream factory” to go global in the name of “world cinema.” Hollywood’s global hegemony goes deeper than the export of images. The worldwide media commotion surrounding the annual Academy Awards ceremony effectively turns this “American” event into an international festival. Nowadays, cinema as an enterprise consists of an entire commodity marketing chain made up of DVDs, VCDs, original sound tracks, books, photo albums, and all kinds of toys, stationeries, souvenirs, and consumer items. The ubiquity of these auxiliary products speaks volumes about Hollywood’s market penetration. Even the underground DVD piracy market in China is helping to groom a large population of future consumers of Hollywood films and products. A foreseeable challenge to Chinese cinema’s ability to maintain its autonomy is the rapid advancement in digital and information technology. Continued improvement in storage capacity and speed of transfer will open direct and unlimited access for Hollywood films, against which China’s existing defenses will become inadequate if not meaningless. This is why US trade negotiations representative James Bates specifically mentioned internet investment rights in a media interview, saying that internet access rights would be a crucial issue to resolve in future negotiations with China.22 As we can imagine, “cyber cinemas” will be Hollywood’s next big challenge to China’s film industry. Apart from the economic benefits of opening up the world’s secondlargest film market in China, Hollywood is also entrusted with the cultural mission of disseminating “the American tale” to the world. This is achieved by utilizing local (Chinese) talents in the creation of socially and culturally ambivalent characters and stories on screen. In transforming

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America into “the world,” Hollywood is also transforming “the world” into America. This is why confronting Hollywood is as much about cultural autonomy as it is about the survival of the Chinese film industry. It is also about how Chinese cinema faces up to the “trans-regional power” of the “core states”.

Trans-regional power: Hollywood’s challenge to China’s national cinema As a developing country China is an inexperienced player in the global economy compared to the West. This also applies to the relationship between Chinese cinema and Hollywood as a global media power. Prior to joining the WTO, China imported fewer than ten films from Hollywood each year, but these films already accounted for half of the annual box-office takings. There are many reasons to explain this appalling reality, for instance the shortage of capital, lack of professional know-how, and obsolete equipment and facilities. The most crucial factor, however, is the absence of a sophisticated industrial infrastructure, a mature audience base, and more importantly an effective institutional framework in which to develop the cultural industries. Compared to other industrial and cultural production sectors, the domestic film industry is the least equipped to benefit from China’s WTO membership and to “go global” as some would have expected. Some critics resort to historical experience to paint a brighter picture of the present: Chinese cinema in the 1930s and 1940s managed to split glory with Hollywood, and sometimes outperformed it at the box-office. A good example is A Spring River Flows East (Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, 1947) and other patriotic films of the period. However, history is not always repeated. Contemporary Chinese cinema differs from the situation in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s in at least four respects: (1) in the past, the film industry operated in a free market system, whereas China today is still largely a planned economy; (2) the level of capital and technological investment required today is much higher than fifty years ago, and so far the Chinese film industry still lacks the advanced technological and managerial expertise comparable with the big studios in the West. This means the gap between Chinese and American cinema in technology, capital investment, and organizational infrastructure has become wider, not narrower; (3) although China has introduced some free market mechanisms into its planned economy, the predominance of the latter mode means that a large number of films produced each year can ignore or even go against popular tastes and demands, leading

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to the loss of faith, and interest, in the “national brand”. This is quite different from the status of “national cinema” among Chinese audiences half a century ago; (4) China in the mid-twentieth century was a completely different historical and social context: locally made films provided a channel for articulating the people’s shared political and social sentiments and concerns. Such unifying sentiments are lacking in the film industry and in Chinese society today. Cinema has to be much more diversified in order to reach out to the general audience. On the other hand, as society becomes more diversified and the social space more differentiated, cinema is subject to an increasingly rigorous ideological control, which inevitably compromises its ability to connect with the masses. Under the present circumstances, the combination of internal and external factors is making Chinese cinema’s negotiation with Hollywood a complex and difficult process. After all, Chinese cinema has not yet developed a free market mode of operation for competing in the international market. As a result, the so-called co-existence of challenges and opportunities (tiaozhan yu jiyu bingcun) does not apply to the film industry, because the challenge is much bigger than the opportunity. The comparative advantage of Hollywood over Chinese cinema can be summarized as follows. Firstly, Hollywood has the backing of the US as the world’s numberone “superpower.” As the world becomes more globalized, economic and military supremacy translates into cultural hegemony as the US continues to export its cultural products to every corner of the world. What we call “international pop” today is largely modeled after “American pop.” This kind of cultural power is far ahead of what China is capable of despite its being one of the oldest civilizations and its impressive economic progress in the last two decades. The lack of a strong superpower back-up impacts not only the competitiveness of Chinese films in the international market, but also their performance in the local market, as the local people tend to accede to the cultural superiority of American films and popular culture. Witness the nationwide enthusiasm for the Academy Awards and the NBA in China today, which far outweighs the public’s interest in China’s own CBA and “Golden Rooster” or “Hundred Flowers” awards. All this has to do with the general tendency to embrace or admire a “superior culture,” whether it is one’s own or not. Hollywood’s sophisticated industrial infrastructure developed over the last one hundred years is founded upon the understanding that cinema is first and foremost a form of entertainment. As one American film historian remarks, there are three key words in the history of the

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American cinema, namely production, distribution, and exhibition, and at the center of all these is the audience.23 This means that all changes that have occurred in these realms serve a single purpose: capturing a bigger market and increasing profit. This industrial framework enabled Hollywood to survive the political uncertainties of two World Wars and the Cold War, and overcome the challenge of television to develop a comprehensive industrial business model. This model enables Hollywood filmmakers to attain equilibrium between art and commerce, cultural value and business opportunities in the construction of a dynamic “dream factory.” By comparison, in China cinema functions as both a cultural industry and state propaganda medium. It was not until the 1980s that the film industry began to make the transition from a socialist mode of operation guided by the planned economy principle to a more market-oriented mode. However, the transition has been hindered by institutional and political constraints on the one hand, and a lack of managerial and entrepreneurial expertise on the other. In fact, Chinese cinema still remains in the “pre-industrial” stage, that is, a comprehensive industrial model and operational mechanism has yet to emerge from the deeply ingrained planned economy to which the global market is far from a level playing field. Hollywood’s hegemony is also the result of a massive, industry-wide restructuring that took place at a time when the US transformed into a “post-industrial society” in the late twentieth century. This transition also marked the arrival of the so-called Age of the Behemoths24 in Hollywood, when the eight major studios consolidated their businesses to accelerate the centralization of capital investment through vertical and horizontal integration and the use of advanced technology in production. This restructuring exercise became globalized as major production companies such as Times Warner and Walt Disney began to outsource productions to take advantage of cheaper labor overseas. One representative example of corporate restructuring was the merging of AOL (America Online) and Times Warner in 2000. 25 Large scale mergers and restructuring brought into being an unparalleled super power in the sphere of cultural production. Not surprisingly, the combined strength of China’s “big three” (Shanghai Film Studio, Beijing Film Studio, and Great Wall Studio) and the other 16 provincial studios and private enterprises cannot match the scale of any one of the major studios in Hollywood. Apart from strong government support in policy-making and international trade negotiations, Hollywood has developed an effective self-adjustment mechanism to adapt to the vicissitudes in foreign

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markets. During the 1990s, many Hollywood films still featured China and the Chinese people as an “imaginary enemy” in order to please their domestic audience. Films such as Seven Years in Tibet and The Art of War were censored by the Chinese government for their negative portrayal of China. This prompted some companies to produce films that promote mutual goodwill, such as the Disney animation Mulan. Casting Chinese female stars also helped to mediate the conflict between East and West. Government policy and cultural adjustments thus combine with sophisticated international operations to make Hollywood a global success. As of today, the China Film Group included, China does not have any filmmaking enterprise that can play a key role in mainstream international productions due to a lack of relevant experience and institutional mechanism. As a market-oriented entertainment industry, Hollywood has over the years developed into a popular cultural tradition, whereas in Europe cinema is mainly seen as an art form. The primacy of the audience means that Hollywood movies can set the standard for narrative and representational conventions that cater to the conscious and subconscious needs, desires, aspirations, and social and moral values of the mainstream audience. For instance, the exploitation of sex and violence, the preference for “happy endings” and “poetic justice,” and the Cinderella-style popular romance: all these conventionalized elements in the classical Hollywood narrative tradition are endlessly renewed and recycled in the internationalization of American cinema. Sometimes the employment of foreign stars and production talents will endow a mainstream movie with alluring artistic qualities to achieve even greater popular appeal. The result is two-fold: market-oriented internationalization confirms and consolidates Hollywood’s mainstream status worldwide, and it also constrains its ability to create truly revolutionary films. In the history of Hollywood, art and culture have always been an organic part of the “whole,” that is, entertainment. This is evident from the seamless integration of production mechanisms, from the studio system, the star system, and the high-concept production mode to the systematic exploitation of film techniques, genres, and film language such as the montage, shot/reverse shot and point-of-view shot. This also explains the intellectual distaste for Hollywood films in and outside the US. China presents the opposite picture: cinema until recently has been used as a propagandistic tool. Its ideological function therefore far exceeds its entertainment value. As such, there always exists an irresolvable tension between cinema as propaganda embodying the “collective

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will” and cinema as entertainment and consumption. This historical difference results in the absence of a popular film-as-entertainment culture compatible to that of the US. One can say that despite the reform efforts made since the 1980s, Chinese cinema has not been adequately equipped to confront the formidable force of Hollywood, which is likely to gain in momentum in the foreseeable future. To ride the tide of globalization, Chinese cinema has to step up its reform efforts and acquaint itself with the cultural and entrepreneurial mindset of its global partners.

History and reality: Chinese cinema’s comparative advantage The above analysis does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that other national or local cinemas will eventually be replaced by Hollywood. To a nation such as China, local films are more capable of getting to the depths of the social psyche because of their intimate knowledge of local history and the complex realities of the present. In the early and midtwentieth century, the success of The Goddess (1934), Street Angel (1937), and A Spring River Flows East already proved that cultural and social empathy is crucial to the survival of local films. Contemporary Chinese cinema is not lacking in such examples: in 1998, Feng Xiaogang’s Party B (Jiafang yifang) made a record 1.15 million RMB upon its release in Beijing alone. According to the statistics of the theater chain New Film Association, in 2000 the average box-office revenue of Hollywood blockbusters (da pian) such as Mulan, Tarzan, and Notting Hill was less than ten million, but Feng’s There or Be Square (Bujian busan) grossed 39 million RMB, far exceeding any of the imported films from the US. Thereafter, Yu Benzheng’s Fatal Decision (Sheng si jueze, 2000) and Zheng Xiaolong’s Gua Sha (2001) also outperformed American films.26 These examples show that local films still have a foothold in the domestic market. The resilience of local films is also evident in other WTO member countries. Even in culturally more open locations such as India, Hong Kong, and Japan, local productions have performed well in recent years. In 2000 Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s Needing You (Gunan guanu) was the best-selling Chinese-language film of the year; its 35 million HKD box-office record came third in the overall count, which was led by John Woo’s US blockbuster, Mission Impossible 4 (36 million). Other Hong Kong films on the top-20 list included Jingle Ma’s Tokyo Raiders (Dongjing gonglue), Summer Holiday (Xia ri mo mo cha), and Andrew Lau’s The Duel.

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In Japan, the market share of local films dropped to 10 percent during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A recovery occurred in the 1990s. Japanese films regained 50 percent of the market share when new independent production companies steered the film industry away from the monopoly of the big studios by injecting new talent and substance into Japanese cinema. A similar story took place in South Korea, where Hollywood used to take up as much as 80 percent of the market share. Policy and market reforms in the 1990s created a boost in the domestic film market and a new generation of filmmakers. With an annual domestic output of 40 to 50 films, local films in South Korea are able to capture up to 30 percent of the market, with an attendance rate of 40 percent. South Korea is also active in exporting its movie stars, whose fame has been growing throughout Asia. Another example from the English-speaking world is the UK. Since the 1990s, a cluster of films carrying strong “British flavor” have helped reverse the freefall in theater attendance, which has correspondingly risen from 54 million entries in 1984 to nearly 104 million in 1997.27 All this points to the fact that Chinese cinema, like other national cinemas, can survive the global challenge of Hollywood, provided that it can turn its comparative weakness into strength. Considering Chinese cinema has not yet fully integrated into the “free” global market economy, the Chinese government is still able to protect its national film industry through various administrative and economic measures. The state can thus still act as a “contributing player” in drawing up its own rules of the game in the global economy.28 Since the 1990s, the state has made regular investments in the national cinema. For instance, the Ministry of Finance stipulates that the state television CCTV has to invest 3 percent of its annual advertising income in film production. Provincial governments also have to do the same at the local level. In addition, the SARFT’s film administration office issues a policy directive to make sure at least 75 percent of the “recommended” domestic films will be shown in theaters throughout the country.29 It is expected that leaving the film industry out of the state’s “economic liberalization” plans will continue to be the government’s policy in the long run. This means that limitations will still be imposed on foreign films, investment, and production personnel, as well as distribution and exhibition interests. Perhaps a more appropriate role for the state in regard to the film industry is that of a “contributing player” rather than protector and regulator. This means that the government’s job is to cultivate and support local film production, to enable the development of a mature industrial infrastructure, and to assist the

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film industry in reaching out to broader audiences in the domestic and international markets. In doing so the government is also providing the local film industry with a “buffer zone” to position itself better in the global market. It is therefore important for government policy to shift from being a form of political protection to that of industry development, one that can buy time, and space, for the local film industry to equip itself better for the future. The foundation for Chinese cinema’s future lies in its ability to adapt itself to the global culture market as a thoroughly “modern” film industry. This is not to say that every rule of the market should apply to Chinese cinema. However, it is also true that cinema has to reach out to the market in order to compete with the advanced industrial and consumer culture of Hollywood. Chinese cinema, after all, has to rely on consumption to sustain its creative energy, and the market can be seen as a testing ground for Chinese cinema in projecting its cultural visions to the world. To carry out market-sensitive and industry-wide reform, therefore, is the most pressing task for Chinese cinema in the twenty-first century.

The biggest politics: Chinese cinema as cultural industry So far the inner strength or competitive advantage of Chinese cinema remains largely a latent rather than materialized potential. In this context, the question “to be or not to be” is a practical, instead of philosophical, issue. What will happen when Chinese cinema is fully integrated into the global film market? How would Chinese films compete with Hollywood? Apparently, upholding the current protective measures such as import and screening quotes, taxation, and censorship seem to be the most logical response. Admittedly, similar protective measures have been applied by other countries to minimize the impact of American films on the national film industry. During the 1990s, France increased its expenditure on culture to 1 percent of GDP, and cinema was a major beneficiary. In 1993, one-third of French productions relied on government subsidy (0.46 billion USD in total). The French government also requests local television to broadcast mainly French or European programs. This effectively makes France the most culturally protective country in the world. In the foreseeable future, China will adopt a similar strategy to protect its national film industry. Yet protection should not be the ultimate goal. In the foreseeable future, protective measures inspired by nationalistic sentiments will be losing ground as China continues to reach out to the international

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community, and as film audiences increasingly demand a more open film market. An over-protected domestic film industry is always counter-productive. In fact, the protective measures in other countries have not changed the reality of Hollywood’s dominance: in 1993, American film and television exports totaled 3.7 billion USD, the second-largest category of the US’ total export to the EU, whereas the EU’s total export to the US in this category was only 0.3 billion USD. American films took away 60 percent of the annual box-office revenue in France, and 86 percent in Germany. Obviously protection can only be a temporary measure. In the long-run, Chinese cinema must undergo a thorough industrial restructuring and complete its transition to a modern cultural industry. This will also enable Chinese cinema to utilize its local resources to participate in the global culture market. Neither government officials nor film workers would deny the fact that Chinese cinema has not yet been able to make the necessary changes to accommodate the needs of the cultural market. While one can find reasons to explain the crisis of Chinese cinema, such as the challenge from Hollywood and limitations in production talent, technology, and capital, the core issue is the absence of an open, healthy, competitive, and dynamic environment for creative work. Yet, favorable factors can be institutionally engineered. In other words, institutional infrastructure is also a source of productivity. As one critic argues, oppositional politics increasingly oscillates between two proposals—either to develop a capitalist economy successfully or to be marginalized or excluded.30 China’s entry into the WTO has already excluded the latter option. The remaining option, therefore, is to develop an economic model for the film industry suited to the unique conditions of China. To this end, liberating the productive force is of fundamental importance. This implies freeing up the creative energy of film workers to the greatest possible extent. Liberalization requires not only changes in the existing system of production, but also in the general perception of cinema as a cultural industry. These changes will enable Chinese cinema to complete its transition from a planned economy mode to a market economy mode of operation. The first step toward this goal is the transformation of the management culture and structure. For a long time in China cinema has been a vehicle for political ideology and propaganda, and managed as such. This mentality persisted in the New Era, when cinema was beginning to assume a relative autonomy as an art form and popular entertainment. As the government makes use of administrative and regulatory measures to control the production of films, these measures are usually

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subject to various interpretations in their implementation. As a result, the disjunction between the regulatory regime and the cinema as a form of popular culture remains due to the lack of general consensus and cultural awareness in the regulation of subject matter, content, form, and style. This disjunction is the reason why in China local productions are subject to more rigorous political, regulatory, societal, and moral scrutiny than in other countries. This is also true compared to foreign films and public television programs in China. Under such a stringent regulatory regime, Chinese cinema’s ability to compete in the cultural market is weakened, its investment appeal compromised, and its artistic range and social impact limited. What is to be learned from the American experience? First of all, in the US, cinema has always been a vehicle for the government’s economic, political, and cultural agendas. In the American management philosophy, marketing is the biggest politics. In China, such an organic synthesis of the cinema’s various functions does not exist. One obvious setback of China’s regulatory culture is the commercial and artistic failure of the so-called mainstream rhythm films. To get out of this culde-sac, the government has to commit fully to transforming the film industry. Policy reform will have to strengthen the existing legal framework in which film production operates primarily as an industry. Film production thus has to abide by the law of the market, the regulations of the WTO, and the operational momentum of a cultural industry. China not only has to produce films, but also develop domestic and international markets. As in Hollywood, the market, too, is the biggest politics in Chinese cinema. In China, the film industry can only be modernized under the prerogatives of the government, which means the government has to take the lead in industrial reform. To some extent, the merging of the major studios in the 1990s into the China Film Group did result in an increase in international competitiveness of Chinese productions. However, an effective industrial reform goes far beyond an expansion in size. In the absence of a well-established production system, it would be impossible to optimize the deployment of manpower, capital, and resources. A “workshop” mode of operation under the control of a big corporation is only a re-packaging of the old “cottage industries.” Under these circumstances, it would be impossible for China to develop an effective system for investment and production through which filmmakers do not make profit from “producing” films, but from the films’ box-office returns. This is because a significant number of filmmakers derive earnings from outside the film industry, or even from

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non-commercial sources, and therefore remain relatively unconcerned whether the films will make profit in the market. After all, the formation of a mega-corporation to oversee film production is only a change in form, rather than in substance, of the existing practice. China does not lack local experience in far-reaching industrial reforms. As far as the cinema is concerned, smaller-scale yet more thoroughly commercialized “independent” production companies may prove to be a more dynamic force in revitalizing the film industry than the “big corporations” bounded by ingrained practice and rigid conventions. One area worth exploring is digital technology: a three dimensional production system consisting of film production, exhibition, and the circulation of post-production digital products may well lead the way in the systemic reform of the Chinese film industry. China’s entry into the WTO is a two-way street, requiring China to enter the world market and the “world” to enter the China market. It might be difficult for Chinese cinema to attain the same level of international success as Hollywood in the foreseeable future, but if Chinese film production is in line with international demands and practices, it is still able to cultivate an overseas market compatible in size and importance to its domestic market. Chinese cinema can take advantage of the new conditions brought on by globalization to cut out a path to the future. The most important factor is whether the film industry can completely be free from the confines of the planned economy to embrace fully the new “cultural economy.” Many existing practices, such as the rating system, low-budget productions, comedy genres, seasonal blockbusters, children’s films, social problem films, and cop movies become meaningful only when they are situated in the context of the market. The future of Chinese cinema, it seems, largely depends on whether it can initiate and sustain an industrial reform in harmony with the rhythm of modern economic development. If, rather than interfere into the production of every film, the function of politics is to facilitate the development of a film industry and a film market responsive to the changing realities of the Chinese society at large, then industrial reform can be understood as the biggest politics in Chinese cinema. In other words, the function of government is to create a free yet orderly “theater,” where every film becomes the actor/actress whose value is ultimately determined by the audience. The opposite scenario is not hard to imagine: a Chinese cinema struggling for survival at the mercy of government subsidy, producing films that quickly go into oblivion. Even in terms of politics, such films cannot be regarded as a real victory.

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It is also true that many people are criticizing, if not practically resisting, the “cultural imperialism” of developed countries in the developing world. Some even predict that the world will be dragged into a gigantic capitalist system dominated by a few multinational corporations serving only their self-interest, whereas the mass media will be saturated by entertainment-oriented programs at the expense of serious social content.31 On the other hand, liberal economists, media leaders, and academics such as John Tomlinson have come to the defense of cultural globalization.32 To the latter group, globalization has challenged the conventional notion of national cinema. If multinational companies with production subsidiaries in Hollywood (such as Sony and News Corporation) are not based in the US, then how should we understand national cinema? Is national cinema defined by the location of production, distribution, and exhibition; the nationality of the main creative crew; or its content, style, and cultural characteristics? Predictably, the global expansion of multinational corporations will be accompanied by more “localized” products to cater to different markets. As such, a film’s cultural and national identity becomes harder to define. The erosion of cultural difference is indeed a manifestation of the homogenizing power of globalization. The world’s cultural ecosystem will be in danger when “world cinema” becomes “one cinema,” and “world culture” becomes “one culture.” On the other hand, preserving one’s “national identity” is not the alternative to globalization. As Aijaz Ahmad has pointed out, nationalism does not necessarily mean “progress” or “backwardness,” and the role it plays in international politics is very often the combined effect of the hierarchical power of states and their respective social and political realities.33 If nationalism becomes an obstacle to reform and democracy, then globalization can be construed as a revolutionary force. Confronted by the forces of globalization, resistance or participation is not an end in itself. As far as Chinese cinema is concerned, the ultimate goal is to develop a dynamic and healthy system for film production, so that the national cinema can also embrace a more open “world vision”. Cinema then would become a platform for cultural dialogue between China and the world. To be precise, the crisis of Chinese cinema does not only come from Hollywood, and the foregoing discussion about the impact of the WTO is not about how to resist Hollywood. What the WTO means to Chinese cinema is an opportunity, and Hollywood is a frame of reference. The future depends on the relative success of policy and industrial reform. Otherwise, Chinese cinema will run into a cul-de-sac with or without the presence of Hollywood. China’s film industry has to keep

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in pace with the political, economic, and cultural developments both at the local and global levels. It has to imagine a future different from Hollywood, one that thrives on diversity rather than uniformity. “One possible outcome of globalization is not homogenization or hegemony, but the proliferation of alternatives and empowered margins.”34 Such diversity will find a place in a multivalent, multi-polar world that transcends the myths of nations.

Notes This chapter was originally published in Chinese in Kuayue bainian: quanqiuhua bei jing xia de zhongguo dianying (Beyond the First 100 Years: Chinese Cinema in the Age of Globalization) (2007). Translation and publication in this volume with the permission of the Tsinghua University Press. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Giddens 1986: 36. Li 2000: 35. Wallerstein 1974. Qi 1999. The World Film and Television Market 1993. Thompson 1985. See Thompson and Bordwell 1994. This chapter refers to the Chinese translation by Liao Jin-feng, Dianying bainian fazhan shi (Taipei: Mei shang Maigeluo Xi’er guo ji gu fen you xian gong si, 1998). Pells 1997: 205. Olson 1999: 1. Sklar 1993: 126. Yip Wai-lim, ‘Zhiminzhuyi, wenhuagongye yu xiaofei yuwang’ (Colonialism, Culture Industry and Consumption), quoted in Zhang 1993: 124, 142–3. Curry Janson 2000: 196. See Chong 2001. Li 2000: 30–1. This view is shared by John Naisbitt (1996). This chapter refers to the Chinese translation, Yazhou da quzhi (Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press, Economic Journal Press, and Shanghai Far East Press, 1996). Naisbitt 1996: 25. Barshefsky 1999. Farley 1999. Franklin 2000. Schatz 1988. Yuan 2001. Franklin 2000. Bates and Farley 1999. Basinger 1994: 278. Smith 1991. “Meiguo Lianbang muyi weiyuanhui pizhun AOL yu Shidai huana heping jihua”. Jie 2000.

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27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

See Yan 2001. Mosco 1996: 170. He 2000. Mosco 1996: 185. Demers 1999: 62. Tomlinson 1991. Greenfield 1992: 11. Yin 2000: 47.

Bibliography “Meiguo Lianbang muyi weiyuanhui pizhun AOL yu Shidai huana heping jihua” (US Federal Trade Committee approved AOL and Times Warner Merger), http://www.people.com.cn/electric/201215/h02.html (Accessed December 15, 2000). Barshefsky, Charlene (1999) Public Address, Nov 15, http://beijing.usembassychina.org.cn/060205e.html (Accessed October 9, 2000). Basinger, Jeanine (1994) American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking, New York: Rizzoli International Publication. Bates, James and Maggie Farley (1999) “China in a Chilly Embrace,” Los Angeles Times, June 13. Chong, He (2001) “Zongshu: Meiguo xinzhengfu jiang tuixing ‘danjihua’ quanqiu celue” (In sum: the US will enforce ‘unilateral’ strategy), http://news.sina. com.cn/w/169109.html (Accessed January 11, 2001). Curry Janson, Sue (2000) “Gender and Information Society: A Socially Structured Silence,” Journal of Communication, 39: 3, 196–215. Demers, David (1999) Global Media: Menace or Messiah. Cresskill: Hampton Press. Farley, Maggie (1999) “Struggles in an Ambivalent Nation,” Los Angeles Times, June 13. Franklin, Paul (2000) “Hollywood Eyes China,” CNN, May 22, 5: 26 pm, ET. Giddens, Anthony (1986) Sociology, London: Macmillan Press, 1986. Greenfield, Liah (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. He, Ruiran (2000) “Guozan dianying: mingnian guojia dali fuchi Yu huanhuan” (Domestic films: the state stepping up its support next year), Shenzhen shangbao, December 5. Jie, Xizhang (2000) “Fenxi: da pian shichang weihe nan zuo da?” (Analysis: Why Blockbusters couldn’t Bust?), Beijing wanbao, March 31. Li, Tianduo (ed.) (2000) Chong hui meijie dipingxian—dangdai guoji chuanbuo quanqiu yu bentu quxiang de sibian (Remapping the Mass Media: Reflections on the Global and the Local in Contemporary Mass Media), Taipei: AsiaPac Books. Mosco, Vincent (1996) The Political Economy of Communication, London: Sage. Naisbitt, John (1996) Megatrends Asia: Eight Megatrends in Asia That Are Reshaping Our World, New York: Simon & Schuster. Trans. as Yazhou da quzhi (1996), Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press, Economic Journal Press, and Shanghai Far East Press. Olson, Scott Robert (1999) Hollywood Planet: Global Media and the Competitive Advantage of Narrative Transparency, Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hong Yin and Zhiwei Xiao 57 Pells, Richard (1997) Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II, New York: Basic Books. Qi, Longren (1999) “Haolaiwu: dianying yu zhengzhi” (Hollywood: cinema and politics), Dangdai, 139, 19–29. Schatz, T. (1988) The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era, New York: Pantheon. Sklar, R. (1993) Film: An International History of the Medium, New York: Prentice Hall. Smith, Anthony (1991) The Age of Behemoths, New York: Priority Press. The World Film and Television Market: Industrial Analyses (1993), vol. 1, Montpellier: IDATE. Thompson, Kristin (1985) Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market, 1907–1934, London: Constable. Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell (1994) Film History: an Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill. Trans. Liao, Jin-feng (1998) as Dianying bainian fazhan shi, Taipei: Mei shang Maigeluo Xi’er guo ji gu fen you xian gong si. Tomlinson, John (1991) Cultural Imperialism, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wallerstein, I. (1999) The Modern World System, New York: Academic Press. Yan, Yuanying (2001) “Hollywood UK—Haolaiwu Yingguo” (Hollywood UK), Zhongguo Dianyingbao, January 4. Yin, Hong (2000) “Quanqiuhua, Haolaiwu yu minzu dianying” (Globalization, Hollywood and National Cinema), Wenyi yanjiu, 6, 98–107. Yuan, Youming (2001) “Dianying shichang ye shangyan ‘Lang laile’: Keda touzi 400 wan jian yingyuan,” http://finance.sina.com.cn/g/30594.html (Accessed January 2, 2001). Zhang, Jing-yuan (ed.) (1993) Houzhimin lilun yu wenhua renting (Postcolonial Cultural Criticism and Cultural Identity), Taipei: Rye Field.

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Part II Genre and Transnational Aesthetics

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3 Bicycle Thieves and Pickpockets in the “Desert of the Real”: Transnational Chinese Cinema, Postmodernism, and the Transcendental Style Gina Marchetti

Postmodernism challenges many firmly held beliefs about what film realism is and does. Andre Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, John Grierson, and even “formalists” such as Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov all put forward theories of film’s relation to the “real,” that now must be reconsidered in light of cinematic postmodernism. In his seminal essay, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” Fredric Jameson mentions “false realisms” that “are really art about other art, images of other images.”1 In “Simulacra and Simulations,” Jean Baudrillard talks about the “desert of the real.” He links the image to the “real” by moving from the image’s initial claim to reflect reality to the final phase of the simulacrum, which bears no relation to reality at all.2 Theorists as diverse as Slavoj Žižek3 and Gilles Deleuze all seem to agree that engaging with the “real” is essential. (Žižek revivifies Lacan’s notion of the Real, while Deleuze looks for “reasons to believe in this world.”4) The relationship of the “real” to the postmodern culture of the spectacle characteristic of late-capitalism continues to be a central concern of contemporary philosophy and critical cultural theory. Within this “desert of the real,” various styles of film realism have taken international film festivals by storm and have helped to define the “look” of art cinema at the millennium. Some scholars have pointed to the digital revolution and the celebration of a “century of cinema” as creating a suitable environment for this resurgence of film realism by encouraging filmmakers to go back to the roots of the medium in the actualities of the Lumière Brothers. Others link current trends in film realism to a desire to develop a style as diametrically opposed to Hollywood’s 61

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commercial homogenization as possible, to insist on the specificity of the local against the global, of the immediate against the computer generated, and to provide some access to the screen for the marginalized. Celebrating the long take and the long shot (sometimes enhanced by DV’s ability to push celluloid’s limits on the duration of the shot) has become common within international art cinema from Greece to Iran. The impact of Dogme 95’s “Vow of Chastity” as an attempt to redefine world cinema through a type of reinvigorated realism also should not be underestimated. However, other types of realism have been lauded (Michael Moore’s winning of the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 immediately comes to mind). Far from being buried in the “desert of the real,” film realism, in many forms, continues to dominate many aspects of world film culture. While there may be important international reasons for this (ranging from a reaction against the artificiality of global consumer culture to the cultivation of a style that is cost-effective, accessible, and sometimes provocative), the specific face of film realism in contemporary East Asian cinema needs to be examined in relation to the global dynamics of international cinema, the regional market for motion pictures, as well as the specifically local dimension of films shot in small towns in Shanxi, rural Malaysia, and the mean streets of urban Hong Kong and Taipei. However, the connection between the “real” and the “local” goes beyond the specific use of location shooting in these films. Rather, as Jameson’s work on postmodernism implies, these Chinese cinematic realisms can be looked at as art about other art, images about other images, and films about other films. Often, a deceptively simple film can hide a complex web of cinematic citations that link it back to the silent era and forward to the digital future as well as place it within the wealth of cultural, political, and historical allusions circulating within transnational China and the Chinese diaspora. Drawing on forms as diverse as classical Hollywood’s social problem film and the domestic melodrama, Soviet socialist realism, and Popular Front humanism, Shanghai “left-wing” filmmakers of the 1930s–40s developed a style of cinematic realism that created the cornerstone for post-1949 Chinese cinema. After 1949, Chinese-language cinema moved in very different aesthetic directions, which ranged from socialist realism (often countered by “revolutionary romanticism”) in the PRC, social realism (exemplified by genres like the “tenement” film) in Hong Kong, and “healthy” realism as the KMT’s propagandistic reaction to critical social realism in Taiwan.

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As it did in many places, Italian Neo-Realism had an enormous impact on not only the evolution of film aesthetics in the PRC, but also the continuing development of various realist aesthetics throughout the Chinese-speaking world. One of the first foreign films shown after the establishment of the PRC in 1949, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948)5 inspired directors such as Xie Jin, for example. Hong Kong’s melodramas of the 1950s (for example The Kid, 1950) as well as New Wave features such as Allen Fong’s Father And Son (1981) indicate a familiarity with this seminal work,6 and scholars have commented on Fruit Chan’s debt to the Italian Neo-Realism in films such as Little Cheung (1999).7 Shades of Italian Neo-Realism also seem evident in the inaugural works of Taiwan’s New Cinema, particularly in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s contribution to The Sandwich Man (1983), “The Son’s Big Doll,” in subject matter as well as film style. Because of its transnational visibility, it comes as no surprise that PRC filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai’s Beijing Bicycle (2001) should use Bicycle Thieves as the basis for this French-Taiwan-PRC co-production, co-scripted with Peggy Chiao and Hsu Hsiao-Ming from the ROC. Evoking Bicycle Thieves precipitates a transnational wave of recognition, links a film to a local and global cinematic history, and positions it in relation to maligned forms of realism including socialist realism in the PRC to the sentimental melodrama in Hong Kong and the ROC. Just as the French New Wave grew out of Italian Neo-Realism as both a continuation and a critique of that particular film aesthetic, filmmakers associated with New Chinese Cinema, from the Fourth (Xie Fei), Fifth (Tian Zhuang-zhuang), and Sixth Generation ( Jia Zhangke) in the PRC to the Hong Kong New Wave (Allen Fong) and “indies” (Fruit Chan) as well as Taiwan New Cinema (Hou Hsiao-hsien), reacted against these earlier types of cinematic realism by evoking Italian Neo-Realism. They pursued (as the French New Wave had) a modernist aesthetic while maintaining many important links to earlier realist forms. Moving through modernism into the postmodern, the status of cinematic realism has become even more complicated. Transnational co-productions and increased contact across the Chinese diaspora have put these various traditions of realism—and the specificity of their historical, political, and cultural roots—into direct contact. However, the question remains as to why Chinese filmmakers working across national borders should gravitate toward realism in any form within the postmodern cinema’s “desert of the real.”

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Although Neo-Realism’s influence on the Hong Kong New Wave, Taiwan’s New Cinema, and the films of China’s Sixth Generation has been duly noted by scholars, the impact of other realist aesthetic traditions has not been given the same critical scrutiny. One omission has been the influence of Robert Bresson and what Paul Schrader has termed the “transcendental style” on contemporary Chinese cinema. Even Johnnie To’s The Sparrow (2008) evokes Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959) in its choice of subject matter and some shot compositions. Several Chinese-speaking directors have noted their debt to Bresson, and the two under discussion here, Jia Zhangke and Patrick Tam, have made their connection to Bresson explicit. (It may also be worth noting in passing that the presence of Bresson in Asia extends beyond the Chinese-speaking world as Lee Chang-Dong’s Secret Sunshine (2007) demonstrates.) As “transcendental” implies, this style uses the mimetic properties of the film image to point beyond the “real.” Jia Zhangke self-consciously expresses this debt to Bresson by giving Xiao Wu (1997) the English title Pickpocket in honor of Bresson’s Pickpocket. Internationally, he is in very good company, since Martin Scorsese, who has collaborated with Schrader and has spoken about the importance of Bresson to his own filmmaking, points to Xiao Wu as outstanding among recent Chinese-language films. In his book on the transcendental style, Schrader focuses on three filmmakers—Robert Bresson, Ozu Yasujiro,

Figure 3.1 Xiao Wu

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and Carl Theodor Dreyer. The relationship between Hou and Ozu has been widely discussed, and Bresson has come in the backdoor on some of those scholarly exchanges regarding Hou’s oeuvre. Given the fondness of Hou’s early collaborator, Edward Yang, for Bresson, the connection seems valid. Although Schrader’s linking of these three very different directors through a common, transcultural, ahistorical, spiritual bond has been duly critiqued, the fact that this style continues to find its way into contemporary cinema worldwide attests to its power. However, the question remains as to why particular Chinese-speaking directors should be attracted to Bresson. Given the spectrum of realist styles available to contemporary directors, the visual austerity, spiritual asceticism, and moral complexity of Bresson may not be an obvious choice. If observational style, improvisational freedom, and stylistic exuberance might be expected to attract Hong Kong New Wave filmmakers like Tam or Sixth Generation filmmakers like Jia, Bresson does not seem to fit the bill. The transcendental requires patience. The cinema’s realist tendencies would seem to make the medium a perfect vehicle for narratives about the external world and human beings in society or within the natural environment. These sorts of films might serve as impetus for political or social reform in that world. However, transcendental filmmakers go against the grain of the medium to craft a style that connects not to the immanent but to the spiritual. As Schrader puts it, these films “describe the immanent and the manner in which it is transcended.”8 Realism remains on the visual surface as a conduit for another type of experience. For Schrader, filmmakers such as Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer use the mimetic properties of film to point toward what cannot be depicted—the spiritual, the otherworldly, the holy. These filmmakers achieve the transcendent through a style that favors stasis over action, quietude over drama, the repetition of the details of quotidian life over the celebration of the spectacle of the extraordinary. In so doing, the films point toward what cannot be depicted in images—much as Byzantine icons gesture toward a spiritual realm beyond the frame. This type of realism would appear to be diametrically opposed to Italian Neo-Realism’s social engagement and its critical perspective on the legacy of fascism in post-World War II Italy. However, Schrader mentions Roberto Rossellini as on the edge of the style, and many other Neo-Realists, including Vittorio De Sica, may also be on that frontier. This may explain why a Catholic scholar such as Andre Bazin would praise what he calls a “Communist” film such as Bicycle Thieves: the only valid Communist film of the whole past decade precisely because it still has meaning even when you have abstracted its social

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significance. Its social message is not detached, it remains immanent in the event, but it is so clear that nobody can overlook it, still less take exception to it, since it is never made explicitly a message … in the world where this workman lives, the poor must steal from each other in order to survive. But this thesis is never stated as such, it is just that events are so linked together that they have the appearance of a formal truth while retaining an anecdotal quality.9 Jia Zhangke also admires Bicycle Thieves: Sometimes I have been termed a neo-realist filmmaker, and there is some truth to this, since I admire Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) by Vittorio de Sica. It’s a simple story about a man who is beset by problems in the impoverished environs of postwar Rome. But the film is essentially about the beauty of life, which is reflected in De Sica’s assiduous observation of the surroundings: the sun, the light, the city. He has a marvellous [sic] way of dealing with objects.10 Jia praises De Sica’s observation of inanimate objects rather than people, and this may be linked to Bazin’s interest in “formal truth” over “social message.” Bazin praises Neo-Realism’s “supreme naturalness,”11 and he welcomes, in particular, the “disappearance” of ideology that implies: Not one gesture, not one incident, not a single object in the film is given a prior significance derived from the ideology of the director.12 Jason McGrath sees this same movement away from the ideological in Jia’s approach to realism: rather than professing to show an ideological truth that underlies apparent reality, it seeks to reveal a raw, underlying reality by stripping away the ideological representations that distort it.13 As the human hand and the political consequences of the human element disappear, the “raw, underlying reality” can transcend the ideological and take its place—or appear to take its place. Like Schrader, Bazin looks for the transcendent within the immanent—for the abstract formal truth within the everyday. As John Hess

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points out in his work on Personalism (a type of existential Catholicism) and the auteur theory, Bazin views film realism with an eye to another spiritual dimension. Hess sees this as having three important consequences that seem to be quite similar to key aspects of the “transcendental style”: 1. that films should be as realistic as possible because the more closely the images on the screen correspond to the real world, the more clearly the images will reveal the human being’s relation to the infinite; 2. that the mise en scène (the composition of the visual image) be constructed in such a way as to include those parts of the real world which most directly reveal “soul through appearance”; 3. that the actors must, through identification with the roles and through the gestures they develop to express both themselves and the character they represent, reveal their spiritual dimension.14 The “transcendental style” shares many of these elements. As Schrader points out in his discussion of Bresson, the use of non-actors (emphasizing a non-expressive other-worldliness rather than psychological depth), natural sounds (music not used for dramatic impact), and location filming (with an emphasis on the ordinary object) contribute to the transcendental experience. Schrader quotes Bresson: “The supernatural in film is only the real rendered more precise.”15 Martin Scorsese, who directed a number of projects with Schrader as scriptwriter, including Taxi Driver (1976), which borrows liberally from Pickpocket, admires Jia’s own take on the Bresson classic: The remarkable eye and ear for detail grabbed me immediately: every scene was so rich, so perfectly balanced between storytelling and documentary observation. And as a character study, and a film about community, Xiao Wu is extraordinary. There’s nothing sentimental about Wang Hongwei’s performance or about Jia’s approach to him, and somehow that makes the end of the film, where the protagonist is arrested, chained, and exposed to ridicule, all the more devastating.16 Not surprisingly, Jia claims Bresson as his favorite European filmmaker: My favourite European filmmaker is Robert Bresson. He has the ability to show states of mind on film, which is an extremely difficult thing to pull off.17

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When Jia first met his future collaborator Nelson Yu Lik-Wai in Hong Kong, the pair immediately bonded because of their mutual regard for Bresson.18 Hong Kong filmmaker Patrick Tam is also a great admirer: As for Bresson, he was a very unique film auteur, his cinematic language and instinct are very different from others. He liked to use the most simple story and minimalistic details to tell the most fruitful message, and to utilize the most superficial action in order to convey the inmost feeling. In addition, his film is also different from traditional drama in a way that he treated the actor as a model. He didn’t want any dramatic performance from the actors. I think it is very original and focused.19 Many critics see a close connection between Tam’s After This Our Exile (2006) and Bicycle Thieves. The Chinese title of the film (Father and Son) immediately conjures up the father/son duo in Bicycle Thieves as well as evoking Allen Fong’s film Father and Son with a very similar title. However, Tam insists his film owes a far greater debt to Bresson. Again, given the subject matter, Pickpocket comes immediately to mind.

“What a strange road I took to find you” At the end of Pickpocket, Michel (Martin LaSalle), the eponymous thief, utters these words in a voice-over from his prison cell as he embraces his love Jeanne (Marika Green). Given that both Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile evoke Bresson’s Pickpocket, the question arises as to why two very different Chinese-speaking filmmakers should turn to this particular French film for inspiration. The PRC’s Sixth Generation and Hong Kong’s New Wave/Malaysian independent filmmaking come together through the legacy of Bresson in these films, and the reasons behind this Pickpocket connection need to be explored. In some way, Bresson must answer aesthetic, ideological, philosophical, moral, and/ or spiritual questions for these two very different filmmakers. Moreover, both films evoke Bicycle Thieves—from their Neo-Realist stylistic choices to attention to particular objects in the mise en scène (for example bicycles play a prominent visual role in each film) and implicit social critiques. While Jia accepts this connection to De Sica’s film, Tam downplays it. However, the fact remains that two distinct styles of realism come into play in both films. Although Neo-Realism may point to the transcendent in certain cases, Bazin clearly states that it deals with the “immanent.” However, both styles do move away from the ideological into a type of social observation that contrasts sharply with more didactic

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forms such as socialist realism. Bresson moves toward the spiritual, the redemptive, the transcendental, while De Sica tends to accept the human scale and evoke the pathos of the individual’s moral plight within a society at a loss to help him. For Bazin, Bicycle Thieves is that rare example of a “Communist” film that is not didactic. However, although it deals with moral complexity, Bicycle Thieves does not take its protagonists to the same spiritual plane as Michel achieves in Pickpocket. Caught and imprisoned, Michel finds redemption through grace in the form of Jeanne. However, in Bicycle Thieves, when Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is caught trying to pilfer a bicycle to replace his own stolen one, the humiliation he suffers in front of his son Bruno (Enzo Staiola) does not seem to lead to any transcendental moment of salvation. Rather, the two walk off to continue their struggle to survive. Perhaps in the meeting ground between Bicycle Thieves and Pickpocket another type of film realism emerges—somewhere on a sliding scale between Bresson’s transcendental style and Italian Neo-Realism. In assessing the career of another Neo-Realist Roberto Rossellini, Gilles Deleuze remarked that he showed us the link between man and the world. Hence it developed either in the direction of a transformation of the world by man, or in the discovery of an internal and higher world that man himself was.20 Deleuze astutely pinpoints the meeting ground of two different approaches to two types of film realism that seem to be diametrically opposed. One form (critical realism, social realism) favors “a transformation of the world by man,” while the other (the “transcendental” style) looks toward the “internal and higher world that man himself was.” The “internal” may point to humanism and psychological realism, but the “higher world” implies the transcendental. Deleuze, of course, puts Bresson in the spiritual realm (while Dreyer, for him, remains preoccupied with the moral/ethical). The link between existentialism (a strong dose of Jean-Paul Sartre) and Christian redemptive transcendence seems quite clear in the character of Michel in Bresson’s Pickpocket. However, the legacy of Neo-Realism—for example the use of non-actors, city locations, emphasis on the lower classes, a “gritty” sense of urban life, and links to moral, social, and political issues—can also be felt. His embrace of Jeanne through his prison bars at the film’s conclusion, of course, represents spiritual redemption more

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than erotic fulfillment and any social commentary on the plight of the poor man driven to crime is virtually absent from the plot. Both Jia and Tam seem preoccupied with both aspects of realism— with Tam, perhaps, closer to the “transcendental” than Jia. Like Bresson, Jia and Tam are drawn to “sinners” (anti-heroes). Unlike De Sica’s protagonist, who only gave into his impulse to steal after being abused at virtually every level of post-war Italian society (from the trade unions to the police to the church), Jia’s Xiao Wu (and virtually all the other characters in the film) and Tam’s central Chow family (Chow Cheongshing/Aaron Kwok, Lin/Charlie Yeung, and Ah Boy/Gow Ian Iskander) are all morally flawed in some way. Like Bresson’s Michel, Jia’s Xiao Wu starts off as a thief. Although Cheong-shing and Ah Boy only turn to thievery later in the film, they do so independently of each other, and Tam does not portray Ah Boy as a complete “innocent.” Likewise, Lin may be driven to abandon her family by her husband’s abusive ways; however, she still runs off with another man and leaves her son in the questionable “care” of his father. As Schrader sees Bresson’s oeuvre, the flawed protagonist goes on a spiritual journey that leads to a miraculous or redemptive moment, which points to the transcendental. The film depicts this journey through a buildup of repeated events emphasizing the details of everyday life—often fragments of objects or parts of the body. Unlike the long shot/long take style (often with deep focus cinematography and a mobile camera) favored by Bazin, Bresson tends to fragment time, space, and the body with an eye beyond the human dimensions of the “democratic” style Bazin prefers. For Bresson, the protagonist mirrors an ironic detachment that the observational style of the film also evokes. For example, the camera’s scrutiny of events is doubled by Michel’s diary entries, which make the same observations in voice-over. This, in turn, is contrasted with a spiritual passion, which erupts unexpectedly in a soulful glance or through the Jean-Baptiste Lully score. This leads to a “decisive” action and to a transformative moment that appears to be miraculous. After this redemption, stasis creates a near mystical experience—for example the impact of the close-up with Michel’s eye peering out from behind the prison bars and Jeanne’s head to look beyond the camera at the end of Pickpocket. Neither Xiao Wu nor After This Our Exile evidences the stylistic purity of Pickpocket. However, both follow the same narrative pattern—at least to a certain degree. Xiao Wu parallels Pickpocket’s plot more closely, but After This Our Exile appears to be more concerned with questions of

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redemption. All three films do, however, deal with the issue of what has been called a “spiritual malaise” characteristic of post-war Europe in Pickpocket, post-Mao China in Xiao Wu, and post-colonial Hong Kong displaced onto the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia in After This Our Exile. This could be translated into dissatisfaction with the social and philosophical climate in France in the 1950s, Communist reform under Deng Xiaoping in China in the 1990s, and Hong Kong’s transition from a colony to an SAR after 1997 as well as Malaysia’s political and economic vicissitudes at the millennium. All three films owe a debt to the realist traditions that predated them—particularly Italian Neo-Realism in Europe, critical realism in pre-1949 Chinese cinema, socialist realism of the international Communist movement, and the social problem film associated with the commercial melodrama in Hollywood and Hong Kong. However, they also break dramatically from these earlier forms. Jia and Tam look to Bresson as the trailblazer to take them in a direction that transcends these other forms of realism. However, the question remains as to whether these three filmmakers take up the transcendental style for the same reasons or whether each has taken a different path on their “strange road” to find an appropriate cinematic aesthetic.

Thieves on the road Looking at what the three films have in common may help to shed some light on how and why they differ. Like Pickpocket, Xiao Wu focuses on its titular thief, and the parallels continue with the main characters surrounding him. With glasses obscuring his face and an air of philosophical detachment, Xiao Wu seems a lot like Michel, holed up in his Parisian garret surrounded by stacks of books. Like Michel, Xiao Wu maintains close contact with the police, and Wu even does his civic duty by returning the identification cards he filches directly to the police by mail. Both work with a gang, although Wu’s connections are more juvenile à la Dickens’ Oliver Twist or the father-son team in After This Our Exile. Both have strained relationships with their families, and trouble with the women in their lives. In Xiao Wu, Pickpocket’s Jeanne is divided in two—Xiao Yong’s fiancée and the KTV hostess Mei Mei (Hao Hong-jian). In Pickpocket, Michel wins Jeanne as the symbol of his redemption when she refuses to marry their mutual (and honest) friend Jacques, the father of her child, because she loves Michel. In Xiao Wu, Xiao Yong wants to put his past behind him, so he decides not to invite Xiao Wu to his wedding and refuses his wedding gift by returning his hong bao to him. In a parallel plot point, Wu purchases

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a gold ring for his girlfriend Mei Mei; however, she disappears and leaves him in the lurch before he can even offer her the ring. When he gives the ring to his mother instead, she passes it along as a gift for his brother’s fiancée. While Jacques, Jeanne, and Michel’s mother always seem to be there for him, Xiao Wu is shunned by all. His friends and family symbolically refuse to be connected with him (guan xi) by refusing his gifts, and he becomes increasingly isolated. The beeper that connects Xiao Wu with Mei Mei, which he foolishly, sentimentally, or self-destructively leaves on even after Mei Mei abandons him, goes off during a robbery, and he is caught. Needless to say, unlike Jeanne, Mei Mei does not appear after Xiao Wu’s incarceration. After This Our Exile also has quite a lot in common with Pickpocket. However, in this case, Michel is divided in two. Both father Sheng and son Ah Boy are thieves—cat burglars rather than pickpockets. However, while Michel and Xiao Wu have some skill, Sheng and his son seem doomed to failure from the very beginning. As the scene in which Sheng lays out a variety of objects to train Ah Boy to look for the most valuable items in a mark’s house indicates, neither has any idea of how to be a thief. In fact, the scene plays more like the ritual some Chinese families use to predict their child’s future profession by putting out a display of attractive objects for a toddler to pick from at will. The perversion of the ritual here indicates how far Sheng has strayed from the Confucian ideal. Only when completely on his own does Ah Boy manage to steal a watch from his friend’s house and a piggybank from his neighbor. The theft of the watch is particularly telling, since the scene contrasts Ah Boy’s nobler feelings, indicated by his reaction to his friend’s mother’s piano playing, and his impulse to steal. Like Michel and Xiao Wu, Ah Boy is a divided character who struggles with his own feelings, desires, and familial circumstances. When he teams up with his father, disaster, of course, ensues. However, no feminine force represents salvation for the duo. Father and son are both estranged from the women in their lives; that is, Ah Boy’s mother Lin and Fong (Kelly Lin), a prostitute Sheng pimps out. Both father and son find redemption away from these women—the father through a fresh start with a new wife and family and the son by repaying his debts, forgiving his father, and finding peace with himself. All three films follow the basic narrative pattern Schrader associates with the transcendental style. Close attention to the repetitive details of daily existence alternates with occasional moments of emotional insight; ironic detachment vies with spiritual passion. The details of

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Xiao Wu’s cold life as a pickpocket meet with unexpected emotional warmth in his dealings with the policeman and his toddler when he first returns a stolen ID, or his courtship of Mei Mei in her sickbed. The domestic routine of ironing shirts, fixing meals, organizing the bus fare for school, planning family trips, or celebrating birthdays has an emotional dark side as Lin prepares to abandon her family; quotidian details hide the pain of the disintegrating family. Both Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile open with journeys. Xiao Wu starts with a bus trip and moves on to a bicycle ride; Ah Boy dreams about riding a bicycle with his father, and the initial sequence ends with his aborted bus ride to school. In many ways, these opening journeys encapsulate the plot of the entire film. Just as Bresson’s Pickpocket opens with Michel deciding to steal, stealing, and getting caught (a pattern repeated until the final shot), the openings of Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile parallel the overall plotline of each film. The opening of Xiao Wu depicts its protagonist in his environment— the struggling hinterland of post-Mao China. Xiao Wu waits on a country road for the bus, and similar scenes dot the film. He is shown sitting by the side of roads as an onlooker, waiting to zero in on his mark, or simply killing time throughout the film—watching life pass him by. As he gets on the bus, he is being watched—as he remains under surveillance at various points throughout the film. A contradictory figure, his shabby suit does not sit well with his thick nerdy eyeglasses, and the tattoo exposed when he lifts his arm to steady himself on the bus indicates the criminal clashes with both the peasant and the student in this single character. He does not pay and attracts the notice of the bus attendant, who leaves him alone when he says he is a cop. His fellow passenger/his first mark in the film gives him what appears to be a quizzical gaze, and the picture of Chairman Mao hanging from the rearview mirror of the bus seems to indicate disapproval. Xiaoping Lin talks about the journey in terms of a “pilgrimage” with Xiao Wu “under the shadow of Mao/Holy Ghost.”21 The tensions underlying the journey find visual expression in a cutaway to the bus’s side-view mirror. As the bus moves forward, the road behind appears moving backwards. This forward/backward tension defines Xiao Wu’s journey and his predicament. When he appears to make some progress in his life—toward romantic love, friendship, reconciliation with his family, attempting to get “right” with the law—he takes a giant leap backwards—losing Mei Mei, his friendship with Xiao Yong, his welcome at his parental home in the countryside, his détente with the police authorities. A close-up of his shirtsleeve as he gets ready

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to strike is juxtaposed with the portrait of Mao—an icon of the past, of a different political/moral value system, with the residue of its symbolic power as the “Holy Ghost” of the PRC circa 1997. After This Our Exile begins with shots of the Malaysian landscape. Evidence of a dock indicates a human presence. Like Ozu, Bresson, Hou, and Jia, Patrick Tam appreciates closely observed details. A shot of a bicycle wheel on a country road opens the story. A close-up of a foot in a sandal pedaling a bicycle follows. The circular movement of the bicycle wheel is picked up by a twirling pinwheel. A close-up of Ah Boy’s cheek on his father’s back looking at the pinwheel is followed by a shot of the bicycle within the green landscape as it moves away from the camera. Jump cuts of the boy’s fall literally disrupt this reverie, and a shot of Ah Boy’s eyes opening indicates it was all a dream. Following Bresson, this could be read as a religious allegory—keep in mind, for example, that the pinwheel acts as a prayer wheel in certain Chinese funerary and other religious practices. Ah Boy is taken for a ride by his father, at the mercy of the forces beyond his control like the pinwheel, and, inevitably, falls from grace, only to wake up to the nature of life in order to transcend it (and overcome the sins of his father). However, Ah Boy wakes up in the world of his dysfunctional family. The mattress on the floor and broken electric fan not only pay homage to Ozu’s tatami shots, but also, closer to Bicycle Thieves, place the child Ah Boy in an adult world filled with poverty and pain. Again, the immanent (the bedroom) and the transcendent (the field of dreams) form a dialectical unit. However, whereas De Sica clearly places the blame on post-war Italian society for the moral emptiness in his film, Tam, more like Bresson, keeps the story on a spiritual plane. Ah Boy’s father has a job as a cook, but he squanders his money gambling. His mother faces temptation at her workplace where she is a bar hostess. In this moral vacuum, Ah Boy steals from his friends who are better off—either materially or emotionally. Although life within the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia may not be ideal, other working class families, similar to Ah Boy’s, do well, and many, including Lin, find a way to become upwardly mobile. As in Bresson’s Pickpocket, social, political, and economic circumstances really do not come into play. While Sheng and Lin’s dreams for a better life may be misguided, leading one to gamble and the other to abandon her family, their failings are presented as individual moral flaws, evidence of a spiritual malaise linked to an increasingly materialistic society to be sure, but, still, not rooted in the political system, the failings of capitalism, or even the social ills of gambling and prostitution.

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After This Our Exile is not a social problem film, a political tract, or even a Neo-Realist indictment of a heartless political or economic system. Rather, it is about, as the Catholic prayer used for the film’s English title indicates, what exists “after this our exile” within this human body during our time on earth. It points to a spiritual transcendence that has little to do with a call for any type of social change—rather the call for change involves moral and spiritual values—a change in the orientation of the society, to be sure, a movement away from personal ambition, avarice, and selfish disregard for the feelings of others—but not really a call for radical economic transformation or political revolution. When compared to After This Our Exile, Xiao Wu, then, seems closer to Bicycle Thieves than Bresson’s Pickpocket. Rather than pinpointing a particular moral weakness like gambling or an impulse to steal as the moral flaw at the center of the protagonists’ spiritual malaise, Jia keeps his critical options open. Mao may continue to observe Deng’s reforms from the dashboard, but he has left more than a moral vacuum behind. The appearance of law and order broadcast on the radio and television takes the place of any sense of social justice in the film. Xiao Wu may be a little (“xiao”) pickpocket, but he is surrounded by thieves even bigger than his old friend Xiao Yong (who now trades in illegal cigarettes and call girls). The village has deteriorated into a patriarchal enclave where women again demand a bride-price, and the town is perpetually threatened with demolition. As many scholars have pointed out, Xiao Wu is one of the “losers” under Deng’s reforms—his ability to work with his hands (a working class skill prized by Mao) no longer makes him fit to succeed under Deng’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Xiao Wu says this explicitly; he works with his hands but is “too dumb” to be an entrepreneur. With no place in the town or countryside, he becomes a bystander, a thief fated to be captured during a publicized crackdown on crime (which leaves “entrepreneurs” like Xiao Yong not only unscathed, but celebrated as “heroes” who manage to show that getting rich can be glorious.) Although there is no hint of any Maoist nostalgia, no call for Communist political purity, or anything close to that in Xiao Wu, Jia does maintain a link between the spiritual malaise experienced by his protagonist and the economic/political changes precipitated by Deng’s neo-liberal reforms. The film carefully delineates a particular temporal period—from 1982 to 1997. The year 1982 appears on a wall featured prominently in the mise en scène of several shots in the film. In that year, the Fifth National People’s Congress put forward a new

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constitution which paved the way for the economic changes that followed.22 At another point, 1993 is mentioned, which is the year after Deng Xiaoping’s famous southern tour that accelerated market reforms. In 1997 (the year of the film’s premiere), Deng Xiaoping, the mastermind behind those changes, died just a few months before Hong Kong’s return to the PRC—seen by many as a sign of China’s rising national status on the global stage as an economic and political power. Xiao Wu is a contradictory creature of this era—drawn to steal but happy to support the police who arrest him. In fact, he can be seen allegorically as a Reform Era Everyman, who believes in the State and an economic system that has set him up for failure in order to enrich a new elite. After This Our Exile engages with historical time quite differently. Roger Garcia, for example, sees the film as taking up issues of Hong Kong’s past more than the present circumstances of the Chinese community in Malaysia: It remains one of the few Hong Kong films … to capture the mood, spirit and feel of growing up in Hong Kong as Hong Kong itself grew up into an integral part of the global economy.23 And in its profundity it transmits not only the energy of the image, but also a dialectical current—a melancholic treatise on the author’s control or otherwise, of his creation. It is a process that was nascent in the Hong Kong New Wave as filmmakers inflected the identity of a new Hong Kong and its relationship to a patriarchal Mainland China, but a consciousness which has been vapidly absent from much of recent Hong Kong cinema.24 Here, as Garcia places the film within Hong Kong’s postcolonial temporal frame, a different understanding of it emerges. As a political allegory of the encounter between the destructive patriarch and the vulnerable son, it sits within the ranks of the many fathers and sons that have peopled the Hong Kong New Wave since the signing of the Joint Accord in 1984. Sheng and Ah Boy become stand-ins for the PRC and Hong Kong, and this story of a journey toward acceptance and reconciliation seems to have its own political dimension. However, Tam prefers Bresson to De Sica, and the theme of redemption and spiritual transcendence may indicate a desire to get beyond the political economy of human existence. Going away from contemporary Hong Kong to Malaysia and back in the past to a way of life that resembles Hong Kong during the post-war colonial era takes After This Our Exile away from the direct engagement with politics that Xiao Wu

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does not evade. As the two films drift apart, they again come closer together, since both go to the margins of the Chinese experience—the “primitive” hinterland in and around the small town of Fenyang in Xiao Wu and the Chinese-speaking communities of small-town Malaysia (where Johor Bahru, the border town across from “modern” Singapore, functions as the big city). Moving away from Beijing or Hong Kong, the films appear to go back in time, to contrast the present with the past, and to highlight the impact of change. However, going away from the urban and the modern also opens the films up to an experience outside normal expectations.

The decisive action and stasis According to Paul Schrader, transcendental films establish narrative patterns that alternate between ironic detachment and spiritual passion expressed through the details of daily life—from household routines and habitual visits to cafes and restaurants to the cyclical details of the preparation for and execution of the thefts. These patterns build to a decisive action, which is transformative and appears to be miraculous. In all three cases, the protagonists make decisions which lead directly to their arrests. These decisive actions may or may not be consciously executed. The actions may be fated, inspired by a higher power, or be part of what Deleuze may call “the discovery of an internal and higher world that man himself was.” In After This Our Exile, the decisive moment and its transformative power seem clear. For Ah Boy, his role as observer transforms him. After breaking into a house in which a young boy hovers on the verge of death from cancer, Ah Boy begins to cry from his hiding place inside a closet. Of course, he is caught, but Sheng steps in to claim his son is mentally ill and beg for clemency. After this incident, Ah Boy tells his father he no longer wants to steal, and Sheng agrees to get a job. Given Sheng’s problems with the triads because of his gambling debts, the idea of being able to find a job undetected seems remote as he hobbles along still suffering from the effects of a gang beating. Indeed, after affirming his promise to his son, Sheng, when opportunity presents itself, still pushes Ah Boy into a house to steal. Ah Boy drops some of the loot and gets caught again. However, this time, the homeowner has no mercy and begins to beat the boy severely. As the neighbors come out to witness the commotion, Sheng abandons his son. Father and son meet again during a visit to the juvenile prison in which Ah Boy is incarcerated. The boxlike framing Tam uses throughout

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the film (for example frames-within-frames, walls dividing the frame, doorways, mirrors, windows, closet ventilation slats, and so on) reaches its apogee in this scene. The camera follows Ah Boy as a female jailor accompanies him, gazing at him in a narrow corridor through slats in an interior window, past doorways, pillars, and other objects physically dividing the frame. Sheng and Ah Boy sit on opposite sides of a table; a window frames them in the background, the light places them in partial shadow. The father moves closer and squats in front of his son to ask for another chance. A cut makes a transition that cannot be temporally or spatially pinpointed. In an evening, exterior location, the camera follows Sheng as he limps along alone in a shadowy blue streetscape. As he walks toward the camera, a bandage on his ear becomes visible. A low angle shot frames him from the chest up against the blue sky. The camera tilts down, the sound of insects can be heard, and Sheng stands silhouetted against an abandoned colonial-style building. He limps over to a bench and sits down. Only then does the connection between this scene and the jailhouse confrontation become clear. Quick cuts reveal two very brief shots of Ah Boy biting Sheng’s ear. After an inserted shot on the bench, the film returns to a longer take showing Ah Boy ripping the ear away from his father’s head. While Sheng sits quietly on the bench, the displaced voice of Ah Boy demands an answer to his question, “Why did you make me steal? Why?” Over a close-up of Sheng’s bandaged face, the off-screen, temporally displaced sound of footsteps and clank of a door slamming shut indicate that Ah Boy has been put away for good. Biting off his father’s ear is a decisive gesture. It forces Sheng to separate from his son and take stock of his own life, and it also allows Ah Boy the sanctuary of prison. Like Michel in Bresson’s Pickpocket, Ah Boy finds his freedom in jail, away from his father and a life of crime/sin. As in most of Schrader examples of the transcendental style, these decisive moments bring to a head the dialectic exchange between surface realism and spiritual passion. The attention to formal details becomes more intense through framing and camera movement, music and voice-over displace synchronized sound, long takes give rise to jump cuts, and the narrative folds in on itself temporally and spatially. The intensity of the decisive action is juxtaposed with absolute quietude—the blank expression on Sheng’s face, his slow movements leading to immobility, and the change from a focus on the human form to images of the water, sky, and trees at the end of the sequence. As the film’s conclusion indicates, both Ah Boy and Sheng appear to have changed their ways. Although there is no scene of father-son

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reconciliation at the film’s conclusion, Ah Boy implicitly forgives his father—the final sign of his spiritual redemption—indicated by the phrasing of his voice-over. Ah Boy goes to the riverbank, looks across, and sees a man resembling his father. A boy, who resembles Ah Boy in his earlier dream, passes by on a bicycle holding a pinwheel, provides a prelapsarian vision of his relationship with his father before the symbolic fall off the bike and away from grace. A concluding flashback image of Sheng’s hand caressing Ah Boy’s head followed by a close-up of Ah Boy looking off indicates not only forgiveness, but transcendence— just as Jeanne’s caress at the end of Pickpocket does not indicate a “happy ending” involving romantic love, but points to a transcendence of human emotion with Michel’s gaze off screen looking into the infinite. Withholding the happy father-son reunion at the conclusion of After This Our Exile provides a similar gesture; it moves away from the human scale of oedipal conflicts and toward something deep within the soul or far away in the heavens. Although the decisive actions in Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile seem similar, their consequences differ considerably. Following Mei Mei’s suggestion, Xiao Wu purchases a beeper, so she can contact him when she is free. However, she runs off before it goes into regular use. In the countryside, the beeper becomes a novelty and a way for Xiao Wu to show his family how he has prospered and progressed in town. Of course, no one seems particularly impressed. Returning to Fenyang, Xiao Wu continues to wear his beeper even while picking pockets. The beeper goes off (with the weather report not with a message from Mei Mei) while Xiao Wu tries to steal a wallet. The pickpocket attempts to escape, but the victim follows shouting at him as Xiao Wu runs deep into the background of the shot. As in the cases of Michel and Ah Boy, the botched robbery leads to Xiao Wu’s incarceration. However, rather than being placed behind bars like Michel and Ah Boy, Xiao Wu ends up handcuffed to a motorcycle in what appears to be the recreation room attached to the police station. Although a toddler walking into frame gives the place a domestic feeling, the crowd gathered outside the window looking in at the prisoner indicates that this is, in fact, a jail with the prisoner on view (publicly humiliated) for all to see. The policeman turns on the television to help his prisoner pass the time. However, Xiao Wu only seems to be mocked by the broadcasts. Beethoven’s “Für Elise” (the same tune his lighter plays) comes on to remind him of his own alienation from the forces associated with the market economy and cultural Westernization. The interview show that

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had earlier featured Xiao Yong comes on, and Xiao Wu takes the place of his friend as the subject of the broadcast. However, instead of being used as an example of a model entrepreneur, Xiao Wu’s case testifies to the efficacy of the anti-crime campaign in the province. Unlike Bresson’s Pickpocket and Tam’s After This Our Exile, Jia’s Xiao Wu does not use any voice-overs. Rather, music, often in the form of KTV favorites, serves the same function. After Xiao Wu’s final humiliation of an anonymous message on his beeper telling him to look out for himself, the film shifts to a street scene at night and a pop song plays with these lyrics: “I’m fighting desperately to put an end to all my suffering. Look at the sky; the clouds are moving too quickly. May I ask you all who’s the hero?” In daylight, one of the police guards takes Xiao Wu out in handcuffs—presumably to court or to another jail. Needing a break, the guard handcuffs Xiao Wu to a wire on the street, and the prisoner squats down to wait. The camera moves from Xiao Wu to show the crowd that has gathered to look at him. The circular movement conjures up a camera style associated with Jean-Luc Godard’s fondness for 360 degree pans, while the use of the handheld camera seems to reference Dogme 95 and its “Vow of Chastity,” crafted as a clear statement opposed to the French New Wave auteurism associated with filmmakers such as Godard. The film moves away from Bresson’s minimalism and any indication of the transcendental as the cinematographer, Yu Lik-Wai, stitches together a camera style in synch with Jia’s vision, navigating a contradictory course between the French New Wave and Dogme. Women, children, old men, and people on bicycles stop and stare, and the camera takes on the perspective of Xiao Wu—or, in a self-reflexive gesture, the film shifts from a story about a pickpocket to a tale about the camera and the transformation of China into a cinematic spectacle. Unlike Pickpocket and After This Our Exile, which end with close-ups of their protagonists staring off beyond the camera, Xiao Wu ends with the protagonist off-screen and with the citizenry of Fenyang staring directly into the camera lens. Less an evocation of the transcendent and more a commentary on China and the society of the spectacle, Xiao Wu, like the Bresson and Tam films, still moves away from surface realism into another type of filmmaking—reflecting on the cinematic apparatus, on the spectacle of existence, and on the complicity of the viewer in the public humiliation of the “hero” Xiao Wu. Again, the decisive action has led to stasis—the handcuffed Xiao Wu cannot move. However, as in Bicycle Thieves, which also ends with the public humiliation of its protagonist caught in the

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act of trying to steal a bicycle, this status does not point to spiritual transcendence, redemption, or quietude. The gaze back at the camera places Xiao Wu back into the world of the international film festival, and the self-reflexive ending of Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (1997), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes the same year Xiao Wu had its premiere. Like Taste of Cherry, Xiao Wu blends an apparently realist aesthetic with a pared-down style that pushes it into the realm of formal self-consciousness and self-reflexivity. In both cases, the films are less an engagement with the “real” per se or a meditation on the transcendental (although Taste of Cherry can certainly support a claim to the transcendental style in its depiction of a spiritual malaise that leads to a search for meaning in a life on the brink of suicide—the ultimate “stasis”). Rather, the films appear to be engaging with the idea of cinematic realism. To paraphrase Godard, they go beyond the image of reality (realism/Bazin) as well as the reality of the image (modernism/Godard) to an investigation of the collapse of the real into the image (postmodernism/Baudrillard). As Jason McGrath astutely points out with reference to Jia Zhangke’s oeuvre: [T]he question raised by Jia’s realism is not whether it divulges an elemental real so much as how it constructs the powerful impression of a confrontation with reality through the rhetoric of the films’ narratives and their cinematic style.25 Jia engages with global conversations regarding cinema aesthetics, and he draws on a common history of film practice. Just as thieves people Xiao Wu, the film’s intertextual citations resemble theft. As Kevin Lee notes in his analysis of the film’s closing scene: [T]he idea of “stealing” informs the work of Jia’s camera. It cops a gaze at the crowd, some of whom turn away, while others stand transfixed by what is looking back at them. The power of the camera’s gaze brings to mind a variety of gazes in and around Chinese society: those of the government, of neighbors, and of foreigners seeking an inside look at an exotic world. This moment of mutual gazing brings attention sharply towards us, the audience, locating our own act of spectatorship within the spectacle. We are implicated in a collective urge to look, and are captured in a moment that inverts the positions of spectator and spectacle so that they become one and the same in a panoptic society that describes China, the world, and the cinema.26

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In fact, in all these films, the thief can stand in for the filmmaker— Bresson “steals” from Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953); Schrader, Scorsese, Jia, and Tam from Bresson. Inevitably, the latter four filmmakers engage with film realism, the transcendental style, and the dialectic between the immanent and the transcendent through the postmodern. In advanced capitalism, within the society of the spectacle, where images circulate like other commodities, the mimetic properties of the cinema— realism’s supposed ability to be “democratic” or “transcendental”—takes a backseat to an engagement with cinema as a medium of surfaces. Performance has taken the place of representation as the operative concept in understanding cinema in the age of the digital revolution. The non-actors that people Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile live in a world of performance. In Xiao Wu, Mei Mei sings and dances in a KTV establishment, and she also pretends to be an actress in training in Beijing for the benefit of her parents’ peace of mind. The gangster Xiao Yong performs the role of the “new” entrepreneur and welcomes the opportunity to display his success on television. Both play their roles convincingly and change their parts appropriately to survive in the new economy. However, Xiao Wu cannot seem to perform adequately as a boyfriend, a son, or a thief. With his thick glasses, the non-actor does not even seem to look the part of the gangster. Similarly, much of the critical attention surrounding After This Our Exile involves Aaron Kwok’s performance as the flawed father— questions of whether the popular Cantopop singer can act come up frequently. Many of the other characters in the film play performers—bar hostesses, prostitutes, and so on—and the notion of the “authentic” behind the mask of the performance comes into doubt. Even the newcomer who plays Ah Boy stands out with a style quite different from Aaron Kwok’s, and the two sometimes appear to be operating on different emotional registers—performing in different films. In speaking of the crisis in cinema after World War II, Gilles Deleuze pointed to the rise of the non-actor, associated with Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave but also with individuals such as Bresson who preferred “models” to dramatic “actors” for his films. Models, of course, can perform a behavior to the director’s specification rather than act out a dramatic situation, and this type of performance suits both Jia and Tam. Going back to the spiritual, Deleuze called the non-actors of this type of cinema “seers”—observers rather than actors—pointing toward the mystical. If seen with a postmodern slant, they witness the implosion of meaning in the cinema—paralyzed but observant.

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Conclusion—postmodernism and stasis All three films revolve around a tension between stasis (observing) and action (stealing), and the final resolution involves accepting stasis—which can be interpreted as spiritual quietude and redemption. As the characters observed their marks, a higher power (God, Mao as the “Holy Ghost,” the State, the police authorities, their own conscience) gazed at them with the camera (and the viewer’s perspective) alternating between the two—sometimes involved with the protagonists’ point of view and its detachment from the action, and sometimes identifying with the disembodied eye of the camera and its detachment from the protagonists. To pick up on interpretations of Ozu’s so-called empty shots, seasons change, human beings come and go, evidence of human presence may linger, but, eventually, everything passes away with the changing seasons, the passing years, and the individual fades into an insignificant speck within the cosmos. Quietude, for Schrader, marks human acceptance of this spiritual fact. However, although Pickpocket may take After This Our Exile into the realm of redemption and spiritual transcendence, the same style takes Xiao Wu in a different direction. Nevertheless, in both cases, the engagement with the transcendental style and the type of realism it favors brings both films back to Deleuze to provide an answer for this interest in Bresson. As different as Deleuze, Baudrillard, Debord, and Jameson are, they all point to schizophrenia as the common denominator of the postmodern experience. With the schizophrenic’s detachment from the anchors of chronological time, sequential space, and linguistic order, time, space, and meaning lose their foundation in the perception of “reality.” In his work on cinema, Deleuze asserted: “Whether we are Christians or atheists, in our universal schizophrenia, we need reasons to believe in this world.”27 While “belief” may be the operative concept for Bresson, “reasons to believe” trump faith for Jia and Tam. Through citing Pickpocket and crafting conflicted, contradictory, arguably “schizophrenic” characters who perform as seers, Jia and Tam engage with these reasons through their postmodern encounter with the transcendental style. Within the context of Chinese-language cinema, this also indicates an engagement with a specific history of realist styles and the ideologies to which they have been attached. As a result, Xiao Wu and After This Our Exile both deal with how China and the Chinese diaspora have been depicted, how they should be presented, and how a sense of “authenticity”

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as well as “transcendence” become crucial to that portrayal. Engaging with the “authentic” as a consequence of the rise of independent cinema globally, Tam steps away from the commercial artificiality of Hong Kong cinema to nurture the development of New Malaysian Cinema. However, this connection also indicates that established centers like Hong Kong continue to play an important role in East and Southeast Asian film. For example, Jia partners with cinematographer Yu after meeting at a festival in Hong Kong, and he sets up his production company Hu Tong Communication in Hong Kong. However, within the world of Asian independent filmmaking, the nature of the “real” that needs to be transcended varies greatly. Postcolonial Malaysia with its rural/urban divide, ethnic tensions, and economic disparities differs from postcolonial Hong Kong as an international financial center and commercial hub. The “real” demands of the marketplace in post-Deng Fenyang seem a far cry from the glittering consumerism in the urban centers of Beijing and Shanghai. In fact, the “real” changes as the filmmakers position themselves and their cameras within these varying contexts. In each case, though, the weight of global capitalism cannot be avoided. However, the transcendental moves away from politics, and elevates the moral, ethical, and spiritual above the material. The style thus promises relief from ideology while insisting on realism—a claim for authenticity when all forms of identity have been placed in doubt within postmodernity. At a time when meaning and the medium itself are in crisis, looking beyond the confines of the frame to another world has its appeal. If filmmakers sit still, look long and hard enough, they may, indeed, see.

Notes A portion of the research for this chapter came from the Seed Funding Program for Basic Research, University of Hong Kong. I am particularly grateful to Sabrina Baracetti of the Udine Far East Film Festival for her help with my work on Patrick Tam. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Jameson 1983: 123. Baudrillard 1988. Žižek 2001. Deleuze 1989. Liu 1965. Li 1994. Chan 2007. Schrader 1972: 8. Bazin 1971: 51. Jia 2007.

Gina Marchetti 85 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Bazin 1971: 58. Bazin 1971: 68. McGrath 2007: 83–4. Hess 1974. Bresson quoted in Schrader 1972: 62. Martin Scorsese “Foreword,” in Berry 2005: viii. Jia 2007. Berry 2005: 22. Kantorates 2007. See also Marchetti, Vivier, and Podvin 2007. Deleuze 1989: 171. Lin 2005: 187 and 192. Heilig 2009. Garcia 2007: 135. Ibid.: 137. McGrath 2007: 84. Lee 2003. Deleuze 1989: 172.

Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean (1988) “Simulacra and Simulations,” http://www.stanford.edu/ dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html (Accessed February 24, 2010). Bazin, Andre (1971) What Is Cinema? Vol. 2. Ed. and trans. Hugh Gray, Berkeley: University of California Press. Berry, Michael (2005) Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, New York: Columbia University Press. Chan, Natalia Sui-hung (2007) “Cinematic Neorealism: Hong Kong Cinema and Fruit Chan’s 1997 Trilogy,” in Laura E. Ruberto and Kristi M. Wilson (eds), Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 207–25. Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Garcia, Roger (2007) “After This Our Exile” in Alberto Pezzotta (ed.) Patrick Tam: From the Heart of the New Wave, Udine: Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche, 135–7. Heilig, Gerhard K. (2009) “Timeline: Chronology of Key Events”, China-Profile, http://www.china-profile.com/history/hist_list_1.htm (Accessed February 24, 2010). Hess, John (1974) “La politique des auteurs (Part One): World View as Aesthetics,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1, 19–22, http://www.ejumpcut.org/ archive/onlinessays/JC01folder/auturism1.html#2 (Accessed February 24, 2010). Jameson, Fredric (1983) “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in Hal Foster (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic: Essay on Postmodern Culture, Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 111–25. Jia, Zhangke (2007) “Life in Film,” Frieze, 106, http://www.frieze.com/issue/ article/life_in_film_jia_zhangke/ (Accessed February 24, 2010). Kantorates (2007) “An Interview with Director Patrick Tam Ka-ming (Part II)”, Cinespot, http://www.cinespot.com/einterviews18b.html (Accessed February 24, 2010).

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Lee, Kevin (2003) “Jia Zhangke”, Sense of Cinema, http://archive.sensesofcinema. com/contents/directors/03/jia.html (Accessed February 24, 2010). Li, Cheuk-to (1994) “The Return of the Father: Hong Kong New Wave and Its Chinese Context in the 1980s,” in Nick Browne, Paul G. Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, and Esther Yau (eds), New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 160–79. Lin, Xiaoping (2005) “Jia Zhangke’s Cinematic Trilogy: A Journey across the Ruins of Post-Mao China,” in Sheldon Lu and Yueh-Yu Yeh (eds), ChineseLanguage Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 186–209. Liu, Alan P. L. (1965) The Film Industry in Communist China, Cambridge, MA: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McGrath, Jason (2007) “The Independent Cinema of Jia Zhangke: From Postsocialist Realism to a Transnational Aesthetic,” in Zhang Zhen (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Century, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 81–114. Marchetti, Gina, David Vivier, and Thomas Podvin (2007) “Interview Patrick Tam: The Exiled Filmmaker”, Hong Kong CineMagic, June 28, http://www.hkcinemagic. com/en/page.asp?aid=270 (Accessed February 24, 2010). Schrader, Paul (1972) Transcendental Style in Film, Berkeley: University of California Press. Žižek, Slavoj (2001), “Welcome to the Desert of the Real”, re:constructions, September 15, http://web.mit.edu/cms/reconstructions/interpretations/ desertreal.html (Accessed February 24, 2010).

4 007 in Late Colonial Hong Kong: Technology, Masculinity, and Sly Humor in Stephen Chow’s From Beijing with Love Eric K. W. Yu

The James Bond films, the world’s second most commercially successful series, created by the London-based Eon Productions, are hardly new to the Hong Kong audiences. Bondmania, in respect of film adaptations rather than Ian Fleming’s literary works, has swept this former crown colony back to the 1960s. The fictional MI6 super agent 007, incarnated by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan in You Only Live Twice (1967), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and Die Another Day (2002) respectively, has also visited the city en route to adventures elsewhere. Although the imperial spy thriller has never been a major genre in Hong Kong cinema, the influences of the Bond films, ranging from far-fetched allusions to unacknowledged borrowing of certain generic elements, can be found in countless local crime films of the 1960s and early 1970s. It was no accident that the first part of the famous nu shashou (female assassin) series, starring the young Chan Po-chu, bore the rather irrelevant English title “Lady Bond.”1 In a historical perspective, the Hong Kong action comedy Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat, also known as From Beijing with Love (1994),2 an overt Bond spoof starring Stephen Chow as a Chinese spy dispatched to the thenBritish colony to investigate the theft of national treasure, is particularly interesting. With reference to the development of the Bond films, FBWL emerged almost five years after Licence to Kill (1989), the lowest point of the series’ gradual decline in the 1980s, when Bond fans would look back on the earlier, pre-Timothy Dalton, films starring Connery and Moore with a sense of nostalgia and shortly before the series was “rebooted” by the popular Brosnan Bonds, beginning with Goldeneye (1995).3 In regard to colonial history, FBWL was released in September 1994, less than three years before the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese 87

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sovereignty. Given that so many Hong Kong films made during that period deal with anxieties about the 1997 transition almost compulsively but not always with inspiration, Chow’s curious appropriation of the formulas of a three-decade old, presumably dying, British film series well known for its imperialist ideology and sexism, not only to poke fun at the original but to engage, at times obliquely and full of sly humor, with the pressing questions of Chinese modernity, is an especially tricky business that warrants closer critical attention. The cultural politics involved in fashioning a Chinese Bond in a late British colonial context distinguishes FBWL from Anglo-American Bond parodies like Casino Royale (1967) and the Austin Powers films. So far as the growth of Chow’s comic persona is concerned, FBWL marks a more mature phase in which wulitou, or “nonsense,” wordplay and vile pranks have largely given way to situational humor and more “poker-face” performance.4 To this day, FBWL is probably the only Hong Kong film which plays extensively with the Bond conventions, at times devastatingly so. Let us begin with the most obvious. The English title From Beijing with Love derives from the second Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963). Although James Bond is never mentioned, the protagonist’s name, “Ling Ling Qi,” is a homophone of “007,” Bond’s well-known code number. “Golden Gun,” the nickname of the arch-villain, a corrupt Chinese official responsible for national security, is borrowed from The Man with the Golden Gun. The agent killed by Golden Gun at the beginning of FBWL is called “Ling Ling Yi,” sounding exactly like “002” in Cantonese. Moore’s last Bond film A View to a Kill (1985) also begins with the death of a fellow double-0 agent. Even the handgun that Qi’s partner uses is a Walther PPK, Bond’s issued sidearm in most of the Eon films, though her PPK is said to be made in China. In fact, the Chinese film title means “domestically-made 007,” that is, “007 made in China.” With the search for a lost item very important for the government intertwining with a romantic subplot involving a villainess-turned-lover, the plot is not unlike a hybrid of For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Goldfinger (1964). Almost all the main character types of the Bond series have their counterparts in FBWL. Li Xiangqin (Anita Yuen), the spy who is sent by Golden Gun to kill Ling Ling Qi (Stephen Chow) but who falls in love with him, can be regarded as the leading “Bond girl.” M, Bond’s superior in MI6, is represented by Golden Gun, who turns out to be the arch-villain.5 Q, the inventor who provides Bond with all the gadgets needed on his missions, becomes Da Wenxi, that is, Da Vinci. Azalea, Golden Gun’s personal secretary, alludes to M’s Moneypenny. The almost injuryproof Chinese henchman recalls both the steel-toothed Jaws played by

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Richard Kiel in the Bond films and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. Hallmark Bond narrative segments like the music video-like opening title credits showing sparsely clad women in graceful movements, Bond’s ritualistic flirting with Moneypenny, his receipt of an urgent assignment from M, technical briefing with Q, the decisive combat scene inside the arch-villain’s base, and the ending with Bond being summoned while making love to the chief Bond girl are all parodied by FBWL. Yet other elements the Bond series boasts of, like the fancy sports cars equipped with hi-tech weapons, explosive chase scenes, exotic locales, and lavish sets, most famously designed by Ken Adam, are all absent. But, as I will explain, what FBWL ultimately dramatizes, if somewhat playfully, is the triumph of a certain mythical “low tech” approach, associated with Chineseness over advanced Western technology, which has been persistently valorized by the Eon Bonds. The cartoonish mockery of high technology and of the closely related Bondian masculinity in this low-budget Hong Kong hit is strangely funny. The intriguing idea of making a Chinese super spy in the model of the famed British screen hero might be taken as a grotesque reference to China’s quest for fast modernization, reminding us not only of Premier Deng Xiaoping’s recent economic reforms but also more remotely of Chairman Mao’s famous slogan of zhuiying ganmei (catching up with Britain and America). Stretching the limits of the artistic license granted to film comedy, Chow and his collaborators have created a “domesticated” Bond figure, a ridiculous looking and incurably hybridized “national hero,” symptomatically condensing Hong Kong people’s love-hate toward Chinese culture and anxieties about the city’s inevitable return to a modernizing communist regime.6

Bondian modernity According to Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott’s now-classic book, Bond and Beyond, the birth of the Bond films in the 1960s created a new image of post-war Britain that placed great emphasis on modernity. The Bond figure optimistically pointed to a “brighter and better future” of “swinging Britain,” a country presumably “in the process of being thoroughly modernised as a result of the implementation of a new, meritocratic style of cultural and political leadership, middle class and professional rather than aristocratic and amateur.”7 Another defining feature of such a modernity is technological advancement. As Bennett and Woollacott’s case study reveals, the production team of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was much obsessed with the

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weaponry and gadgets. The producer, Albert Broccolli, was convinced that their films surpassed other spy-thrillers because Bond’s weapons were simultaneously “at the edge of but within the boundaries of credibility.”8 As emblems of state-of-the-art technology, the latest inventions, like the industrial laser in Goldfinger, space shuttles in Moonraker (1979), and Q’s various gadgets have been an essential part of the “Bond formula” up to today. With American space ships and tie-ins like Omega watches, Ericsson mobile phones and BMWs, in additional to the legendary Aston Martin DB5 and the Bentley, we should add that what the Eon series highlights is the industrial competitiveness and technological supremacy of Western Europe and America rather than of Britain alone. Still, in an era of decolonization, Bond as the hero of an empire that used to rule the seas must prove that his nation still plays an important role at the forefront of the world stage.9 A prime example of the patriotic code can be found in the pre-credit sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me, in which Moore’s Bond, being attacked by the ambushing Russians, performs a daredevil ski jump and escapes by opening a Union Jack parachute, accompanied by the theme song “Nobody Does it Better.” Aside from Bond’s physical prowess and unrelenting professionalism, Britain’s power is even more dramatically demonstrated by Bond’s legendary charm and sexual potency. Connery’s Bond has lightly joked about making love to a villainess as one of “the things I do for England” in You Only Live Twice; his self mockery could hardly dismiss the lasting importance of the omnipresent phallic trope, which seeks to assert national and patriarchal dominance through endless sexual conquest. At the end of Moonraker Bond and the beautiful CIA spy, Holly Goodhead, are caught in flagrante delicto by their embarrassed superiors. When the Minister of Defence asks what he is doing, Bond glibly replies that he is “keeping the British end up.” Bennett and Woollacott have observed that during the Moore phase Bond’s sexuality was gradually weakened, increasingly “fetished [sic] on to machinery, cars, guns, [and] motorcycles.”10 Martin Willis disagrees that this technological trend implies the diminishment of masculinity. With Brosnan’s Bond in mind, Willis contends contrarily that Bond “imbues the technology he uses with his own sexual potency” and the technology so empowered in turn augments the power of Bond himself.11 Whichever perspective we take, technology, sexuality, and nationhood are sometimes closely related. How are China and Hong Kong represented in the Eon series before FBWL? In films like Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, it is hinted that China, as a dangerous communist power during the Cold War, is secretly behind some conspiracies against the Western world. You

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Only Live Twice also features a Hong Kong girl who, like many Japanese women in the film, provides Bond with some sort of Oriental-flavored “spicy” services. In a ridiculous fight scene, a tough-looking character played by a Japanese actor reveals himself to be a Hong Kong narcotics agent, complaining that Bond has got in his way. He and his band of kung fu fighting Asian girls are soon finished off by the villains. Such images, Orientalist in the Saidian sense, are not very inspiring. One might wonder if Stephen Chow’s spoof has retaliated by portraying British people or the colonial rule negatively. The simple answer is no. We can see in FBWL a few white women, some in short skirts or bikinis, and also a few faultlessly attired white men, particularly at the rich Hong Kong merchant’s party. Yet none of them is identified as a British subject. The only shot that reminds us the adventure mostly takes place in the crown colony is the brief appearance of some “Royal” policemen in uniform. In other words, the colonizers are almost invisible. Instead of poking fun at the outgoing colonial government or regretting its near demise, Chow’s main concern seems to be the social problems of China which have arisen since Premier Deng Xiaoping launched the “Four Modernizations” in the late 1970s, problems which would directly affect Hong Kong after the 1997 return. The apparent lack of antiBritish sentiments or a decolonizing spirit in mainstream Hong Kong cinema during the late colonial days is not hard to explain. Many Hong Kong citizens, their parents, or grandparents came from the Mainland, fleeing the communist rule or looking for better career opportunities. All along the kind of colonial rule in Hong Kong involved “a certain tacit collaborative contract between the British colonizers and the [local] Chinese elites.”12 The “collaborative” colonial system did not offer Hong Kong people political autonomy but at least allowed them to enjoy greater freedom and material prosperity, especially since the economic take-off of the 1970s. This peculiar background accounts for Hong Kong people’s general acceptance of the status quo during the late colonial period. While not harboring any genuine hostility toward Britain, Chow’s parody of the Bond conventions still subversively exposes the phallic excesses and sexism concerned. The mock Maurice Binder credit sequence is a case in point. Binder not only created the signature gun barrel sequence but also designed the opening credits of most Bond films down to Licence to Kill, characterized by recurring images of guns and silhouetted moving female figures. Chow’s version retains Binder’s silhouetted form and artistic wavy movements, but the Chinese Bond in a Western suit and fedora, accompanied by a dancing girl, is oddly

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holding a cigarette in the mouth. Fleming has commented in his novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, that the gun is “a symbol of virility—an extension of the male organ.”13 In the opening credits of FBWL, the gun motif is comically exaggerated by images of the magnified handgun used by Golden Gun and some gigantic bullets, one even over six feet tall. While holding her in a graceful whirling motion, Chow’s 007 awkwardly drops his curvaceous terpsichorean partner to the ground. When she gets up and attacks him with a knife, he draws a gun and fires repeatedly at her until she is utterly dead. This abrupt, impossibly cruel moment arguably reveals the innate misogyny in Bond’s gallantry, foreshadowing Bond’s killing of the beautiful Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) in The World is Not Enough (1999). Nevertheless, because the notable background of this sequence is a red, five-star, PRC national flag rather than the Union Jack, it is unclear whether Chow’s main target is the British Bond or Red China. Ling Ling Qi’s ungainly manners, like constant cigarette smoking and occasional spitting in the film proper, are more likely to be light jokes on Mainlanders’ presumed lack of civility. Qi is presented, rather unrealistically, as a big fan of James Bond. In one long take we see on Qi’s desk the pirated videotapes of a few Eon Bonds like Thunderball (1965), Moonraker, and For Your Eyes Only. In reality, the Bond films had been banned in China until the coming of Casino Royale (2006), and underground copies were not widely available in the early 1990s. Featuring Bond seen from behind a pair of woman’s naked legs, the cover of the For Your Eyes Only cassette box is especially eye-catching. In fact, when the film posters concerned came out in the mid-1980s, they attracted much criticism from Anglo-American feminists and were forbidden on some American university campuses.14 In the same shot, a TV set is showing an awkward scene from Moonraker in which Moore’s Bond is barely able to walk after escaping from a mortal threat while riding the centrifuge trainer in a space technology laboratory. Contrasted with the virile images on the cassette boxes, the selected scene undermines Bond’s usual masculine prowess. The Bond films are also notorious for a sense of snobbery, as indicated by the emphasis on the protagonist’s impeccable taste. The most widely known example is no doubt Bond’s preference for dry vodka martinis, “shaken, not stirred.”15 The association of this cocktail with cultivation and manliness, however, is completely undone in an early scene of FBWL shortly before Qi the “reserve agent” is summoned by the secret service after a whole decade of neglect. Qi is introduced as a humble pork vendor in Shenzhen, a Special Administrative Region of

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China bordering Hong Kong, being confronted by a prostitute urging him to pay for the night they have spent together. In mockingly literary language, the woman claims that wherever Qi hides, his glass of dry martini will distinguish him from the common folks and betray his identity. Qi’s appearance, half naked, unshaven, with sweat dripping down his cheeks and a cigarette in his mouth, juxtaposed with a wineglass on the meat table, first shot in close-ups and then shown through a long shot in the kind of romantic slow motion Wong Kar-wai has just experimented with in Chungking Express (1994), transforms the celebrated Bondian icon into a risible sign of meaningless hypocrisy.

Ambivalence toward Mother China For some Hong Kong film critics, the chief virtue of FBWL is not the devastating Bond parody as such but the biting satire on contemporary social problems in China, particularly those regarding the legal system and official corruption.16 If Chow’s film plays with the Bond conventions extensively, it also makes tireless references to contemporary China in the wake of modernization. Most of the scenes set in China show us not only the national flag, national emblem, and portraits of Chairman Mao, but also wall slogans related to modernization. The precredit opening sequence begins with a close-up of a Chinese national flag at the entrance to an airbase in North China. The camera then tilts down to follow a container truck, supposedly carrying an invaluable dinosaur cranium, as it enters the base. What immediately draws the viewer’s attention is the huge advertisement painted on the container promoting a Chinese aphrodisiac. The image at once condenses three possible connotations. First, the product recalls the motif of sexual prowess exaggerated by every Bond film. Second, if the military represents the stronghold of conservative communist ideology, then the intrusion of the commercial sign suggests that Red China has already been thoroughly “corrupted” by capitalism because of Deng’s open door policy. This interpretation is further supported by the later revelation that the head of the Chinese secret agents is none other than Golden Gun, the villain who tries to make money by stealing the national treasure and selling it to an overseas buyer. Third, the source of evil now lies deep in China itself: all the villains come from the Mainland, and do not involve the plots of any hostile foreign powers. Jeremy Black has noted that the Bond novels and films “find it hard to accommodate the notion of British villains.”17 Hence, Bond’s major foes are Russians, foreign megalomaniacs like Auric Goldfinger, and international crime

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organizations like SPECTRE. The situation in FBWL is just the opposite. Despite their Chinese cultural roots, Chow and his Hong Kong team, having grown up in a more liberal and Westernized colony, could laugh at Chinese social ills at a greater critical distance while knowing full well that such freedom of expression might not last. So far as satire goes, the hilarious sequence in which Qi is almost executed is most memorable. It begins with a gross exaggeration of the imperfection of China’s juridical procedures. Deceived by Golden Gun, Qi has signed a document without knowing that it is his confession of smuggling the national treasure. Within minutes, he is brought to an execution ground without any opportunity to defend himself in court. He is horrified by the sadistic killing of fellow convicts one after the other. The scene also alludes to the notorious Chinese problem of laws being compromised by personal connections. Yet instead of presenting such a problem in a straightforward way, the film cleverly inverts it. Right after Qi says he knows a top government official very well, hoping to evade his death, another convict boldly claims he himself is indeed the son of that official, only to meet his fate more quickly. A subsequent joke is directed at the complete uselessness of Chinese martial art skills in the teeth of modern weaponry. A convict standing beside Qi, played by Chow’s co-director, Lee Lik-chi, happens to be a great kung fu master. With the “iron legs” he cracks the earth to deter the firing squad and makes use of the wall to jump into mid-air. But while taking his “weightless” flight, an unimpressed solider launches a missile from a MANPADS (Man-portable air-defence system) and blows him into pieces. Although toward the end of the film Qi will magically defeat Golden Gun’s high-tech weapon with his butcher’s chopper and mastery of qi, or “life force,” this gag demonstrates that Chow is well aware of the problematic nature of the kung fu myth fabricated by Hong Kong cinema. His ultimate celebration of Chinese martial arts seems to be self-reflective and must not be taken too literally. Finally and most absurdly, at the end of the execution sequence Qi saves his own life simply by bribing the executioners with a one hundred dollar bill. The soldiers’ disrespect for laws and orders is most vividly captured in the shot where, having taken Qi’s money and shared his cigarettes, they all cheerfully wave goodbye to Qi at his safe departure. Let us return to the Bondian motif of technology in relation to modernity. It is not difficult to see a curious ambivalence toward technology in FBWL, an ambivalence probably stemming from Hong Kong’s unique position as a meeting place between a more “backward” Mother China and the technologically advanced Western world, and an ambivalence

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having also to do with a more complex and elusive ethnic identity. Siu Leung Li has instructively pointed out that, while the Japanese can keep worshipping “their World War Two war machines, iconized by the battleship Yamato (the largest of its kind in military history) and the Zero fighter plane (the most advanced fighter in the early years of World War Two) as proud symbols of power in modern times,” China, at least in the first half of the twentieth century, did not produce “any technological artefact that could be cherished as a sign of power for the Chinese people to build upon and imagine their national identity and pride.”18 Not too surprisingly, when Hong Kong film-makers tried to assert a certain empowering Chinese identity for audiences in the British colony and overseas Chinese diasporas in the 1960s and 1970s, they turned to the time-honored Chinese tradition of martial arts, particularly its embodiment in the well-trained, fetishized male body, to imagine a way of coping with the complex and conflicting experience of colonial modernity. But the filmic fantasy of an unarmed Bruce Lee easily beating Japanese karateists or Western boxers and saving the day in a world in which Western technology is already ubiquitous and almost invincible, as already testified by China’s humiliating defeats during the “Opium Wars” of the late imperial period, is ultimately self-deceiving, a disavowal of the fact that technological advancement has not only influenced world politics but also radically changed our daily life. Reading FBWL, Li regrets that Qi’s victory in the final duel with Golden Gun reaffirms “the myth of kung fu as the force to overcome evil and correct the wrongs of reality.”19 However, if we place kung fu within the larger picture of how irreverently this Bond spoof has dealt with various kinds of technology, we will come up with a more nuanced interpretation attentive to Hong Kong people’s geopolitical in-betweenness, cultural hybridity, and the flexibility of their identificatory process. One can see the resurgence of a naïve valorization of martial arts in recent Hong Kong films like Ip Man (2008) and Ip Man II (2010), but Chow’s sly comic vision implies a much greater self-awareness and ambiguity. The whole series of jokes about Wenxi’s low-tech gadgets, for example, could be understood in different ways. It is an obvious distortion of the image of the resourceful Q in the Bond films, and can thus arouse in those viewers familiar with the original character hearty laughs owing to the deliberate subversion of an established foreign generic convention. However, in a sense the butt of the joke is not the British Q but the disadvantage of China with regard to science and technology when compared with Western countries and Japan, a well-known fact that has troubled the Chinese psyche for over

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a century in the country’s quest for modernity. Those identifying with the West can indulge in ridiculing Chinese backwardness presented in such an unrealistic way without much guilt. For less politically conscious viewers, in any case, Wenxi is simply an eccentric sidekick, and the more idiotic his inventions look like the more they would applaud the comic creativity in FBWL. The photoelectric torch that will work only when there is another light source illuminating it, and “Life Taker 3000,” a combination of ten lethal weapons that cannot resist a single bullet, are two of Wenxi’s inventions best loved by Chow’s fans. The carnivalesque mocking of advanced technology, on the other hand, can be found in the cartoonish representation of weaponry, such as Golden Gun’s incredibly powerful handgun, his Robocop-like armor, the flame throwers protruding from a female agent’s breasts, and her companion’s ejectable iron fist—the last two actually derive from the Japanese anime Mazinger Z. Such mockery hardly entails a serious questioning of scientific progress or a plea for the “return to Nature.” Qi’s final triumph over the hi-tech-equipped Golden Gun does represent the defeat of Western technology by the “low-tech” martial arts, as if repeating the kung fu myth that tries desperately to reassert traditional Chinese supremacy. Yet earlier in the film the image of Qi’s indigenous martial arts has also been “made strange” and hybridized by showing him in sunglasses at night remotely moving a Mickey Mouse doll using qigong. The name of Qi’s throwing knives, “Xiaoli feidao,” alludes to a popular Chinese knight-errant novel by Gu Long; Qi also appropriates hyperbolic phrasings from the wuxia genre to explain the origin of his deceptively humble-looking chopper. Such explicit extradiegetic references have the Brechtian effect of reminding audiences that Chow’s film is playfully borrowing the conventions of a fantasy genre, rather than facilitating spectator immersion. We may contend that Chow’s use of the kung fu myth to express Hong Kong people’s patriotic sentiments is as eclectic and opportunistic as his condemnation of official corruption in contemporary China through quoting the old communist morals captured by the slogan zhongdang aiguo (be loyal to the Party and love thy country) displayed on a wall in Golden Gun’s military base. National or ethnic identity aside, using such low-tech means to defeat the high-tech may be made sense of in terms of the struggle of the Hong Kong film industry against Hollywood. The British-produced but chiefly American-funded Bond series also faced fierce competition in the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when encountering a new generation of American “movie brats” like Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas,

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whose expensively made, spectacular, often special-effect-driven, works like Jaws (1975), the Star Wars series (1977, 1980, 1983), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) outperformed the Bond films in the box office, especially in North America. When the series was repeatedly questioned as tired and anachronistic, Eon’s response was to strengthen the old formulaic entertainment with an ever-bigger budget and revitalize the old formulas through various means, ranging from incorporating elements from then-trendy genres like “blaxploitation,” kung fu, and SpielbergLucas style sci-fi, through alluding to current affairs to increase narrative topicality, to toughening up the Bond figure and making him more “hawkish” by relocating him in a Cold War rather than détente milieu. In this light, the idea of the theft of a dinosaur cranium in FBWL might be considered a stroke of genius, for it simultaneously borrows a popular motif from the latest hi-tech Hollywood blockbuster, Jurassic Park (1993), and addresses, if tongue-in-cheek, the century-old Chinese national concern about foreign aggressions as exemplified by the “international race” for Dunhuang treasure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when thousands of valuable cultural and archaeological artefacts were smuggled out of China. One will not miss the joke of having Golden Gun, the master of this shameful trade, state in a seemingly patriotic tone that, unlike the foreign ones in Jurassic Park, the Chinese T. Rex is most peace-loving. In the final combat scene, the fact that Qi can intercept Golden Gun’s super bullet and break his bullet-proof armor with his butcher’s chopper is not merely a conventional martial art fantasy about a mythic Chineseness successfully resisting the Western tides of modernity. It is also an apt allegory about how Hong Kong filmmakers, with limited resources, can creatively refashion what they are best at, that is, the “domestically-made” martial arts and low comedy genres, to heroically rival big-budget Western mega-hits. If FBWL has greatly complicated the technological motif in the Bond films with the introduction of low-tech and the caricature of hightech, it has also sought to re-imagine rather than simply imitate or invert Bondian masculinity. Qi shares Bond’s naked sexual desire for women but not his irresistible charm. As if to reinforce the impression of Qi’s goatishness, the film shows us some notable gratuitous close-ups of the curvaceous female figure, especially legs and bosom, in the hotel and party scenes. Having just entered the rich merchant’s garden, standing by the swimming pool and staring at some women in bikinis, Qi reports to his partner over the radio that the guests at the

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party are unbelievably “fierce-looking” yet “easy to get along with.” Actually these two Cantonese expressions contain sexual innuendoes, punning on “bosom” and “two nice breasts” respectively. We are also reminded that Qi is a customer of inexpensive sex services and a lover of pornographic videotapes. Although Qi is obviously complicit with Bond’s libertinism, we should notice the big difference that he has never taken advantage of any women in the film, perhaps with the only exception of the Shenzhen sex worker in the “dry martini” episode discussed above. The hallmark Bondian trope of simultaneously asserting patriarchal and national dominance through endless sexual conquest is completely absent in FBWL. Besides, Bond’s snobbery, notorious in the Fleming novels and somewhat abated in the Bond films, is comically undermined in FBWL. Lacking Connery’s brawn and physicality, Moore’s polish and sophistication, or Dalton’s brooding and Byronic quality, and their common strong physique and good looks, Chow’s 007 appears to be an unremarkable grassroots hero.20 Nonetheless, beneath his clownish appearance Qi is indeed a very decent man with a heart of gold, a redeeming quality apparently absent in Bond, who is, despite the veneer of gallantry, a merciless professional assassin working for the crown. Even more interestingly, in FBWL the revelation of Qi’s generosity and integrity occurs in the most unlikely, sexually suggestive bathroom scene, as will be explained below. In the shopping mall sequence preceding the scene concerned, Qi has just saved a child from a band of robbers from Mainland China with his throwing knives and chopper. Unfortunately, the poor boy’s father has already been cold-heartedly shot dead on the spot. The ensuing bathroom scene begins when Qi’s partner, Xiangqin, is communicating with her boss, Golden Gun, via an electronic device ridiculously hidden in the toilet seat. Impressed by Qi’s heroic deeds in the mall, Xiangqin no longer wishes to follow Golden Gun’s order to take Qi’s life. To convince her that Qi deserves his death, Golden Gun shows Xiangqin some photos of pregnant women and little girls and claims that they have all been raped or molested by Qi. At this moment, Qi forces open the bathroom door, saying that he merely wants to see if Xiangqin is fine since she has stayed inside for a long time. It should be noted that Qi’s appearance and apparel here—with sunglasses slid down the bridge of his nose, a pipe in his mouth, two iron balls in his right hand, and in briefs and a loose bathrobe baring his chest—recall the stereotypical image of villains in the Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong cinema of the 1960s, played by actors like Shek Kin (Shi Jian), who would sadistically take advantage of helpless girls in their hands.

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Wrapped only in a towel, Xiangqin seems rather defenseless and she immediately asks this unwelcome intruder to leave the bathroom and close the door. Qi does close the door, yet he remains outside for a while and intrudes into the bathroom again a moment later. Given Golden Gun’s claim about Qi’s sexual violence, the mise en scène hints exactly that Qi is about to assault Xiangqin. When Qi suddenly breaks in the second time, he startles Xiangqin with a deeply ambiguous question, “Do you want to do it?” The word “do,” or zuo in Chinese, could mean quite a few different things, including “make love,” and “make a deal” (between a sex worker and the client). The ambiguity is further enhanced by Chow’s deadpan performance, which hides any sign of Qi’s true intention. Completely unexpectedly, Qi actually wants to ask if Xiangqin will join him giving money to the boy’s family for his father’s funeral. Even more intriguingly, Qi plans to offer this total stranger’s bereaved family 500 dollars, the sum of what he will earn for his entire mission. If this scene shows us Qi’s extraordinary compassion and altruism, a later scene will demonstrate his great sincerity: at the merchant’s party Qi risks his own life simply to fulfil his promise of picking some roses as a parting gift for Xiangqian, who is actually trying to murder him with her sniper rifle. This silly act of Qi’s finally melts the professional assassin’s heart and turns her into a devoted lover. Can we thus conclude that Chow and his collaborators have “reformed” the British Bond figure in order to re-imagine a new “modern hero” for China? The answer seems to be a complicated yes and no. The motif of fashioning a better society as the very goal of Chinese modernization is no doubt highlighted by FBWL, as indicated by the reappearance of the big Shenzhen poster which reads: you lixiang, you wenhua, you zhixu, that is, we must have ideals, culture, and social order. Despite his kindheartedness, sincerity and honesty, Qi possesses glaring comic flaws, such as ineptitude, eccentricity, boastfulness, and goatishness—these are obviously clownish qualities for viewers to laugh at. If the final celebration of Qi’s martial arts skills represents a half-hearted assertion of good old Chineseness, Qi’s odd combination of a sharp white suit with a gaudy rainbow-patterned tie, with his pork vendor’s knife hidden in a holsterlike sheath strapped to his waist, is a blatant sign of bad taste, arguably also the symbol of a weird, defective kind of mimetic modernity. However, it is precisely the duality of this hybridized “national hero,” at once a native bumpkin and an imitation of Bond, an utter fool and a super cool professional, which enables more engaging negotiations with the conflicts between China and the West, communism and global capitalism, the late colonial conditions and the new political challenges

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of the prospective Special Administrative Region, albeit in some covert and cunning ways. Hong Kong viewers could afford to sneer at Qi and his partners for their supposed Chinese “backwardness,” as exemplified by spitting and the idiotic gadgets.21 But they might equally identify with Qi’s weaknesses and inferior position in the Chinese government, for such things would keenly remind them of Hong Kong’s precariousness and marginality vis-à-vis the native country, while Qi’s optimism, hidden abilities, and final triumph over the official corruption of the modernizing communist regime offer a wish-fulfilling compensatory fantasy. One critic has written that Qi, belittled and ignored by his superiors, betrays “Hong Kong people’s collective pent-up emotions.”22 The last sequence of the film, with the caricature of a Bond-like love scene, ending with a close-up on Qi’s chopper bearing the phrase “national hero” supposedly inscribed by Premier Deng, nicely concludes this hilarious comedy rich in cultural heterogeneity, ambivalences, and unresolved contradictions, a sly allegory about Chinese modernity that refuses to be taken too seriously.23

Notes 1. Lady Bond, aka Ladies in Distress, was directed by Mok Hong-see for Wader Motion Picture and Development Company and released in the summer of 1966. 2. Henceforth abbreviated as FBWL. 3. The first Bond actor in the “official” (read Eon) series was Sean Connery, who has performed in six Eon Bonds, while the second major Bond actor, Roger Moore, has appeared in seven. The “Dalton Interlude” was brief: Timothy Dalton starred only in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989). The next Bond was Pierce Brosnan, whose four films were all box office hits. His successor, Daniel Craig, began with the even more commercially successful Casino Royale (2006), the first Bond film officially allowed to be screened in China. 4. See Deng Tu 1996. 5. This obviously breaks the Bond convention, for all through the Bond series M’s loyalty to his or her country is beyond any doubt. 6. In recognition of his unquestionable status as a star comedian and for simplicity’s sake, in this essay I refer to FBWL as a “Stephen Chow” film; this is not to deny the contributions of the co-director, Lee Lik-chi, and of the two scriptwriters, Roman Cheung and Vincent Kok Tak-chiu, who worked on the screenplay with Chou and Lee as a team. 7. See Bennett and Woollacott 1987: 34–5. 8. See ibid.: 304. 9. Black contends that the popularity of Bond films in Britain is due mainly to “the element of nostalgia,” for they “offer a refuge from the reality of

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10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

British decline and the decay of traditional British values, a refuge lit by high explosives and colored by the blood of sinister foreigners.” See Black 2005: 213. See Bennett and Woollacott 1987: 203. See Willis 2003: 156. See Law 2008: 527. Quoted in Bennett and Woollacott 1987: 127–8. See Chapman 2007: 178. Craig’s Bond deliberately modifies this convention in Casino Royale. When asked if he would like it shaken or stirred, he actually replies, “Do I look like I give a damn?” See Lin Li 1996, for example. See Black 2005: 209. See Li 2001: 519 and 2005: 51. See Li 2005: 59. See Chapman 2007: 124, 197. In the shopping mall sequence, Qi happens to spit on the trousers of someone who comes from his home village in Hunan. The reaction of his fellow countryman rather nastily suggests that spitting is a normal thing to do on the Mainland, requiring no apology at all. Xiangqin’s favorite model of a 0.224 inch diameter jacketed bullet for her “UFO Rifle” is called “224 Tiny Spittoon.” See Lin Li 1996: 176. Despite the “slyness” of Chow’s humor, FBWL was banned in the PRC. However, in recent years the film has been made readily available on some major Mainland China film websites.

Bibliography Bennett, Tony and Janet Woollacott (1987) Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero, New York: Methuen. Black, Jeremy (2005) The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Chapman, James (2007) Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, 2nd edn, London: I. B. Tauris. Chow, Stephen, dir. (1994) Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat (also known as From Beijing with Love), Win’s Movie Productions. Deng Tu (1996) Review of From Beijing with Love, in Shi Qi (ed), Yijiujiusi Xianggang dianying huigu (A Retrospect of Hong Kong Film in 1994), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 177. Law, Wing-sang (2008) “Hong Kong Undercover: An Approach to ‘Collaborative Colonialism,’” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 9: 4, 522–42. Li, Siu Leung (2001) “Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity,” Cultural Studies, 15: 3, 515–42. —— (2005) “The Myth Continues: Cinematic Kung Fu in Modernity,” in Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li and Stephen Chan Ching-kiu. (eds), Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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Lin Li (1996) Review of From Beijing with Love, in Shi Qi (ed) Yijiujiusi Xianggang dianying huigu (A Retrospect of Hong Kong Film in 1994), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 176–7. Willis, Martin (2003) “Hard-wear: The Millennium, Technology, and Brosnan’s Bond,” in Christoph Lindner (ed.) The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 151–65.

5 “Asia” as Regional Signifier and Transnational Genre-Branding: The Asian Horror Omnibus Movies Three and Three … Extremes Nikki J. Y. Lee The Ring (2002), The Ring Two (2005), Dark Water (2005), The Grudge (2004), The Grudge 2 (2006), Shutter (2008), The Eye (2008), and One Missed Call (2008) are all recent Hollywood remakes of Asian horror movies. Some of these titles have enjoyed critical and commercial success, as in the case of the first entry in this trend, The Ring (which achieved good box-office takings both inside and outside the US),1 and The Grudge.2 Others have proved to be major disappointments to fans of the original movies. Indeed, faced in summer 2008 with a string of remade Asian horror movies (Shutter, The Eye, and One Missed Call), the nightmarish destiny of Hollywood remakes appeared to many to have come true. Here were movies which not only failed to match the originals, but completely ruined their essence. The international currency of “Asian horror” as a popular sub-genre has grown sharply over the past decade and often before Asian critics and scholars have had an opportunity to debate and agree certain ideas concerning its generic conventions. It is certainly true that numerous Asian countries have long and prolific traditions of cinematic horror. However, it is only recently that the traditions of specific countries have been brought together under the rubric of “Asia.” In these circumstances, Asian horror—a new generic term conjoining the regional signifier “Asia” and the generic label “horror”—has been returned to Asian critics and audiences with a haunting question: what is Asian horror? In order to consider what may be thought of as the ghostly existence of Asian horror, this chapter considers two interrelated Asian omnibus horror movie projects, namely Three (2002, also known as San Geng) and Three ... Extremes (2004, also known as San Geng Yi or Three, Monster).3 I intend to examine how different configurations of national, intraregional and trans-regional markets intersect with specific reception 103

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practices, and how a generic horizon for Asian horror gets redrawn in the process. My argument is that the genre of Asian horror is an intraregional and equally a transregional construction that functions as a mediator between national film industries and both regional and global markets.

Asian horror at the nexus of globalization and regionalization The international box-office success of the Hollywood remakes of Asian horror movies listed above appears to signal Hollywood’s takeover of the growing regional Asian film market. As evidence of such a dark scenario, Bliss Cua Lim points out that the Hollywood remake of Ringu (1998) made a huge profit (considerably surpassing that of the Japanese original) in not only the international market but also Japan.4 On the other hand, Lim also stresses that in order to achieve global success both the “regionalist and globalist” aspects of “Asian horror film” are important:5 In effect, to global (read Americanist) audiences, the coinage “Asian horror film” affords an abstracted measure of cultural distinction. The films are culturally distinguished as Asian; yet their cultural distinction has been blunted by both regionalism and generic familiarity, by all the ways in which these horror films are new yet readily recognisable.6 A key point to make here is that such regional-cum-generic imagery for global consumption is not only externally imposed upon, but also actively initiated by regional film industries. Asian film industries attempt constantly to expand their overseas markets, and Asian horror may be seen as one important recent example of such an aspiration. However, Asian horror denotes a certain transitional momentum. Unlike ostensibly nation-specific genres such as Japanese samurai films or Hong Kong action movies, Asian horror is promoted in order to solidify the regional Asian market and to facilitate the transregional circulation of movies as Asian (and thus not necessarily as Japanese, from Hong Kong, and so on). According to Leo Ching, recently emerging Asianism within the region “represents a mediatory attempt to come to terms with the immanent transnationalization of capital and the historical territorialization of national economies.”7 Similarly, the recent production and circulation of commercial Asian horror movies is

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one further mark of the increased regionalization of the Asian film and media market.8 Three and Three … Extremes are the outcomes of the first substantial attempts by local agencies to package Asian horror as a bringing together of regional and generic imaginations.9 Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh remark that “[g]enres provide a brand of taste distinction, a safety net and a representative agent for national film industries.”10 Although it is not a nation-specific genre, Asian horror functions as “a brand of taste distinction” and “a representative agent” in regional and global markets for the region’s various national film industries. Davis and Yeh divide recent pan-Asian filmmaking into five clusters, namely: (1) Euro-Asian alliances; (2) intra-Asian co-producers; (3) pan-Chinese co-producers; (4) pan-Asian program packagers; and (5) HollywoodAsia ventures.11 Three was intended to appeal to the respective domestic audiences of the three participating countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, and Thailand) whereas Three … Extremes, a co-production made by companies from Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan, aimed at the larger international market beyond the Asia region. In this respect, Three falls into the second cluster listed above as it received “predominantly commercial funding from big corporations, by and for Asian markets.”12 Three … Extremes may also be categorized in the same way. However, it deviates from Davis and Yeh’s description of the cluster in terms of its market, since it was distributed widely to European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, and the UK as well as to the US and Australia. In other words, Three and Three … Extremes were produced with differing orientations and targeted different markets. Whereas Three was meant to be an intraregional product, Three … Extremes was designed as a trans- as well as intraregional product. Although produced two years later than Three, Three … Extremes was transregionally released before it. Indeed, for its DVD release in the US and UK, Three was retitled Three … Extremes 2, as if it were a sequel to the 2004 film. Such a reversed temporal order indicates the two movies’ differing conditions of circulation and reception on intraregional and transregional levels. In what follows, I elaborate on these differing conditions and variable generic identities.

Transnational constructions of Asian horror: Three and the intraregional market Three was the first omnibus movie initiated by Asian producers with the aim of establishing intraregional industrial networks. Peter Chan

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of Hong Kong company Applause Pictures, Thai director and producer Nonzee Nimibutr, and Oh Jung-wan of South Korean company b.o.m. Film Production collaborated on the project. Applause has become well-known for leading the pan-Asian drive of local film industries by instigating Asian co-productions, networking between movie companies and personnel, and connecting local markets.13 According to Davis and Yeh, Applause’s two main strategic priorities are 1) “to invest in local Asian movies and directors capable of making commercial art films” and 2) “to repackage genre pictures to stimulate new interests in popular forms.”14 Three and Three … Extremes are among the fruits of these dual strategies. It is Applause which suggested that horror should be the key common theme which could hold together three short movies. Why horror? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, so-called J-horror (Japanese horror movies) became a cultural trend, leading to box-office success in some Asian countries followed immediately by Asian remakes and copies of the genre. The Ring Virus, the Korean remake of Ringu, was made in 1999, and Whispering Corridors (1998—also from South Korea), whose success led to the prolific horror series set in a girls’ high school, was made in awareness of the popular success of Japanese school horror movies. Applause contributed to this trend by producing the horror movie The Eye (2002) as another pan-Asian project in collaboration with Singapore and Thailand. Released in summer 2002, not long before Three, The Eye’s marketing campaign emphasized Asian rather than national characteristics and it was sold as a mainstream genre movie “not trapped in the foreign-language ghetto.”15 In the specific case of The Eye, then, Asian horror is firstly an intraregional construction. Building on the popularity of J-horror and other movies, horror is appropriated as the quality which can make a film appeal to a wider range of regional audiences as a mainstream genre title. In the case of Three, horror was not chosen as the preferred genre in a strict sense. Instead, horror was used as the main theme tying together three short movies produced independently in each respective country. Three comprises Nonzee Nimibutr’s The Wheel, Kim Ji-woon’s Memories, and Peter Chan’s Going Home. The Wheel is a ghost fable with strong ethnic characteristics; Memories is a stylistic and atmospheric horror tale with a shocking plot twist; and Going Home is a sad melodramatic love story delivered in the style of a horror movie. Going Home was originally shot as a feature-length movie and was in fact released as such in Hong Kong.

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The format of this particular omnibus project does not differ from many others of its type. However, what does differentiate this project is that its raison d’être lies in developing intraregional industrial networks rather than celebrating a certain occasion or cause or evoking public interest in a given social issue. For example, many international omnibus movies, such as Paris, je t’aime (2006) and Tokyo! (2007), are made in order to celebrate a city, or, as in the case of To Each His Cinema (2007, also known as Chacun Son Cinema), to explore a cultural or aesthetic theme. Many recent South Korean omnibus movies, for example If You Were Me (2003) and its numerous sequels, have been produced in order to draw public attention to critical social issues. Unlike these kinds of projects, though, Three was initiated so as to test the possibilities of intraregional co-production and distribution. Each of the three countries involved therefore took responsibility for producing their own respective segment of the film, for ensuring that each segment conformed to the same budget as the others, and for distributing the finished product in their own country. Such loose working relations evidently ensured a high degree of autonomy for both producers and directors. As a result, when viewed collectively the styles and themes of the short movies included in the first Three project are incoherent. In the eyes of South Korean company b.o.m. Film Production, the domestic box-office of Three was not satisfactory. However, the project was still deemed worthy of investment because the company wanted to learn the skills of international co-production and to raise its international profile as part of its long-term strategy. The Korean box-office receipts of Three (drawing an audience of 73,750 in Seoul) were far lower than those recorded in the same month of release (August 2002) by The Eye (which drew 263,640 admissions in Seoul). Yet the box-office performance of The Eye was not impressive enough in comparison with Korean horror hit Phone (2002) (765,000 admissions in Seoul).16 When Three was released theatrically in South Korea in summer 2002, Peter Chan’s Going Home was the favorite of the film’s segments among Korean audiences, who seemed to prefer its melodramatic love story, with familiar Hong Kong stars, to local director Kim Ji-woon’s more chilling Memories. However, Kim’s skill in creating scary moments using shock cuts and for evoking a terrifying atmosphere was highly appreciated and certainly boosted audiences’ expectations of his following feature-length horror movie A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). A Tale of Two Sisters has a different setting and characters from Memories. Nevertheless both movies have in common a deceptive

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narrative structure organized around the subjective point of view of the main character, leading to a shocking revelation at the film’s end. As a high quality horror movie, A Tale of Two Sisters enhanced critical and popular expectations around the genre and contributed to the Korean movie industry’s horror boom by becoming the sixth biggest box-office hit of 2003. By contrast, in the midst of the Korean horror movie boom the Korean box-office fortunes of J-horror titles such as Dark Water (2002) were not so good.17 Three aimed to create a movie package that could present pan-Asian cinema, yet for South Korean audiences it failed to enhance popular awareness of Asian horror or to raise interest in other Asian horror titles.18 It was rather the rising popularity of Korean horror movies which expanded domestic demand for the genre and later increased the level of imports of Japanese and Thai productions.

Amalgam of Asian horror and Asian extreme: Three … Extremes and intraregional and transregional markets The idea of producing a sequel to Three was proposed by the Korean side of the collaboration and led to Three … Extremes—a project consisting of Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, Park Chan-wook’s Cut, and Miike Takashi’s Box, with the latter Japanese contribution, produced by the Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Company, replacing the earlier Thai input to Three. By the time of production, Park Chan-wook and Miike Takashi’s international critical stock was already riding high as a result of the intense hype of so-called Asian extreme movies. On the other hand, Fruit Chan was not the first choice for the Hong Kong segment and only joined at the last minute after Andrew Wai-keung Lau, of Infernal Affairs (2002) fame, dropped out. Chan’s Dumplings was in fact originally shot as a feature-length movie and then cut into a short with a running time of less than 40 minutes in order to fit into the omnibus movie format. The South Korean title of Three … Extremes is Three, Monster and the Hong Kong title is San Geng Yi. Both emblematize the continuity of the series and the attempt to create and maintain Three as a brand-name.19 The shorts in the second project converge around a common theme—the monster lurking within ordinary people—but diverge in terms of style and the degree to which they depart from the generic conventions of horror movies. The South Korean title, Three, Monster, contains the word “Monster,” thus clearly designating this as the concept that holds the three short films together and is to be explored within its generic terms of

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reference. The Korean movie poster and cover of the DVD use images of Lee Byung-hun, who portrays the main character in Park’s piece, alongside the Korean title Three, Monster. (By comparison the poster and DVD cover used in Hong Kong present the three segments together in equal measure, although the green color tone taken from Dumplings creates a dominant background atmosphere.) In addition, the South Korean marketing focuses solely on Park’s contribution, deleting any images of, or references to, the other two directors. This strategy is also reflected in the film’s theatrical trailer, which allocates a disproportionately large amount of time to clips from Park’s piece. All of these examples thus provide evidence of Park’s brand-name value as a popular auteur director in the domestic market as well as Korean moviegoers’ relatively low interest in other Asian movies and directors. In South Korea, Three … Extremes drew better audience figures (107,960 in Seoul) than Three (73,750 in Seoul). However, these figures are still far lower than those for the Korean horror hit of the year, R-Point (2004), and Japanese import Miike Takashi’s One Missed Call (2004).20 Yet although Three … Extremes was not a big success at the Korean box-office, the film did help make the names of two Asian directors more familiar to local audiences. For its transregional release the second Three project was entitled Three … Extremes—a tactic that provided overall coherence by subsuming the three shorts under the broader generic horizon of Asian horror and raising expectations concerning extreme cinema. The variety of different cover images used for the DVD release of the film in different countries denotes its variable commercial and critical positioning. For example, the UK and US DVD cover images of Three ... Extremes clearly express the movie’s newly endowed generic identity with the simplified and iconic image of the face of the female character from Park’s Cut presented in the center of a black background. The UK cover also displays the Tartan Asia Extreme label at the top of the sleeve as a brand logo; the word “Extremes” appears in capital letters under the word “Three” and an accompanying quotation claims that this is “maybe the sickest, most twisted flick you’ll see all year.” As all of these factors indicate, Three … Extremes is here being presented as part of the Asia Extreme brand, although not necessarily linked with Asian horror movies as such. Indeed, the word “horror” appears only once in the packaging in the line introducing each director: “From the nightmares of three masters of horror.” Under these words Park Chan-wook is introduced with Lady Vengeance, Miike Takashi with Audition and Visitor Q, and Fruit Chan with Dumplings. In the UK the full-length feature version of Dumplings was released theatrically and on DVD respectively two months and

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one month earlier than the DVD of Three ... Extremes. The UK DVD of Dumplings was also released by Tartan Video under the Tartan Asia Extreme label; its cover makes no reference to Three ... Extremes. In other words, the UK release of the Dumplings’ feature film first and foremost utilizes the name of Fruit Chan as an Asian extreme director and later builds audience recognition for the omnibus movie. The US theatrical trailer of Three … Extremes attempts to present the film as a coherent and singular work by mixing together images from its trio of separate short films. Over the edited images a voice-over narration states that “[f]rom the minds of three cinematic masters, comes one singularly terrifying vision of fear.” Similarly, the US DVD cover image is also dramatically different from other versions, even the UK one, as it makes clear that it is distributed by Lionsgate Films, “a specialist in hardcore horror fare.”21 The image used for the UK DVD cover is again reproduced here but in a distorted form that exaggerates the sense of extremeness. In addition, the key concept of the omnibus project, “Three,” is turned into the digit 3 and the word “Extremes” dominates and overwhelms the whole image. Three … Extremes subsequently meets new sets of frameworks on transregional release and reception—generic conventions of horror movies (as the movie is introduced as an Asian horror omnibus or trilogy) and on the other hand expectations associated with extreme cinema. When labeled as “Extreme,” the omnibus project—as well as each of its three component short films—is assessed critically in light of other famous (or notorious) examples of Asian extreme filmmaking. Since two of the representative directors of Asian extreme cinema, Park and Miike, both participated, their respective shorts (Box and Cut) are discussed through reference to their given international profiles. To quote from the New York Times review of Three … Extremes: It’s a title that at least a few Western distributors of Asian films and DVD’s are happy to exploit in turn. Picking up on the reputations of Mr. Park and some of his colleagues—including, most notoriously, Mr. Miike, whose work displays little of the formal inventiveness and moral seriousness of Mr. Park’s … “Three … Extremes” is being distributed by a specialist in hardcore horror fare, Lions Gate Films, a company that includes “Audition” (1999), one of Mr. Miike’s most popular/reviled efforts, among its offerings.22 According to reviewer Dave Kehr, the only segment that fits with the “Extreme” aspect of the film’s title is Park’s Cut. In this short entry

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a young and famous movie director and his pianist wife are held on the former’s own film set by a villain who used to work as an extra in his movies. The villain completely ties up the body of the pianist in wires like a marionette and threatens to cut her fingers off one by one until the director kills a young child who has been kidnapped for this occasion. In addition to such an extreme setting, the segment includes scenes in which the fingers of the female pianist are cut off, fingers are ground up in a food-mixer, a kidnapped child is suffocated, and the villain is killed by having his skin and blood vessels bitten off. While therefore tapping into the generic conventions of the horror movie, Cut simultaneously fed the hype surrounding Park as a director of extreme movies. Released in the US in 2005 after Park’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Oldboy (2003), Three … Extremes served to fill the void between Oldboy and the release of Lady Vengeance (2005) in 2006.23 In contrast, Miike Takashi’s Box appeared to disappoint viewers anticipating “the usual hyper-violent frenzy of Mr. Miike’s films.”24 The segment’s poetically beautiful and surrealistic scenery, its images of dreamy and weird fantasies, and its atmosphere of fear and psychological pressure are all reminiscent of Japanese horror movies like Nakata Hideo’s Ringu and Dark Water, and the works of Kurosawa Kiyoshi. Box may thus have impressed mainstream audiences unfamiliar with Asian horror movies, but it disappointed fans of Asian extreme and Miike: “Miike fans will likely hate Box, offering as it does none of the director’s trademark verve, ultraviolence, and dark humour.”25 In terms of generic classification, horror is a more stabilized genre than extreme. Indeed, films labeled as “Extreme” are often considered a sub-category of the horror movie. However, it nevertheless remains difficult to contain some extreme movies within the category of horror. Extreme cinema does not bear any fixed boundary relative to the horror genre. Moreover, all genres are innately historical constructions with many different uses. Writing on the historicity of genre, Barry Langford comments that “genre is a process rather than a fact, and one in which different perspectives, needs and interests can and do deliver widely varying outcomes.”26 As the examples of Asian horror and Asian extreme cinema clearly demonstrate, genre may be a process; and it is also a transnational one, operating at both intra- and transregional levels. The UK DVD brand Tartan Asia Extreme is a particularly strong example of this phenomenon. The label was established on the basis of both the horror (e.g. Ringu, The Eye, Tales of Two Sisters) and extreme genres (e.g. Audition, Battle Royale, Oldboy) which it brought together and contained under the banner of “Extreme.” This may all have

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been an attempt to market movies separately from “the horror genre’s associations with voyeurism, misogyny and formulaic simplicity.”27 Yet Tartan Asia Extreme also focused on the extreme in order to be able to encompass a variety of generic movie traits. For example, although Park Chan-wook’s JSA: Joint Security Area (2000) is neither a horror nor an extreme movie, its DVD was released under the label. In fact, Tartan Asia Extreme is an amalgam of many different Asian genres and auteur movies, including Japanese horror and violent films, Hong Kong action and thrillers, and a variety of Korean genres. It was also devised to appeal to young audiences with cool cultural connotations (as in extreme sports). Chi-yun Shin argues that the target audience for the Tartan Asia Extreme brand is young people, not the older generations who largely comprise the clientele for foreign language art cinema in the UK.28 Unlike Park and Miike, Fruit Chan had not been labeled an Asian extreme director before Three … Extremes. However, his participation in this particular omnibus project contributes to an extension of the generic horizon of Asian horror as it converts his filmmaking reputation into precisely this. Prior to his participation in the project, Chan was recognized as an independent filmmaker whose works criticizing aspects of Hong Kong society included Made in Hong Kong (1997), Durian Durian (2000), and Hollywood Hong Kong (2001). By being included as one of the three segments that comprise Three … Extremes, however, Chan’s Dumplings cannot escape the expectations surrounding Asian horror and Asian extreme. Neither does the segment lag behind the other two in terms of sensual intensity. With its impressive cinematic qualities, Dumplings articulates social issues through a shocking sense of horror, fear, and repulsion. (Christopher Doyle worked as cinematographer on both Going Home and Dumplings and in each case succeeds in creating an eerie atmosphere with unique color tones.) Certainly, Chan’s segment is loyal to the film’s overall thematic exploration of the monstrous self that lurks in everyone. Its storyline revolves around a question: how far will you go to recover your youth and beauty? Dumplings concerns a female ex-soap opera star who is desperate to recover her youth and beauty after witnessing her husband’s affairs with a young woman. She visits a woman from mainland China known to possess a secret for youthful beauty and is served dumplings filled with suspicious ingredients. She later discovers that the main ingredient of the dumplings is human fetus, but still she cannot stop the addiction that has already developed. Even when the Chinese woman vanishes, the protagonist herself seeks out the secret ingredient.

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Along with the two other segments comprising Three … Extremes, Dumplings contributes to the heightening of expectations around Asian horror movies. In the first instance the popular international reputations of two directors, Park and Miike, were drawn upon in order to label and market the omnibus project as an Asian extreme movie. However, Chan and Miike’s segments defy such packaging and enhance horror’s generic expectations and cinematic experiences in different ways. Miike’s Box shares the permeating sense of eerie and atmospheric dread found in other Japanese horror movies while deviating from the template of the fearful curse cast by supernatural female ghosts. Dumplings conforms neither to the expectations of extreme cinema nor to the generic conventions of horror movies, but it manages to thrill and horrify viewers all the same. Chan’s Dumplings was subsequently released as a feature-length movie in numerous Asian countries while the feature-length version was released before the public appearance of Three … Extremes in the UK. However, regardless of whether it was released before or after the omnibus movie, the feature film Dumplings functions as a fourth segment of the Three … Extremes project. Viewers who have watched both the short and feature-length versions of Chan’s film tend to acknowledge the superior quality of the latter and comment upon the subtle difference in generic emphasis caused by the different endings. The ending of the short version skips over the process whereby the main female character herself turns into a kind of monster and closes with a scene exuding a sense of shocking horror. The ending of the feature film version is much more harrowing, yet does not exactly resemble a horror movie. One reviewer underlines this by stating that “[t]he first thing to say about the full-length Dumplings is that it’s hardly a ‘horror’ movie as such.”29 The existence of a competing feature-length version of Dumplings does not damage the value of Three … Extremes but rather functions as a hypertext that completes the omnibus project by filling in the gaps absent from Chan’s participating short segment. The fulllength Dumplings also strengthens the social message of Chan’s short. As a result, the experience of viewing the feature-length version interferes with the reception of the omnibus project while also undermining its generic predisposition as a horror movie. By comparison, the social theme of Park’s segment—which the director himself has identified as class—is downplayed by the generic expectations of an extreme style.30 While South Korean critics were well aware of Park’s consistent interest in class issues, this focus became displaced upon transregional reception by an emphasis on the extreme setting

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and excessive style often identified by critics outside Korea as Park’s trademarks. Certainly, if Park had also developed a feature-length movie out of his short segment Cut, then these social messages may have been as clearly recognizable as they are in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). Being labeled as an Asia extreme or Asian horror director has changed the nature of the future possibilities open to Fruit Chan. The popularity of Dumplings has transposed his position from that of an independent filmmaker to a director able to produce a fine quality international remake of a Japanese horror movie. After his involvement in the Three … Extremes initiative Chan was recruited to remake Nakata Hideo’s JoyuuRei (1996, also known as Don’t Look Up), an international project coproduced by South African company Distant Horizon and Japanese companies Action 5 and Hakuhodo and shot in Los Angeles with an American cast. In sum, Three … Extremes managed to transfer perceptions of Asian cinematic horror onto a different horizon of expectation than that usually associated with the seemingly endless procession of supernatural ghosts (particularly women dressed in white with long black hair) paraded in other titles. Moreover, engaging with more profound social themes through high-quality filmmaking is often taken to raise the project beyond the level of contemporary US teen date horror flicks or bloodspattering gore fests. As Chicago Sun-Times reviewer Roger Ebert writes: Here is not a joker in a Halloween mask, scaring screaming teenagers, but adults whose needs and weaknesses turn on them with savage, relentless logic. I imagine “Three... Extremes” will attract some customers who thought they wanted to see a horror movie but find they’re getting more than they bargained for.31 As embodied by the US trailer (“one singularly terrifying vision of fear”), the singularity of the movie Three … Extremes, or that of the concept of “Asian horror” itself, was not conceived before the movie crossed over its regional boundaries. Yet the irony is that such an attempt to tame the omnibus movie’s conflicting generic elements results in the strengthening and extension of given generic horizons. Ultimately, the relatively multilayered and incoherent format of the omnibus movie may not hinder so much as facilitate new forms of genre-branding.

Conclusion The Asian horror movie genre is an intraregional and also a transregional product. Its critical and commercial currencies are reconstructed through

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transnational circulation in three interrelated domains: the domestic national film industry, the regional Asian market, and transregional markets. As outlined above, both the Three and Three … Extremes projects were initiated by local agencies. However, while the former film contributed to establishing the popularity of local horror movies in the regional market, the latter achieved much the same in the transregional market. Three … Extremes engages with the two dominant sets of contemporary generic expectations for films from Asia—namely, horror and extreme. It attempts to establish an Asian horror brand while laying out ample possibilities for exploitation as Asian extreme movie fare. As a result of this process, Three … Extremes re-shapes the generic terms of horror movies— both American and Asian—as it becomes fused with extreme cinema. The contemporary construction of Asian horror corroborates the idea of genre and genre-branding as transnational processes. “Asia” as regional signifier plays a key role in this regard as it prefigures conditions for generic production, marketing, and consumption. It formulates an abstracted (and void) conception of a regional genre that only gains concrete and different qualities as an alternative to Hollywood or other local horror movies. In particular, “Asia” functions in the case of the Tartan Asia Extreme brand as a justification mechanism for bringing together under one category different films from different countries, rather than as a means of offering identifiable regional reference points. In conclusion, the global circulation of Asian horror movies has led to the blending of the horror genre with extreme cinema on the basis of regional origins.

Notes 1. The Ring, the Hollywood remake of the Japanese movie Ringu (1998), was directed by Gore Verbinski. It earned 249,348,933 USD worldwide (http:// www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ring.htm. accessed February 18, 2009). The Ring Two, the Hollywood remake of Ringu 2 (1999), was directed by Nakata Hideo who directed the two original Japanese movies. It earned far less than the first remake worldwide (161,451,538 USD) (http://www.boxofficemojo. com/movies/?id=ring2.htm. accessed February 18, 2009). 2. The Grudge, the Hollywood remake of The Grudge (2002, also known as Ju-on, 2002), earned 187,281,115 USD worldwide (http://boxofficemojo. com/movies/?id=grudge.htm. accessed February 18, 2009) and The Grudge 2, the remake of Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003, also known as Ju-on 2), earned 70,711,175 USD worldwide (http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=grudge2. htm. Accessed February 18, 2009). It was remade in Hollywood by Japanese director Takashi Shimizu, who had made the original series in Japan, and did relatively well at the box-office. 3. San Geng is the Chinese title of the project, which means three bells that ring to indicate 11 pm. Three, Monster is the South Korean title of the second Three project. The English title of the second project is Three … Extremes and that

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Asian Horror and Transnational Genre-Branding of the first project, which was released on DVD after the first one, is Three … Extremes 2. In order to avoid confusion, in this chapter I call the first project Three and the second project Three … Extremes. Lim 2007: 124–5. See ibid.: 117. Ibid. Ching 2001: 282. For increasing intraregional cultural flows and regionalization in the Asian media market, see Iwabuchi 2002. Another omnibus horror movie, Black Night (2006) was made by a different set of three partners: Filmko Pictures (Hong Kong), Five Star Production Co. (Thailand), and Movie-Eye Entertainment Inc. (Japan). Davis and Yeh 2008: 117. Ibid.: 90. Ibid. Ibid.: 93–4. Ibid. Ibid.: 95. See Im 2002. See KOFIC 2002 Annual Korean Film Industry Statistics, www. kofic.or.kr, date posted 10 January 2003. (Accessed June 25, 2008.) KOFIC 2003 Annual Korean Film Industry Statistics, www.kofic.or.kr, date posted 22 December 2003. (Accessed June 25, 2008.) Cine 21 Netizens’ Marking and Review of Three http://www.cine21.com/ Movies/Mov_Movie/movie_detail.php?s=rate&id=6103 (Accessed June 25, 2008.) Lee 2004a. KOFIC 2004 Annual Korean Film Industry Statistics, www.kofic.or.kr, date posted 26 January 2005. (Accessed June 25, 2008.) Kehr 2005. Ibid. Cashill 2006. Stevens 2005. Galloway 2006: 68. Langfold 2005: 5. For the arbitrariness of the classifying functions of genre, see also Naremore 1995–6. Jancovich 2001: 159. Shin 2008. Johnston 2005. See Lee 2004b; see also Lee 2004c. Ebert 2005.

Bibliography Cashill, R. (2006) “Lady Vengeance,” Cineaste, Summer, 58. Ching, L. (2001) “Globalizing the Regional, Regionalizing the Global: Mass Culture and Asianism in the Age of Late Capital,” in Arjun Appadurai (ed.) Globalization (Durham and London: Duke University Press). Davis, D. W. and E. Y. Yeh (2008) East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI).

Nikki J. Y. Lee 117 Ebert, R. (2005) “Three … Extremes,” The Chicago Sun Times, 28 October. Galloway, P. (2006) Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press). Iwabuchi, K. (2002) Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press). Jancovich, M. (2001) “Genre and the Audience: Genre Classifications and Cultural Distinctions in the Mediation of The Silence of the Lambs” in Mark Jancovich (ed.) Horror the Film Reader (London and New York: Routledge). Johnston, I. (2005) “Compliments to the Chef: Three … Extremes: Dumplings Expertly Mixes Social Critique and Questionable Cuisine,” Bright Lights Film Journal, no. 48, http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/48/dumplings.htm (Accessed June 25, 2008). Kehr, D. (2005) “De-Finger the Piano Player,” The New York Times, October 30. Langfold, B. (2005) Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Lim, B. C. (2007) “Generic Ghosts: Remaking the New ‘Asian Horror Film,’” in G. Marchetti and S. K. Tan (eds) Hong Kong Film, Hollywood, and the New Global Cinema: No Film is an Island (London: Routledge). Naremore, J. (1995–6) “American Film Noir: The History of an Idea,” Film Quarterly, 49: 2, 12–27. Shin, C. (2008) “Art of Branding: Tartan ‘Asia Extreme’ Films,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 50, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/ jc50.2008/TartanDist/index.html (Accessed March 10, 2010). Stevens, D. (2005) “An Introduction to New Asian Horror,” The New York Times, 25 October.

websites www.boxofficemojo.com www.kofic.or.kr Cine 21 Netizens’ Marking & Review of Three http://www.cine21.com/Movies/ Mov_Movie/movie_detail.php?s=rate&id=6103 (Accessed June 25, 2008).

Korean references Im B. (2002) ‘Asia Three Countries’ Co-production Movie Three: Head of Korean Production Company B.O.M, Oh Jung-wan’, Cine 21, no.366. ,‘ 3 ’< 21> no.366. 2002.8.21. Lee S.W. (2004a) ‘Three Omnibus Horror: The Nightmarish Production Note of Three, Monster- Miike Takashi’, Cine21, no. 465. , ‘3 < , > – ’, < 21> no.465. 2004. 8. 17. Lee S.W. (2004b) ‘Three Omnibus Horror: The Nightmarish Production Note of Three, Monster- Park Chanwook’, Cine21, no. 465. , ‘3 < , > –’ ’, < 21> no.465. 2004. 8. 17. Lee S. W. (2004c) ‘Three, Monster’s Park Chanwook and Kang Hye-jung’, Cine21, No. 466. , ‘< , > , ’, 21, no. 466. 2004. 8. 24.

6 J-Horror and Kimchi Western: Mobile Genres in East Asian Cinemas Vivian P. Y. Lee

Writings on East Asian cinemas, or non-Western cinemas in general, have tended to focus on the representation or contestation of the nation, and the negotiation between indigenous traditions and what were considered “modern” cinematic codes in the evolution of film art. Chinese cinema scholarship has produced a fascinating account of how these various positions are argued, debated, rethought and revised, particularly the controversy over the exact meaning of the “nation” and the “national” when applied to Chinese or any non-Western cinema in today’s globalized world (e.g. Zhang 2004; Berry and Farquhar 2006; Lu and Yeh 2005).1 In the early 1990s, the “New Korean cinema” came into being against a long history of political repression and state interference. This history, Julian Stringer (2005) notes, is also a narrative that “encompass[es] the experience of successive national traumas.” Beginning with the political democratization in 1992, the massive program of commercialization and globalization orchestrated by the state and large multinational corporations (chaebols in Korean) has given rise to the phenomenon of “record-breakers” or Korean blockbusters,2 a number of which have gained arthouse respectability.3 When one turns to Japan, the “national” appears to be diffused into comparatively more formal questions of style and techniques of both Western and Japanese origins. Due to its relatively earlier admission to international (art) cinema through the works of cinematic luminaries such as Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro, and Kurosawa Akira, Japanese cinema studies in the West has produced a substantial body of literature, from an aesthetically oriented, formalistic mode of inquiry to ideological and political critique.4 This does not mean that a clear-cut dichotomy has existed between reception of Japanese cinema and other East Asian national cinemas, or between “purely” formalistic approaches and those informed by “grand 118

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theory,”5 but that reception patterns are also a matter of timing, that is, the temporal difference in the international trajectories of various (nonWestern) national cinemas and prevailing intellectual currents. This is reflected in the greater emphasis on ideological and cultural critique in more recent work on Japanese cinema.6 The worldwide success of films from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea and the internationalization of East Asia’s film industries in the last decade or so have encouraged discussions on regional approaches to national cinemas. As Davis and Yeh point out, the “national cinema” model still predominant in the study of East Asian cinemas cannot adequately address the region “as an interconnected whole that is susceptible to global political fluctuations and multinational capitalism” (1). While East Asia “remains a differentiated, conflicted region” rather than a homogenous whole (8), their study sheds light on how government policy and structural changes in the last decade have led to greater regional consolidations and internationalization of East Asia’s screen industries. The need to reconfigure and transgress existing conceptual boundaries is echoed by Leo Hunt (2008), who argues that “East Asian cinema challenges existing conceptions in film studies such as textuality, authorship, Hollywood domination, third cinema and national allegory.” As “an idea in process,” East Asian cinema’s “mutating currencies of transnationality” indicates a globalism more complex and unstable than “Hollywoodization” or “Americanization” (5, original italics). These reflections have opened up new possibilities for situating East Asian cinemas within a regional framework without losing sight of the “differentiated, conflicted” nature of such a configuration. From this perspective, popular genre films display a high degree of transnationality, interweaving multiple localities, traditions, and textual and visual conventions. In East Asia, transnational mobility is also facilitated by accelerated traffic of film personnel and capital across the region. This migratory pattern is also reflected in the style and content of films produced under these conditions. This is especially true for popular films targeting international audiences. This chapter is a preliminary study on the transnational mobility of contemporary East Asian genre films as a regional, and increasingly globalized, phenomenon. Two types of genre films, horror and the western, will be considered. Similar to what Theresa L. Geller says about “transnational noir,” these films are a form of hybridity “eminent to the postmodern return that is itself a translation of (and intervention into) a historically situated transnational form of aesthetic refiguration” (Geller, 2008: 183). Drawing upon current scholarship

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on East Asian and transnational cinemas as well as more formalistic approaches to film art, I will examine the interplay of generic codes and conventions in Japanese director Shimizu Takashi’s US remakes of his own Ju-on series, and Korean director Kim Ji-woon’s self-reflexive citations of the western in The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. As we shall see, these genre films belong to a new “global vernacular” through which the “lingua franca” of popular cinema is no longer the uncontested property of Western (American) cinema.7

Genres Internationally successful genre films from East Asia have reinvigorated cross-cultural analysis as prevailing norms in the West are revised and recast in innovative ways, not by complete opposition to but creative transformation or “fusion” of elements from both Western and nonWestern sources.8 This penchant for creative adaptation in the evolution of film art in East Asia explains some of the distinctive qualities of the “regional-local” that go beyond mere anthropological knowledge. Far from simply recycling received genres from Hollywood, East Asian cinemas have developed local(ized) genres with their own set of norms and conventions: for example Chinese martial arts and kung fu films; the huangmeidiao, a localized form of traditional musical popular in 1970s Hong Kong; and the chambara eiga (samurai films), yakuza eiga (gangster films), and sub-genres such as shomin-geki (films about petty urbanites), family drama, and “salaryman movies” in Japan. Increased regional collaborations have brought into being a new “pan-Asian cinema,” which features innovative and less ethnicity-bound thematic and visual design. The most internationally successful genre films from the region nowadays exhibit traits of their local pedigree couched in an international(ized) film language that aptly reflects their hybrid heritage. Horror, action, and martial arts films continue to top the list in this category. Understood inter-generically, “genre” encompasses the recasting and reworking of conventions; hence horror can include psychological and crime thrillers as well as self-referential parodies such as Scary Movie and Scream.9 Another interesting line of thinking asks whether the art film has become a genre in itself. As Davis and Yeh (2008) suggest, institutionalized marketing of East Asian art films carrying the benchmark label of “auteur cinema” through festival circuits has enhanced the often understated commercial value of the art film. This brings to mind Bordwell’s (2008) analysis of the art film as a specific style carrying a

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set of norms and conventions whose “high art” status is defined by a self-conscious difference from its commercial/Hollywood counterpart (151–70). Rachel Gabara’s discussion on neorealism from Italy to Africa also sheds light on this “poetics of refusals,” that is, “a rejection of certain filmic conventions in favor of others” (203). Although Bordwell does not explicitly mention “genre,” the technical and aesthetic features he identifies in some of the best known art films—the persistent prioritizing of the long take, documentary-style, on-location shooting, non-professional cast, and inconclusive narratives—strongly suggest a “generic” reading.10 Returning to East Asia, celebrity directors such as Miike Takashi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Kitano Takeshi, Park Chan-wook, Kim Ji-woon, John Woo, Wong Kar-wai, Ang Lee, and even former “dissident auteurs” Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, seem to have great facility for crossovers between art and popular films; indeed, popular cultural elements are not completely banished from the cinematic consciousness of some well-known Taiwan New Wave directors (for example, Tsai Mingliang’s blending of “high” and “low” cultural forms in The Hole and The Wayward Cloud and Edward Yang’s reinterpretation of the melodramatic in his portrayals of Taipei urbanites). In Japan, major studios such as Shochiku have been backing art films and independent directors from Ozu and Kurosawa to Kitano, Miike, and Hou Hsiao-hsien. The fluid boundaries of auteur and popular cinema, mainstream and non-mainstream have created the necessary conditions for “popular art films” and “popular auteurs” in theory and in practice.11 These developments in the East Asian context are conducive to genre mobility.

East Asian horror Asia has some of the richest and the longest-standing traditions of supernatural folklore. These traditions have continued to evolve and influence the cultural imagination, beliefs and everyday practices of broad sections of Asian societies even today. The international success of the “Asian extreme cinema” in Europe and North America testifies to the time-defying charm of this imagination in a transcultural context. To Asian audiences, using “extreme” as a qualifier to distinguish Asian horror from an assumed Western paradigm may sound suspicious, like bringing back to life an old colonial metaphor. As a working description for lack of a better word, “extreme” admits to the sheer diversity of these types of movies but does not help much to explain the consistency and uniformity of their unnerving effects on the viewer. Unrestrained

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brutality, morbid indulgence in graphic violence, and a readiness to break all rules of propriety and moral constraint are hallmarks of “Asian extreme.” Patrick Galloway believes that religion, culture and history account for the distinctively Asian sense of the horrific: [T]he longer [a culture] lives and the more it sees, the less shocked it’s likely to become by the horrendous realities of life. That’s why if Se7en had been made in Japan, Korea, or China, you’d have seen Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in that box; the Asian filmmaker recognizes what a powerful cinematic payoff such a shot would be and … wouldn’t pull such a solid punch so late in the game. (14) If this sounds like a valorization of Mysterious Orient, the question of what an East Asian answer to Se7en would be is essentially a question about the limits of cinematic horror East and West: if culture and history impose limits on the extent to which moral and social sensibilities could be challenged, then they also enable/disable certain means by which these challenges are embodied in the film text. As is common to most horror films, East Asian horror takes its subject matter from manifest or latent crises and anxieties in society traceable to some distant historical roots while evoking more universal fears of the unknown, usually in the form of the “monstrous other.”12 As an interface between the universal and the specific, East Asian horror in its transcultural circulation accommodates several axes of signification: there is, for example, the culturally-specific imagination of the “monstrous other” and its specific sociopolitical ramifications; then comes the transnational contact zone of global film culture. Each of these realms of cinematic encounter produces its own set of discourses on how a film should be read and evaluated. One interesting outcome of this multi-layered discursive community is a vague consensus that Asian horror is somehow “different” from its Western counterpart. My analysis of the Ju-on series attempts to address this “difference” and how such difference is translated and transformed into the American remakes. Visual expressivity at the expense of realistic representation and narrative coherence is a well-known property of Japanese cinema. Donald Richie (2005) calls it the “presentational style,” which also explains the strong preference for the elliptical and an aestheticized vision of reality in the Japanese literary and cinematic traditions. David Bordwell, writing on Japanese film style, describes the interest in pure visual pleasure in film composition as the “decorative” or “ornamental” style most

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sophisticatedly developed in Japanese cinema.13 Some critics have also noticed that the “pictorial” nature of the Japanese visual tradition has been used as a marker of “Japaneseness” in films.14 On the other hand, such markers are also found to be conscious “knowing citations,” made to achieve strategic self-differentiation rather than proofs of an inner cultural essence (Bordwell 2008: 355). Just as it would be misleading to try to locate or dispute the presence/absence of Japaneseness based on fixed categories of values in the case of such “great masters” as Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa, the “local flavor” in contemporary Japanese cinema can better be seen through the filmmaker’s strategic choices and ongoing negotiation with contending conventions and stylistic trends. Tradition, on the other hand, is felt through the selective use of cultural codes. In Japanese horror, one sees very traditional-looking female ghosts haunting urban middle-class neighborhoods. Female ghosts of old are constantly recycled in film adaptions of classic kaidan stories. It is nothing new to see female protagonists at the center of intense moral/ physical/psychological struggle in horror films today. Indeed, this sensitivity toward gender, especially the way in which the complex psychosocial dynamics—male anxiety over losing economic/sexual power, the tension between coloniality and postcoloniality, the ambivalence toward a Westernized modernity project, and the desire to subvert the patriarchal cultural order—are embodied by the female “monster” in a wide range of Asian horror films (e.g. Ju-on, Ringu, Audition, Whispering Corridors, and Nang Nak).15 While the feminine/feminized Other has been a favorite and much contested trope in the conventions of horror worldwide, female victimization and vengeance, apart from their modern connotations as noted above, has their generic pedigree in Asian folklore. Female ghosts as “avenging spirits” have been a defining property of Japanese horror films (McRoy 2005: 3–4), in which the vengeful female ghosts are characterized by their generic looks: a floating/drifting body in a long (usually white) robe, with long tresses and big, round staring eyes. This distinct cultural marker has been well utilized in the marketing of Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998) in Hong Kong, where a blown-up poster image of the woman’s ghastly eye staring down through a curtain of long black hair is an iconic reminder of the ghost’s generic origin: wronged women, haunted houses, mother-child bonding, demonic mothers, and male (domestic) violence (Balmain 2008).16 This said, “Asian ghosts” are not exclusively creatures of the dark: they also appear in daylight and participate in human affairs.17 This perception of the supernatural is in line with the animistic tradition in Japanese cinema (notably

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Miyasaki Hayao’s world popular anime) as well as many Asian films with a supernatural element. Pieter Aquilia attributes the difference between the Western and Asian perception of the supernatural to differences in religious traditions, hence different understandings of life and death, human and non-human, and the natural and the supernatural.18 While the above “traditional” elements are present at the thematic and contextual levels of Japanese horror, we can also turn to other stylistic features for more clues to the transnational aesthetics of Japanese and Japanese-inspired horror films. Shimizu Takashi’s Ju-on: the Grudge (hereafter Ju-on) series and their US remakes (The Grudge and The Grudge 2) exemplify the crossover between “regional-local” and global visual cultures. Many Japanese and Asian horror films have US remakes (such as Ringu, The Eye, Dark Water, and One Missed Call, to name a few), and most remakes have been slighted as poor copies of the source films. The reason for focusing on Ju-on is two-fold: first, it is the only instance so far of remakes directed and co-written by the director of the originals.19 As such, the Ju-on series offers a rare opportunity to look into the crosscultural negotiations faced by an Asian filmmaker working on basically the same project under two different systems. Second, apart from shared visual style and basic motifs, Ju-on’s US versions preserve the original setting in Tokyo, using a mix of American and Japanese (and in The Grudge 2 Hong Kong) cast. This latter dimension offers an opportunity to re-consider Gary Xu’s (2004, 2008) criticism of the remake as an instance of Hollywood homogenization: What has been remade is not only the story but also ethnicity. While the originals are ethnically specific, albeit Hollywoodised representations, the remakes are completely severed from the original ethnic soil and become solely the product of Hollywood homogenisation. The remakes, therefore, have nothing to do with the supernatural aura, the long development of East Asian cinemas, or the peculiarly “Asian” aesthetic based on cultural and ethnic specifics. (Original italics) Xu’s criticism applies to many existing Hollywood remakes of East Asian films, and the Ju-on project is not immune from the commercial opportunism behind the remake enterprise. Yet Ju-on presents a slightly different scenario from being “completely severed from the original ethnic soil” for reasons noted above. From the perspective of transnational aesthetics, homogenization would require qualification to be precise in each case. In the case of Ju-on, a selective comparison of the

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stylistic features and their differential deployment in the originals and the remakes will enable us to see more clearly the ways in which a film’s “cultural and ethnic specifics” are (de)mobilized, that is, the adjustments made to the “regional-local” in the transnational context. While I also pay attention to the “Americanized” aspects of the remakes, my purpose is to identify salient features of Shimizu’s transcultural projects, which do not preclude re-appropriations of Hollywood in the process. My discussion will concentrate on setting, characters, and narrative structure in the various Ju-on films and remakes. As we shall see, the Ju-on cycle also raises questions about the nature of the sequel and the remake: while the Japanese versions (the first two being direct-to-DVD productions) are usually regarded as sequels, the sense of “sequencing” comes mainly through the continuity of Kayako’s curse in the form of episodic killings. Of the two US “remakes,” only The Grudge shows significant repetitions in story lines and characterization from the originals, while The Grudge 2 is more a sequel to Part 1 than a remake of its Japanese counterpart. The greatest resemblance between the Japanese and US films lies, not surprisingly, in Shimizu’s directorial style and the signature scenes of Kayako’s horrific killings. Utilizing the same back story of a paranoid husband’s brutal murder of his wife (Kayako) and her son (Toshio) in a middle-class suburb house, both The Grudge and its sequel anchor the narrative in blurry, fragmented shots of the homicide. Saeki Takeo (the husband) apparently does not survive long after his heinous crime: the first DVD version has him killed by Kayako. The deaths, according to the films’ pre-credit announcement, are the origin of the curse: “When a person dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born.” In all the six versions, fragmented scenes of the murders are repeated in black-and-white flashbacks as Kayako’s victims are forced to recall/relive the scenes of murder in the first person before they are killed. Toshio, a five-year-old boy, is seen bouncing around every next victim, scaring them onto the path of death (Figure 6.1). The advantage of having the remakes set in Tokyo is obvious: it enables the US films to utilize fully the back story of the curse without resorting to a “cultural equivalent” or justification; there is also no need to completely “remake” the ethnicity of the film, for, after all, Kayako and Toshio remain at the center of these haunting tales. This said, some fine-tuning is unavoidable to orientate Western audiences in this “foreign” city: the US versions include a number of outdoor street scenes and familiar panoramic shots of the city center to anchor the audience and the American characters in Tokyo, whereas the Japanese versions stay close to quiet, lackluster middle-class

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Figure 6.1 Toshio in The Grudge 2

neighborhoods in suburban Tokyo. Saeki’s house, too, shows obvious signs of an artistic touch-up to conform to a more popular image of the haunted house in Western horror: while the Japanese films favor natural lighting (sometimes brighter than natural) to create a deceptively quotidian and banal everyday-ness, the US versions opt for blue and green hues to accentuate the ominous mood, and the house looks older and much darker. In Grudge 2, this drive toward cliché is more pronounced: the haunted house is moss-laden and badly scorched by a fire set off by Karen, an American exchange student played by veteran horror star Sarah Michelle Geller. These modifications to the setting do not cause significant changes to the visual style of the remakes. Instead, these technical changes help foreground the “fear factors” inherent in the Japanese originals more effectively in the eyes of an international audience by providing them the necessary cues to “tune in” the terror. This can be seen from the largely identical visual motifs and cinematography in rendering the scariest moments of the films. For instance, the use of a lighter/torch to reveal the ghastly face of Kayako lurching inside the attic, the fragmented, grainy black-and-white shot sequence of Saeki’s brutal murders, the haunting “empty” interior shots that suggest the presence of an invisible, diabolic force, and the horrific scene of a woman’s

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blood-dripping, jawless corpse slowly turning back to face the camera. Shimizu’s use of staging and mise en scène to hide and reveal crucial details for shock effects is also quite consistent throughout. With slight variations, these “fear factors” are repeated in different parts of the US versions. Shimizu’s role as director explains why these motifs are so effortlessly, even off-handedly, transplanted into the remakes with such a high degree of consistency; as a result the technical adjustments (such as a briefer close-up shot of the jawless woman) do not lead to major deviations in the visual and psychological effects of these scenes, though the repulsiveness is contained by the much reduced screen time. Like her generic predecessors, Kayako’s appearance conforms to the image of the avenging female spirit (onryou) in the Japanese literary and dramatic traditions. Commenting on Ju-on’s Japanese theatrical versions, Jay McRoy notes that while the onryou has its roots in Shintoism, Christianity, and Noh and Kabuki tales of the supernatural, Shimizu’s rendering is a “curious filmic hybrid, combining carefully chosen aesthetic trappings of western—particularly US—horror films” (175–6). On the transcultural hybridity of the ghost figures, he writes: Not quite ghosts in the strictest sense of the onryou or kaidan tradition, but not quite conventional biological monsters either, this otherworldly, mother-centered family merges a dangerous corporeality … with an eerie spectral quality without adhering absolutely to one convention or the other. (180) Nonetheless, Kayako’s appearance and Shimizu’s use of a slow-paced, non-linear episodic narrative (more fragmentary in the Japanese versions) underscore the female ghost’s distinctively Japanese accent. This hybrid image of Kayako as the “Japanese ghost lady” par excellence is sustained in all the different versions of Ju-on: the vengeful spirit of the wronged woman unleashing her wrath on anyone who steps into the haunted house. In the films, Kayako and Toshio can seek out their victims to literally every corner of the world (as far as Chicago in Grudge 2). The transcultural hybridity of the ghosts, it seems, is matched by their physical mobility over space: in Grudge 2, Kayako’s vindictiveness intensifies after the fire set off by Karen (Sarah Michelle Geller), an American student in Japan, in an attempt to stop the curse. In this film, Kayako is more aggressive in seeking out her targets, and her wrath spreads to those who have never been to the house. Also in line with her counterparts in Ringu and One Missed Call is the ghost lady’s

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penchant for invading through digital media: surveillance cameras, video recordings, cell phones, and once through a photocopier. Her last victims in the film are an American family in Chicago who live next doors to Allison, the international school girl who flees Tokyo after incurring the curse. The film ends with a blackout as Kayako’s ghastly face closes in upon the camera on her way to consume the next victim. In this second installment,20 it seems Kayako has evolved: from a vengeful spirit wrecking havoc on unwelcome visitors to her house (which symbolizes the “domesticity” of the feminine monster) to a transborder aggressor. Gender imagination, too, has changed: in eliminating an entire family in their Chicago apartment Kayako refuses to be domesticated by a haunted house. One can say that the curse is no longer Japanese but globalized, like Kayako and the horror aesthetics she has come to symbolize. The intercutting between the Japanese and US episodes in Grudge 2 enables a further transculturation of the vengeful spirit motif. Several new factors are introduced: (1) a bigger cast of American characters complement the female protagonist Aurbrey (Karen’s estranged sister); (2) there are three different story lines, two of which take place two years after Karen’s death, which motivates Aubrey’s investigation soon afterwards. The non-linear intercutting of scenes from the three story lines results in a more fragmented narrative than in Part 1, but in a way and for purposes different from the Japanese versions (discussed below). In the remakes, characterization rather than visual language marks the biggest difference from the Japanese originals and shows the greatest conformity to standard Hollywood practice, which requires characters to be psychologically motivated, goal-driven, and (especially for the hero and heroine) fully individuated agents who act upon rather than passively succumb to Fate. In both The Grudge and Grudge 2, Karen and Aubrey are the “final girls” who try to stop Kayako’s wrath at all cost. This unquestioned heroism is absent in the Japanese versions. While Karen is praised by her mother as a young woman who “knows how to face life,” Aubrey, the less favored daughter, learns to face life and tries to fight her inner devils as she embarks on Karen’s unfinished mission. In these two films, individuals are more firmly and explicitly anchored in a familial and social structure, as opposed to the rather piecemeal and isolated vignettes in the Japanese versions. A male-female pairing of the main characters is also added to the remakes. Shimizu here is making some obvious effort, helped by co-writer Stephen Susco, to negotiate between the “Japanese” preference for suggestive and impressionistic sketches in creating mood and atmosphere, and the Western

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convention of providing logical connections and psychological interpretations. One interesting interpretation of the originals in the US versions is the exploitation of Kayako’s cryptic journal for a psychological (Freudian) reading of the woman’s unending rage: Aubrey and her journalist friend, Eason (played by Hong Kong teen idol Edison Chen) seek the help of a local folklore specialist to decode the contents, which soon reveal Kayako’s traumatic childhood: her mother is an Itako (spiritual medium) who feeds her daughter with evil spirits driven out from her clients’ bodies. At the climax of this “discovery,” Kayako arrives on the scene, killing her mother as she does the other victims. Eason and Aubrey’s “anthropological” impulse is absent in the Japanese versions, in which human agency is systematically undermined. (Keisuke, the TV producer in the second theatrical version, tries to decipher Kayako’s cryptic notes but his attempt is cut short by the woman’s apparition coming through a photocopier. Disempowered human agency also accounts for the marginal role of the police and the absence of the “detective plot” in the Japanese films.) Compared to The Grudge, Grudge 2 contains more Americanized elements in plot and characterization. This change is very likely the result of the increased involvement of Stephen Susco, who is officially credited as the primary scriptwriter, whereas Shimizu is the primary scriptwriter in The Grudge. There is reason to suggest that after receiving mixed comments from film critics the producers of Grudge 2 would encourage a more liberal “remaking” of the less satisfactory elements, among which are, not surprisingly, social contextualizing, psychological explanations, language problem-related tensions, and a scarier haunted house.21 These changes, however, did not reap the desired results either, as movie fans and critics begin to show fatigue over some all-too-familiar horror devices.22 Be that as it may, Shimizu insists on an important ground rule in the entire Ju-on cycle: the rejection of the “final girl” formula. Both Karen and Aubrey fall victims to the curse. (Karen’s survival at the end of The Grudge is a decoy: her death is only deferred to the opening scene in the sequel.) One distinctive element of the Japanese narrative tradition is the tendency toward elliptical, non-linear structure and a take-for-granted acceptance of what is not shown. Donald Richie (1988, 2005) attributes this to the Japanese aesthetic tradition, which favors the “presentational” rather than “representational” (or “selective realism”). The Ju-on series, with its close affiliation to traditional kaidan stories, exemplifies this presentational style. The Japanese theatrical and direct-to-DVD releases adopt a non-linear, episodic structure, separating each incident by an

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intertitle in the form of a black-out showing a victim’s name on the lower left. The order of the incidents is largely random with no apparent causal links. McRoy (2005) notes that this kind of narrative structure is similar to the popular horror manga of Ito Junji (179). This kind of narrative structure is less concerned with plot and rational explanations than with sensory perceptions and emotional states of multiple centers of consciousness. It also demands a similar “take-for-grantedness” in the viewer to savor the emotions invoked by sensory fragments. Shimizu’s choice of this structuring device can also be understood through what Bordwell calls the “decorative” or “ornamental” style in Japanese cinema of the 1930s. This style stands out when a particular device “appears to exceed its denotative, thematical, or expressive function” (2008: 379). This interest in the ornamental reflects an “attitude toward cinema” traceable to traditional painting and visual arts (388–9). The influence of traditional visual aesthetics on Japanese (and Chinese) films is well-documented in Ehrlich and Desser’s (1996) anthology. Not only have the traditional two-dimensional space and “empty space” founded their way into the works of Mizoguchi, Ozu, Zhang Yimou, and Chen Kaige, but folk traditions such as Japanese woodblock prints and Chinese nongcai hua (deep-hue painting) also share a place in the cinematic vocabulary of the two countries. Although these studies are mainly concerned with earlier decades,23 traditional aesthetics and visual motifs can provide clues to understanding the “regional-local” in more recent films from Japan and East Asia. In Shimizu’s case, the decorative use of intertitles as transitions between story fragments draws attention to itself rather than serve any necessary thematic, expressive, or denotative function. This device is omitted from the US remakes, probably for fear that it might look too strange or “primitive” to the average American viewer. Narrative fragmentation in the US remakes, while sometimes a source of viewer complaints, is less decorative than thematic and expressive in function. In The Grudge, the opening scenes from Karen’s encounter with Kayako to the death of the new tenants in the haunted house largely follow the sequence of the original (Ju-on, 2002). Structure-wise thereafter, it begins to adopt a much more viewer-friendly intercutting of scenes in a more or less linear temporal order. Apart from the numerous memory fragments of Kayako and Toshio’s murders (functioning as contextual reminders of the curse), the only major anachronistic sequence has an explanatory/denotative purpose: it reveals the incident that leads to the suicide of Peter, an American college professor who jumps to his death at the beginning of the film. This scene follows directly Karen’s interview

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with Peter’s wife. (A similar technique is used in Grudge 2 to explain the homicide in Chicago.) By strengthening the denotative and expressive function (suspense) of the narrative fragments, the film develops along a more coherent temporal order and logical flow. The film’s second half presents a much smaller cast, as opposed to the introduction of new characters and variously timed episodes in the Japanese original. In the US version, fragmentation is used mainly to juxtapose concurrent or causally related events, heightening the dramatic tension before all the threads are brought together in the finale: the Japanese police officer’s failed attempt to burn down the house, Karen’s failed attempt to save her boyfriend from Kayako, and Karen’s setting fire to the house using the kerosene left behind by the police officer. In Grudge 2, fragmentation is more pronounced, with three temporally and spatially different storylines crisscrossing one another in a more densely populated narrative. While fragmentation in this sequel results in a more complex and disorienting structure, the juxtaposition of scenes in Tokyo and Chicago works to achieve a condensed vision of Kayako’s territorial stretch—she is seen as not only omniscient but also omnipresent, and her grudge is contagious, spreading across time and space like a global virus. As a thematic pointer, fragmentation also serves a denotative function in the final scenes: it is Audrey’s ghost, instead of Kayako’s, that is haunting inside the closet in the first scene; and Allison (one of Kayako’s targets at the Tokyo international high school) is revealed to be the mysterious new tenant next door only in the final encounter with Jake, the youngest and only surviving member of the Chicago family, shortly before Kayako rises from inside Allison’s hooded jacket to get to her prey. The above analysis suggests that the transnational aesthetics of Shimizu Takashi’s Ju-on series is effected by the director’s selective deployment of culture-specific elements within an internationalized film language that underscores the eclecticism of these films; the “global vernacular” in these films results from numerous stylistic, formal, and thematic choices and adjustments made by the director in refashioning J-horror into a culturally mobile genre. Such mobility complicates the binary structure of Japaneseness and Americanization, a quality also noted in East Asian filmmakers’ creative adaptation of the western, and Kim Ji-woon’s The Good, the Bad and the Weird discussed below.

Spaghetti “eastern” and Pan-Asian cinema Pan-Asian cinema commonly refers to collaborations among production companies, directors, actors, investors, and production personnel

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based in Asia. Although the prefix “pan-Asian” is often used to describe more recent co-produced films, Asia’s film industries have had a long track record of co-producing films. This earlier phase of pan-Asian transnationalism is exemplified by Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studio, which has its earliest roots in Southeast Asia and Shanghai. Through its collaborations with Japan’s “big five” studios (Shochiku, Daiei, Toho, Toei, and Nikkatsu) Shaw eventually developed the largest filmmaking network in Asia (Yau 2003). In recent years, the popularity of pan-Asian films has further demonstrated the potential of regional co-productions in reaching out to audiences within and outside Asia. While these coproductions span a wide spectrum of genres—from horror, historical epic, and action, to the musical—the transnational aesthetics at work in the creation of an “(East) Asian film” is discernible in some general features amidst this diversity. This is most visible in the engagement with generic codes through displacement and inter-/intracultural borrowing. Hong Kong director Peter Chan Ho-san and his Applause Pictures have produced a number of successful pan-Asian projects in collaboration with film personnel from Thailand, Korea, Mainland China, Japan, and Taiwan.24 Apart from horror, Chan himself has directed two regional blockbusters, Perhaps Love and The Warlords, both of which are festival award winners in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. While the horror films such as those mentioned above exhibit a cautiously couched regional outlook, using vaguely familiar Asian settings and key acting and production personnel recruited from Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand, Chan’s two recent blockbusters show a sharpened awareness of the importance of the Mainland Chinese market, and also of “China” as an important cultural resource for his pan-Asian, and no less global, ambitions. The director’s dialogue with both Chinese and Western generic codes and conventions results in a partially “Orientalized” musical, Perhaps Love, and a partially Westernized historical epic, The Warlords. Perhaps Love as a contemporary “Chinese musical” is itself a hybrid of different conventions, mixing a Moulin Rouge-like setting with the Indian dance choreography of Farah Khan, a Hong Kong-China romance recalling Chan’s earlier work, Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), and a hint of cultural nostalgia for 1930s Shanghai and early 1980s Beijing. Utilizing an all-star cast from South Korea (Ji Jun-hee), Hong Kong (Jackie Cheung), China (Zhou Xun) and Taiwan/Japan (Kaneshiro Takeshi), Perhaps Love exemplifies the kind of big-budget pan-Asian films that have come to the forefront since the early 2000s. Chan’s next project is Warlords, an historical epic starring international

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martial arts superstar Jet Li and Kaneshiro and Andy Lau, both top male idols in Asia. It is also a remake of a 1960s Shaw Brothers film, Blood Brothers by Chang Che. Blending a Zhang Yimou-style war epic (Hero) with the cinematography of Hollywood’s 300 and conventional thematic of brotherhood, loyalty, and the love triangle, Warlords made a smoother crossover from East to West. Chan’s attempts to internationalize his pan-Asian blockbusters have led to a differential reception of the films among Western and Asian audiences (V. Lee 2009: 201–203). As a “Chinese musical,” Perhaps Love may not have made the intended impact in the West, but its success as an Asian film among Asian audiences is not in doubt. Gary Xu’s criticism of Hollywood remakes can be understood positively in the case of Perhaps Love: in this musical, ethnicity is “remade” through an indigenized setting, cast, plot, and lyrics. Yet it is not a homogenization but multiplication of ethnic elements and visual motifs—baroque, Indian, Canto-pop, and colonial Shanghai—in a film-within-the-film narrative. I am not suggesting that actors’ skin color determines whether a film is “Asian” or not. Rather, “pan-Asianness” is communicated through a hybridized film language: a Hollywood-style musical provides ready-made generic codes and formal features for the enactment of a Hong Kong-China imagination couched in familiar Asian-style pop music. The colonialera Shanghai studio is a reminder, too, of the bitter-sweet encounter with Western modernity shared by many Asian societies. Thematically, Chinese audiences would appreciate the light-hearted allegory in the failed romance between Zhou Xun’s high-flying mainland actress and Kaneshiro’s sobered-up idealist turned Hong Kong pop idol. Yet the film’s “localized” appeal betrays a dilemma in the pan-Asian enterprise. If, according to Wang and Yeh (2007), the global success of transnational films with a strong (Chinese) ethnic content such as Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Walt Disney’s Mulan relies on effective manipulation of the mechanism of “deculturalization,” “aculturalization,” and “reculturalization,” in Perhaps Love the attempt to “reculturalize” the musical, an established western film form with firmly held conventions and viewing expectations has not been as effective as the same operation on Chinese culture-based films for a Western audience. Such a “model” of transnational filmmaking explains the generally better reception of Warlords in the West. Chan’s pan-Asian projects have variously engaged with Asian and Western generic codes and conventions, merging culture-specific visual motifs and themes with more universally decodable elements. In Warlords, the culture-specific elements are borrowed from the already internationalized film language of the Chinese war epic

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and martial arts films. As such, Warlords better fulfills Western viewers’ expectations of a “foreign” (Asian) genre while remaining intimately familiar to local/regional audiences. These observations point toward a particular trait of the transnational aesthetics of pan-Asian films: drawing upon both local and foreign sources, pan-Asian films generally show a high degree of selfconscious eclecticism in their multiple borrowings or cultural references/ quotations. Ethnicity functions more as a style-marker in anticipation of pre-existing modes of viewing (for example a “Chinese war epic” and a “Chinese musical”) as specific cultural-historical contexts are articulated in a variety of cinematic “voices” gleaned from Western and Eastern sources. Such mixing of codes also presumes a certain degree of deviation from the “norms” borrowed or quoted while making explicit acknowledgement of the sources. This kind of inter-generic and intertextual borrowing is brilliantly manipulated in South Korean director Kim Ji-woon’s latest “kimchi western,” The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (2008), the last case study in this chapter. A big-budget “kimchi western” from South Korea, The Good, the Bad and the Weird has been applauded by critics worldwide for its clever b(l)ending of genres and visual styles: “spaghetti westerns,” John Woostyle gunfights, kung fu, comic action, ethnic motifs, and references to Korea’s fight for independence from Japanese colonial rule. From the film’s title to plot and character design, Kim’s work makes direct reference to Sergio Leone’s classic, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly trilogy. Best known for his horror films (The Quiet Family, A Tale of Two Sisters), Kim joins the ranks of Miike Takashi (Sukiyaki Western Django, 2007), Tsui Hark (Seven Swords, 2005), Jackie Chan (The Myth, 2005), and to some extent John Woo by conjuring up this “hodgepodge Asian western” (Maguire 2009) as both homage and parody of the genre.25 While Miike’s “sukiyaki western” makes direct reference to Sergio Corbucci’s Django using a Japanese cast speaking heavily accented English, Tsui’s Seven Swords draws upon a popular 1950’s Chinese martial arts novel (Qi jian xia tian shan/Seven Swords Descend Mount Heaven), Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and its Hollywood remake, The Magnificent Seven. Writing on the evolution of the “Chinese western” in the 1980s and 90s, Daniel Fried (2007) observes that in most Chinese westerns of this period “Hollywood western clichés … [have] been combined with Hong Kong martial arts clichés to produce pure pop” (1492). This “fade-out from national allegory to globalized entertainment vehicle” is crystallized in films such as Tsui’s Seven Swords, which “treats China as a mere name” and “marks the genre’s escape from the political anxieties [of national

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cinema] and from the ontological disputes over the meaning of national genre” (1493). These world-popular precedents provide the immediate context for the hybrid generic code-mixing and transnational mediations in Kim’s film. Set in 1930s Manchuria, the film showcases three male Korean superstars, Jung Woo-sung (the Good), Lee Byung-hun (the Bad) and Song Kang-ho (the Weird) playing respectively a Clint Eastwood-like bounty hunter, a tuxedoed assassin, and a pudgy peasant bandit, on their Indiana Jones-style treasure hunts in China’s “wild wild East,” a lawless bandit country inhabited by a variety of ethnic groups. Beginning with a political assassination involving a map that purportedly shows the route to the ancient treasures of the Qing dynasty in Northeastern China, the trio’s adventures are joined by other stakeholders: Chinese officials, Mongolian tribesmen, Korean secret agents, and eventually the Japanese army. Developing around a straightforward adventure plot, the film’s elaborately executed action sequences are intensely visual: from the opening train robbery (as generic signature) to the ensuing highoctane knife-play and gunplay, the film proceeds in a series of exuberant set pieces against the soaring rhythm of resounding musical scores. The restless motion of the action sequences is further enhanced by the extensive use of close-up shots, which effectively fill up the screen space with a dizzying array of bouncing bodies. Visual disorientation aside, this filming style facilitates a hyperbolic disclosure of its various sources, for example kung fu, western, comic action, and a videogame-like viewer/ player positioning, a tactic that not only creates but actively draws attention to a condensed stylistic palette in a self-referential text loaded with intertextual, if not meta-textual, references. One can see this in the “cool” looks of Jung Woo-sung’s Eastwood-like bounty hunter performing majestic gunplay sequences on horseback, in the comic moments where Song Kang-ho’s goofy bandit mimics the western cowboy with a comical twist, and in Lee Byung-hun’s fusion of the martial arts knighterrant and gun-slinging mafioso performing cold-blooded murders. The barren desert landscape of Northeastern China serves as a geographical and cultural parallel to the American West in this fanstasmatic re-enactment of spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. The regular native Indians, too, have reincarnated in the gun-slinging native tribesmen on horseback. The film’s playful engagement with genre conventions culminates in the final duel between the three male leads: in an attempt to vindicate his earlier defeat, the “bad” hitman forces his two opponents to take part in a three-point shootout. Rendered in slow-motion, the shootout recalls the smoky gunfight choreography of John Woo. The film ends with the

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deaths of all three in this absurdist, and no less childish, game of vindication. This scene also finds echoes in the “deconstructive” aesthetics of recent Hong Kong action films that question and unsettle conventional heroism (e.g. Johnnie To’s PTU, The Mission, and Mad Detective). This pan-Asian reinterpretation of Leone’s classics echoes the inherent hybridity of the spaghetti western as a sub-genre that both critiques and reinvigorates its “master genre.” According to Steve Neale (2002), the western as a Hollywood genre has undergone cycles of changes and adaptations after its heyday in the 1960s. Two major threads of these changes are what he calls “neo-traditionalist” westerns, which seek, nostalgically, to revive the genre’s best moments by incorporating modern elements, as in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, and “new revisionist” westerns, which signify various attempts to parody, quote, or pastiche the old form (27–34). Spaghetti westerns can be considered as forerunners of the second thread for their critical stance toward the western’s “frontier mythology.” Made by Italian directors outside the US, many spaghetti westerns were co-produced with Spanish companies and feature an ethnically more diverse cast of Mexican, Spanish, and Italian, as well as American actors. (Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly trilogy was originally made in Italian.) Projecting a more cynical view of life on the American frontier by questioning the motives of the traditional western hero, these “neo-revisionist” westerns are seen to have a “demythologizing” attitude toward the western (Kupfer 2008: 103–4). Kim’s film both mirrors and displaces this hybridity in the creation of a “spaghetti eastern” set in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s. This setting enables an effective recontextualization of the political and social turmoil as well as the ethnic heterogeneity of the spaghetti westerns. Compared to Perhaps Love, Kim’s effort seems to have reaped better harvest internationally, judging from the generally enthusiastic responses among critics and viewers both East and West. The film’s overt borrowings from Leone are also regarded as “a gleefully deranged Korean homage to [Leone’s] spaghetti westerns,” “a highly ritualised cowboy movie in the far east,” and “[a] hodgepodge Asian spaghetti western … that perfectly recreates a Sergio Leone gun-slinging bonanza on the Mongolian Steppe with uncommon bravado.”26 Two main reasons can account for this difference in cross-cultural adaptation: first, the source borrowed is a pre-existing model of hybridity distinguished by its propensity for “genre-breaking” and “genre bending” (Berliner 2009: 26–8), processes widely accepted by Western audiences and duly recognized as such in film studies.27 The kind of hybridization and

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stylistic eclecticism found in Kim’s film is therefore expected and even desirable as a “deviation from type” (29). Second, Kim’s film also benefits from the proliferation of “localized” versions of the Hollywood western from Hong Kong, China and Japan that have paved the way for further updating and cross-fertilization of the genre, “not because the genre is a universal that has the power to overwhelm national boundaries, but because universality is a crucial coded property of the Hollywood western” that, like the Chinese martial arts film, is open to creative adaptations and reversals. Whether Chinese, sukiyaki or kimchi in flavor, “spaghetti easterns” or “pan-Asian westerns” generally demonstrate a penchant for stretching generic possibilities by foregrounding cultural, linguistic, and ethnic heterogeneity in a cinematic universe where such incongruities are taken for granted. Using Shimizu Takashi’s Ju-on series, their US remakes, and Kim Ji-woon’s The Good, the Bad, and the Weird as examples, this chapter has examined the transnational aesthetics of contemporary East Asian genre films in light of the productive crossover between what is “local” and what is “global” as manifest in these films. By no means exhaustive, these preliminary case studies have shown that the cross-breeding between different cultural and generic conventions have contributed to the regional character of popular genre films in East Asia today. This regional quality is also what enables East Asian films to claim a place in the “global popular” today.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

Zhang 2004 and Berry and Farquhar 2006 adopt a flexible model to account for the relationship between cinema and the national, locating the national within transnational networks or “projects” in which “a variety of regional, national, and local specificities impact upon each other in various types of relationships ranging from synergy to contest” (Berry and Farquhar 2006: 5). Lu and Yeh 2005 favor the term ‘Chinese-language film’ to emphasize the geopolitical and cultural diversity of Chinese cinema. For a discussion on the phenomenon of the blockbuster film from Korea and China, see Berry 2003. One classic example is Sopyonje (1992) by Im Kwon-Taek, a key figure of South Korea’s art cinema. It was regarded as a film that “marked both an end and a beginning within the field of Korean cinema in the early 1990s.” Other note-worthy record-breakers include Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000). See, for example, Robinson 2005 and Pacquet 2005. Aesthetic ingenuity alongside culture-specific subject matter is at the centre of many influential works on Japanese film, for example, David Bordwell’s Ozu

138

5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

J-Horror and Kimchi Western and the Poetics of Cinema (1988), Donald Richie’s Ozu (1974) and A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001), and Noel Burch’s To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (1979). More recent studies have shown an increased interest in cultural and ideological analysis, see note 13 below. This debate over methods is taken up in Bordwell 2008: 12–23. For instance, Isolde Standish argues for a “politics of cinema” (Standish 2005). Anthologies representing different textual, contextual, and ideological concerns can be found in, for example, Phillips and Stringer 2007, Nolletti and Desser 1992, and McRoy 2005. Mariam Hansen uses “global vernacular” to describe the worldwide popularity and adaptability of Hollywood films, and “vernacular modernism” to characterize those emerging film cultures outside mainstream Western cinema (Hansen 2000). The dynamics between “modernity and tradition” is a structuring principle of Donald Richie’s history of Japanese cinema (Richie 2005). For David Bordwell, “Japanese film style” involves “an assimilation of continuity techniques seen in the West alongside an experimental impulse … mediated by a self-conscious sense of ‘Japaneseness’” (Bordwell 2008: 356). Such East-West electicism is also noted in King Hu’s martial arts films by Hector Rodriguez (1998). For a discussion on parodies as a reinstatement and reaffirmation of genre, see Harries 2003. Expanding on a 1979 essay, this updated version includes a discussion on Chinese auteurs Hou Hsiao-hsien and Gu Changwei (Peacock, 2004). See Bordwell (2008), 151–70. Government policy and international branding encourage this blurring of boundaries. See, for example, Nikki K. Y. Lee’s discussion on the “making” of the Korean cult-auteur, Park Chan-wook (Lee, Nikki 2007). For a discussion on horror’s dual focus on the “universal monstrous” and specific social anxieties, see, for example, Prince 2004. The “decorative purpose” of a particular edited sequence becomes noticeable when the other three purposes, that is thematic, stylistic, and narrative, fail to account for the visual outcome of a scene. Bordwell 2008: 377–80. Various essays in Ehrlich and Desser 2005 explore this connection between traditional aesthetics and film style. See, for example, Hantke 1994. Colette Balmain traces these motifs to ‘Edo Gothic’ films from the 1950s and 1960s. Jun-on’s references to the haunted house and male violence, she notes, is both inspired by traditional horror tales as well as American horror films such as The Shinning and The Amityville Horror. See Balmain 2008: 64–9, 143–7. Aquilia (2006): 438–9. Ibid. The third US sequel, The Grudge 3 was released on DVD in March 2009. Shimizu however declined to direct this film (his role was taken up Toby Wilkins), but stayed on as producer. Online user comments so far have shown the same disappointment as with other remakes. At the time of writing, the third installment, The Grudge 3, has been released in the US on DVD, directed by Tolby Wilkins and written by Brad Keene. Shimizu has only agreed to stay on as producer.

Vivian P. Y. Lee 139 21. These comments are common to western critics. See, for example, Ebert 2004 and Winter 2004. 22. Based on information on the IMDB website and various online discussions. See also Debruge 2006. 23. The section on Japan in Ehrlich and Desser (1994) covers roughly the same generation as Bordwell (2008). The China section shows a stronger interest in “Fifth Generation” films since the 1980s (Ju Dou, Yellow Earth, and Black Cannon Incident). 24. Applause Pictures was founded by Chan and two other Hong Kong filmmakers specifically to make films for the Asian markets. “Pan-Asian cinema” is officially endorsed as the company’s objective. See also Lee, Vivian 2009: chapter 8. 25. Hong Kong’s action cinema is known for its creative adaptation of Italian westerns. See Williams 1997. 26. See reviews by Bradshaw (2009), Maguire (2009), and Ide (2009). 27. Neale has listed over a dozen sub- or ‘sub-sub-’ genres of the western that have emerged in the 1990s (Neale 2002: 33). See also Berliner 2001: 25–46.

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Kupfer, Joseph H. (2008) “The Seductive and Subversive Meta-Narrative of Unforgiven,” Journal of Film and Video, 60: 3–4, 103–14. Gabara, Rachel (2003) “‘A Poetics of Refusals’: Neorealism from Italy to Africa,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 23, 201–15. Galloway, Patrick (2006) Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand, Berkeley, California: Stonebridge Press. Gateward, Frances (ed.) (2007) Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema, Albany: State University of New York. Geller, Theresa L. (2008) “Transnational Noir: Style and Substance in Hayashi Kaiyo’s The Most Terrible Time of My Life,” in Leo Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London: I. B. Tauris, 172–87. Hansen, Miriam Bratu (2000) “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” in Christine Glenhill and Linda Williams (eds), Reinventing Film Studies, London: Arnold, 332–50. Harries, Dan (2003) “Film Paradoy and the Resuscitation of Genre,” in Steve Neale, (ed.) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, London: BFI, 281–93. Hunt, Leo and Leung Wing-Fai (eds) (2008) East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London: I. B. Tauris. Ide, Wendy (2009) Review of The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, The Times, February 5, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_ entertainment/film/ film_reviews/article5660716.ece (Accessed April 27, 2009). Iwabuchi, Koichi (2002) “Nostalgia for a (Different) Asian Modernity: Media Consumption of ‘Asia’ in Japan,” positions, 10: 3, 543–73. Iwabuchi, Koichi and Chua Beng Huat (eds) (2008) East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lee, Hyangjin (2005) “Chunhyang: Marketing an Old Tradition in New Korean Cinema,” in Julian Stringer and Chi-Yun Shin (eds), New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press, 63–78. Lee, Hyangjin (2000) Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lee, Nikki J. Y. (2007) “Salute to Mr. Vengeance!: The Making of a Transnational Auteur Park Chan-wook,” in Leo Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai (eds), East Asian Cinemas, London: I. B. Tauris, 203–19. Lee, Nikki J. Y. “‘Asia’ as Regional Signifier and Transnational Genre-Branding: The Asian Horror Omnibus Movies Three and Three … Extremes” in this volume. Lee Keehyeung (2008) “Mapping out the Cultural Politics of ‘the Korean Wave’ in Contemporary South Korea,” in Koichi Iwabuchi and Chua Beng Huat (eds), East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 175–90. Lee, Vivian P. Y. (2009) “Outside the Nation: the Global Trajectory of Applause Pictures,” in Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-Nostalgic Imagination, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 184–210. McRoy, Jay (2005) (ed.) Japanese Horror Cinema, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Miyagi, Taizo (2006) “Post-War Japan and Asianism,” Asia Pacific Review, 13:2, 1–16. Neale, Steve (2002) “Westerns and Gangster Films Since the 1970s,” in Steve Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, London: BFI, 27–47.

Vivian P. Y. Lee 141 Nolletti, Arthur and David Desser (eds) (1992) Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Paquet, Darcy (2005) “The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present,” in Julian Stringer and Chi-Yun Shin (eds), New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press, 32–50. Phillips, Alastair and Julian Stringer (eds) (2007) Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, London and New York: Routledge. Prince, Stephen (ed.) (2004) The Horror Film, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Richie, Donald (2005) A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos, Revised edition, Tokyo, New York and London: Kodansha International. Robinson, Michael (2005) “Contemporary Cultural Production in South Korea: Vanishing Meta-Narratives of Nation,” in Julian Stringer and Chi-Yun (eds), New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press, 15–31. Rodriguez, Hector (1998) “Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu,” Cinema Journal 38: 1, 73–97. Schneider, Steve Jay (ed.) (2003) Fear Without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe, Godalming: FAB Press. Standish, Isolde (2005) A New History of Japanese Cinema: a Century of Narrative Film, New York: Continuum. Stringer, Julian and Chi-Yun Shin (eds) (2005) New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press. Wang, Georgette and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (2007) “Globalization and Hybridization in Cultural Production: a Tale of Two Films,” in Chan Kwok-bun, Jan W. Walls, and David Hayward (eds), East West Identities: Globalization, Localization, and Hybridization, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 79–82. Williams, Tony (1997) “Space, Place, and Spectacle: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo,” Cinema Journal, 36: 2, 67–84. Winter, Jessica (2004) Review of The Grudge, Village Voice, October 12, http:// www.villagevoice.com/2004-10-12/film/more-now-again-j-horror-remakekeeps-j-forgets-horror/1 (Accessed April 14, 2009). Yang, Fang-Chi Irene (2008) “Rap(p)ing Korean Wave: National Identity in Question,” in Koichi Iwabuchi and Chua Beng Huat (eds), East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 191–216. Xu, Gary Gang (2004) “Remaking East Asia, Outsourcing Hollywood,” Senses of Cinema, 5: 34, http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/34/remaking_ east_asia.html (Accessed December 10, 2005); reprinted in Leo Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai (eds) (2008) East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, London: I. B. Tauris, 191–202. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting (2003) “Shaws’ Japanese Collaboration and Competition as Seen Through the Asian Film Festival Evolution,” in Wang Ain-ling (ed.), The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 279–91. Zhang, Yingjin (2004) Chinese National Cinema, New York and London: Routledge.

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Part III Screen Cultures and Identity Politics

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7 Rethinking a New National Identity in Heisei Japan: Neo-Conservatism and Japanese Cinema Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau Introduction World War II has been over for more than half a century, but today Japan is still blamed by many Asian countries, particularly China and South Korea, for its war responsibilities. After World War II, Japan recovered rapidly and emerged as a world economic power, but its influence in international politics did not match up to the strength of its economy. From the 1970s, when Tanaka Kakuei visited China to resume normal diplomatic relations through Fukuda Takeo’s “Fukuda Doctrine,” Japanese leaders have been trying to create the country’s own foreign policy independent of US influence. In the 1980s, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro brought to light what would be called a Neo-conservative view of Japan. The Neo-conservative agenda includes increasing Japan’s presence in the arena of global politics and reforming a society that had decayed and forgotten its traditional virtues after World War II. Neo-conservatives in Japan started to gain attention in the 1990s, as the Cold War ended and the country stepped into a spiral of depression with the burst of the bubble economy. The turbulent but prosperous days of the Sho¯wa period ended in 1989; Japanese society next faced the uncertainty that plagued the Heisei era, which would later be called The Lost Decade. From the three-time re-election of the conservative Ishihara Shintaro¯ as the governor of Tokyo to the unparalleled support enjoyed by the antagonistic Koizumi Junichiro¯ during his reign (2001–6), the Japanese public showed a rising level of tolerance to Neo-conservative rhetoric that called for a more assertive Japan.1 Nationalism expressed in Japanese cinema has always been a fascinating subject for both academia and the public. The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War 1931–1945,2 Nihon eiga to 145

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nashonarizumu 1931–1945 (Japanese Films and Nationalism 1931–1945),3 and The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan4 all seek to provide insight into the correlation between Japanese nationalism and cinema during World War II. The fact that Imperial Japan was selected by academics as the time frame to examine Japanese nationalism and cinema indicates that the subject is deemed inseparable from the country’s imperial past. Development of Japanese nationalism in the post-World War II period, however, remains to most an unexplored territory. This is not to say there is no interest on the subject; two years ago, Chinese director Li Ying released documentary Yasukuni* (2008), a film that puts the controversial shrine into the limelight. Yasukuni can be seen as one of the latest attempts by a foreigner to explore the dynamics of Japanese nationalism. Controversy* surrounding the release of Yasukuni in Japan, however, is more significant. A book called Eiga Yasukuni: Jo¯ei chu¯shi wo meguru taigiron (Yasukuni the Film: Debate surrounding the cancellation of its screening) was published to detail the response from filmmakers and critics alike, including the director’s distaste for political intervention by Diet members.5 Such circumstances revealed to the outside world that Japanese people care much about their image as projected by foreigners, and that nationalism remains a main subject of interest to most in Japan. These circumstances underline the urgency and significance of this research, for its objective is to examine and illustrate the role and impact of Neo-conservatism in the Japanese filmmaking industry. Post-1990s Japanese cinema provides the biggest insight into the development of the country’s nationalism after World War II. Nonetheless, the topic has never been seriously debated before. It is hoped that this research will stimulate interest toward an area where attention is long overdue. The discussion of this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section provides a brief overview on the rise of Neo-conservative ideology in Japan, while the second section focuses on war-related films produced since 1990 that best reflect the directors’ stance on Japan’s imperial past. They include: Puraido: Unmei no toki (1998, Pride, directed by Ito¯ Shunya), Hotaru (2001, The Firefly, Furuhata Yasuo), Otoko tachi no Yamato (2005, Yamato, Sato¯ Junya), and Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku (2007, For Those We Love, Shinjo¯ Taku).6 The third section shifts to personalities who exemplify Neo-conservatism in the filmmaking industry, including Ishihara Shintaro¯, Kitano Takeshi, Matsumoto Hitoshi, and Kubozuka Yo¯suke. These four figures are not merely perceived as celebrities but also intellectuals due to their outspoken nature on political and social issues in Japan. Their image of Japan,

Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau 147

demonstrated in their work, embodies the core values of Neoconservatism. The accomplishments of these four suggest that while their opinions may not be agreed upon, they are certainly heard: Ishihara is the serving governor of Tokyo and makes frequent appearances in the media, Kitano is a world-renowned director hosting several national TV-shows weekly, Matsumoto enjoys nationwide recognition as a comedian, and Kubozuka was the youngest recipient (at the time) of the best actor award in Japan in 2001. By reviewing films that they are involved in, one should be able to see how the champions of Neo-conservatism promote their cause in Heisei Japanese cinema.

The rise of Neo-conservatism Popular movements in Japan in the post-war period had always centered on events occurred in global politics, which forced the Japanese to rethink their foreign policies. The Anti-Anpo Movement* took place as Japan’s joint security treaty with the US was due to expire in 1968. Tanaka Kakuei’s visit to China came as an aftershock response to Nixon’s sudden visit to China in 1971. The Japanese, however, had proved that they could just discard such concerns with the same swiftness as they reacted to them. The Anti-Anpo Movement quickly died out after the treaty was signed, and the China-fever followed by Tanaka’s visit soon lost its steam as Japanese business became disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s policies. The Neo-conservative tide came just like its other predecessors, but it has proved to be long-living. It came into shape in the 1980s when Nakasone Yasuhiro served as the prime minister between 1982 and 1987. Nakasone, with his strong belief that Japan had already grown out of its World War II shadow, promoted the idea of adopting Neo-conservative policies in his book Atarashi¯ hoshu no riron (The New Conservative Theory) published long before he assumed office. When he came to power, he called for “Sengo seiji no so¯kessan” (A settlement of the post-war politics)7 and aimed to change Japan’s pacifist foreign policies for good. He abandoned the conservative policies implemented by Yoshida Shigeru8 and proposed that Japan take a more active diplomatic stance.9 Nakasone suggested that the Anpo Treaty was outdated and emphasized Japan’s need to rebuild its military.10 He re-evaluated Japan’s role in World War II, claiming that Japan was not an aggressor but a liberator of Asian countries.11 Nakasone became the first acting Japanese prime minister to pay an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine* in 1985, as he declared that those who fought in World War II should be praised and remembered.12 He also

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promoted unity through embracing Japanese traditions and values.13 Nakasone supported constitutional monarchy, but disagreed that the emperor should hold any political power. However, the emperor should remain as a symbol of Japanese culture. Furthermore, he emphasized that Japanese nationalism should keep up with the times, rejecting the revival of fascism and militarism.14 These are all core values that Japanese Neoconservatives hold today. Indeed Nakasone, even long after his retirement, still pushes hard to reform the Constitution of Japan and redefine the role of the Self Defense Force (Jieitai) to a more active one.15 Taking the lead from Nakasone, Neo-conservatism continued to develop in the 1990s with Ozawa Ichiro¯ and Hashimoto Ryu¯taro¯ picking up the baton.16 In addition, the end of the Cold War, the burst of Japan’s bubble economy and the rise of China and South Korea, all contributed to the growing popularity of Neo-conservatism in the 1990s, as anxiety and uncertainty grew in the public. When the Cold War ended, Japan had to redefine its foreign policies and its security alliance with the US because Soviet Union was no longer a threat to both countries.17 While Japan was experiencing economic recession, China and South Korea were rapidly developing their economies. In such insecure times, the Japanese public increasingly turned their ears to the Neo-conservative’s call for a more assertive Japan, as seen in the landslide victories enjoyed by self-assured politicians such as Ishihara Shintaro¯ and Koizumi Junichiro¯.18 In short, Neo-conservatism suggests: (1) Japan was not an aggressor in World War II. Therefore, the Tokyo Trial* and Article 9* should be rejected; (2) Japan should build up its defense and seek equal partner status with the US; (3) Japanese have lost their sense of identity and effort has to be made to restore their pride. Since the beginning of the 1990s, these ideas have formed into a dominating doctrine in Japanese politics and also an influential philosophy in Japanese society that has an impact on the local filmmaking industry. In fact, many war-related Japanese films produced after 1990 follow a Neo-conservative agenda. There are also a number of significant Japanese personalities who can be labeled as cultural champions of Neo-conservatism in Heisei Japan. Their support for Neo-conservative ideologies undoubtedly helped the Neo-conservative campaign to penetrate the Japanese public.

Neo-conservatism in Post-1990 Japanese war-related films Neo-conservatism’s effects in the filmmaking industry are reflected in the post-1990 Japanese war-related films such as Pride, The Firefly,

Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau 149

Yamato and For Those We Love. These films portray Japan as a defender rather than an aggressor in World War II, a critical element of the Neo-conservative argument. Pride gives the most explicit example in this regard. The film sets in the Tokyo Trial of 1948 when To¯jo¯ Hideki (Tsukawa Masahiko) is tried as a Class A war criminal. It criticizes the Tokyo Trial for being an unfair trial designed by the victors at the expense of the loser, Japan. The film emphasizes that Japan went into World War II to liberate Asia and denies that the Japanese military had any involvement with the Nanjing Massacre*. The film portrays To¯jo¯ as a hero who keeps his pride at the trial without yielding to the Allies’ “unreasonable” accusations. Similarly, For Those We Love stresses at the beginning that Japan’s objective in World War II was “to liberate Asia from the hands of Caucasians.” To emphasize Japan’s role as a victim in World War II, many war-related films include footage of American attacks on Japanese civilians. In both Yamato and For Those We Love, for example, newsreel of American air forces conducting indiscriminate bombings on urban areas in Japan are frequently shown, and the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are treated as “means to end the war.” Although there are no direct implications of any antiUS sentiment, the complete absence of Japanese acts of aggression in Asia or even the absence of China only reinforces the impression that the filmmakers involved are highly selective in their materials. These films convey the message that Japan was a victim of World War II, and that the indiscriminate bombings on Japanese cities and the death of thousands of civilians proved this. Most post-1990 war-related films tend to show the humane side of World War II by depicting tokubetsu ko¯gekitai* (special attack units) or kamikaze. Gekko¯ no natsu (1993, Summer of the Moonlight Sonata, Ko¯yama Seijiro¯), The Firefly and For Those We Love are all set in 1945, when it was all but clear that Japan would be defeated. These films express sympathy toward young kamikaze pilots who sacrificed their lives for their country. In Summer of the Moonlight Sonata, Kazama (Tanaka Minoru) wants to become a music teacher and Unno (Nagano Norikatsu) wants to become a pianist, yet they are conscripted as kamikaze. When they learn that they have to go on a suicide mission soon, the only thing they want to do is play the piano for the last time. In both The Firefly and For Those We Love, there is a Korean lieutenant called Kanayama. On the night before the attack, Kanayama sings the Korean folk song Arirang to express his love for his homeland. He claims that he is not fighting for Japan but for Korea and the people he loves. Kanayama is probably a real character as both The Firefly and For Those We Love are based on

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stories told by Torihama Tome, the lady whose restaurant catered for several young kamikaze pilots during World War II. By portraying World War II from the perspectives of front-line soldiers, these films cleverly avoid the imperialistic element of Japanese involvement in World War II; they simply provide a picture of young men who are willing to die for their pride and loved ones. This signifies the endeavor to disassociate nationalism from militarism. The recurring theme of life and death is constantly discussed in these films. While characters often express their readiness to serve their country, none of them want to die in vain. In For Those We Love, Tabata (Tsutsui Michitaka) casts doubts over the significance of their mission because he knows nothing could prevent Japan from losing. Bando¯ (Kubozuka Yo¯suke)’s brother wonders if his sacrifice would mean victory for Japan. Crew members in Yamato also ask if their deaths could prevent Japan’s defeat. These questions are essentially criticisms aimed at the Japanese Imperial Government at the time. In these three films, the role of the villain, that is the commander(s) who orders suicidal missions, is always played not by the front-line soldiers, but by people from the top of the command chain or local military police (kenpeitai). Acts of bravery and self-sacrifice, however, are carried out by young, eager-to-serve new recruits, who have little idea about the peril their country is facing. By pitching the young and rebellious against the old guard, the directors hope to create a notion that most war-dead in World War II were actually innocent men who are just like any ordinary folks today. Self-sacrifice and readiness to serve a higher course with pride are evidently the virtues that Pride, Yamato, and For Those We Love seek to promote. From old classics like Chu¯shingura* to newer, defining works like Bushido*, these are what foreigners have come to learn as essence of the “ideal” Japanese. In Chu¯shingura, the low ranking samurais took justice into their own hands, and committed suicide by hara-kiri after avenging their master’s death. In Yamato and For Those We Love, frontline soldiers facing the choice of living or dying for nothing, choose to convince themselves of the latter by reinventing a noble cause for their deaths. For Bando¯ in For Those We Love, that means reunifying himself with his deceased comrades; for Moriwaki (Sorimachi Takashi), that means doing the least he can to protect his family in Okinawa. Their deaths are honorable: the cause they serve is glorious. Those who live to tell the stories of the dead, like Nakanishi (Tokushige Satoshi) in For Those We Love, while important, are overshadowed by those who died for a higher cause. It is obvious where the focus of the directors is.

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There is a striking similarity to the “lost Japanese values” that Japanese Neo-conservatives are preaching: self sacrifice and live with pride.

Stars of Neo-conservatism Ishihara Shintaro¯ (1932–), Kitano Takeshi (1947–), Matsumoto Hitoshi (1963–) and Kubozuka Yo¯suke (1979–) represent four different generations: yakeato sedai*, dankai no sedai*, shinjinrui* and hyo¯gaki sedai*. To a different degree, they express Neo-conservative ideas in their works, including books and movies that help to shape a new national identity in Heisei Japan. They are popular among Japanese, who are generally known for their reserved and implicit attitude.

Ishihara Shintaro ¯ The person who can best exemplify Neo-conservative philosophy is Ishihara Shintaro¯. His outspoken nature makes him one of the most controversial politicians in Japan. For example, he remarked that the Chinese government stressing Taiwan as part of China is a true representation of imperialism; he even said China would follow in the Soviet Union’s footsteps and disintegrate into six separate states.19 Ishihara has close connections with Nakasone Yasuhiro with whom he shares similar ideologies. His popularity once made him a potential candidate for prime minister, although he has never run for the position.20 Ishihara began his career as a writer after graduating from the Law School of Hitotsubashi University in 1956. He also wrote screenplays for his younger brother actor Yu¯jiro¯. In 1956, his first novel Taiyo¯ no kisetsu (Season of the Sun) won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award. The story describes the rebellious youth culture in postwar Japan. It was made into a film of the same title by director Furukawa Takumi in the same year and marked the screen debut of Yu¯jiro¯. Ishihara entered the political world with the help of Nakasone who fully supported him in his election for the upper house of the Diet in 1968 and into the lower house in 1972. When Nakasone became prime minister in 1982, their relationship was once worsened when Ishihara refused to join Nakasone’s faction within LDP. They later reconciled with each other and co-wrote the book Eien nare, Nihon (Long Live Japan) in 2001. Ishihara was elected as the Governor of Tokyo for three consecutive terms since 1999, including the 2003 election, in which he was re-elected with 3,080,000 votes, the highest number of votes in

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Japanese history. His eldest and third sons, Nobuteru and Hirataka also became members of the House of Representatives. Ishihara’s most influential book is “No” to ieru Nihon (The Japan That Can Say No, 1989) which he co-wrote with Morita Akio, a co-founder of Sony Corporation. Ishihara expressed his view on US–Japanese relations from a political perspective while Morita wrote from a businessman’s point of view.21 In the book, Ishihara voiced his abhorrence of the US, citing the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and trade frictions as examples of racist behavior.22 He also criticized the US for treating Japan as an inferior state while calling Japan an “equal partner.” He urged Japan to be more autonomous as “Japan is so vulnerable because our defenses were built in accordance with Washington’s wishes, not our own priorities.”23 He believed that Japan was financially and technologically competent to rebuild its military defense independently.24 Ishihara made several anti-foreign statements that that led him to be perceived as an ultra-nationalist. In a speech he made in front of a group of Self Defense Forces in April 2000, Ishihara used the word sangokujin (third world national) to criticize foreigners (mainly Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese) who entered Japan illegally to commit serious crimes. His choice of words was regarded as an expression of racial discrimination. As shown in the Yasukuni, a speech he gives at a memorial gathering in the shrine, he stresses that “the sleeping lion is Japan, not China.” This comment implies that Japan should not underestimate its potential while acknowledging China’s new-found dominance. Ishihara’s rightist sentiment was also reflected in his support for the new history textbook and refusal to acknowledge the Nanjing Massacre. He supports the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which was responsible for compiling the 2005 version of New History Textbook published by Fuso¯sha. This version downplayed issues such as the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women (sex slaves), which sparked outcries from China and South Korea. He also sponsors the production of Nanking no shinjitsu (The Truth about Nanjing) (2008, Mizushima Satoru), a three-part film series that denounces the Nanjing Massacre. Ishihara’s reputation as a nationalist is so deep-rooted that he was used as a model in the comedy Nihon igai zenbu chinbotsu (2006, The World Sinks except Japan, Kawasaki Minoru), a parody of Nihon chinbotsu (2006, Japan Sinks, Higuchi Shinji). The film uses self-deprecation to ridicule Japan’s low international status and tells the story of the whole world sinking except Japan. Leaders of the US, Russia, China, and

Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau 153

South Korea have to flatter the Japanese in order to take refuge in Japan. The film satirizes Japan’s international position that it can only receive respect from other countries when it is the only nation left on earth. The depreciation of the US dollar, the closing down of English schools, and American superstars’ loss of popularity are all mockeries of Japanese “slavery” to American culture. In the movie, Ishihara is parodied by Fujioka Hiroshi as Ishiyama Shinsaburo¯, Japan’s Minister of Defense, who constantly emphasizes saying “No” to American demands. He goes so far to set up the “Gaijin (Alien) Attack Force” to expel foreigners out of Japan. Such behavior has become synonymous with Ishihara. Ishihara’s Neo-conservative view of Japan’s imperial past is visible in For Those We Love, for which he wrote the script and acted as the supervising producer. As discussed previously, the film explicitly glorified World War II by romanticizing the sacrifices of kamikaze pilots. Right after it starts, Ishihara gives the audience a clear message of why he made the movie: I have the fortune to hear the poignant stories of the tokko¯ (suicide corps) recruits from Tome Torihama, mother of the kamikaze. I want to create a legacy on the bravery and beauty of Japanese back in those days. There is a scene where a group of young soldiers sing the military song Do¯ki no sakura (Cherry Blossom of the Same Season), in which the lyrics carry the meaning of “reunion at Yasukuni (as a dead body).” In the scene when his team is preparing to depart for their mission, Nakanishi tells his subordinates that their spirits would meet at the Yasukuni Shrine. These young people died for a higher cause and their sacrifice is adorable, something that all Japanese today should learn about: that is the Neo-conservative message that Ishihara seeks to deliver.

Kitano Takeshi Apart from violence, Kitano Takeshi’s films are famous for their nostalgia of Japanese traditions, culture, and values. Kitano was influenced by his mother’s enthusiasm in education during his childhood. However, he dropped out of Meiji University after two years of study as an engineering student to pursue a career as manzaishi (stand-up comedian). Later on he became a successful television personality (known as Beat Takeshi) and actor. Kitano has made movies that receive international acclaim and become one of the most influential Japanese directors.

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He has been a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Kitano also hosts a weekly television program called Beat Takeshi’s TV Tackle, a kind of debate among Japanese talents and politicians regarding controversial current issues. In the show, however, he usually plays the role of the facilitator (or outsider) rather than the debater. With his debut Sono otoko, kyo¯bo¯ ni tsuki (1989, Violent Cop), and later 3–4 x ju¯gatsu (1990, Boiling Point), Sonatine (1993), HANA-BI (1997, Fireworks) and Brother (2000), Kitano brought back a yakuza eiga (gangster films) boom in the 1990s, a time when Japan was suffering from economic recession and social instabilities (Figure 7.1). He rejects the legend of ninkyo¯ eiga (chivalry films), while his characters are pragmatic beings that carry out their own principle of Social Darwinism which is “do unto others before others do unto you.”25 However, unlike jitsuroku eiga (realistic gangster films) which portrays the yakuza as lack of jingi (chivalry), Kitano idealizes the outlaws by emphasizing nakama ishiki (fellow bonding). Brother, in particular, reflects how Kitano shares the Neo-conservative view that Americans do not consider the Japanese as their equals. In the film, Kitano constantly juxtaposes Japanese gangsters and

Figure 7.1 Brother

Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau 155

American gangsters; through whom he praises the Japanese for upholding traditional values while expressing contempt for the Americans. American gangsters look down on Yamamoto because he cannot speak English. Superficially, they allow Yamamoto to take over the drug dealing territory, but their real motive is to kill him and his gang. Yamamoto, however, understands the swear words used by the Americans that contain insult to the Japanese. Knowing that the Americans are not sincerely letting him own the territory, Yamamoto kills them before they can erase him. This shooting scene is relatively dramatic and exaggerated compared with Kitano’s other films, with Yamamoto shooting the American gangsters relentlessly beneath the table. Kitano also criticizes American individualism while showcasing his admiration for Japanese yakuza, who keep the code of loyalty and brotherhood. When the Italian mafia murders members of Yamamoto’s gang, Japanese members are ready to take vengeance for their brothers, but American members are reluctant to risk their lives. Yamamoto’s strong fellow bonding is displayed in the end when he gives all the money to Denny (Omar Epps) and tells him to run away. This is similar to Sonatine, in which Murakawa decides to face his enemy alone and tells his only surviving subordinate Ryo¯ji (Katsumura Masanobu) to leave. Kitano often portrays his heroes as strong and bold. This reflects his desire, at least in his movies, to build up the masculinity of Japanese men, whose social status has been on the decline since the 1990s. On the other hand, his heroes always meet their ends to counterbalance their idealized images. Heroes, acted by none other than Kitano himself, like Murakawa in Sonatine, Nishi in HANA-BI, and Yamamoto in Brother, all display masculinity, but they are all powerless when facing the gravity of their own situation. In Sonatine, although Murakawa manages to take revenge on his enemies, he kills himself in the end because he knows that he can never free himself from the never-ending yakuza battle. As he says to his girlfriend, “The more I fear of death, the more I want to die.” In HANA-BI, Nishi kills his wife and himself in the end because he knows that he cannot pay off the debts he owes to the gang and his wife’s condition is incurable. In Brother, Yamamoto knows that he cannot overpower the Italian mafia, so he chooses to face them alone and dies under their gunfire. These heroes who meet a tragic end reflect Kitano’s image of Japanese men and Japan as a whole: in a downward spiral with no way out. After Brother, Kitano drifted away from the yakuza genre and directed Dolls (2002), Zato¯ichi (2003), TAKESHIS’ (2005), Kantoku banzai! (2007, Glory to the Filmmaker!) and Akiresu to kame (2008, Achilles and the

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Tortoise). TAKESHIS’ and Glory to the Filmmaker! are regarded as parodies of Kitano himself and Japanese society. TAKESHIS’ begins and ends with the same two sequences, which reflect the mentality of most Japanese. The first sequence shows a group of American soldiers walking into a wrecked building where bodies of Japanese soldiers lie around. One of the Japanese soldiers played by Kitano has been faking death. When he opens his eyes, he sees an American soldier looking at him. The movie then cuts to a scene where Kitano, who plays a dual role as a yakuza leader, engages in a battle. After intense gunfights, Kitano is the only person left alive with everyone else dead. These two sequences present two totally different images of Kitano: a coward who is afraid of the Americans, and a superman who seems to be immortal. This brings out the real-life dilemma of the Japanese. On one hand, Japanese want their country to be considered a major power; on the other, they tend to be quiet when confronted by the Americans. Using films as a media, Kitano, as an actor and director, has always delivered a consistent message. While characters he portrays may meet a different end, the despair facing men in the Japanese society, and Kitano’s belief that the Japanese must overcome an obstacle (the US) before they can rediscover their own identity, reverberates in his work. Kitano’s message in his films echoes well with the core ideas of Neo-conservatism in Japan.

Matsumoto Hitoshi Like Kitano, Matsumoto Hitoshi is also a comedian-turned-director who has been famous as a member of a manzai duo, Downtown, since 1983. Matsumoto wrote regular columns in the weekly magazine Shu¯kan Asahi (Weekly Asahi) between 1994 and 1995. He expressed his personal view on various topics, which included social and political issues. These essays were later compiled and published as Isho (A Will) (1994) and Matsumoto (1995), which sold more than 2,000,000 copies in Japan, making him the highest tax-paying celebrity in 1994. In his books, Matsumoto often criticizes Japan’s submissiveness to the US. On February 9, 2001, a Japanese ship Ehime maru clashed with an American submarine off the coast of Hawaii, causing the deaths of nine Japanese students and teachers. The media were more concerned in covering the story of Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro¯ who continued to play golf after learning about the incident. Matsumoto voiced his anger in his TV shows, because he thought it was more urgent to report the cause of the incident, rather than blaming Mori for playing golf. Matsumoto also

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showed discontent with the release of Pearl Harbor (2001, Michael Bay) in Japan, claiming that the movie romanticized the Americans while demonizing the Japanese. He further criticized Japanese magazines for promoting it as one of the most anticipated films of summer that year. Moreover, Matsumoto blamed the government and politicians for being weak and not opposing the screening of the film.26 Matsumoto’s directorial debut, Dainipponjin (2007, Big Man Japan), is a satirical comedy that ridicules present Japan and its foreign policies. Through self-deprecation, the film criticizes and calls attention to Japan’s reliance on the US. It is shot in documentary style revolving around the life of Daisato¯ (Matsumoto Hitoshi) whose family has been playing the role of the “Dainipponjin” (Big Man Japan), a giant “hero” who defends Japan from the invasions of monsters. Being the sixth generation “Big Man Japan,” Daisato¯ is disrespected and unwelcomed by the masses. People throw stones at his house and write unwelcoming words on the walls outside. His wife even splits from him, worrying that his bad reputation will lead to discrimination against their daughter. The nostalgic and glorious days of his grandfather, who was the fourth generation “Big Man Japan,” reminds the audience of a glorious Imperial Japan in Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. In contrast, Daisato¯ is living at rock bottom: he does not even have a stable income. His degrading status signifies Japan’s declining political and economic influence since the 1990s. Daisato¯’s evasive response to the interviewer’s questions shows his lack of confidence and self-abasement, which Matsumoto thinks characterize most Japanese today. His fondness for things such as dried wakame (seaweed) and oritatami-kasa (folding umbrella) can be perceived as a search for self-comfort. This is because Daisato¯ thinks it is alright to be “small” unless there is a dangerous situation. The movie also ridicules the Japanese for being overly materialistic and superficial. For Daisato¯’s manager and commercial sponsors, Big Man Japan’s biggest asset is his huge body and not his ability to repel monsters. As seen in the film, his body is used to place commercial ads. When he is attacked mercilessly by a red monster, he turns his back and runs away. Ironically, the television live coverage of this incident receives the highest ratings, and the sponsors are more than happy because their ads can be clearly seen on Daisato¯’s back while he runs for his life. The red monster, whose appearance resembles North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, symbolizes the real-life threat to Japan: many Japanese now consider North Korea to be Japan’s main source of fear. In 1997, it was discovered that at least 16 Japanese were abducted to North Korea to teach Japanese in North

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Korean spy school.27 This issue intensified relations between Japan and North Korea. Aside from the missile tests conducted by North Korea, the uncertainty of North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons also poses a threat to Japan’s security. The government’s reserved response to these incidents disappointed Japanese society. The North Korean threat is also depicted in The World Sinks except Japan, in which a North Korean leader resembling Kim Jong-il attempts to take over the Japanese government to occupy Japan. American dominance over Japan is shown in the final sequence of Big Man Japan, when the American heroes, “Super Justice” and his family come to the rescue. Once the American heroes arrive on the scene, the red monster turns into a “dolly” who the heroes can easily overpower. Before Super Justice and his family deal the final blow to the dolly with power beams, they ask Big Man Japan to put his hands on top of theirs. He hesitates until one of the heroes turns to him and says “Zehi” (Please, I insist) in a friendly tone. At a glance, it seems that Big Man Japan is not taking an order; he is just being polite to accept the “invitation”. Ironically, however, his participation would not have changed the outcome; the power beam would still have been released, and the Americans would emerge triumphant, having saved Japan yet another time. The American heroes then ask Big Man Japan to share their victory, and carry him while they fly back home, during which he drops his shoe. His request to pick up his shoe is duly ignored. This sequence expresses Matsumoto’s impression of how Japan is treated by the US, her supposed partner: that the two are far from equals. Unfortunately, there is not much that Japan’s own superhero can do, let alone the ordinary people. In an interview Matsumoto gave in the official guidebook to Big Man Japan, he denied that he added scenes to reflect the social problems Japanese society was facing. Those scenes were there because he found them to be funny, but the satirical effect was never his intention. Matsumoto also pointed out that he wanted to hire an American to act as Super Justice, with the American flag printed on his underwear, but only gave up the idea after the level of acting and potential communication problems worried him. He was also surprised that some viewers were unable to figure out the identity of the red monster, saying that they should stop seeing films if after all the hints given in Big Man Japan and they still would not get it.28 One can see from these comments how Matsumoto hoped to leave his footprints with his debut: the current state of Japanese society worries him, the American presence

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discomforts him, but the lack of awareness among the Japanese public regarding these problems stings him the most.

Kubozuka Yo ¯suke Nationalist sentiment developed in the Heisei era is characterized by a rising star, Kubozuka Yo¯suke, who critics claimed represented the younger generation.29 Kubozuka graduated from Kanagawa Prefectural Yokosuka High School, a prominent high school in Kanagawa with many famous alumni such as former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro¯ and Physics Nobel laureate Koshiba Masatoshi. Kubozuka also published a number of books, such as 20 (2001), in which he shared his personal feelings and views on national identity. Kubozuka mainly plays characters who struggle to find their place in the society, such as Sugihara in GO (2001, Yukisada Isao), Yamaguchi in Kyo¯ki no sakura (2002, Madness in Bloom, Sonoda Kenji), and Hoshino in Ping Pong (2002, Sori Fumihiko). The choice of picking the much acclaimed Kubozuka as the leading role indicates that directors see him as the perfect fit to convey their messages. In fact, Kubozuka was heavily involved in the making of Madness in Bloom.30 In GO, Kubozuka plays a zainichi (resident Korean), Sugihara, who is frustrated by the racial discrimination he faces on a daily basis in Japan. Japanese youth’s uncertainty about their identity is another central theme of the movie. Sugihara’s girlfriend, Sakurai (Shibasaki Ko¯), is reluctant to tell him her full name, because she thinks her name, “Tsubaki,” is too “Japanese” and she is embarrassed by it. In the final scene, Sugihara keeps asking “What am I?” This question not only represents the uncertainty facing resident Koreans in Japan, but also that of Japanese in general. Sugihara once asks Sakurai’s father what is the meaning of “Nihon” (Japan), and the latter’s inability to answer the question symbolizes the damning deficiency of national consciousness even among Japanese adults. In Madness in Bloom, Kubozuka plays Yamaguchi who claims to be a nationalist but does not regard himself as a rightist. Every night Yamaguchi and his two friends go around Shibuya and beat whoever they consider as social scum and fake Japanese. Yamaguchi also criticizes right-wing yakuza for still upholding the objective of anti-communism, which is irrelevant to the current situation in Japan as the Soviet Union has disintegrated and communism no longer poses a threat. He suggests that nationalism should develop over time and claims that violence is

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an act of righteousness. As shown in the film, Japanese culture is being eroded by American culture and values; Shibuya is full of Western cultural elements including commercial ads for American clothing brands and cigarettes. The diminishing of Japanese culture is signified with the closing down of Yamaguchi’s favorite place, a traditional Japanese bookshop, which is going to be replaced by large bookstore chain, another sign of American cultural invasion. Yamaguchi believes that violence will wake up the national consciousness in Japanese people. However, when he enters the adult world, he discovers that he is powerless to make any influence. His failure to counter Saburo¯ (Eguchi Yo¯suke)’s intelligence shows that violence alone is insufficient to achieve his objective. Yamaguchi’s naivety is a reflection of today’s Japanese youths, who only vent out their discontent with society but cannot come up with any substantial ideas to reform Japan. To a certain extent, the film also criticizes extreme right-wing groups for merely carrying out violent activities to voice their desires. This is also the biggest distinction between Neo-conservatives and the extreme right-wing. Although Neo-conservatives are also considered as ultra-nationalists, they advocate reforming Japan through political ideologies, not violence. Most Neo-conservatives are young, well-educated politicians who are extremely proud of Japan and aim to turn Japan into a world political power. This is also the reason why Neo-conservatism is able to gain the popularity that extreme right-wingers cannot achieve. The gist of the movie is expressed by Aota (Harada Yoshio), who advises Yamaguchi to find his own ideology, advice that applies to all young Japanese. Ping Pong is another film that shows the uncertainty of Japanese people, particularly toward Asian neighbors like China. In the movie, Kubozuka stars as an ambitious and confident ping pong player, Hoshino. However, when he loses to a Chinese player named Kong (Sam Lee) and his childhood friend Sakuma (Okura Ko¯ji), while his best friend Tsukimoto (ARATA) shines at ping pong, Hoshino’s confidence begins to erode and he eventually gives up playing ping pong. Kong, whose language and playing style are “foreign” to Hoshino, represents Japan’s unfamiliarity with its Asian counterparts. It also signifies Japanese people’s fear for the rising China, which they perceive as a threat to their status in the world. Hoshino’s response to his defeats reflects the pessimistic attitude of Japanese who choose to avoid confronting the problem. Nevertheless, Kong, also referred as “China,” is not Hoshino’s main opponent, signifying that China should not be Japan’s major obstacle. When Hoshino regains his confidence and competes in the

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tournament, Kong is not the only opponent he has to defeat, he also has to overcome the defending champion Kazama (Nakamura Shido¯) and his best friend Tsukimoto. The ending of the film, that is Hoshino represents Japan in international tournaments, conveys the desire of Japan to play a more affirmative role on the global stage, and the belief that Japan would prevail. Kubozuka admitted that he was inspired by Ishihara Shintaro¯ and the comics of Kobayashi Yoshinori,31 who claims that a distorted view of history is what caused the problems Japan faces today. Kubozuka regarded it as necessary for the Japanese to re-examine the history in order to rediscover the strength of Japan.32 His support for Ishihara also explains his interest in participating in For Those We Love, for which Ishihara acted as the supervising producer. After finishing the movie, Kubozuka said in an interview that he felt grateful to those who fought in World War II because they contributed to peace in today’s Japan. He hoped this film might inspire young people to appreciate and cherish the peaceful days and enjoy every moment of their life.33 He is probably a suitable person to give such advice as he once fell off from the balcony of his ninth-floor apartment in Yokosuka in 2004. Despite only suffering from minor injuries, many speculated that he attempted to commit suicide. He and his agency denied this speculation afterwards, but the incident caused a stir in Japan. A suspected will was even found circulating on the Internet stating that he was committing suicide to express his strong opposition against the US for invading Iraq in 2003. Although the will was later found to be fake, it proves that Kubozuka’s image is highly politicized.

Conclusion Neo-conservatism has become a major component in the new nationalist agenda, which centers on two core ideas: building Japan into a normal, assertive country with a political presence on the international scene, and reshaping the values of Japanese society according to traditional virtues. Since the 1970s, Japan has exerted much effort in building its own foreign policies, hoping to make a stand that is different from the US. In 1975, Japan became a member of the G8 (Group of Eight). Being the only Asian country in this group, Japan represents Asian interests at G8 meetings. In 1977, Japan established official relations with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Japan is also committed to nuclear disarmament by signing the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty in 1970 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban

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Treaty in 1996. In 2000, Japan submitted a Draft Resolution on Nuclear Disarmament to the United Nations. Since 2003, Japan has been a member of the six-party talks that aim to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Japan’s determination to play an active role in politics is evident in the country’s decision to send the Self Defense Force to Iraq for humanitarian support in 2003, and the government hoped to strengthen its bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Japan wanted to improve its international status through the United Nations, because it provides opportunities for Japan to be actively involved in international affairs. Japan’s efforts can be observed through its participation in peacekeeping missions and financial contributions.34 As discussed before, films that deal with Japan’s World War II past and problems within its society since the 1990s carry with them a strong flavor of Neo-conservatism. These films serve as a reminder to the public of the critical situation of their country. War-related films such as Summer of the Moonlight Sonata, The Firefly, and Yamato convey messages that Japanese people should learn about their country’s “real” history.35 Through their encounters with people who have experienced World War II, the young characters in the movies learn to appreciate and respect those who sacrificed their lives fighting, and it is the hope of these filmmakers that somehow Japanese youth would shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding Japan into a great country. In Yamato, the young boy Atsushi (Ikematsu So¯suke) takes the initiative of driving the boat in the end, which signifies that the future of Japan lies in the hands of this younger generation. Neo-conservatism also aims to arouse national awareness of the peril Japan is facing, and encourage preservation of traditional Japanese culture and values. This is accompanied by a campaign that is anti-foreign in nature, particularly regarding the influence of the US. Popular celebrities such as Ishihara Shintaro¯, Kitano Takeshi, Matsumoto Hitoshi, and Kubozuka Yo¯suke all express their distaste of American influence in Japanese society in the movies in which they have participated, albeit subtly and in different ways. While they recognized the importance of maintaining good relation with the US, Neo-conservatives call for “equal status” between the two nations, instead of remaining an American subordinate.36 For Ishihara, that means saying “No” to American demands. For Kitano, that means rediscovering cultural roots that are unique to Japan’s people. For Matsumoto, that means realizing the discrimination that Japan receives from the US in everyday life. For Kubozuka and his directors, that means every youngsters must engage

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in a soul-searching process to rediscover who they are. These messages are core ideas that Neo-conservatives in Japan seek to convey, and their champions in the filmmaking industry have delivered. The rise of young Japanese politicians in their 40s and 50s who voice their Neo-conservative views in public suggests that the ideology is now growing in Japan’s political scene. They include Nakagawa Sho¯ichi, who was Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries when Koizumi Junichiro¯ was prime minister; Abe Shinzo¯, who was prime minister between 2006 and 2007; and Ishiba Shigeru, who is Minister of Defense under Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo. Correspondingly, this trend will also continue to affect the Japanese filmmaking industry. For instance, the release of the controversial movie in April 2008, The Truth about Nanjing and the opposition toward the screening of Yasukuni reflect that a certain segment of the public, encouraged by the views of prominent Neo-conservative figures, is no longer willing to tolerate the traditional and foreignimposed view of history. Under such circumstances, it is reasonable to assume that Neo-conservatism will continue to make its presence felt in Japanese cinema, and utilize the industry to satisfy its goals.37

Glossary Anpo-Jo¯yaku (Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America): First signed in 1951, the treaty was revised in 1960. It is still intact today and is considered one of the most important treaties signed between Japan and the US. Anti-Anpo Movement: For fear that Japan would be forced into another war as a US ally, protests and demonstrations followed after it was made public that the Japanese government was going to renew the Anpo-Jo ¯yaku* with the US in 1959. The first Anti-Anpo Movement took place from 1959 to 1960 and ended when then Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke resigned after the signing of the treaty in 1960. The second Anti-Anpo Movement took place in the late 1960s when the treaty was set to renew automatically, but was considered much smaller in scale than the first movement. Article 9: Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes,” therefore Japan shall not maintain an army, navy, or air force. It came into effect in 1947.

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Bushido ¯ (book): The full title is Bushido ¯: The Soul of Japan, written by Nitobe Inazo ¯ in 1900. Bushido ¯ detailed the way of the samurai according to the understanding of the author, and discussed how values once held by the samurai class were now shared by all Japanese. Chu¯shingura: A Japanese classic based on an incident that took place in 1701. Kira Yoshihisa, a high-ranking official of the bakufu, was attacked by Asano Naganori while he was staying in the Edo Castle. The sho ¯gun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, upon hearing the incident, ordered Asano to commit hara-kiri (stomach-cutting), and the bakufu confiscated all assets of the Asano clan. In order to avenge their master’s death, 47 former Asano subordinates raided the residence of Kira the year after, killing him and brought his severed head to Asano’s grave. The story is so revered among Japanese even today and has been adapted into screenplays, films, and numerous TV series. Dankai no sedai: Refers to people born in the first baby boom after World War II (1947–9). Hyo ¯gaki sedai: Refers to the group of people who found difficulties in securing employment during the 1990s when the economic bubble burst. This term derives from the term shu ¯shoku hyo ¯gaki (ice-age of employment), which refers to the 1990s when Japan suffered from economic recession, a time when securing a full-time job was difficult. Nanjing Massacre: The atrocities committed by the Japanese military after the Imperial Army seized control of Nanjing. China claims that around 300,000 were killed in the siege while Japan’s figures vary from 3000 to 150,000. Shinjinrui: Or Generation X. Refers to people, whose values and perspectives are different from the previous generation’s, rejecting the conventional mainstream culture. Tokubetsu ko ¯gekitai: Also known as tokko ¯ or kamikaze, the term refers to suicide attacks by Japanese military pilots during World War II. Japan began using this tactic to attack the Allied troops in October 1944. Tokyo Trial: Also known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. It was set up by the Allied powers to try leaders of Japan who committed war crimes during World War II. It ran from May 3, 1946 to November 12, 1948. Twenty-five Japanese were charged for committing crimes against peace and were classified as Class A criminals. The trial caused much controversy because Emperor Hirohito, the “leader”

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of Japan at that time, was not charged with any crimes. It was also considered an unfair trial designed by the victors against Japan because the American use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not listed on the agenda. Yakeato sedai: Refers to the generation of people (born 1921–41) who experienced World War II in their childhood. Yasukuni (film): A documentary directed by Chinese director Li Ying in 2008. It displays different voices (both supporters’ and objectors’ opinions) toward the controversial issues involving the Yasukuni shrine*. Japanese Diet lawmakers regarded the film as anti-Japanese after previewing it in March 2008. The film was originally scheduled to make its first-run screening in five theaters in Tokyo and Osaka in April 2008. However, these theaters were pressured by threatening calls from right-wing groups and eventually cancelled their screenings. Yasukuni (shrine): A shinto ¯ shrine dedicated to all the war dead who have fought for the nation since the Meiji period. Separated from the government after World War II and became the center of controversy when 14 Class A war criminals were enshrined by shinto ¯ priests in 1978. To avoid controversy, no prime ministers of Japan before Nakasone Yasuhiro ¯ ever visited the shrine on War Memorial Day (August 15). Yasukuni Controversy: Yasukuni was supposed to be released nationwide in Japan in March 2008. However, after news of the screening was leaked into the press, right-wing groups demonstrated outside the theaters that were scheduled to show the documentary, and the unprecedented premiere for Diet members only produced wide dismay among Diet members. The documentary changed venues later on and managed to show in limited number of theaters. It generated debates on whether freedom of speech is under threat in Japan.

Notes The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Sumitomo Foundations, who provided a Fiscal 2006 Grant for a Japan-related Research Project. 1. Ishihara won all his elections in landslide fashion. Similarly, Koizumi became the second Japanese prime minister to serve two full terms in postWorld War II Japan. 2. High 2003. 3. Iwamoto 2004.

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4. Baskett 2008. 5. Mori and Kunio 2008: 30–4. 6. Most of these movies gained public attention, while Pride’s box-office stood at 1870 million yen, The Firefly at 2330 million yen, Yamato at 5050 million yen, and For Those We Love at 1050 million yen. Yamato, released at the start of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, ranked 20th in the alltime Japanese film box-office ranking (General Works 2008). 7. This was the slogan that Nakasone advocated in 1984 when he was re-elected as the president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). 8. The first prime minister in post-war Japan (1946–54), Yoshida emphasized the economic development of Japan and dependence on the American military protection and foreign policies. His conservative policies became a dominant doctrine in Japanese politics throughout the Cold War. 9. Klien 2002: 88. 10. Nakasone withdrew the policy of spending less than 1 per cent on military expenses implemented by Miki Takeo’s government (1974–6) and used more than 1 per cent of Japan’s GNP on military expenses. 11. Nakasone 1978/1984: 92–3. 12. Nakasone’s visit drew criticisms from the Chinese government at the time. Before his visit, other prime ministers of Japan preferred to call their visit a private one and avoided the War Memorial Day. 13. Ibid.: 95. 14. Ibid.: 18. 15. Nakasone is now the chairman of the Shin Kenpo ¯ Seitei Giin Do ¯mei (The Parliamentarians’ Alliance for Establishing a New Constitution). The aim of the group is to “get rid of the out-of-date and foreign-imposed old constitution” (Wikipedia, 2009). 16. Ozawa and Hashimoto are considered the two most influential politicians in 1990s Japan. Ozawa was originally a LDP member. He was elected into the Diet in 1969 and worked as Minister of Home Affairs under Nakasone in 1985. In 1989, Ozawa was elected as LDP’s Secretary General. He became one of the influential leaders within LDP. In 1993, Ozawa left LDP and formed the Japan Renewal Party with Hata Tsutomu, which eventually led to LDP’s loss in the election and it becoming a minor party in the Diet for the first time in 38 years. In the same year, Ozawa published a book called Nihon kaizo ¯ keikaku (Blueprint for a New Japan) in which he advocated political reforms and asserted that Japan should take an active role in international affairs. In 2006, Ozawa was elected head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), after merging his Liberal Party with the DPJ in 2003. In the July 2007 upper house election, DPJ sustained the largest victory in history under his leadership. In May 2009, however, Ozawa stepped down as the president of DPJ amid political fund scandal. After his resignation, he remained an influential figure in the party while working as DPJ’s chief election strategist. Victory in the 2009 general election saw him staying as a powerful player, until two of his former secretaries and a current aide were indicted for misreporting at his fund management body (Kyodo News 2010). Hashimoto served as the prime minister between 1996 and 1998. When he took office, one of his political agendas was to increase Japan’s autonomy in foreign policies. In 1997, he met with US President Clinton to discuss the return of

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

Marine Corps Air Station Futena, an American marine base in Okinawa. In the same year, he also met with former Russian President Yeltsin and made agreements on Russo-Japanese economic cooperation. Klein 2002: 90. Koizumi is not entirely a Neo-conservative. This is shown in his foreign policies toward Asia and the US. He was assertive on issues such as North Korea’s abduction of Japanese and nuclear development. He also visited Yasukuni six times when serving as prime minister. Despite oppositions and criticisms from China and South Korea, Koizumi insisted his visits to the shrine were justifiable. However, toward the US, he adopted the conservative pro-US policies such as supporting President George W. Bush’s decision to send troops to Iraq. He was also the first Japanese prime minister to be invited to board the Air Force One and stay at Camp David, a mountain retreat of the US President. Ishihara and Yasuhiro 2001: 187–8. This phenomenon is known as “Ishihara shusho ¯ taibo ¯ron” (View of Expecting Ishihara to be the Prime Minister). See Maeno, Tetsu 2002. The book sold more than a million copies in Japan. The English edition was published in 1991 but Morita did not participate in this version. Ishihara 1991: 28. Ibid.: 72. Ibid.: 150. Schilling 2003: 19. Matsumoto 2002: 145–6, 213–14. The official number is 16, but the number varies from account to account. For example, the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea (NARKN) claims that there are around 100 victims (Sukuukai 2008). Ogawa 2007: 22–6. Nakajima 2006: 58–63. See the homepage of Madness in Bloom (Toei 2008). Kobayashi is a manga artist whose comics contain controversial political statements. His famous works include Go ¯manizumu sengen (Haughtiness Manifesto) and Shin gomanism sengen supesharu: Senso ¯ron (Neo Gomanizumu Manifesto Special: On War), which deny Japanese war crimes such as the Nanjing Massacre. Maeno 2002. Kobayashi 2007. Klein 2002: 96. That is, a revisionist’s view of history. See earlier reference to Neo-conservative historical views. Both Ishihara and Nakasone Yasuhiro proposed that Japan should maintain a cooperative relation with the US and the Anpo Treaty should be reformed so that Japan can share more responsibilities in keeping world orders (Ishihara and Nakasone 2001: 222, 225–6). Since former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio assumed office on September 16, 2009, however, there appears to have been a change of attitude in the Japanese government. According to Hatoyama, “[t]he new government of Japan has declared that it attaches great importance to Asian diplomacy.

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Rethinking a New National Identity in Heisei Japan The main pillar of this policy is the initiative for an ‘East Asian community’ … I personally cherish this ‘yu-ai’ philosophy. … Within ‘yu-ai,’ people respect the freedom and human dignity of others just as they respect their own freedom and human dignity” (Hatoyama 2009). After the landslide election victory, Hatoyama has been meeting with world leaders and actively preaching his “East Asian community” ideology. At first glimpse, there lies the hope that Japan’s relationship with its Asian neighbors could reach a historical high in the near future. However, the Hatoyama administration needed to dedicate much of its energy to deal with domestic issues, including a growing budget deficit and his failure to keep a promise on abolishing tax on gasoline (Tabuchi 2009). Furthermore, it has been revealed that Hatoyama’s aide has been falsifying his funding reports. Later on, the scandal spread as it has been reported that the prime minister’s mother Yasuko donated about 900 million yen to Hatoyama’s political fund management body, an amount that would violate the Political Funds Control Law (Hongo and Martin 2009). As the government strives to develop closer ties with its Asian counterparts, it is expected that domestic issues could also trigger opposition against the government’s foreign policy stance.

Bibliography Baskett, Michael (2008) The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Black and Blue (eds) (1999) Japanese Films 1955–1964 Sho ¯wa sanju¯ nendai no hitto shiri¯zu jo ¯ ge (Japanese Films 1955–1964: The Hit Sequels of the 30th to 40th Years of the Sho ¯wa Period 1 & 2), Tokyo: Neko Publishing. Bu, Ping and Wang Xiliang (2005) Riben youyi wenti yanjiu (A Study of Right-Wing Issues in Japan), Beijing: Academy of Social Sciences. General Works (2008) SF Movie Data Bank, http://www.generalworks.com/databank/movie/rank04.html (Accessed September 8, 2008). Hatoyama, Yukio (2009) “Japan’s New Commitment to Asia: Toward the Realization of an East Asian Community,” http://www.kantei.go.jp/ foreign/hatoyama/statement/200911/15singapore_e.html (Accessed January 4, 2010). High, Peter B. (2003) The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War 1931–1945, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Hongo, Jun and Alex Martin (2009) “LDP Calls Hatoyama to Account,” The Japan Times, November 28. Hori, Yukio (1993) Sengo no uyoku seiryoku (Power of the Post-War Right-Wing), Tokyo: Keiso ¯ Shobo ¯. Ishihara, Shintaro ¯ and Nakasone Yasuhiro (2001) Eien nare, Nihon (Long Live Japan), Tokyo: PHP Kenkyu ¯jo. Ishihara, Shintaro ¯ (1991) The Japan That Can Say No, trans. Frank Baldwin, London: Simon & Schuster Ltd. Originally published 1989. Iwamoto, Kenji (2004) Nihon eiga to nashonarizumu (Japanese Films and Nationalism), Tokyo: Shinwasha. Keene, Donald (trans. and ed.) (1971) Chu¯shingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, New York: Columbia University Press.

Kinnia Shuk-ting Yau 169 Klien, Susanne (2002) Rethinking Japan’s Identity and International Role, New York and London: Routledge. Kobayashi, Yo ¯ko (2007) “Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku: Tokushige Satoshi and Kubozuka Yo ¯suke tantoku intabyu¯” (For Those We Love: Exclusive interview with Tokushige Satoshi and Kubozuka Yo ¯suke), Cinema Today, http:// cinematoday.jp/page/A0001384 (Accessed March 3, 2008). Kyodo News (2010) “Maehara Hoping Ozawa will Reach Decision about his Future by Himself”, Kyodo News, February 23. Maeno, Tetsu (2002) “Tatejikuha no shinboru Ishihara shusho ¯ taibo ¯ron no haikei” (The Symbol of Vertical Faction: Behind the View of Expecting Ishihara to be the Prime Minister), Gekkan Seiron, http://www.sankei.co.jp/seiron/koukoku/2002/ronbun/06-r5.html (Accessed March 27, 2008). Matsumoto, Hitoshi (2002) Playbo ¯zu: Matsumoto Hitoshi no jinsei so ¯dan (Playboy Monk: Consultation of Life with Matsumoto Hitoshi), Tokyo: Shueisha. Mori, Tatsuya and Suzuki Kunio (2008) Eiga Yasukuni: Jo ¯ei chu¯shi wo meguru taigiron (Yasukuni the Film: Debate Surrounding the Cancellation of Screening), Tokyo: Tsukuru Publishing. Nakajima, Takeshi (2006) “Kubozuka Yo ¯suke to Heisei Neo-nashonarizumu wa doko e iku no ka” (Where will Kubozuka Yo ¯suke and Heisei Neo-nationalism Lead to?), Ronza, January. Nakasone, Yasuhiro (1978) Xinde baoshou lilun, trans. Jin Sucheng and Zhang Heping as The New Conservative Theory (1984), Beijing: World Knowledge Press. Nitobe, Inazo ¯ (1990) Wushidao, trans. Zong Jianxin as The Way of the Samurai (2006), Shandong: Shandong Pictorial Press. Ogawa, Hitoshi (ed.) (2007) Dainipponjin Official Guide (Big Man Japan official guide), Tokyo: Nikkei Business Publications. Richie, Donald (2001) A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, Tokyo: Kodansha International. Schilling, Mark (2003) Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films, Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. Sukuukai (2008) National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, http://www.sukuukai.jp/narkn/ (homepage) (Accessed September 1, 2008). Tabuchi, Hiroko (2009) “Harsh Realities Stand in the Way of a Leader’s Vision of a New Japan,” The New York Times, December 23. Toei (2008) Madness in Bloom Profile, http://www.toei-video.co.jp/data/kyoki/ profile.html (Accessed August 28, 2008). Wikipedia (2009) http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki (Accessed March 1, 2010).

8 Cinematic Imagination of Border-Crossing in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta: Comrades, Almost a Love Story and Durian, Durian Tsung-yi Michelle Huang

Recent years have seen Hong Kong undergo a process of regionalization. Integration with the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to become a mega global city-region is placed high on both the political and economic agenda for Hong Kong’s development in the twenty-first century.1 For a long time, the relationship between Hong Kong and the PRD was defined largely in economic terms, that is, the dominant mode of “front shop, back factory” referring to a partnership based on comparative advantages. Yet the 1990s witnessed a dramatic change in dynamics. It was a time when Hong Kong met unprecedented challenges, including the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, deep economic recessions, SARS, and a high unemployment rate. On top of these socio-economic blows, the return to China, its ever-stronger presence in the global economy, and the increasing intra-regional urban competition with such neighboring cities as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Singapore, all contributed to motivating Hong Kong to reposition and redefine itself in relation to China, and particularly to the PRD. Integration with the PRD is loudly voiced by official and private promoters alike. For example, The Better Hong Kong Foundation, a nonprofit organization with political affiliations, urges Hong Kong to locate itself less as the gateway or mediator than the commercial hub of the PanPearl River Delta (Yeung 2003, page vii, emphasis added). In his Policy Address 2003 Tung Chee Hwa states that the direction of Hong Kong’s development is to consolidate the economic relation with China, that is, to integrate into the Pearl River Delta’s economy (Deng, 55). Tung’s “Go North” policy wins confirmation and credibility after the conception and implementation of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic 170

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Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003. This trade agreement, aiming to facilitate closer economic cooperation, justifies and galvanizes the speed of the regionalization of Hong Kong. Following the CEPA the second regional agreement, the Pan-Pearl River Delta Regional Cooperation (PPRD), was signed in 2004. Targeting the Shanghai/Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone as its competitor, the PPRD economic zone ambitiously expanded to cover South China’s nine provinces, Hong Kong and Macau, further pushing Hong Kong toward the PRD.2 If the “front shop, back factory” mode registers Hong Kong as a global city-region in the sense that it is a metropolis with a huge hinterland, the current trend of integration of Hong Kong and the PRD corresponds to another distinctive type of Allen J. Scott’s categorization of global city-region, that is the urban linkage across borders in the form of a Hong Kong–Shenzhen–Guangzhou network.3 Hong Kong and the PRD also exemplify a city-region which serves a double function of economic trading and political governance (Jonas and Ward, 171). Here I hasten to add that the complexity of city-regions cannot be exhausted by their morphology or dual functions. Rather, as Andrew Jonas and Kevin Ward remind us, we have to “conceptualize the emergence of ‘city-regions’ as the product of a particular set of economic, cultural, environmental and political projects, each with their own logics” (176, emphasis added). This insightful observation inspires me to pursue ways to see the city-region as a cultural project and comprehend its cultural logic at work. I argue that one strategic point of departure lies in excavating the relationship between identity formation and regional integration. As Yang Chun points out, one of the obstacles to interaction between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong is the lack of a regional identity, and therefore it is paradoxically “an integrated region in lack of identity” (2006: 75). If Yang is right, how do we grasp such a paradox? When integration produces new aspirations, are economic and political alliances inadequate to give rise to a new imagined community? What languages and cultural forms are generated to help us understand the integration without a regional identity? Indeed, how does culture come into play in the process of regionalization? To answer these questions, I will look at identity imagination in the context of regionalization, by exploring two representative contemporary Hong Kong films, Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996) and Durian, Durian (2000), that address the cross-border subjects between Hong Kong and the PRD at different phases. Particular attention will be paid both to the ways Hong Kong people conceive of linkage and integration from their everyday encounter with those who are brought about by cross-border flow, and the meanings of regionalization from the perspective and

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experience of those who move across the border between Hong Kong and the PRD. As micro and artistic accounts of the integration, these two cultural texts illustrate how the border of city-regions, as Étienne Balibar describes, “are creating problems in the heart of civic space where they generate conflicts, hopes, and frustration for all sorts of people, as well as inextricable administrative and ideological difficulties for states” (109–10, emphasis added). The myriad emotions and feelings evoked by border-crossing provide us a window through which to see the (im)possibility of a regional identity of Hong Kong and the PRD. First I analyze representations of border-crossing in Comrades, Almost a Love Story and Durian, Durian in the context of Hong Kong’s relationship with the PRD at different historical junctures of integration to illustrate the complexity of recognizing those who come to Hong Kong as a result of regionalization. I argue that Comrades, Almost a Love Story, Peter Chan’s box-office success before the handover, is a romance that foresees the emergence of a new social subject in Hong Kong, namely new immigrants from the Mainland, particularly the PRD. I will explain how the characterization of the female protagonist from Guangzhou as a “fake Hong Kong girl” as well as the lack of representation of her hometown Guangzhou interestingly echo a long-held identity imagination of Hong Kong as a global city facing the world, turning its back to the PRD. The Hong Kong–PRD relationship as seen in the film corresponds to the “front shop, back factory” economic partnership. On the other hand, Fruit Chan’s Durian, Durian points to another possibility for defining one’s imagined community shaped by the ever-intense regionalization. The film not only presents the PRD as a concrete endpoint of the city-region network instead of an empty narrative signifier merely to contrast or complement Hong Kong’s identity as Asia’s world city, but also offers a more realistic version of the multiplicity of a new translocal community in Hong Kong’s city-region and the problems involved in cross-border governance. Besides suggesting a contrapuntal relationship between the films and the geopolitical changes between Hong Kong and the PRD, I attempt to highlight how both films presuppose a new audience, anticipating the emergence of Hong Kong as a global city-region and of a new social subject. The hospitality shown in different degrees in the films suggests a possibility for regional integration to reformulate a collective identity. In other words, the films articulate a politics of recognition. The “recognition” of the cross-border subject here carries two meanings. First, employing cross-border people as the narrating protagonists, the films push front and center their existence in Hong Kong. More importantly,

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through the narrative plot and perspective of the film, cross-border people are endowed with subjectivity and respected as individuals with agency. Despite living under a limited social and material context, they are entitled to the right to urban space and the possibility of moving across borders. The films shed light on their aspirations and frustrations as well as a vast array of living and emotional needs. What cannot be ignored is that the politics of recognition in these films does not merely polish the image of the other and preach hospitality, but negotiates a new self/other relationship and sense of boundary through casting, generic conventions, narrative strategies, and cinematic language.

Comrades, Almost a Love Story: Almost a tale of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, but not quite Narrating the love affair of a couple coming from Wuxi and Guangzhou to Hong Kong from 1986 to 1996, the director ingeniously takes the romance of new immigrants from the Mainland to define the identity of Hong Kong (people). In an interview Peter Chan voices his deep commitment to telling a story of Hong Kong people: I’ve always wanted to film a story on the topic of immigration to reflect the “rootless status” of Hong Kong people. I think one can love one’s homeland so much only because he does not live there. When I filmed Comrades: Almost a Love Story, it was 1996, the very time when Hong Kong people felt so lost, so they can relate to the meaning of drifting in the film. 1987 was when Hong Kong stocks plunged, and 1995, Teresa Teng passed away. When watching the film, the audience would be reminiscent of the day and feel connected with the characters, knowing without even thinking about it.4 The question is, apart from appealing to a shared historical memory, how does the story of new immigrants move the Hong Kong audience, since new immigrants from the Mainland have been conceived in negative images? As Hon-chu Leung indicates, although Hong Kong is “a land for immigrants, when examined from the official regulations and common bias against new immigrants, Hong Kong does not welcome its immigrants much, even when, or especially when, they are immigrants from the Mainland” (97). The answer partly lies in how the characterization and casting of new immigrant protagonists are skillfully calibrated to allay the uncertainties as well as tantalize the desires of a mass audience at a critical

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historical juncture of integrating with China. For one thing, although dressed in an outdated manner, the hero Xiaojun Li is good-looking and kind, unlike the stock character of the rude and illiterate Ah-Chan (McDonogh and Wong, 131).5 More crucial is the representation of the female protagonist Li Qiao. Chan comments on how he decides to characterize his heroine as a Cantonese girl: “[I]n the beginning, Li Qiao was set as a girl coming from Shanghai to Hong Kong and speaking Putonghua (i.e. Standard Mandarin). Yet the Hong Kong actors didn’t work hard learning Putonghua. Even Maggie Cheung wasn’t serious about it. So, four days later, we had to change the original plan and re-characterize Li Qiao as a Cantonese girl. This way, she sounds like a fake Hong Kong girl and creates better dramatic effects in characterization” (emphasis added). Chan’s arguments have to be understood in light of the trans-local network of Hong Kong. The linguistic and cultural affinity between Guangdong and Hong Kong, which are historically and geographically connected, turns the Cantonese girl played by Maggie Cheung into what Peter Chan calls a “fake Hong Kong girl.” When Li Qiao finally confesses to Xiaojun that she is from Guangdong, Xiaojun smiles and replies: “In fact I’ve guessed it. Then, we are comrades.” Li Qiao instantly retorts the “comradeship” comparison: “Hell with ‘we are comrades.’ We speak Cantonese, watch Hong Kong TV programs, and drink Vitasoy. We are so close to Hong Kong.”6 Li Qiao’s self-definition via the imagination of Hong Kong and Guangdong as an integrated community foregrounds the intimate relationship between Hong Kong and the PRD. The two areas are not only geographically contiguous but also so much alike in language, culture, and even everyday commodities. It is the connection between Guangdong and Hong Kong that enables the “fake Hong Kong girl” Li Qiao to play a crucial role in negotiating boundary and in forming the imagination of a flexible cross-border identity. Li Qiao’s identity as a new immigrant suggests the advent of a new social subject in Hong Kong: the contiguity of the PRD shapes her Cantonese identity as the medium through which the Hong Kong audience can both identify with and at the same time keep a distance from the new cross-border community. On the one hand, compared with Xiaojun from the “North,” Li Qiao is a Cantonese girl who not only resembles Hong Kong people but also embraces Hong Kong spirit to such an extent that she embodies Hong Kong’s core values, in particular its entrepreneurialism—diligent, smart, down-to-earth, and enthusiastic about earning money and investment of all kinds.7 To Xiaojun, Li Qiao is the mouthpiece of Hong Kong culture and not much different

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from Hong Kong people both in appearance and in thoughts: “[Y]our manners, look, behaviors, and features are so much like Hong Kong people.” Li Qiao plays Xiaojun’s mentor and instructs him how to adapt himself to the modernity of the global city: she advises that he should learn English (“You can work anywhere if you learn English well!”), learn to use an ATM card, share the business of selling cassettes, and so on.8 Li also buys stocks and trades in foreign exchange. When finding out that Xiaojun has no idea about what the Deutsche Mark is, she says to him: “[E]ven the old ladies in the traditional market know stocks and foreign exchange can make money. […] Stocks are the national products of Hong Kong, just like oil in Arab countries and durians in Thailand. If you want to be rich in Hong Kong, you must buy stocks” (emphasis added).9 Portraying Li Qiao as a Cantonese-turned-Hong Kong girl allows the Hong Kong audience to regard her as their kindred spirit, and thus the Other they choose to identify with. As Agnes Shuk-mei Ku indicates, “according to the mainstream discourse of Hong Kong, typical Hong Kong people are those who are successful, practical, and hard-working, and they are usually treated as its social subject. They become the paradigm to examine the foreign Other in the society” (364). Comrades also reinforces the audiences’ affinity with Li Qiao’s identity as a Cantonese girl by representing her Hong Kong experience as a typical Bildungsroman, which corresponds to the process of new immigrants’ assimilation into Hong Kong. Li Qiao’s transformation endorses the Hong Kong image developed since the 1960s: “The economy was portrayed as a place where Hong Kong people could enjoy freedom and also a place where they could enjoy personal transformation” (Ho, 29). As the narrative unfolds, Li Qiao transforms herself from a Cantonese girl into someone who is “more Hong Kong than Hong Kong people.” The process of assimilation parallels the realization of the Hong Kong dream, which means being successful in this global city. When Xiaojun sees the well-dressed Li Qiao, he tells her: “Finally you have become what you have always wanted to be. I am sure now no one calls you Chinese girl anymore.” Li Qiao replies happily: “Yeah. In five-star hotels, they speak English to me. When I go shopping, no one gives me any look. Last month, when I went back to my hometown to have my house built, my old neighbors couldn’t even recognize me. I told my mother: ‘Finally, I can be a Hong Kong citizen.’” Although the hometown is included in the Hong Kong dream of the new immigrants. it only serves as an index of success. While Li Qiao emphasizes that no one can recognize her when she returns home, her tone is tinted with pride and excitement rather than loss and sorrow. To Li Qiao, to be a Hong Kong resident means to be

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able to afford to stay in luxurious hotels, squander money shopping, and, most important of all, speak fluent English. Here language becomes a label of social status, with English replacing Cantonese as a symbol of class advancement.10 When the new immigrants’ assimilation intersects with Hong Kong’s long-assumed identity as a global city, the border-crossing Other can easily become a member of the imagined community.11 Another narrative strategy that facilitates the audiences’ selective identification relies on Li Qiao’s perception of herself as such an authentic Hong Konger that she reiterates Hong Kong’s rhetoric that constructs Mainlanders in exclusionary terms to keep a distance from those new immigrants who cannot become “fake Hong Kong people.” At the beginning of Comrades, Li Qiao refuses to reveal her identity as a Chinese immigrant like Xiaojun. She would exploit the stereotype of people from the Mainland to distinguish herself as a local. When Li Qiao introduces Xiaojun to go to the English class and thereby gets commission for herself, the clerk there teases her: “Hey, Cantonese girl! Taking advantage of your comrade again?” Li Qiao immediately rebuts: “What comrade? He is only a boor from the North, speaking Mandarin.” Here, Li’s distinction of her own identity from that of a Mainlander expresses Hong Kong’s long-standing sense of superiority and prejudice against China as an economic backwater. Noticeably, language functions in the film as the means of differentiating the other (specifically, Cantonese versus Putonghua). With the advantage of fluency in Cantonese, Li Qiao can easily pass as a Hong Kong resident. For instance, soon after Li Qiao and Xiaojun know each other, he asks her whether she is from China. Li Qiao replies: “Of course not. You can tell from my Cantonese.” Then she comments in Putonghua: “People who speak Putonghua may not necessarily be Mainlanders,” and adds with excessive complacency in Cantonese, “but those who can’t speak Cantonese are certainly Mainlanders.” The dialogue here not only highlights the sense of supremacy in Cantonese/Hong Kong identity, but also underscores how outsiders can be easily identified.12 This double function psychologically helps to mollify the possible anxiety of the city’s fretting populace over the cross-border population flow. In other words, the heroine’s ambiguous identity allows a flexible imagination of symbolic borders to take shape in the film. Li Qiao’s function as a Cantonese/fake Hong Kong resident accentuates the Hong Kong-centered ideology and reinforces the stereotyped distinction between the Hong Kong people and the immigrants from the Mainland, between the self and the Other. The heroine’s Cantonese identity enables her to speak out for the Hong Kong people and paradoxically

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encourages them to treat her as the Other, and thus feel no obligation to endorse Li Qiao’s over-simplified and exaggerated “fake Hong Kong” perspective. On the other hand Comrades still grants credibility to the heroine’s narrative: her cross-border point of view serves to reflect the significance of recognizing a newly emerging community in Hong Kong. Encountering a large number of immigrants and visitors from the Mainland is a reality Hong Kong people have to face. Li Qiao asks Xiaojun, “Do you know how many Chinese there are in Hong Kong? The newspaper says up to one-fifth of Hong Kong population is Chinese. In fact, this place is crowded with Mainlanders. Yet you can’t tell if they do not speak.” The differentiating function of language is again highlighted. Through Li Qiao the audience is invited to rethink the linkage between Hong Kong and the Mainland. For instance, Xiaojun once pops a question: “Li Qiao, why do they call me ‘uncle’?” Li Qiao’s gut response “No. They should call you Ah-Chan” is followed by an inspiring observation: “To tell the truth, a lot of Hong Kong people are from the Mainland. Aren’t their grandfathers and fathers ‘uncles’ as well?”13 At the end of Comrades, the scene where Li Qiao, as a tour guide in NY, shows travelers from Mainland China around the Statue of Liberty prefigures the birth of the new Chinese/PRD subject. Two tourists with a Southern Chinese accent are chatting with Li. One of them asks her anxiously when they can go and get Gucci handbags. Finding out Li Qiao’s plan of homecoming, one tourist says: “In the past, everyone is going out; now, everyone is returning. In my hometown, there are a lot of part-timers who are from Hong Kong.” The other follows up: “Yeah. Whoever left China now regrets it. There are more job opportunities in China.” Mainlanders now assume a different identity, no longer as new immigrants leaving China for a better life, but as big-spending tourists/consumers. These tourists from the South serve as informants from home updating Li Qiao on the new economic condition in the PRD. The new Sino-Hong Kong relationship suggested by their comments (Hong Kong people are moving north, there are more opportunities in China, whoever left China now regrets it, and so on) speaks more to the anxiety and uncertainties of those who stay than those who left. These lines may have sounded like wishful thinking at the time the film was shot, but with the rise of China and the signing of the CEPA, for many people these observations seem to come closer and closer to contemporary reality. The historical and geographical affinity between Hong Kong and the PRD not only gives rise to new cinematic images of Mainland

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immigrants in Comrades, but also points to Hong Kong’s paradoxical border imagination—the cognitive mapping of the time shows that Guangzhou, despite its physical proximity with Hong Kong, is more remote and distant than the faraway New York City. This irony is suggested by the end of the film when Xiao Jun and Li Qiao consummate their love in another global city, New York, rather than in Hong Kong or in their hometowns.14 Undoubtedly, such a narrative closure is made possible by Hong Kong’s position as a nodal point linking the PRD and other international metropolises. What calls for nuanced interpretation are the power relations between the multiple endpoints of the urban linkage at a particular historical period. Overall, Li Qiao epitomizes the PRD migrants, whose longing to identify with Hong Kong illustrates that in the 1980s Hong Kong was a dreamland for the PRD. The relationship between Hong Kong and the PRD, represented by Guangzhou, is structured around the imagination of center and periphery. The geopolitical hierarchy accounts for one apparent paradox of the film—while it is the linkage of Hong Kong and the PRD that renders the plot plausible, only Hong Kong is represented. There is no representation of the urban space of Guangzhou in the film other than a series of signifiers (for example Guangzhou versus Wuxi, the Cantonese girl versus the Hong Kong people, etc.). As the other endpoint of the linkage, Guangzhou is left behind by the camera’s eye, and the family never seem to exist except when mentioned by the protagonist moving ahead. One example provides eloquent testimony to how the invisible hometown and family serve as a mere rhetorical device. In order to characterize Li Qiao as seemingly realistic and feisty but in fact caring and sweet, the camera shows us several times how she speaks of her mother at home: “In two years I will queue up and purchase houses of my own; one in Hong Kong for myself and the other in China for my mom.” Later when her dream of building a house back at home comes true, Li laments that “my mom would never see the house since she has passed away.” Set in a stock scenario that portrays prosperous children returning home only to find their parents no longer waiting for them, the so-called hometown and family in Guangzhou are exploited as signifiers recurring in the heroine’s narrative mainly to foreground Li Qiao’s identity as a Cantonese girl paying a dear price to become a “fake Hong Konger.” The absence of Guangzhou is illustrated by another scene in which Li Qiao shows tourists around the Statue of Liberty in 1995. Here the signifiers of the hometown of Guangzhou and family are evoked once again to deliver the dramatic effect of drifting away from home. At this time Guangzhou is again audible yet invisible from the scene, the city

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on screen being New York. We only see that when less occupied, Li Qiao makes a call to inform her father that she has got a Green Card and will fly back home next month. The appearance of Li’s father, who has never been mentioned in the story, seems to be an abrupt development of the plot. Yet if Li’s home and hometown only serve as a narrative device rather than a concrete lived space, then the “appearance” of the father figure here is no more an issue of narrative logic. In the second half of the film, Xiaojun and Li Qiao respectively come to New York. Again, it is the linkage of global cities that easily makes the shift of setting to another global city natural and convincing. However, in contrast to Guangzhou, New York as a fellow global nodal point of Hong Kong, albeit configured stereotypically, is given a concrete representation in the film. The camera shows the audience Times Square, Chinatown, the Statue of Liberty, and the residential district of the new immigrants (where Xiaojun is invited to a BBQ party). The narration further consolidates the linkage between Hong Kong and New York in two ways. One is through the comparison made by the seasoned gangster Pao Au-Yueng. Lamenting how fickle fate has brought him to a foreign city that bears an uncanny resemblance to his hometown, Pao juxtaposes Chinatown with old Hong Kong: “It is so funny that this place is just like the Yau Ma Tei of 30 years ago. Narrow streets crowded with people. Small shops where you can buy everything. There are also Chinese tea restaurants and herbal tea shops. When I was eleven or twelve, I started to make a living in Yau Ma Tei. Who would have known that I would return to the same kind of place decades later.” The juxtaposition suggests the route and history of migration (Chinatown and Cantonese immigrants) on the one hand and the contemporary flow of people made possible by the networks of global cities on the other. The narrative completes the connection between Hong Kong and New York by making the Big Apple a place of reunion for the lovers. At the very end of Comrades, Xiaojun and Li Qiao run into each other in Chinatown. As both are long-time fans of Teresa Teng, on the very day Teresa passes away the couple are attracted by the news report on TV in the same appliance shop in Chinatown and thus come across each other. After being separated for so many years, the comrades look at each other and smile. Finally, the romanticized imagination of the global cities renders this “almost a love story” complete. Underneath the surface of this classic romance is a story of ambivalence, a subtle tool for cultural negotiation. The positive characterization of the protagonists encourages the Hong Kong audience to identify with the new immigrants, thereby opening the possibility of imagining a new

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community. At the same time, the cinematic narrative appeals to the conventional stereotype of the Sino-Hong Kong distinction and hence distances itself from the emerging cross-border subject. Also noteworthy is the apparent hierarchy of power exposed in the film’s representation of global cities. The romanticized representation of New York and Guangzhou’s invisibility both indicate the inclination of Hong Kong to turn its back upon the PRD and face the world in its self-writing.

Durian, Durian: Conflicts, hopes and frustrations of border-crossing between Hong Kong and Shenzhen Durian, Durian tells a story of Hong Kong’s others. As part of Fruit Chan’s Prostitute Trilogy, the first half of the film focuses on Fan, a child without documentation from Shenzhen, and Yan, a prostitute from Mudanjiang, portraying the two protagonists’ temporary stay in Mongkok. The second half of the film takes us to Mudanjiang to see Yan’s life back home, intertwined with Fan’s experience of border-crossing. From the perspective of a northern girl and a Mainland child, the film casts the emergent social subject of Hong Kong in a new light, mapping the complicated meanings of cross-border social relations of the global city-region.15 Fan’s story can be seen as Chan’s effort to represent the integration of Hong Kong and PRD from the perspective of the regional Other.16 In contrast to Comrades, Chan does not choose to affirm the Hong Kong value through the identification or assimilation of cross-border subjects, but chooses instead to construct the Other’s subjectivity and observe regional integration from their experience and perspective. The story of Fan lays bare the context, form, space, and price of regional mobility for which cross-border immigrants must pay. The linkage between Hong Kong and the PRD in the film begins with the little girl’s first-person narration. The film shows that for the split families at the bottom of society, the integration between Hong Kong and the PRD is equal to a daily livelihood of continual negotiation with the border.17 At the very beginning, the four members of Fan’s family live separately in Mongkok and Shenzhen. The only one who has the right of abode is Fan’s one-legged father, who raises the whole family by traveling and trading between Shenzhen and Hong Kong all year round. The film first recounts a day of Fan’s father traveling between the two cities—including everyday details about burning incense and worshipping on crutches in a cramped and dim room in Hong Kong, collecting dried clothes, smoking, putting on pants, washing his face, and so on.

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Fan’s Cantonese voice-over accompanies shots of her father: “This is my Dad, out of employment now. From time to time he brings tobacco and liquor for sale from Hong Kong to the Mainland or from the Mainland to Hong Kong. I heard Mom say he used to run a good business, and even bought our big house in Shenzhen with the money he earned. The house in Mongkok now is rented” (emphasis added). A later shot of Fan’s father packing and taking a train with a blue and white checkered bag suggests what physical hardship the informal cross-border trading entails for the disabled father. Behind the seemingly plain narration is concealed the time cost lower class people must pay for mobility. The shot of the expressionless father on the train is joined by several shots of Fan coming to pick up her father at Luohu Station on the border. Sitting on the back seat of the motorcycle, Fan cheerfully goes to Luohu Station to welcome her father home. Not knowing why her father does not appear on time, she can only wait there all by herself until sunset. After a while, we see Fan meeting her father at the door in the dusk, helping him with the luggage. The director does not explain why Fan’s father is late at the station or how long Fan has been waiting. The narration leaves these questions unanswered perhaps for a good reason. This way the audience might concentrate on Fan’s emotional ups and downs resulting from repeated separation. The homecoming episode, with a particular emphasis on Fan’s changing moods, suggests the meaning of integration from the emotional aspect of the split family. A sequence of shots shows us the little girl’s delighted face from the back seat of the motorcycle and her anxiety of waiting and disappointment in missing her father at the station. We also hear her complain to him over the phone with her back toward the camera (“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”) as well as her calling her mom’s attention from the second floor that “Dad is coming home” followed by a shot of her running to meet him halfway. In another scene in which Fan gets up early in the morning to see her father leaving home, her voice-over tells the audience the little girl’s idea of the Hong Kong–Shenzhen relationship: “Going to Hong Kong has always been Dad and Mom’s dream, and also what my sister and I have been yearning for. If we make it, the whole family can get together, and Dad won’t always have to travel back and forth from Hong Kong to Shenzhen and Shenzhen to Hong Kong.” The word “always” appears twice, suggesting that the four of the family have been separated for a long time. For Fan, the Hong Kong–Shenzhen linkage means her father’s toilsome travel to and fro between two homes and her pining for long-term family reunion.

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Given the time, labor and emotional cost invested in the hope for a better life across the border, Fan and her mother’s illegal immigration to Hong Kong seems to be the only way out for a family with few resources. The scene of the whole family in the yard ushers in the subject of illegal immigration, which is one of Chan’s master strokes—using seemingly plain details of daily life to tackle sensitive socio-political issues.18 The shot takes place in the big yard of their house in Shenzhen, with Fan’s father taking a shower with water from the well, her mother washing clothes, and the two sisters feeding chickens and helping their father shower at the same time. What the parents discuss in such an ordinary and domestic scene is how the whole family may leave and cross the border to Hong Kong. The dialogue between the parents reveals illegal ways of mobility for underclass people, representing their viewpoints, experiences, and feelings. Through their conversation the director shows us that even though Fan’s parents have been exhausting all the means and possible connections for their reunion in Hong Kong, ultimately the family are still split by the border. This deceptively ordinary and domestic dialogue between Fan’s parents points to the fact that the underclass family split between Shenzhen and Hong Kong have limited resources and much difficulty in moving across the border. The father says: “I don’t know those people.” The mother suggests, “Why don’t we [mother and daughters] stow away?” “It could not work, since you will still be sent back when you’re caught,” says the father. The mother then argues, “What choice do we have? It would be difficult to go there. We don’t have any connection.” The solution the father thinks of is to “spend more money giving people a treat.” Demoralized, she replies: “Every treat adds up to a lot of money. You don’t earn enough for that.” He argues that everyone pays a price, as “other people also pay tens of thousands for it.” The unspecified phrases, like “those people,” “connection,” and “giving people a treat,” refer to the underground agency network for population flow. “Other people also pay tens of thousands for it” can be understood in two ways, either as the prevailing situation of illegal immigration to Hong Kong, or as the costly price for the agency. The dialogue ends at the mother’s brooding: “You really want the sisters to go?” The father’s answer is a firm and positive “Yes.” Behind the simple round of question and answer lies the deep yearning for reunion for the split family, as well as the motive for Fan and her mother to exhaust all the possible resources (even illegal ones) to immigrate to Hong Kong. Additional details later in the film suggest that the three of them come to Hong Kong with two-way permits and overstay.

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Besides offering a new frame for the context and condition of crossborder control of migration from the perspective of underclass people, Durian, Durian, unlike Comrades, gives due weight to each endpoint of the city-region. The multiple endpoints of urban networks in the film, including Luohu, the most important juncture between Shenzhen and Hong Kong/Guangdong where Fan’s family live, and Mudanjiang, where Yan comes from, are all concrete spaces of everyday life rather than narrative props or simply the background of the Other. Situated in the north of Hong Kong, since 1978 Shenzhen has been constructed as an economic special district with the function of a rapidly growing global city that “mixes modernity, reconstructed tradition, and chaos in ways that recall the former ‘frontier town’” (McDonogh and Wong, 152). Overall, while in most Hong Kong movies Shenzhen/Luohu still remains a stereotype at the service of Hong Kong’s self-narration,19 Shenzhen in Durian, Durian is by no means an empty sign. Chan says: “From Hong Kong to Luohu Station in Shenzhen by Kowloon-Canton Railway, this journey takes less than an hour. It feels like people’s life has changed, though one cannot detail where and how it is different, perhaps in clothing, appearances, or women’s makeup. But what I feel the most is a change in ‘scent,’ which makes everything familiar yet also very strange.”20 In a sense, Durian, Durian can be said as the director’s attempt to capture this change in “scent” by representing Shenzhen as a tangible “hometown” for people like Fan’s family. The space of everyday life for the residents thus becomes the focus of the camera’s eye—including the modernized Shenzhen streets and Luohu Station, the little post office where Fan sends a durian to Yan for the Chinese New Year, and most significantly the domestic space of Fan’s home. The little girl describes her home in Shenzhen as follows: “The big house in Shenzhen has three floors. Dad and Mom live in one; my sister and I in another. It has a balcony and a garden. The balcony can look to faraway places.” The camera shows two shots of chickens roaming freely at the stairs. The scene where Fan answers her father’s phone on the second floor is shot against an open space. At the center of the mise en scène is where the indoor and outdoor intermingle, with Fan standing on the right with her back toward the camera. Outside the window meadows and faraway buildings come into sight, with the chirping of birds at sunset meeting the ear. The house in Shenzhen provides not only a view overlooking all this but a spacious yard for the family’s daily activities. Fan’s story ends at the balcony of the house; here the narration associates the open space with happiness once again: the overjoyed Fan is setting off fireworks with her sister at the balcony with the open space in the

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background. The shot is shrewdly contrasted with the previous one when she is taken away in the cramped space of the police car. Contrasting the house in Shenzhen and that in Mongkok, the film once again underscores another price that underclass people have to pay for mobility: compression of living space. When Fan talks about their spacious house in Shenzhen, the shot does not take us to the big house, but the rented house where Fan’s father lives in Mongkok instead. The crowded and enclosed space is so small that the father alone can barely feel comfortable in it, yet this small place is where the other three of Fan’s family stay after they come to Hong Kong. Fan and her sister squeeze in one little bed; the whole family lives and moves around a little dining table. The differences between Mongkok and Shenzhen in the film are also framed by the way the cross-border subject sees their connection with Hong Kong as a global city. For Fan’s family Hong Kong is a thrilling world city of opportunity and prosperity. However, what kind of opportunity they would find remains elusive and the price they pay seems beyond their calculation and control. Fan’s mother once tells Yan that they have to do the dishes every day since “it is very difficult to make money in Hong Kong.” To the mother, who has a hard time crossing the border to be with her family and now tries to make a living in a restaurant, the official slogans, such as “Metropolis of Business,” “Asia’s World City,” and “Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis,” perhaps do not mean much personally. What cannot be ignored is the flip side of the city of opportunity: Hong Kong is also a space of fear and surveillance for them. Fan and her family have to be on the alert for the police on the streets all the time. Even when they witness an assault, they dare not send the victim to the hospital or call the police. Fan’s story ends with her repatriation back to Shenzhen by the Hong Kong police. In her letter to Yan, Fan recounts life after their parting: “Since you were gone I was soon caught by the Hong Kong police. They treated me and my sister as overstaying children without documents, forced us to leave my Dad the next day, and sent me, Mom, and my sister back home” (emphasis added). The story of Fan’s family inspires us to dwell on the controversial case of children without documents in 1999. The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeals ruled in January 1999 that four Chinese children (without permits) whose parents are permanent residents in Hong Kong also have the permanent right of abode in Hong Kong, and that if the Chinese nationals can prove that either of their parents is a Hong Kong permanent resident, even though not both of the parents were permanent residents when they were born, they can,

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based on Article 24, still acquire the right of abode in Hong Kong (South China Morning Post, 1999). The verdict soon raised intense controversy—the Government of HKSAR estimated that around 1.67 million people meet the requirement and the population pressure in Hong Kong would thereby worsen. In May Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, then Commander of Security Bureau of Hong Kong, asked the National People’s Congress (NPC) for a reinterpretation of the article on the right of abode in Hong Kong in the Basic Law. After the NPC’s reinterpretation, it is regulated that Chinese nationals can acquire the right of abode in Hong Kong on condition that either of their parents is a permanent resident in Hong Kong when they were born. HKSAR allows no more than the quota of 150 people per day to enter Hong Kong. It is in this context that Chan tells the story of cross-border split families. Restricted by the regulations of the right of abode, Fan and her family have to live by planning one day at a time with a hit-andrun strategy. In Hong Kong, their house was rented, their identity papers overdue. Even when Fan’s family members get together in Hong Kong, they cannot call Hong Kong home since without right of abode this temporarily reunited family is doomed to separate again. If three of Fan’s family apply for the right of abode, immigration regulations require them to apply one by one. That means the regulations cannot coordinate their time of approval. As Leung describes, a common conundrum facing split families goes like this: “If the mother acquires the right of abode earlier than her child, she would probably need to cross the border back and forth to take care of the family separated by the immigration regulations. On the other hand, if her child acquires the right earlier, either the mother needs to stay in Hong Kong illegally, or the father needs to quit and take care of the child at home” (105). The portrait of Fan’s family is Fruit Chan’s reminder to the audience that there is a grim reality of regional integration beyond the official version of linkage between Hong Kong and the PRD. When integration with the PRD has become the policy and direction for the development of Hong Kong, for many split families reunion has a long way to go. Unlike the highly glossed and celebratory macro accounts of Hong Kong and the PRD integration that seldom take into account the role of geocultural identities, the cinematic representations suggest a much more nuanced picture of a regional identity than can be deduced from face-value analysis of the dominant official discourse. The cosmopolitan imaginaries of the other create possibilities for recognizing the emergent social subjects brought about by the linkage of Hong Kong and the PRD. Seen in this light, we could argue that the films culturally sustain regionalization

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by facilitating the formation of a new imagined community. At the same time, interpreting the complex psychological mechanism of coping with the newcomers from the PRD in Comrades, as well as the stories of everyday life of those who cross the border to look for a better life in Hong Kong from the PRD in Durian, Durian, what I have tried to argue here is how these two films shed light on the hopes and challenges of regional integration not in the sense of economic bloc or political sovereignty, but in terms of social and cultural inclusion/exclusion.

Notes 1. See Perkmann and Sum 2002, Yang 2005 and Yang 2006. 2. For example, see Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong 2006. 3. Allen J. Scott proposes that there are three forms of the global city-region. The first is the metropolis, which figures as an equivalent of the global city and comprises a nuclear city and its adjoining hinterlands. The second could be defined as the “conurbation,” or an agglomeration of cities: Southern California or the belt of cities that stretches from Washington, DC, to Boston are pertinent examples. The third refers to the kind of cities that are articulated by a cooperative relation. Such a city-region sometimes extends across national borders, such as the linkage of San Diego and Tijuana, or the network of Singapore, Malaysia’s Johor Bahru and Indonesia’s Batam (Scott 2001: 4). 4. Ifeng.com 2007. 5. McDonogh and Wong 2005: 131. Ah Chan is a derogatory term for new immigrants from the Mainland, suggesting an uncivilized country bumpkin. 6. These remarks form the only Cantonese perspective presented in the film. 7. Li Qiao works part-time in McDonald’s and a flower shop, and also as a cleaning lady in an English agency center. 8. Miriam Bratu Hansen indicates that Xiaojun’s assimilation is typical of the process when the country fellow encounters modernity of urban technology. Hong Kong in the film represents late capitalist modernity, as the film is loaded with various high-tech equipments in daily life, including beepers, TV screens, video tapes, cassettes, ATMs, and all kinds of economic activities ranging from street dining industry, McDonald’s, to stock markets (Hansen 1999: 307–8). 9. Xiaojun replies: “Wait, the old ladies in my hometown do not know that.” 10. On the examples in the film that language equals to social status, see Liu 2003: 46. 11. Xiaojun’s character, although not so enterprising as Li Qiao, similarly expresses curiosity for and identification with Hong Kong as a global city. During his stay in Hong Kong he loves McDonald’s, learns English, saves enough money to realize his dream of marrying the girlfriend in hometown, happens to become a cook, and finally migrates to America. Hong Kong to him represents an exciting and interesting world full of opportunities. 12. When Li Qiao fails to profit from selling Teresa Teng’s cassettes in the night market on the Yuan Xiao Festival, she examines the marketing tactic and

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13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

lets slip by acknowledging to Xiaojun: “I was in Guangzhou last year and the year before last year. I am not this year. I come from Guangzhou.” When speaking of herself as Cantonese, Li Qiao’s lowered body language suggests her unease about her own identity, but later she forcefully disavows being a comrade with Xiaojun. “Uncle” is a derogatory term prevalent in Hong Kong during the 1980s and 1990s to refer to relatives from Mainland China. For the articulation of Hong Kong and New York in Hong Kong films, see Hoover and Stokes Odham 2003. In recent years it is not difficult to find stories in Hong Kong’s media coverage that emphasize how the lifting of tourist control and two-way exit permits offer a shortcut for cross-border crimes in Hong Kong, especially illegal prostitutes and illegal laborers. In this sense, Yan’s story, representing that of a large number of “northern girls” coming to Hong Kong via Shenzhen from the Mainland, points to the governance problem resulted from the integration between Hong Kong and the PRD. Having said that, Yan’s story is not addressed in this chapter since I intend to focus on the representation of Fan and her family to highlight the complexity of integration between Hong Kong people and people from Guangdong rather than the North (Mudanjiang) and the South (Hong Kong and Shenzhen). For the significance of Yan’s story in relation to the Sino-Hong Kong relationship, see Wang 2005, Lee 2009, and Gan 2005. Fan is the same illegal immigrant Mainland child in Fruit Chan’s Little Cheung. “Split families” refers to cross-border families, a new immigrant structure arising in response to the huge influx of immigrants in the 1970s. According to Leung, “most of the illegal Mainland immigrants who managed to enter Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s were men. … Because of the quota system, however, their wives and children have to apply individually and wait in long queues before they can stay in Hong Kong legally” (Leung 2004: 104). See Huang 2006. For a discussion of the representation of Shenzhen in Hong Kong films, see Shih 2005. See Wu 2001.

Bibliography Balibar, Étienne (2004) We, the People of Europe: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Trans. J. Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chan, Fruit (dir.) (2000) Durian, Durian ( ), Hong Kong: Nicetop Independent Ltd. Chan, Peter (dir.) (1996) Comrades, Almost a Love Story ( ), Hong Kong: Golden Harvest Entertainment Co. Ltd. Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (2006) The Prospects, Problems and Strategies of Enhancing Hong Kong’s Role in PPRD Cooperation, n.d., http://www.dab.org.hk/tr/resource/docs/20060814_report.pdf (Accessed July 15, 2007). Gan, W. (2005) Fruit Chan’s Durian Durian, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Hansen, Miriam Bratu (1999) “Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-way Street,” Critical Inquiry, 25: 2, 306–43.

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Ho, D. K.-L. (2004) “Citizenship as a Form of Governance: A Historical Overview,” in A. S. Ku and N. Pun (eds), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City, New York: Routledge, 19–36. Hoover, M. and Lisa Stokes Odham (2003) “Hong Kong in New York: Global Connections, National Identity, and Filmic Representations,” New Political Science, 25: 4, 509–32. Huang, Tsung-yi Michelle (2006) “Revisiting a Postcolonial Global City: Hong Kong and Fruit Chan’s Little Cheung,” Tamkang Review, 33: 3, 53–74. Ifeng.com (2007) “Peter Chan Recollects Comrade after Ten Years,” December 10, http://itv.ifeng.com/feichangdao/toumingzhuang/200712/1210_61_50920. html (Accessed December 18, 2007). Jonas, A. E. G. and Ward, K. (2007) “Introduction to a Debate on City-Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31: 1, 169–78. Ku, Agnes Shuk-mei (2002) “Culture, Identity and Politics,” in K.-C. Tse (ed.), Our Place, Our Time, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 343–73. Lee, Vivian P.-Y. (2009) Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-Nostalgic Imagination, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Leung, Hon-chu (2004) “Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion: Immigration and Citizenship Issues,” in A. S. Ku and N. Pun (eds), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City, New York: Routledge, 97–114. Liu, W.-L. (2003) “The Urban Space and Identity in the Hong Kong Films of Mid1990s: Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story,” Film Appreciation Journal, 22: 3, 44–52. McDonogh, G. and Wong, C. (2005) Global Hong Kong, New York: Routledge. Perkmann, Markus and Sum, Ngai-Ling (eds) (2002) Globalization, Regionalization and Cross-Border Regions, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, A. J. (ed.) (2001) Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, New York: Oxford University Press. Shih, Hsiaoyen (2005) “Shenzhen in Hong Kong Movies,” China Radio International, August 10, http://big5.cri.cn/gate/big5/gb.cri.cn/6851/2005/08/ 10/1326@655483_4.htm (Accessed July 10, 2007). South China Morning Post (1999) “Landmark Ruling,” January 30. Tang, S.-H. (2003) “The Scientificity in the Making of Directions and Decisions of Economic Development: A Comment upon the 2003 Policy Address,” Mingpao, 38: 2, 55–61. Wang, Ban (2005) “Reimagining Political Community: Diaspora, Nation-State, and the Struggle for Recognition,” Modern Drama: World Drama from 1850 to the Present, 48: 2, 249–71. Wu, Chilin (2001) “‘Shooting about 1997, Playing with Prostitutes!’ Fruit Chan Suddenly Smells of the Durian,” ePots, December 24, http://iwebs.url.com. tw/main/html/epots/52.shtml (Accessed August 5, 2007). Yang, C. (2005) “Multilevel Governance in the Cross-boundary Region of Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta, China,” Environment and Planning A, 37, 2147–68. Yang, C. (2006) “The Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong: An Evolving CrossBoundary Region under ‘One Country, Two Systems,’” Habitat International, 30, 61–86. Yeung, Y.-M. (2003) “Viewpoint: Integration of the Pearl River Delta,” International Development Planning Review, 25: 3, iii–viii.

9 In the Name of “Asia”: Practices and Consequences of Recent International Film Co-Productions in East Asia Ti Wei

Introduction International film co-productions among East Asian countries have significantly increased since the beginning of the twenty-first century. From 2005 onwards, several blockbuster films collaboratively produced by film companies from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, including Seven Swords, The Promise, The Myth, and A Battle of Wits, have been released. These films have not only integrated the regional film industries, capital, internationally known filmmaking personnel and popular stars to target the Asian market, but also forged ahead into the global film market by labeling themselves as “Asian productions” or “Asian films.” Although cooperation and exchange in film production among East Asian countries is not new in the history of the region’s film industries, such systematic and intensive cooperation in making co-produced films a unique commodity, branded as “Asian production,” to compete with its Hollywood counterpart, is no doubt an unprecedented phenomenon.1 Indeed, the practice of international film co-production in East Asia has been full of difficulties because there exist great complexity and diversity among the ethnic, religious, political, and cultural compositions in the region. In spite of similar colonial experiences, the influence of the Cold War in the post-colonial era and subsequent hostile relations between individual countries/territories (such as Taiwan and Mainland China, the two Koreas, China and Japan, Japan and the Koreas), political cooperation and integration has been rather limited, if not extremely difficult. Against this background, the interaction between East Asian national film industries has been largely limited to cross-border film consumption, 189

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while horizontal linkages at the level of film production were relatively rare, let alone the attempt to construct an “Asian” cinematic identity. The situation had a significant change at the turn of the twenty-first century, when a number of historical and material conditions made possible a new era of international film co-production in East Asia. First of all, as Chen Kuan-Hsing points out, the political and economic factors for “the rise of Asia” began to emerge in the 1990s.2 He argues that on the one hand, in the globalization of capitalism, Asia’s regionalized economies and cultural production have become increasingly important. On the other hand, several complex and intense historical sentiments came into play in the process, including, firstly, voices advocating an Asian common market and a common Asian currency; secondly, many Asian nation-states for various reasons have started to re-position themselves in the region as being part of an integrated “Asia” in the 1990s, such as Japan’s effort to seek reconciliation with other Asian countries, South Korea’s attempt to engage neighboring countries to solve the “two Koreas” problem, and China starting the “good neighbor policy” in Asia in order to remove anxiety caused by the “China Threat Theory,” Even small countries such as Singapore are also clearly aware that their existence cannot be uncoupled from East Asia. These changes are in tune with the general perception of the rise of Asia, which, as Chen Kuan-Hsing puts it, “created the basis of new historical conditions and sentiments for a new Asia.” Secondly, we cannot ignore the cross-border consumption of Asian popular cultural products (including movies). A large number of martial arts and kung fu movies made by the Hong Kong and Taiwan film industries were exported to Southeast Asia in the 1970s, but their circulation was largely confined to diasporic Chinese communities. Later on, the Taiwan film industry went into recession in the 1980s, and Hong Kong cinema (led by Jackie Chan’s action movies) became widely popular in East and South Asia, accompanied by the rising popularity of Hong Kong pop idols (for example Andy Lau, Leon Lai, Aaron Kwok, and Jacky Cheung, the so called Four Pop Kings) in the East Asian markets. At the same time, pop music and singers from Taiwan and Hong Kong began to enter Mainland China through informal channels and remain in leading positions in the Chinese pop music market. In addition, from the 1980s to the 1990s, Japanese television dramas, pop idols, and spin-off commodities fostered a “Nipponophilia” that spread from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea to Mainland China. In the late 1990s, following and to some extent replacing “Nipponophilia,” Korean television dramas, Korean movies, and Korean idol stars became

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popular and raised the so-called Korean Wave (Hallyu) across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Southeast Asia.3 Under such political, economic, and cultural conditions, collaborations in film production among East Asian countries have been increasingly prevalent after 2000. This trend within East Asian film industries must have been related to the rise of Asia as well as to the exchange of popular cultural products in the region. But more detailed exploration and examination of the nature and complexity of this relationship is required. What are the characteristics of the practice and the consequence of recent international film co-productions in East Asia? More precisely, do these co-productions represent a new mode of operation, from production, investment, and marketing to narrative, form, and ideology? Finally, how do we understand the “Asianness” in films labeled as “Asian productions”? This article attempts to explore these questions. In the next section, the historical context of East Asian film co-production will be examined first.

The historical context of East Asian film co-production In world film history, international co-production is certainly not a recent invention. But in the age of globalization and in view of the domination of Hollywood in the global film market, international coproduction has apparently become one of the important survival strategies for other national film industries. The practice is particularly widely applied by European countries and Canada.4 There are two main models of international co-production. The first is treaty co-production. The model involves a certain degree of state policy intervention such as tax breaks or subsidy funding. The second is equity co-production, referring to corporate activities conducted between private sectors across different countries and without relating to specific government measures.5 Many co-production projects often involve both models. The films discussed in the article are mainly equity co-production. For neo-classical economists, the merits of the international coproduction include the ability to tap into different financial resources, to take advantage of the policy incentives or subsidies provided by local governments, to access multiple markets, to participate in the production project through cooperation, to access unique scenes and landscapes and the cheaper labor of another country, and so on.6 However, these purely economic considerations have apparently overlooked the fact that international co-production is also a complex process of “cultural trade”.

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The international co-production of films and television programs is not simply about cost-sharing or cultural affinity; rather, as Murdock argues, it is a process of symbolic intervention. Currently most coproduction projects are profit-driven and therefore tend to choose production and marketing plans that can realize the greatest profit potential across different markets. These projects very often share the following common features: firstly, most of these co-productions are likely to be irrelevant to local cultural and social contexts. Secondly, most of these projects choose internationally renowned film directors and stars, thus largely conforming to the pre-existing industrial modes of production. Thirdly, this type of film tends to choose the genres and plotlines that are already well known and popular in the market.7 Baltruschat also points out that the majority of international co-productions are action adventure, science fiction, fantasy films, that is, popular genres that can transcend geocultural constraints.8 Asian co-productions have historically operated under the equity co-production model. The development of Asian film co-production after the Second World War can be roughly divided into four phases. My discussion below will briefly introduce the first three phases as the background to the fourth phase, which is the main focus of this chapter. The first phase: 1950s to 1970s Building upon existing geopolitical connections and interpersonal contacts with their regional counterparts, some Chinese film companies initiated exchanges on matters of technical know-how with their Japanese counterparts in the early 1930s. But these early exchanges ended with the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations. During the Second World War the idea of “the Greater East-Asian Cinema” was brought up without substantial implementation. However, when Hong Kong became the center of Chinese-language filmmaking in the postwar era, a cooperation network was gradually established between Hong Kong and Japan. Cooperation was mainly initiated by two major Hong Kong film companies. The first is MP & GI (Dian-Mao), renamed as Cathay (Guo-Tai) in 1965; its main interest was to showcase Japanese landscape or popular elements in movies, most of which were modern romance films featuring inter-ethnic relationships. The second is the Shaw Brothers. With an ambition to take over the entire Asian film market, Shaw’s cooperation with their Japanese partners focused on technical know-how and talent exchange, and the majority of the coproductions were martial arts films and costume drama. At the same time Shaw Brothers also tried to cooperate with the South Korean film

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industry. For example, the box-office hit Love with an Alien (1958) was a trilateral co-production of Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. But the multi-national co-production model was not a major trend. By the 1960s, Shaw Brothers continued to cooperate with the Japanese film industry; the main practice was to employ Japanese directors and other technical personnel involved in film production in Hong Kong. Between 1966 and 1972, Shaw Brothers employed a total of six Japanese directors to produce 31 films. In addition to martial arts, films in other genres, including action, musicals, suspense, and detective movies, were also produced.9 Post-war co-operation in Asia seemed to be gathering momentum at this stage, but it was mainly confined to Hong Kong and Japan and was not clearly oriented to a common and integrated Asian market. The second phase: 1980s to mid-1990s After the 1970s, the Japanese film industry entered a severe recession at a time when the Hong Kong film industry matured and continued to diversify. Because of the lack of incentives, cooperation between the two sides substantially reduced in real terms. Japanese filmmakers employed by the Shaw Brothers eventually had to leave. By the 1980s, Hong Kong had become the production center of popular films in Asia. It was also the golden age of Hong Kong action movies. Both Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung had invited Japanese action stars such as Yukari Oshima and Michiko Nishiwaki to act in their movies, but these efforts were sporadic in nature. Asian cinematic cooperation obviously waned in this phase. The third phase: late 1990s to 2000 By the late 1990s, the cooperation between Hong Kong and Japanese film industries began to revive and the main type of cooperation was cross-national starring of well-known actors/actresses. There are two background factors behind this development. Firstly, Hong Kong films gradually lost ground to Hollywood products in both the local and Asian markets and the industry began to go into recession in the early 1990s. Filmmakers were eager to develop new modes of operation. Secondly, as direct broadcast satellite technology (DBS), cable television systems, and CD-ROM (later DVD) technology became increasingly available and widely applied, Japanese television dramas and variety shows became hugely popular in Asian countries. This explains why Japanese pop idols who had just established their fan-base in East Asia were among the most sought after targets of Hong Kong producers

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in recruiting foreign talents. Prominent examples include Sonny Chiba Shinichi in Andrew Lau’s Storm Riders (1998), Norika Fujiwara in Stanley Tong’s Strike Force (2000), Tokiwa Takako in Daniel Lee Yan-Gong’s Moonlight Express (1999) and Star Runner (2000), and Miyazawa Rie, whose sexy photo book caused a sensation in Hong Kong and Taiwan at the time, in Fan Yang’s Peony Pavilion (2000). On the other hand, several Hong Kong actresses, including Joey Wong Cho-Yin (originally from Taiwan), Michelle Reis, and Kelly Chan, also starred in some Japanese films, though these are less frequent cases compared to Japanese stars recruited on Hong Kong projects. In sum, some degree of collaboration did exist between film companies in East Asia (mainly Hong Kong and Japan) in the post-war era, but they were not able to develop a stable and systematic joint framework. However, while the main model of cooperation in the third phase remains in cross-border starring, these experiences provided the foundation for more comprehensive cooperation in the latest phase, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

Recent East Asian film co-productions The main difference between the latest phase and the previous ones lies in the scale and scope of cooperation. It goes beyond the co-starring of movie stars from different countries and involves every part of the film industry, from the creation of the story and screenplay, through planning, financing, directing, casting, shooting, post-production, marketing, and exhibition, to formulating a comprehensive, systematic, and overall Asian film-market-oriented cooperative practice. The cross-border starring of actors/actresses continues to develop, however, and becomes a trend in international cooperation in the latest phase. For example, one notable case should be the internationally well-known Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, who invited Japanese idol actor Takuya Kimura to star in 2046 (2004). In addition, Korean idol actor Song Seung-Hun acted in the Hong Kong film So Close (2002), directed by Hong Kong action movie director Corey Yuen.10 Song’s case was significant because it signaled a new trend in the East Asian entertainment business, that is, that the “Korean Wave” may have kept pace with, or even possibly taken over, the “Nipponophilia” of previous years. International cooperation projects involving production, casting, marketing, and exhibition appeared around the year 2000. Among the most prominent examples were two Hong Kong-Japan co-productions, The

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Sleepless Town (1998), directed by Hong Kong film director Lee Chi-Ngai and starring Chinese-Japanese idol star Kaneshiro Takeshi and Japanese actress Yamamoto Mirai,11 and Johnnie To’s Fulltime Killer (2001), starring Hong Kong’s Andy Lau and Sorimachi Takashi from Japan. However, the leading figure of systematic and well-planned co-production is Hong Kong director Peter Chan and his film company Applause Pictures. The company was established in 2000 with clearly stated objectives to develop “pan-Asian Cinema” and to promote cooperation between the film industries of East Asian countries. Most importantly, in addition to lining up production crews in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, Applause also managed to develop a production network with counterparts in Thailand and Singapore. The representative products of Applause Pictures are two horror movie sequels released since 2002, The Eye and Three. The Eye was directed by the Chinese-Thai filmmakers Pang brothers (Danny Pang-fat and Oxide Pang Shun) and the cast included MalaysianTaiwanese actress Angelica Lee, Chinese-Canadian singer Lawrence Chou, and Thai actress Chutcha Rujinanon. Not only the cast and the crew are pan-Asian, the film’s main action and setting straddle Hong Kong and Thailand. The Eye achieved considerable market success in several Asian countries and was soon followed by two sequels, The Eye 2 (2004) and The Eye 10 (2005). Also in 2002, Peter Chan conducted another pan-Asian co-production project, two omnibus horror films Three (2002) and Three: Extremes (2004), involving altogether six directors from Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, and Japan, including Chan himself. The sequels were also met with critical and box-office success. Peter Chan made a more ambitious attempt in 2005, directing and co-producing the international blockbuster Perhaps Love (2005), a western-style musical that has been extremely rare in Chinese cinema in recent years. The leading actors and actresses came from mainland China (Zhou Xun), Hong Kong (Jacky Cheung), Taiwan/Japan (Kaneshiro Takeshi), and South Korea (Ji Jinhee). In addition, Farah Khan, a reputed Bollywood choreographer, was employed to design the dancing scenes and hence opened up a crucial opportunity to cooperate with the Indian film industry. To some extent, the latest phase of East Asian film co-production is a continuation, deepening, and expansion of the previous phases. However, co-productions are also shaped by changes in the global and regional economy and cultural dynamics among East Asian countries. First of all, international cooperation in film production and marketing has become more mature and sophisticated, East Asian filmmakers have begun to consciously express their desires to make “pan-Asian” films. Echoing Peter Chan’s idea of a pan-Asian cinema, Hong Kong

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director Gordon Chan said in 2000: “For Hong Kong films to survive in the market, we need to get rid of the tendency of too much local favor. I am eager to make Asian films” (emphasis added). Johnnie To expresses a similar view when commenting on his own film, the Hong KongJapan co-production Fulltime Killer: “We hope that the film will be regarded as an Asian film … for mutual benefits, cooperation with Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and Japan is unavoidable.”12 Secondly, the roles and relationships between countries and regions that participate in co-productions have changed. In the previous phases, the Hong Kong film industry was in a leading position in Asian film co-production. However, it experienced a substantial recession in the early 1990s and its later revival did not really recover all the territories lost. Moreover, the handover to China in 1997 implied that integration between the Hong Kong film industry and its counterpart on the mainland was inevitable. In contrast, the Chinese government started to reform and open up its film industry in 1993. Whether in production or consumption, the Chinese government seems determined to establish a closer relationship with foreign film companies. In this context, with its huge film market, abundant supply of relatively cheap labor and a long history of film production, mainland China is bound to become Asia’s center of gravity of international film co-production. In addition, as mentioned earlier, South Korea’s commercial film industry grew in scale and substance with the rise of South Korea’s creative industries in the late 1990s; the so-called Korean Wave has also begun to play a much more important role in Asian film co-production so much so that it might overtake Japan in terms of its regional outreach. The regional appeal of some Korean pop idols in TV dramas is often an important consideration in co-production projects. Asian film co-productions nowadays usually aim for the global market. This change was closely or even directly related to the international success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001) a martial arts film directed by Taiwanese director Ang Lee and partly financed and distributed by Colombia Pictures. Apparently, film producers in East Asia have been keenly aware of the film’s success: The classical Chinese martial arts is a global theme that is able to attract a worldwide audience. Chinese (Taiwanese) director Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had 10 Oscar nominations in 2001, and ultimately won four awards, including the best foreign-language film. Afterwards, Chinese martial arts films with magnificent scenes and gorgeous colors became highly popular in Hollywood.13

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The martial arts blockbuster film, which combines the strength of well-known and skillful Chinese film directors and foreign capital, is currently the most appealing Asian product in the United States and Europe.14 For many East Asian filmmakers, the global, particularly the Western, film market is full of temptations but the risks can also be formidable. Hollywood still dominates and seems invincible.15 Decision-making over whether and how to enter the market is therefore a tough challenge in the age of globalization. However, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brought two very clear and valuable messages. Firstly, for East Asian film industries that success in the global market (or at least Europe and the US) is an achievable goal. Secondly, magnificent and ornate Chinese martial arts movies could be the product with the highest success rate.

Case studies: Seven Swords, The Promise, and A Battle of Wits In the context as discussed above, the practice of transnational coproduction in East Asian cinema seems to have reached a new level since 2005. Several blockbusters, including those mentioned in the beginning of the article, are the products of a much larger scale of production and marketing. They all claimed to be “Asian productions” in one way or another. In the following section, three co-production films, namely Seven Swords, The Promise (see Figure 9.1), and A Battle of Wits, are selected as case studies. My analysis is organized into three parts: the operational pattern and market performance of the co-production films, the characteristics of the film texts, and an overall assessment. The pattern of co-production and market performance These films have no doubt raised the operational and commercial benchmarks to an unprecedentedly high level in the history of East Asian film co-production (see Table 9.1). First of all, the budgets for the three films all surpass Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whose production cost was 15 million USD. The production cost of The Promise was 40 million USD, the highest among the three films, while the costs of Seven Swords and A Battle of Wits were 18 million and 16 million USD respectively. Such financial strength exceeded that of other “domestic” blockbuster films during the same time period.16 For example, the largest production in South Korea in recent years, the war movie Tae Guk

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Figure 9.1 The Promise

Gi: The Brotherhood of War, had a production budget of about 12.8 million USD, while Zhang Yimou’s Chinese martial arts blockbuster House of Flying Daggers (2004) cost about 11.3 million USD.17 Secondly, all three films copied Hollywood’s “high concept” marketing strategies, that is, huge spending on advertising and publicity and the utilization of the marketing synergy of spin-off products and activities. For example, Seven Swords teamed up with corporations in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea to launch comic books and online games that tied in with the film’s theatrical release. The Promise probably made the most effort in international marketing. The film was showcased at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, where a grand media conference and banquet were held and an 11-minute trailer of the film was shown in a castle on the beach. More than 10 million RMB was spent on this international publicity campaign. It should be noted that the terms “Asia” and “Asian film” are strategically used in the publicity texts of the three films. For instance, it was stressed that the combination of the crew and cast of The Promise is “Asia’s strongest team,” and the slogan “Asian film with no time differences” was used in the promotional campaign to draw attention to the

Table 9.1 Main production details of the three films Title

Seven Swords

The Promise

A Battle of Wits

Co-production by countries Co-production by film companies

Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea Beijing Ciwen Film & TV Production (China) Boram Entertainment (Korea) City Glory Pictures (HK) Film Workshop (HK) Shi Nan-Sen

Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea Beijing Film Studio, China Film Group (China) 21st Century Shengkai Film (China) Moonstone Entertainment (US) Show East (Korea) Han San-Ping, Chen Hong

Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea Huayi Brothers Pictures (China) Comstock (Japan) Boram Entertainment (Korea) Sundream Motion Pictures (HK) Cheung Chi Leung, Lee Joo-Ick, Satoru Iseki Cheung Chi Leung Cheung Chi Leung

Producer(s)

Director(s) Tsui Hark Screenplay writer(s) Tsui Hark, Cheung Chi-Sing, Chun Tin-Nam Other members of Cinematography: Keung Kwok Man the crew Music: Kenji Kawai Action director: Tung Wai, Xiong Xin-Xin Budget 18 million USD Box-office Mainland China: 83 million RMB HK: 8 million HKD France: 71 thousand admissions Taipei: 9 million NTD

Chen Kai-Ge Chen Kai-Ge, Cheung Tan Cinematography: Peter Pau Art director: Tim Yip Action director: Tung Wai, Dion LAM 40 million USD Mainland China: 140 million RMB Japan: 3 million USD South Korea: 4 million USD HK: 0.6 million USD North America: 0.66 million USD Taipei: 20 million NTD

Cinematography: Sakamoto Zensho Music: Kenji Kawai Action director: Tung Wai 16 million USD Mainland China: 90 million RMB Japan: 134 million Yen (First Week) Taipei: 16.5 NTD

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Source: The official websites of the three films, www.mtime.com, www.truemovie.com, www.imdb.com, www.taipeibo.com, and other related press reports.

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film’s simultaneous release in Asia and the US. More hyperbolic language is used on the official website of A Battle of Wits, which is described as “the great unity of the Asian elites.” However, the so-called Asian elites refers to more or less the same cluster of film industry celebrities and veterans in transnational martial arts blockbusters: Seven Swords and A Battle of Wits employed the same music director, Kenji Kawai from Japan, and the same action director, Tung Wai from Hong Kong. The Promise obviously wanted to utilize the talent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s “dream team”: it employed the same cinematography director (Peter Pau) and art director (Tim Yip). The problem remains whether the revenues corresponded to such a scale of investment and operation. Due to the difficulty of collecting comprehensive and precise box-office data, there is only scattered information to sketch a general profile. In the most important market for these films, Mainland China, the box-office performance was barely satisfactory. The box-office receipts of The Promise, having the highest budget among three films, were about 140 million RMB, while the revenues of the other two were below 100 million RMB. All of them failed to go beyond the 200-million RMB record of Heroes. In South Korea and Japan, two significant markets for Seven Swords and A Battle of Wits, their box-office revenues were also far below expected. Both films needed to count on adding up the returns from Europe to make even. The Promise, among others, had the biggest ambition to conquer the US market, where it only received a meager 0.7 million USD at the box-office. This was a huge difference in comparison with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which made more than 120 million USD in North America. In general, adding up the ticket sales worldwide the investors of the three films may not have lost money, but obviously the films did not quite live up to their expectations. The film texts In terms of genre, Seven Swords is a martial arts film, while The Promise is close to a fantasy movie, and A Battle of Wits is a fictional historical epic. However, the three films share a number of common generic elements. Seven Swords, like most other martial arts films, is an adaptation of a martial arts novel set in a specific historical period (the early years of the Qing Dynasty). However, the film also relies on fantasy in constructing the main action around the treasured swords and their magical power. On the other hand, The Promise and A Battle of Wits rely quite heavily on swordplay and combat choreography to advance the main plot as in conventional martial arts movies. We can examine this topic

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in more detail by looking at specific plot details and action sequences of the films. Among others, The Promise is closest to fantasy and myth: a beautiful Princess Qingcheng of an unknown kingdom is imprisoned by Duke Wuhuan (who murdered the King) and is eventually rescued by General Guangming and his slave Kunlun. This straightforward narrative frame is filled by other surreal elements and characters such as the Goddess Manshen, primitive-like barbarians, and Kunlun himself, who has extraordinary physical power, to name only a few examples. The most fantastic sequence appears in the scene where Kunlun rescues Princess Qingcheng and pulls her up by a rope from an iron cage; as they try to escape, the Princess soars and becomes a “human kite.” The scene may have a stylish and ornate appearance but in terms of story-telling it looks awkward and is obviously unnecessary for the narrative to progress. From characterization, costume, use of color, setting, and acting to plot and action, the film exhibits highly ornate and extremely formalist qualities; by comparison, the screenplay seems much weaker. In a similar manner, in Seven Swords, two mediocre youths from the Martial Arts Village (Wu Zhuang), Han Chibang and Wu Yuanying, receive two magical swords and suddenly became skillful martial arts experts. They then join forces with five other martial arts masters to form a group called Seven Swords to fight against the notorious General Fire-Wind sent by the Emperor. The change happens hastily in the narrative and lacks proper explanation. In addition, the fact that the most senior member of the Seven Swords, Chu Zhaonan, and the female slave of the General, Green Pearl, are both from ancient Korea (which only happens in the film version) lacks credibility and occasionally causes confusion. Their ethnic identity is irrelevant to their roles in the story and the rest of the film does not really develop this ethnic motif. As for A Battle of Wits, since the main story is derived from the history of China’s Warring State era, the film is the most realistic among the three in question. Yet it has also inherited some anomalies from its original comic book version, such as the absurd appearance of a black slave and the balloon air forces, and therefore exhibits a strong fantastic quality. Certainly fantasy is not a problem in itself. Nevertheless, when fantasy cannot be effectively combined with the narrative and therefore fails to convey the theme of the film, it becomes superficial and a mere spectacle. Indiscriminate use of fantasy will also jeopardize the integrity, persuasiveness, and emotional appeal of a film. Thus we can understand why all three films received similar critical comments such as “ornate

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look, weak story” across mainland China, Japan, Korea, and even the US, France, and other places.18 As mentioned earlier, casting was one of the key factors in coproduction projects, and its implication is worthy of scrutiny. We can begin with the primary casting of the main characters (for each film we take six characters as examples; see Table 9.2). As we shall see, the nationalities of the stars playing the leading characters are basically a reflection of the proportion of investment from each country. As mainland China and Hong Kong were the main investment and production partners in all three films, the majority of leading actors/ actresses are from these two regions. There are also one or two leading characters played by South Korean or Japanese actors/actresses in each film. In Seven Swords, Korean actress Kim So-Yeon plays Green Pearl, a character of distinct personality and extraordinary beauty. Although one of three leading female characters, Green Pearl is the most prominent heroine in the film. In The Promise, one of the most popular actors in contemporary Korean TV drama and cinema, Jang Dong-gun, plays

Table 9.2 Leading characters and actors/actresses Title Seven Swords

Leading characters

Chu Zhaonan Yang Yuncong Wu Yuanyin Green Pearl General Fire-Wind Liu Yu-Fang The Promise Goddess Manshen Princess Qingcheng General Guangming Kunlun Wuhuan the Duke Assassin Snow Wolf A Battle of Wits Ge Li the Mohist Zhao Commander Xiang Yanzhong King of Liang Liang Cavalry Chief Yi Yue Prince Liang Shi Liang Archer Zi Tuan

Actor/Actress

Nation/Region

Donnie Yen Leon Lai Charlie Young Kim So Yeun Sun Hong-Lei Zhang Jing-Chu Chen Hong Cecilia Cheung Sanada Hiroyuki Jang Dong-Gun Nicholas Tse Liu Ye Andy Lau Ahn Sung-Ki

HK HK HK Korea China China China HK Japan Korea HK China HK Korea

Wang Zhi-Wen Fan Bing-Bing Choi Si-Won Niki Wu

China China Korea Taiwan

Source: The official websites of the three films and www.imdb.com.

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the role of Kunlun, a slave with unusual physical strength.19 General Guangming is played by Japanese middle-age-generation actor Sanada Hiroyuki, who has been well known in East Asia for a long time and in recent years his acting career has taken on an international outlook.20 In terms of their dramatic roles and screen time, Kunlun and Guangming are as important as the other leading characters. In A Battle of Wits, the Japanese side only contributed the production crew, while two Korean stars participated in the acting. The first is Ahn Sung-ki, a senior and award-winning actor who plays the Zhao Commander Xiang Yanzhong, the rival of the leading character Ge Li (played by Hong Kong star Andy Lau). The other is Choi Si-Won (who plays Liang Shi, the Prince of Liang), a young generation idol who was already famous in Japan at the time. The significance of casting in the three films can be further illustrated by analyzing the leading characters. According to the basic characterization pattern of mainstream melodrama,21 there are usually three major characters, a leading male character (as the good man or the hero), a leading female character (as the good woman or heroine), and a supporting character (as the villain). However, in the three films, due to the necessity of accommodating a number of significant roles in order to balance the different demands of all parties, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the leading and supporting roles, for instance the relative significance of the hero, the heroine, and the villain, by evaluating the characters themselves or their allotted screen time. For example, in A Battle of Wits, Ge Li, played by Andy Lau, is a typical hero. He is a Moist who helps the State of Liang to defend itself against the invading Zhao army. But Ge’s rival, Zhao Commander Xiang Yanzhong, played by Ahn Sung-Ki from South Korea, is also a character with good leadership and reputation, and establishes a kind of friendship with Ge Li later in the film. Prince Liang Shi, played by Choi Si-Won, suspects Ge Li’s program at the first place, but changes his mind later when he becomes an admirer and follower of Ge Li. At the end, Liang Shi is killed accidentally by his father’s army for protecting Ge Li. Strictly speaking, King of Liang, played by Mainland Chinese actor Wang Zhiwen, is the character nearest to the villain. As the heroine Yi Yue, played by Mainland Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, is a less significant character in the film, except for her beauty and affection for Ge Li. There are two heroes of equal importance in Seven Swords, Chu ZhaoNan and Yang Yun-Cong, played by Hong Kong’s Donnie Yen and Leon Lai respectively. Similarly, the two leading female characters, Wu Yuangying (played by Charlie Young from Hong Kong) and Green Pearl

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(Kim So-Yeun from Korea) enjoy an equal standing in the main story. However, in comparison with Wu Yuangying (portrayed as a typical chivalrous heroine), Green Pearl, as a slave who later falls in love with Chu Zhaonan, is a more complicated character and has more performing space. Finally, General Fire-Wind is a typical villain, played by veteran Chinese actor Sun Honglei. Compared to the other two films, the more or less equal participation of partners from each country in The Promise explains the more or less equal share of screen time and narrative space between the main characters. Princess Qingcheng, played by Hong Kong actress Cecilia Cheung, is the leading female character and her importance is compatible to the three main male characters, General Guangming, slave Kunlun and Wuhuan the Duke. Kunlun is the main hero. He has extraordinary physical power, a loyal personality, and is the only male character to survive and accompany Princess Qingcheng. General Guangming is the most influential figure in the kingdom other than the King. As a warrior he has had splendid exploits and has an arrogant personality, which makes him more ambivalent than the conventional hero. However, in the final sequence of the film he sacrifices himself to save Qingcheng. His heroic sacrifice ensures a positive ending for the film. The arch villain is Duke Wuhuan, played by Hong Kong’s Nicholas Tse, who despite his good looks is consumed by vengeance. The arrangements of all the leading characters and their corresponding actors/actresses are summarized in Table 9.3. Some observations can be derived from the above discussion: Japanese and Korean actors/ actresses are usually cast in positive roles, while all the villains in these films are played by Chinese or Hong Kong actors. While the nationality

Table 9.3 Casting (lead characters) Character and casting / Title

Seven Swords

The Promise

Jang Dong-Gun (Korea) Sanada Hiroyuki (Japan) Charlie Young (HK) Cecilia Cheung Kim So-Yeun (Korea) (HK) Sun Hong-Lei (China) Nicholas Tse (HK)

A Battle of Wits

The leading male Donnie Yen (HK) character Leon Lai (HK)

Andy Lau (HK) Ahn Sung-Ki (Korea)

The leading female character The villain

Fan Bing-Bing (China) Wan Chi-Wen (China)

Source: The official websites of the three films and www.imdb.com.

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of the actress(es) in a leading role in each film can vary, male characters remain the most significant in the films. The implication of such “division of labor” can be further examined by taking into account the mechanism of film production and the screenplay. Concluding remarks In Seven Swords, Chu Zhaonan, the head of the Seven Swords, rescues Green Pearl from Fire-Wind’s control and later realizes that both were from Korea and for some unknown reason forced to come to China to work as slaves. These two Korean characters were added to the original story by the filmmaker in the film adaptation. Understandably, adding the Korean character Green Pearl diegetically justifies the casting of Korean actress Kim So-Yeon and the use of Korean in the dialogue. Nevertheless, the most powerful martial artist in the film, Chu Zhaonan is played by Donnie Yen from Hong Kong, and his lines have to be dubbed in Korean. The casting of an ethnic Chinese actor in the role of a Korean character seems to contradict the filmmaker’s intention in Kim So-Yeon’s case. Director Tsui Hark has never explained publicly the reason for adding these two characters, but the end product suggests that the film(maker) has made a good effort to capture the Korean market while utilizing the star power of Yen, Hong Kong’s top kung fu actor. In addition, the Korean characters in the film are portrayed as being indomitable in the face of great dangers and adversity. More importantly, they always have the motherland in mind and are determined to “go home” one day. In the same rescue sequence, Chu reveals to Green Pearl that he is also a slave: Chu: I have the tattoo of a slave on my skin, too. I came from the other side of the Yalu River.22 I also live like a stray dog like you. People burned a mark on your body, but you cannot live with it for life! Do not forget your name and do not forget your homeland. Chu takes Green Pearl to a hilltop afterwards and both overlook the mountains. Chu: Go over the hill and walk straight toward the east. We will see the Yalu River. That is the place where we want to go, our homeland.” Green Pearl: Home … home! I will go back! Definitely go back! This exchange of nostalgia and homesickness between Chu and Green Pearl is irrelevant to the main storyline (to save the village and fight

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against the villain) but apparently carries strong emotional appeal for the Korean audience, although how they may interpret the message is not immediately clear. It is also noteworthy that in The Promise Kunlun (played by Jang Dong-gun from Korea), is also a slave. Like Chu Zhaonan, Kunlun has great physical and mental power. His loyalty to his master General Guangming is resolute, and his power and influence have already gone far beyond his master’s. Although there is no specific historical and geographical setting in The Promise, the fact that South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun played Kunlun in the service of General Guangming (played by Japanese actor Sanada Hiroyuki) and their respective treatment in the film betray the cultural dynamics of these two nations at the meta-textual level. A closer look at the three Korean slaves serving the Chinese and Japanese respectively reveals more of these dynamics. Such a masterslave relation symbolizes Korea’s subservience to China and Japan in the distant past. Yet the resilience and persistence of these characters imply that Koreans have never really been domesticated by these colonial powers, and they eventually can outsmart their masters. In addition, the Korean slaves either must go back to their homeland (Seven Swords), or achieve ultimate freedom and reward (The Promise). Is this positive portrayal of Korean characters in these two films simply a coincidence? I will return to this question later. For now, let us consider a relevant aspect in A Battle of Wits. Since the story of A Battle of Wits is derived from Chinese history, it is difficult to include South Korean or Japanese characters even though stars from these countries were cast to play key roles. As a result, Ahn Sung-Ki and Choi Shi-Won from South Korea both play Chinese in the film. Like Chu Zhaonan, Green Pearl, and Kunlun discussed above, Ahn and Choi are cast in positive roles. They are courageous and sometimes display the qualities of the tragic hero. The characterization and casting of these regional co-productions are therefore the result of a combination of commercial and cultural factors. First of all, in addition to whether an actor/actress fits a particular role, the most important criterion in casting is a star’s popularity and box-office appeal in the respective stakeholder’s market and eventually the international market. The leading characters in these films are all played by famous stars with impressive track records in the national, regional, and in some cases international, markets. Secondly, the actors/ actresses from different countries are cast in three basic types, which are respectively represented in the three films. The first type retains the actor’s nationality/ethnicity by adding an inter-cultural or inter-ethnic

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interaction subplot, such as the ancient Korean slaves in Seven Swords. The second type obscures the actor’s national identity through the use of fantasy and myth in an ambiguous time and space setting as in The Promise, and the third type casts an actor/actress in a role whose national/ethnic identity is different from his/her own nationality in reality with the aid of dubbing, as in A Battle of Wits. In a co-production which way is taken is probably the result of complicated practical considerations. However, as shown in the casting and characterization of Korean actors/actresses in the three films discussed above, no matter whether the film narrative is to reconstruct a fictional inter-cultural/ ethnic relationship or to obscure a character’s national identity, the “national” factor is by no means eliminated completely.

Conclusion: Co-producing (a kind of) “East Asia” Taking advantage of “the rise of Asia” and accelerated political, economic, and cultural exchanges in the region, film co-production in East Asia has reached a new level during the first decade of the twenty-first century in terms of the scale of investment and the scope of cooperation. Several blockbuster films co-produced by film companies in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan have attracted region-wide public attention and seem to have brought into being a new “East Asian cinema.” Taking three most prominent examples, Seven Swords, The Promise, and A Battle of Wits as case studies, this chapter has attempted to capture the dynamics of these co-productions and their textual and cultural implications. The primary logic of these East Asian co-productions is to integrate the resources and advantages of the region in order to maximize profit from the regional market and to expand further into the global (mainly the Western) market. To achieve this goal, filmmakers usually prefer the martial arts film due to its transnational popularity and proven record of success worldwide. But instead of developing a fresh and creative approach to martial arts films, these films tend to rely heavily on stylized action, ornate settings, and spectacular special effects at the expense of plot coherence and depth of meaning. The outcome is somewhat disappointing as the films’ overall quality does not do justice to the plentiful resources and multicultural talents invested in these projects. In addition, with the immense market profitability and strong incentives in making big-budget productions, China has inevitably become the center of recent East Asian co-productions: China has become an important source of funding and technical labor as well as a production

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and post-production center in the region. More importantly, due to the size of the Chinese market, the priority given to “China content” is evident in the film texts from narrative, costumes, artifacts, and setting to martial arts choreography. Of course, the most significant of all is that the main language used in all three films is Chinese (Mandarin). In A Battle of Wits, the dialogue of the South Korean actors was dubbed into Mandarin in post-production. Although Korean is used on some occasions in Seven Swords, the arrangements, though essential, result in an awkward alteration of the original story. The Japanese and Korean actors starring in The Promise even made the “compromise” of learning and speaking Mandarin themselves, which became one of the focal points in the film’s publicity. Finally, the martial arts-based stories of these films strategically use an ancient time-space setting, which is more suitable for displaying sophisticated costumes, oriental/exotic set design, and tantalizing fantasy elements. More importantly, to avoid contemporary stories is also to avoid possible conflicts between partners from different national locations over sensitive topics. While regional co-production may have brought about increased political-economic and cultural interactions between East Asian countries, the three films in question seem not to have the slightest intention of alluding to the present. Indeed, specific cultural and historical references are either obscured or simplistically rendered. In all these projects, Korean or Japanese investors are either secondary or invited participants; this explains why their actors/actresses all played positive roles while the nationalistic messages they embody are largely one-dimensional. These new East Asian films are all packaged as “Asian productions” by their producers. However the “Asia” or “East Asia” represented in these films, whether in a general sense or when referring to individual nations, is a superficial, obscured, stereotypical, and ambiguous entity remote from contemporary realities.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

See Lent 1990. Chen 2006. See Otmazgin 2005 and Shim 2006. See Miller, Govil, McMurria, and Maxwell 2001. Ibid.: Chapter 3. See, for example, Hoskins, McFadyen, and Finn 1997. Murdock 1996: 107. Baltruschat 2002. See Yau 2006 and Lo 2005.

Ti Wei 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

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Lo 2005. Tsai 2005. Lo 2005. Italics added. Lee Joo-Ick, General Manager of Boram Entertainment, the South Korean investor of Seven Swords, quoted on http://www.takungpao.com/ news/05/10/30/YMHQ-477258.htm (Accessed December 20, 2005). Lee Jung-hee, head of film department of SHOWEAST, the South Korean investor/distributor of The Promise and The Myth, quoted on http://chinese. chosun.com/big5/site/data/html_dir/2005/09/21/20050921000000.html (Accessed December 20, 2005). See Miller, Govil, McMurria, Maxwell 2001. “Domestic production” here refers to the films financed and produced by domestic companies without foreign participation. The data of production companies and budget numbers of the two films is compiled from the Internet Movie Database (www.imbd.com). The budget of another martial arts film previously directed by Zhang, Hero (2002), was 30 million USD, much higher than that of House of Flying Daggers, but still lower than that of The Promise. See, for example, the Korean newspaper report retrieved from http:// chn.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/01/10/20070110000036.html, and the Singapore news website report retrieved from http://www.sing taonet.com:82/ent/focus/t20060324_173063.html (Accessed April 30, 2008). Both Kim So-Yeon and Jang Dong-Gun were famous in East Asian countries mainly because of their acting in the internationally popular Korean TV drama All About Eve (2000). Sanada Hiroyuki played a Japanese samurai in a Hollywood blockbuster production The Last Samurai (2003), which stars major Hollywood star Tom Cruise. See Giannetti 2007. The Yalu River is the natural boundary between Mainland China and the Korean Peninsula.

Bibliography Baltruschat, Doris (May 2002) “Globalization and International TV and Film CoProductions: In Search of New Narratives.” Paper presented at the Conference Media in Transition 2: Globalization and Convergence, MIT, Cambridge, MA. http://web.mit.edu/ cms/Events/mit2/Abstracts/DorisBaltruschat.pdf (Accessed August 31, 2006). Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2006) Towards De-Imperialization: Asia as Method, Taipei: Xing-Ren. Ciecko, Anne T. (ed.) (2006) Contemporary Asian Cinema, Oxford: Berg. Giannetti, Louis D. (2007) Understanding Movies, 11th edn. NJ: Prentice Hall. Hoskins, Colin, Stuart McFadyen, and Adam Finn (1997) Global Television and Film: An Introduction to the Economics of the Business, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lent, John (1990) The Asian Film Industry, Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Lo, Kwai-Cheung (2005) “There is No Such Thing as Asia: Racial Particularities in the ‘Asian’ Films of Hong Kong and Japan,” Chung Wai Literary Quarterly, 34: 1, 89–106. Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil , John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell (2001). Global Hollywood. London: BFI. Murdock, Graham (1996) “Trading Places: The Cultural Economy of CoProduction,” in Sofia Blind and Gerd Hallenberger (eds), European Co-Productions in Television and Film, Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter. Otmazgin, Nissim Kadosh (2005) “Cultural Commodities and Regionalization in East Asia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 27: 3, 499–523. Shim, Doobo (2006) “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia,” Media, Culture & Society, 28: 1, 25–44. Tsai, Eva Ru-Yin (2005) “On Transnational Star in the Globalized/Postcolonial Asia: Kaneshiro Takeshi in the Relations of Media Cultural Production,” Chung Wai Literary Quarterly, 34: 1, pp. 67–88. Wei, Ti (2006) “Co-Producing Culture: Reflections on the International Film Co-Production in the Age of Globalization,” Mass Communication Research, 89, 127–64. Yau, Shuk-Ting (2006) Searching for the Origins of Asian Cinema: The Relationship between Hong Kong and Japanese Film Industries, HK: Cosmos Books.

Part IV Interviews: Filmmakers on Filmmaking

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10 Framing Tokyo Media Capital and Asian Co-Production Stephanie DeBoer

Regions are mediated. Often entwined with film and media production, they are constructed across a conflicting range of ideological, economic and cultural forces. There have been many reports on the rise in regional film and media co-productions over the past decade or more. Much has also been made of the convergence of this rise with the ascendancy of a “new Asia” of intensified economic and cultural production. In this analysis, film and media co-production often becomes a sign of new possibilities for the region—the possibilities of new markets, new identities, new networks and even new technologies. Yet co-productions do not only signal desires for the production of this ever-emergent Asia. If regionalism, like globalization, is a “complex, conflicting and indeterminate process,” then the regional co-production is also a window into its conflicts, complexities, and negotiations.1 The three edited interview excerpts with film and media producers below, conducted in the spring of 2009, reflect some of the competing discourses and practices at play in recent regional collaborations. Each is a conversation with a prominent Tokyo-based producer who has worked closely on co-productions in Asia since well into the 1990s. To varying degrees, these interviews both promote and problematize the relationship between the economic contours of the region and its film and media production. On the one hand, producing co-productions in close interface with regional market, funding, and network structures, these producers are also significant “framers” of these processes.2 Thus, these interviews certainly offer discourses to be interrogated. At the same time, they also suggest frameworks for approaching the ideologies and formations that constrain their work across national or local, regional and global networks. In this sense, the promotional and production-driven discourses so central to the recently lauded “rise” 213

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of Asian (co-)production are here produced and practiced on multiple, contested, and disjunctive levels. The conflicting range of practices and perspectives on co-productions offered in these interviews should be understood against a backdrop of Tokyo in relationship with other media capitals at work in the region. Michael Curtin introduced the term “media capital” to refer to (most often urban) centers of media production, creativity, and capital as they work in competing and differentiated relations to one another.3 What is important here is the dynamics of power through which these networks are constructed. The media capitals mentioned in these interviews are each distinctively constructed in a complex play of their proximity to intensified flows of capital and creativity and the territorial structures (of funding, distribution, production itself) that constrain or reconstitute those flows. Always in flux and in interface with wider networks, media capitals remain multifaceted yet deeply perspectival entities. In the case of Tokyo, a longstanding backdrop and history of negotiation concerning domestic film and cultural production and its interface with other locations in Asia should not be lost on us. The interviews below incorporate a range of industry positions and interests that are located in commercial film, art house cinema, and public-oriented television industries. Yet each reflects upon co-productions over a period in which industries in Tokyo have demonstrated renewed attention to their place in “Asian”/regional production.4

Iseki Satoru Iseki Satoru is the head of Nippon Development and Finance, and is a producer with a wide range of commercial and independent productions to his credit. He worked as a film distributor in the 1980s and as the production manager of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran in 1990. His transnational productions include such films as Shadow of China (1990, Yanagimachi Mitsuo), Smoke (1995, Wayne Wang), A Little Life Opera (1997, Allen Fong), Emperor and the Assassin (1998, Chen Kaige), Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters (2002, Wellson Chin), and Battle of Wits (2006, Jacob Cheung). IS: Iseki Satoru SD: Stephanie DeBoer IS: To speak of present conditions, and this is true of the Japanese film world as well, there’s been a huge rise in activities aimed at producing co-productions. SD: I’ve noticed this too. Particularly in the last five or so, for example, I’ve noticed a recurring theme in popular journals and film

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magazines—that now is an “era of co-productions” or that “the future lies in co-productions.” I’ve always wondered how filmmakers or producers might respond to these predictions. IS: Some consider me a pioneer in the making of co-productions. And so I’ve been involved in all kinds of co-production seminars. Whenever these kinds of discussions come up, I always remind them that the co-production itself isn’t the goal here. The co-production is a tool, not an aim. But many people approach it rather simply: “Since we can get this much money from Japan, this much funding from China and then this much from Korea, why don’t we put together a film here?” I wouldn’t say that every single film produced in this way fails. But I would say that the vast majority of these cases fail in filmic terms. A great example here is from a while ago—probably more than ten years ago. I received a call from someone who said that film subsidies were available between Kyoto and Florence because they’re sister cities. They went on to say that because of these subsidies they’d decided to put together a love story between Florence and Kyoto featuring an Italian man and a Japanese woman. Not many people know of the film—it wasn’t very successful. There are many of these kinds of films—so many of these cases. But this really is the wrong approach. I would have no problem with a case in which a decision to set a film in Kyoto and Florence came about as a result of a particular idea for a story. But the whole process is wrong here. You’ve got to have something you want to convey. To say it in another way, films should be born as a result of a strong desire to create something, to tell a story. Sure, it’s possible to make a film as a result of pulling this or that resource together. But will it really speak to the audience? This is the most easily occurring danger for an international co-production to fall into. Here we have money. There we have funding. If we get money from these three places, we’ll be able to make a film. All we have to do is come up with a story that links these three cities together. SD: So then you get these stories about international locations, about international romance? IS: Yes. Though the problem isn’t about wanting to make this kind of film from the beginning. It’s about needing to come up with a story that’s structured to fit the funding circumstances that are already in place. This comes up a lot. And it will continue to come up. Especially, to speak of recent developments, in relation to Korea and Taiwan.

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The subsidies that they’re providing now are really substantial. Japan provides a bit of funding. But around last year, I’d say, Taiwan came out with this really big fund. And then Korea, through their KOFIC organization, also substantially reinvigorated its funding system. Japan might somehow come up with a substantial funding system as well. And in this case, people could easily argue that because these three countries have money we should then talk about making more films among them. I’m a bit concerned about this scenario. But there’s a lot of activity like this. SD: So to what sort of aims or advantages are co-productions best suited? Why might they be produced? IS: For example, I produced Emperor and the Assassin. I don’t consider that a co-production at all. In my opinion what we produced was a Chen Kaige film—a film made by Chen Kaige. To simplify it a bit further, we produced a Chinese film. It’s true that the money came from Japan. But I don’t think that where the funding comes from really matters. What’s important here is the ways in which the staff and creative workers are linked to the project. So while we could say that this is a Japan-China co-production—and this is what it tends to get called—I’m of the opinion that we produced a Chinese film. One real danger for a co-production is that it ends up being a film with no identity. And the identity of a film in the end is the director. In spite of everything else. More recently I produced Battle of Wits—a film with a Hong Kong director that was based on a Japanese manga and set on location in China. In this case we intentionally brought into the mix a Japanese cinematographer and Korean star—though I don’t know if any of this worked very well. In comparison to the Chen Kaige/Chinese film that I produced earlier, I guess that this film could actually be called a co-production. But I would consider most of the other films I’ve produced to be films determined by the director, even though they’re generally categorized as linked to Japan because of my participation in them. There is such a thing as a producer’s film in all of this. But producers generally just follow what the director says. There are a few producers out there who manage their films from script on up, but I would say that over 90 percent of the films out there are ultimately the films of their directors. If its a “producer film,” then the producer is the author. But generally speaking I’m sorry to say that we’re not filmmakers. And so while the films that I’ve participated in might be

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said to have Japanese nationality in the mix, I think its difficult to call these films true co-productions. SD: So you would be of the opinion that we consider creative people collaborating without much concern for nationality? IS: Yes, well. Which is to say that while borders are undoubtedly present in Asia today, I have a sense that film is the one thing that can most easily do away with borders. Or rather, because film can potentially cross borders so easily, it should work in this way. Though this is not, unfortunately, the general thinking in Asia at this point. As I’ve said before, there are many systemic differences, many business and organizational differences across these borders. There are all these differences in filmmaking customs and conventions as well, but these can all basically be resolved. This is because in the end, for filmmaking at least, the differences aren’t particularly big. SD: How would you compare the conditions for co-productions in the nineties with those of the last few years? What would you say is different? IS: The biggest difference, and I return to something I’ve said again and again, is the opening of the China market. Though this isn’t to say that it is truly open. In 2004, Hong Kong and China signed a kind of agreement such that when Hong Kong producers, or rather Hong Kong industries, set up offices in mainland China their films would be considered Chinese films. Up until then Hong Kong films had been considered foreign films. And because of this, and it was the same for us, it had been very difficult to do business with mainland China. So when Hong Kong entered we then were able to enter China by way of them—and in a business sense things became much easier. This agreement was to follow 2004, by which time we had already started working on Battle of Wits, so we weren’t able to go this route. But there was a huge change following that. And what resulted from all this are films like Red Cliff. Hong Kong is linked to all of the huge films, so-called big films, from China. China doesn’t yet have the know-how to make these kinds of big budget films on its own. But at the same time China is becoming a market in which only big films make it. It’s very rough. SD: So this is a very tough market… IS: Yes—a very tough market. There are several problems here. One very big one is the piracy problem. You have to draw a huge audience right

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up front. In extreme cases, a pirated version will come out within two days following an opening. And within two weeks it will spread out to the whole of China. In order to protect ourselves from piracy, we’ll show it widely all at once—garner profits all at once—and sell an official DVD at the theaters. SD: So do you look to other locations in Asia when considering co-productions? IS: Now all of Asia is implicated. India in particular has begun to be involved in some very intense ways. Everyone is beginning to really pay attention to India, and India itself has begun to make calls for the possibilities of producing together as well. And then there’s South East Asia—Thailand in particular. Thailand has gotten into post-production. They began by developing their post-production facilities and inviting in all sorts of projects—this is how they’ve been successful. Now a significant percentage of Hollywood film is developed in Thailand. Which is to say that post-production levels in Thailand are becoming higher and higher. And then there’s Singapore. There didn’t used to be any significant film industry there, but now they have one. Thanks to digital technologies, places with no post-production or laboratory facilities have come to be able to make films relatively easily. It used to be really difficult to make a movie if you didn’t have lab facilities—this involved shooting with film. And with this development we’ve seen directors start to come out of all sorts of countries. Singapore and Malaysia, for example. Thailand, of course. India has always had Bollywood, but we’ve also seen more and more films that aren’t of that unique film style come out of India, as well. SD: So you’ve noted that a wide range of locations have come to produce films in Asia of late. What can Japan offer in this context? IS: Yes. Hm. That’s a rather difficult question. SD: Where might Japan sit in all of this? IS: This is an extremely difficult question. Japanese technicians originally—and this is also true of Hong Kong, of Chinese, of Korean film—really furthered the techniques of Japanese film. Thirty or fifty years ago many people were coming to learn about Japanese film technologies. Because of this, for example, Japanese remains in

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Korean filmmaking language up to now. Everyone knows this, but if you ask people if they are linked they’ll generally say there’s no connection. To speak of what Japan can offer now, I think really nothing. These days, everyone considers Japan to be a “material” producing country. For example, the source of an anime to adapt into a film, or a manga into a movie—novels are the same. Needless to say, Battle of Wits was adapted from a Japanese manga and made into a film in China. So what many people are thinking these days is that Japan is the place for things like manga and animation—that Japan is the place for original content. But to consider other things: everyone considers Japanese technology to be at a high level. I wouldn’t say that it surpasses everyone exactly, but it is unparalleled—Japan’s technical level is high. But in the end, its still all of the same general quality. And in this context, Japan is too expensive. Because of this, the question of what Japan can offer becomes really difficult. If you pay your money competently then competent people will show up. Yet the Japanese version of this “competent” is more expensive. Even though the level of quality is equivalent. And so in this case, there’s no advantage to paying for Japanese staff. People sometimes say that Japanese staff work hard. But all film staff of all countries work hard. So there really isn’t a big difference. Because of this it’s really difficult to say what Japan can offer to this context. There are no real subsidies in Japan. Korea has them. So does Taiwan. China doesn’t really have subsidies, but its market is huge. India’s market is of course big, as well. Indonesia—the third largest country in Asia—hasn’t had any real market up to now, but some are saying that its market has really grown recently. China has thirteen hundred million people. India has eleven hundred million. Indonesia has four hundred million. We really can’t ignore these markets. And when it gets stated it in these ways, I’m at a loss for words when you ask about what Japan can really offer. SD: To return to the topic of China: particularly during, as well as before, the nineties there were several Japan-China co-productions concerned with addressing the historical problems of Sino-Japanese relations. IS: Yes, there were.

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SD: What do you think about these kinds of films? And also, have you encountered these kinds of problems in your own filmmaking in China? IS: I’ve never—not even once in all my producing—encountered problems linked to Sino-Japanese historical relations. Personally speaking. But there were several films like this made. For example Sakura, produced by Mr. Kitagawa. Hm. And this brings to mind the films Mr. Tokuma produced that were very close to this type—all of them addressed the problems of Japan-China relations, even if not directly. If you go even further back, there was Kumai Kei’s Ocean to Cross. And you could even say that a film like Dunhuang had a bit of this content underlying it—a concern for what is often termed “Sino-Japanese Friendship.” This came about when Tanaka Kakue signed a peace and friendship treaty with China in the early seventies. This basic stance of “let’s get along together” began around then, and Japan-China collaborations took on a rather political odor. At that time the China Co-production Company existed, and there were people there who spoke Japanese. This was a period when a lot of effort was put into making these kinds of films. But I’ve never approached filmmaking from the stance of encouraging friendship between countries. Not once. Though there is one way in which you could say that I’ve addressed this. For example, when I was working to produce the Chinese film, Emperor and the Assassin—when I was thinking to produce what I earlier referred to as a Chen Kaige film. I was concerned about how I would talk with Chen Kaige. And to prep for this—I’m Japanese, but because I was making a film themed upon Chinese history—the one thing I did was closely study the history of that time period. And actually, not just of that time period. I really studied Chinese history. Seriously studied it—studied it such that I’m probably the one foreign producer who knows the most about Chinese history. But having said this: no matter how much more about Chinese history I may know than Chen Kaige, I’ll never be Chinese. But still, you have to have an understanding of your partner’s culture, even if it can only be from the position of a Japanese. If you don’t take on some level of knowledge, then you’ll have nothing to say when questions come up about what to do with the film. This is what I really learned. And what I continue to learn now. In the end, film is a reflection of culture. And even if you never get it all, I think the work becomes impossible if you don’t make effort here.

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Earlier, you asked if I have any interest in relations between countries, and I don’t have much interest here—it rarely comes up. In the end I think that filmmaking is really about the individual. Not the country. Not the region. In the end it’s about individuals coming together—with all their divergent opinions and viewpoints—to make a film. SD: So you don’t have much of a sense that you’re making an “Asian” film then, either? IS: I guess so. For one, as I’ve become a bit older, time differences have really begun to affect me. The energy I used to have to work with Hollywood, for example, seems to have gone away. I still do have a kind of dream to work with Hollywood—all Japanese producers have this. Or rather, those with money have this dream. There are people who say, “Because I‘ve got money, I’m going to work with Hollywood.” But I’m sorry to say that this is never enough—these films don’t get made only with money.

Ichiyama Shozo Ichiyama Shozo is a producer currently working in the production division of Office Kitano. He is also the program director of the Tokyo FilmEx International Film Festival. He was a producer for Shochiku until 1998, and was responsible for the Best of Asia Film Section in the Tokyo International Film Festival from 1992 to 1998. His production credits include a wide range of both domestic and international productions. Transnational co-productions include: Good Men, Good Women, Good-bye South, Good-bye, Flowers of Shanghai (1995, 1996, 2000, all Hou Hsiao-hsien); Blackboards (2000, Samira Makhmalbaf); Platform, The World, Unknown Pleasures (2000, 2004, 2006, all Jia Zhangke); and Big River (2006, Atsushi Funahashi). SD: Stephanie DeBoer IS: Ichiyama Shozo SD: Given your long-standing experience, perhaps we could begin by reflecting on your earlier co-productions … IS: Until 1991, everything I worked on was your average Japanese film. Everything. But from ’95, when I was working for Shochiku, I produced three of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films. Obviously, originally my original role there had been to produce Japanese films. But from ’92, you know the Tokyo International Film Festival, right? I was sent

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there by Shochiku to run the Asian film section. I did this for several years. During that time Hou’s Puppet Master opened the section, and I got to know the director then. And then in the following year— that must have been about 1993—Hou was in a bind. He wasn’t able to find funding support for his next film in Taiwan. So Hou asked me if anyone in Japan would be willing to invest in his film. Again, I was working for Shochiku, so I replied that, while I didn’t know if they’d support this film, I’d propose it to the company. I consulted with upper management, we read the script, and the decision was made to support it. The production cost of this film wasn’t very big—altogether about one hundred and forty million yen. Shochiku put up around a hundred million yen, I’d say. One hundred million yen is no small amount, but it wasn’t huge in comparison to what Shochiku would usually put into the production of a film. Also, Shochiku already had a special international co-production fund for films at the time. SD: Really? I wasn’t aware of this. IS: Yes. Shochiku had a fund called Future Enterprise for a while. I helped to produce 226/Four Days of Snow and Blood under the fund’s first iteration. Though just like other films linked to the fund at the time, this was a Japanese film. In the fund’s third iteration, it was no longer targeted toward Japanese film. Instead, it was reconstituted with an aim toward co-productions with Hollywood. Though most films linked to the fund were never realized. SD: So this fund helped you to produce Hou’s second film? IS: We didn’t use this fund for Good-bye South, Good-bye. Hou began shooting this film rather abruptly, so Shochiku had to set up the accounts for it very quickly. The fund required that there be a concrete plan set in place, and we didn’t have the time to put this together. So Shochiku itself funded the whole film. To speak frankly, this film didn’t do very well in a monetary sense. We never got a return on our one hundred million yen of funding. But it was accepted into the competition at Cannes, and moved through all sorts of European markets. Which is to say that even though we didn’t put a whole lot of money into it, there was a market for it. It didn’t raise much of a profit. But from another perspective, you could say that it reached some of its goals. And based on that, we were able to produce Hou’s next film. Flowers of Shanghai was produced with the aid of this fund.

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SD: How would you characterize your style of collaborating with directors? Is there anything particular or different about the ways in which you engage with co-productions? IS: There is a style of co-producing in which you leave all the filmmaking details to others and only worry about funding concerns on your own end. I’d say that this approach is closer to simply procuring the worldwide rights to a film. And in this sense, I don’t hear of many cases in which a Japanese producer will consult with a director all the way through the making of a film. When you look at the films made with Hou Hsiao-hsien, you don’t think about there being anything “Japanese” there, right? But at the same time it was produced through a continual process of discussion between director and producer. SD: From your perspective, is there a difference between co-productions of the 1990s and co-productions now? IS: The 1990s was an era in which we could anticipate profits based on the name of the director alone. But from 2000 this has become much more difficult. A showing time of five to six weeks would have felt extremely short in the 1990s—very short for an art house film. If it garnered a bit of a following, ten-week runs were possible and there were many cases of half a year. We’ve stopped seeing these cases, though. Six to seven weeks is considered a long run, and they won’t show a film longer than this. Which is to say that they’ve already decided upon the next film. In the past, if the box-office was low, we’d extend the showing a bit with the hope that a few more audience members would come through the door. Nowadays, if an audience doesn’t show up right away, they just move on to the next film. In this context, there’s a limit to what the name of a director can do. So then you get films featuring this star or this music or that artistic element—you have to incorporate these things that don’t necessarily have to do with film per se. Its become difficult to advertise a film based on the fact that “we’ve created a good film” or that “the director is famous or internationally recognized.” All of this has become difficult. To take us back to co-productions, in the past I never said anything about Hou Hsiao-hsien’s casting. I just told him to put together the cast that he preferred. Since then, if it’s a film costing only ten million yen, I can still say, “Make it as you’d like.” But if we’re putting out a hundred million yen, other factors become

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necessary. Like using stars or including Japanese actors, for example. I’m not certain that these elements will lead a film to box office success, but the film’s possibilities are lost from the get go if you don’t include them. I’d say that things became really difficult from around 2000. For art films, it’s been a particularly difficult time. The one thing that has become easier, however, is that people’s resistance to co-productions has disappeared. In the past, Japanese actors didn’t tend to want to participate in overseas productions. They’d worry about things like how difficult it would be to shoot on location. But these days I’ve seen an increase in the people who think that it would be interesting to work on an international co-production. In this respect, I have a sense that all sorts of interesting collaborations might be made. In the nineties there were limits to this—only a limited set of actors participated in co-produced films. But lately, because of the number of people who are willing to participate in them, these kinds of productions become a bit easier to make. I think that there are all sorts of possibilities here. But at the same time, we’ve also entered a difficult moment for production. SD: So in your experience why produce a co-production? What are its benefits and difficulties? IS: To speak of a film like Unknown Pleasures—a film funded by Japan, Korea, and France, with all its location shooting in China—the merit of a film like this is that when the French producers get involved in it they work really hard to advertise the film over there. They’ll really promote it. If it’s a co-production, people are involved in it from a number of national contexts, and each works really hard on it in their respective territories. This is a huge merit, in my opinion. The disadvantage of a co-production is, of course, its difficulty. This in the end becomes my job. I send the rough cut to the other producers in France, and they come back to me with all these complaints. There would be a huge fight if they were to get back to the director unmediated, so I stand in the middle. I pass on these opinions to Jia Zhangke by saying, “Perhaps it would be better if you did this. …” And then I go back to the producers with the things I know that the director will be angry about—“This is such an important scene that we can’t cut it,” for example. It’s a really difficult process.

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SD: I know that you’ve interfaced with co-productions in your work with film festivals, as well. IS: The central job of a film festival is to show films. But at the same time, all of these people gather together there. There’s this director, that producer, that sales agent. If a space for meeting is created there, then this can be the beginning of a co-production. I’m talking about places like Rotterdam’s CineMart or the Pusan Festival’s PPP, for example. Actually, my relationship with Jia Zhangke began with a meeting at the Berlin Film Festival. But I didn’t meet him at a market. Instead, I just met him at a film showing. Berlin didn’t have a project market at the time—they have one now, though. So at that time we met by chance. Now meeting at Berlin doesn’t happen just by chance in the same way. They’ve produced a project market and are establishing a place for people to meet there. Because a film festival is a place where people gather, I think it’s a really important to create these spaces. SD: In film and industry journals, we sometimes read reports on “the possibilities of the co-production” or how we’re now moving into an “era of co-productions.” As a producer and programmer, what do you think of these predictions? IS: I in no way think that we’re moving into an era of co-productions. The conditions in Europe, for example, are really severe. Though I suppose that you could say that because of the difficult situation that we find ourselves in, we may be entering into something called a co-production era. Domestically, in Japan, it is very difficult to find funding. So in this sense, I suppose some would call it a coproduction era due to these difficulties that force us to appeal to international co-productions, that force us to beg others for money. Where the era of co-productions lies in a more positive sense, though, is the ways in which Japanese actors, especially what you might call star actors, have become less resistant to co-productions. This is where co-productions become interesting in my opinion— in the range films that these actors are appearing in. But again on the other hand, because its so difficult to fully fund a film in Japan, we’ve entered into a period in which we have no choice but to pursue co-productions. In this respect, it really is a negative. This has long been the case for film in Japan: because its market is rather large we’ve always been able to cull together all the funds we needed, so there was little monetary need for co-productions.

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Because of this, very few people were producing co-productions up until the 1980s and 1990s. But things have since become especially tough for the production of anything close to an art film. So we have no choice but to pursue co-productions. Yet at the same time, the European market is becoming smaller and smaller. And they’re not receptive to offers of co-productions from Japan. SD: There are also many articles that point to “the future of Asia” in this context. In what ways have you considered this? IS: We really don’t know what will happen in the future. Korea is a great case in point. Its industry is in a downturn right now, but there was a time when we would never have expected this. Though more generally in the case of Asia, I think that there is always the possibility of an expansion of new markets that we haven’t yet seen. If you ask me what these markets might offer in a concrete sense, I couldn’t tell you. But there always remains this possibility. At the same time, though, there are some significant systemic problems with China. So while the China market is really huge, for example, I don’t think that it will really become that big of a market until these obstructions are cleared. This is something I really hope for. That China will get rid of its quota system. That Chinese film will clear its censorship issues, as well as the requirements on how many Chinese actors need to be used in a film, for example. To make films from the standpoint of clearing censorship hurdles, however—this is really no good for film. But I think that possibilities still remain for the China market. Actually, there are many Japanese stars who are really popular in China. But at the same time, there really isn’t an example of a film that’s done very well in this context. You know the film Battle of Wits, right? It was a co-production among China, Japan, and Korea. It was a hit in China. But it didn’t do very well in Japan. So you’ll see films working differently in different markets—being a hit in one location and missing the mark in another. While it can be difficult, though, China is still the biggest market with the most possibilities. While there are many kinds of foundational limitations, there are also many things that are appealing from a business standpoint. For example, places like the Shanghai Film Studio are very actively being used as a location set for Japanese film and television. They’ve got an incredibly huge open set there. I’ve wanted to shoot prewar Japanese landscapes in

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the past, and it’s so difficult to do this in Japan. So I’ve gone to the Shanghai Studio to shoot there. The recent film K-19 was also shot there. It’s a Japanese film, but it was shot on the Shanghai lot. SD: Is there anything else that you feel is important to a discussion of co-productions that I haven’t brought up yet? IS: There are all kinds of technical problems involved in a co-production. Contract problems, problems with the division of profits. I think that it would be difficult to get people to talk about these things in a straightforward manner. Things are so varied, so case by case. But one important thing to say about co-productions is that they are often uneven or unfair. Battle of Wits was a huge hit in China and its Chinese sponsors retrieved a return on their investment. But other co-production participants may not yet have received any return, for example. These sorts of things always happen. There are certainly cases where cultural differences become an issue. But to also speak in business terms, the taste for films is different from territory to territory. No matter how carefully the rights to a film are divided among territories, these things will always happen. Take a film that’s a huge hit in China. Maybe if China would calculate such that returns could also be divided with Japan or Korea—it would be great if we could do this. But I don’t know that China would be able to do this kind of calculation. China has a very rough system of calculation, and the producer may not know where the more minute details of the budget might have gone. So, depending on the country, there are cases where it’s impossible to fully report these things. Japan is especially strict in this regard, microscopically reporting everything that is possible to report. This kind of reporting is impossible for most countries, I think. So things get divided up into different territories. And for this reason, the kinds of inequalities that I was just talking about can come up.

Ueda Makoto Ueda Makoto headed the NHK Asian Film Festival from its beginning in 1995. In this capacity, he helped to produce a wide range of international films, including: Peppermint Candy (1999, Lee Chang Dong), Little Cheung (1999, Fruit Chan), The Road (2001, Darujan Omirbaev), Osama (2003, Saddiq Barmak), FIVE Dedicated to Ozu (2005, Abbas Kiarostami), and 4:30 (2006, Royston Tan). Beginning in 1996, he also headed the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award.

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SD: Stephanie DeBoer UM: Ueda Makoto SD: Why did NHK establish the NHK Asian Film Festival? This would be well over ten years ago, right? UM: I wasn’t involved in the establishment of the festival. I was assigned to implement it once the decision was made. NHK established its satellite broadcast about twenty years ago. With the establishment of its satellite broadcasting, the number of channels went up— altogether an increase in five channels. So NHK began to think about what kind of software would attract viewers and popularize satellite television. I think that its here where they came up with the idea that film content might be effective. And I think that its correct to say that NHK hadn’t broadcast many films up to that point—they’d broadcast only a small number of films before the advent of satellite. So originally the thinking was to invite a wider viewership to watch the broadcast of these films. And then there was also the fact that Japan is a part of Asia. That was about the time when Japan was becoming more conscious of the fact that it is a part of Asia. So there was a concern for how we might culturally communicate with other countries of the region. We wanted to do something significant. I think that there was something to this thinking at the time. And from there, they came up with the possibility of broadcasting Asian films. This was the kind of motivation for it. SD: Was there much talk about co-productions at that time? UM: First of all, the NHK group had never made films before. And at the time there really wasn’t anything like it. I don’t know a lot about the film world, but I would say that we didn’t hear much, if anything, about “Asian” film co-productions twenty years ago. I would say that this had to do with the state of Asian film industries at the time, and the fact that very little Asian film had been successfully shown in Japanese theaters. So my impression is that there weren’t many films being co-produced at the time. SD: Over your years of being in charge of the NHK Asian Film Festival, is there anything in particular that you came to understand about the value or workings of co-productions in this context?

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UM: Because I was working for an organization that wasn’t about producing films for direct profit, I didn’t have to worry about returns at all. All I needed to be concerned with was how to most effectively use this money to produce this film—that’s all I needed to think about. For a television station, the production of a co-production doesn’t begin with running after joint funding. Most production was instead self-funded, and concerned with supporting people in circumstances where they weren’t able to produce their films—where they were completely lacking in funds. In the process of all this, most of these films did receive a certain amount of financing from their respective countries. So most of them ended up being co-productions under the charge of NHK. Some of the first co-productions we produced were with Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Mongolia. SD: Co-productions, not to mention film production itself, can be extremely complex—all these disparate factors need to work together. Which is why I’m very interested in not only the co-productions that get produced, but also co-productions that, despite all the desire that one might have to produce them, never get made. UM: You know of the Chinese director Jia Zhangke, right? He’s won many awards. And Mr. Ichiyama, whom you’re also interviewing, has been producing his films for many years. When I saw his debut film about twenty years ago, I thought to myself, “This is really great. He’s got real talent.” But despite all the talent that he displayed, he also received a lot of criticism from China. They complained that they hadn’t granted him permission to produce his films when they appeared in, say, the Cannes film festival. In this regard, and this may be a criticism of NHK, it is very difficult for NHK to produce a film by a director who has been told by the Chinese government that he or she doesn’t have permission to shoot a film. It’s the same for some Iranian directors. This means that even though these directors may have all sorts of talent, we run the risk that their respective countries will formally make protests with NHK, telling us “How can you fund a film for which we haven’t granted permission.” So we couldn’t produce Jia Zhangke’s films, we couldn’t produce Makhmalbaf’s films. There wasn’t really a policy on this. It was more of a case of self-restraint. One got the sense that, “Hm, this would be really difficult.” Of course, there were also cases in which we weren’t aware

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of this situation—when we made films in this situation without knowing it. SD: As I listen to this, I wonder. With this wide variety of filmmaking— in content, contexts, locations—what might characterize the “Asian films” that NHK has co-produced? UM: Film is essentially a business. If you don’t recoup your losses, then you can’t make the next film. This is very important—you can’t ignore this. But for NHK, all we were responsible for was making a film good enough to get the kind of viewership that would support our projects. If you need to recover your investments with box office revenues, filmmakers or filmmaking doesn’t tend to come from developed contexts, no matter how much talent a filmmaker has. Places where people may have the ambition to make films but may not have the means. This is the space for filmmaking that NHK offers—one might say that this is NHK’s mode of film production. I think that this is pretty significant. We’ve made films that by and large haven’t been commercially successful. Countries and regions from which, at first take, one wouldn’t consider producing films—Mongolia, Nepal, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union, places where film industries have largely been annihilated, or have been non-existent, or have been constrained by national propaganda. SD: In an essay you wrote on the film Osama, I believe that you wrote that, “Asian film should become anti-Hollywood film.” UM: This was not to say that Hollywood film is bad or wrong per se; rather that it would be great for every country have its own film industry. Hollywood has been very successful in exporting its film across the globe—in many, even most contexts all anyone can see is Hollywood movies. But if film could be a medium for expressing the lives, for expressing the ways of living of the people who live in that country. Not a world supplied with the films of only one place, but rather one in which we can see the films of all sorts of countries across the globe. This is a very difficult thing, I know. But it would also be a very good thing. SD: And this is what the NHK Film Festival was to have addressed? UM: In this sense, while they may not have been a commercial achievement, they were an achievement simply in the fact that they were produced.

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SD: Do you mean to say that the films of Asia should be more “local” films? By which I mean stories that are particular to specific locations in some way? UM: Often with co-produced films—for example films co-produced between Japan and Hong Kong or Japan and China—you will see both Japanese and Chinese characters together. I don’t mean to say that these kinds of films are necessarily bad. But many of these co-productions end up depicting both sides too thinly. The narrative gets too diffuse. Why does this happen? This is because filmmaking is a business. Because if you’re producing a film between Japan and China, you want to appeal to both Japan and China—you want people in both countries to watch it. And so you have stars from both countries and the locations of both places. But instead, it would be just fine if Japan didn’t appear in the film. Its better to shoot a film from your own perspective, or from the perspective of China or India or Indonesia. From our standpoint, we’ve always asked filmmakers not to force a Japanese star or Japanese content into the film. There are many people who say that without a Japanese star the plan is no good. But that kind of obstacle really doesn’t exist. This is probably a more distinctive method, a more difficult way of filmmaking. Within the context of globalization, there are many films made, for example, by a Turkish director living in Germany. This is going with the times. But, say, for a Vietnamese film, we’ve tended to prefer films made by Vietnamese filmmakers living in Vietnam, as opposed to films made by Vietnamese living in Paris. Somehow we ended up producing films in this way. There are many good films of the latter type. But films made by Vietnamese living in Paris will of course have a backdrop of French culture—that’s what the film will be about. And aren’t there already many films of this type out there? Also, France has all these films that are made in co-production with it, right? But prices are forced up here. People working with co-productions between France and Africa or France and Asia— they all know this. There’s nothing conceptually wrong with these films. But in reality, films that could be made much more cheaply end up getting made according Western funding standards. Which is to say that when you make a Vietnamese film with France, it comes with all these requirements attached. And when you attach

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all these requirements, you end up with a budget that doesn’t make sense—it doesn’t fit the film or its situation. A film that could be made with ten million yen ends up with a budget of three hundred million yen. And then it never gets made. This is to say that, putting aside whether or not it is linked to the realities of a particular country, it would be great if all aspects of its production could be made within its particular national context. The cameraman and director from France, all postproduction done in France—these requirements are all part of a cultural policy to protect the industry of France. But then the industry of this other country isn’t being developed. The directing is borrowed, the postproduction is borrowed. In the very beginning, and only in the very beginning, there were cases where we did the postproduction in Japan. In cases where we were pushing to meet deadlines, for example. When we did postproduction in Japan, the technical levels and standards were often higher. We could get a better quality image, better quality sound. But if we could do more in Vietnam—in other words, if we could do more postproduction in Vietnam. There’s a longstanding belief that the most important concern for filmmaking is to avoid even a hint of bad quality—the higher the quality the better the film. Directors would often say that they wanted to do the postproduction for their films in Japan. And I understand this—I understand this way of thinking. I’ve written myself that the quality of film is higher than that of digital video or high definition. And I’m not arguing for the end of film. But the real problem here is that film production is so prohibitively expensive. If this is the case, then focusing more on video means that we can make less expensive films. Which is to say that it’s better to make films than to not make them. SD: So do you think that co-productions are particularly useful at this moment? UM: The first film we produced with Korea was the first co-production between Japan and Korea—the first. As I’m sure you know, because Korea held Japan in such animosity, they didn’t allow Japanese cultural products to enter their borders—no television, no film, no music. Though the ban has since been lifted. So when we began to work on this co-production, of course, it was a time when Japanese films couldn’t be shown in Korea. But then, for the first time, it

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was decided that if it’s a co-production it could be shown in Korea. To speak in monetary terms, Japanese production companies make this kind of film in order to make a profit. And if you think of it in terms of cultural exchange, it is ludicrous that the film not be shown in the country of one of its production participants. But for the first time, we began with a commitment that if it were considered a co-production there would be no problem in this regard. There had been co-productions before this, but they were never shown in one of the countries even though both parties had agreed to work together. This is not a true co-production. But this time it was different. It is because it was the first film allowed to also be shown there that I consider it to be the first co-production. We wouldn’t have made the film without this possibility. This is a common problem with co-productions—as long as you get the funding you can make any film you want, but it still may not be allowed to show in one’s country. There are many cases of this in television. SD: We often hear that now is a time for Asian film. You’ve worked in this context for a long time—from the nineties, at least. So I wonder about your opinion on this. UM: This is a difficult question so I’m not sure that I can answer it. But when people say that, “the future is Asia,” it seems to me that they’re conflating film with larger global conditions. A huge percentage of the world population is in China as well as in India. To have a realistic view of the world, you cannot ignore Asia—this is the age we live in and so we have this phrasing. It would be great if, in regards to film, “now is the age of Asia.” But this is really a question of economics. I’m not so optimistic to think that because the value of Asia may have increased that Asian films will automatically spread out over the world, or that its quality or quantity will automatically increase.

Notes 1. Mackintosh, Berry, and Liscutin 2009: 8. 2. In this sense, interviews can be considered mutual yet also conflicting acts of framing, as the researcher and the producer encounter one another with frameworks that converge just as often as they diverge. For further reflection on this, upon which my thinking here is indebted, please see Ortner 2009. The term “framer” in this context comes from a conversation between Ortner and John Caldwell. Also, Ortner’s experience of the difficulties involved in

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gaining access to film producers in the context of the Hollywood certainly also rings true to my own experiences in Tokyo. 3. Curtin 2003. 4. These interviews were conducted in Japanese and translated by me, with the support of an Indiana University CAHI Research and Travel Grant and Indiana University OVPIA Overseas Research Grant. Many thanks to Masayo Sodeyama for transcribing the interviews into Japanese.

Bibliography Curtin, Michael (2003), “Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial Flows,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6: 2, 202–8. Mackintosh, Jonathan D., Chris Berry, and Nicola Liscutin (2009) “Introduction,” Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Ortner, Sherry B. (2009) “Studying Sideways: Ethnographic Access in Hollywood,” in Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, John T. Caldwell (eds), Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, New York: Routledge, 175–89.

11 “Working Through China” in the Pan-Asian Film Network: Perspectives from Hong Kong and Singapore Vivian P. Y. Lee

Asia’s cinematic landscape has undergone important changes in the last ten to fifteen years, and some of these changes can be attributed to the increasing influence of Mainland China in the region, both as a lucrative market and an emerging film production center. Chinese-language films, and indeed popular mainstream cinema at large, nowadays can hardly avoid confronting, directly or indirectly, the cultural, economic, and political realities of the most populated nation in the world. This multi-layered and multi-directional encounter has informed some of the critical reflections on East Asian cinemas presented in this volume. China’s “peaceful rise” to international prominence, at least in economic terms, was visually asserted in the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony further. The sheer magnificence of this cash- and labor-intensive international carnival also confirms Zhang Yimou’s status as the Chinese cinematic maverick par excellence in our times. The hidden message of the Olympic slogan, “One World, One Dream” seems to be that China is as open to the world as the world is converging upon a kaleidoscopic “China dream” with wonder, apprehension, and pragmatic optimism. One small detail is found missing in the international coverage of this globally televised media event: the fantasmatic reenactment of China’s past glory was the collaborative effort between director Zhang and Hong Kong action choreographer Ching Siu-tung. Of course, the ideological message behind the inclusion of Hong Kong artists—as well as other ethnic minority performers—in such a historic national event cannot be missed. Yet, prior to this mega-project, Ching’s choreographical talent had been an organic part of Zhang’s success with Hero back in 2002. Zhang, arguably the most internationalized auteur of the “New Chinese Cinema,”1 is a new addition to the Chinese martial arts film 235

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tradition whose birth place is, arguably, Hong Kong. This is neither to belittle Zhang’s genius nor to overstate Hong Kong’s importance. Rather, this minor footnote draws attention to the phenomenon of “working through China” among Asian, and especially Hong Kong, filmmakers today. This is especially relevant to what is now commonly called panAsian cinema, as a majority of films that come under this banner are effectively “pan-Chinese” in the choice of setting, subject matter, cast, and most of all market identification. Both being loosely defined categories, the terms pan-Asian and pan-Chinese have overlapping meanings in film criticism.2 This terminological ambiguity would yield productive insight to academic researchers on Asian cinemas, but it also sheds light on the intriguing realities faced by the film industries in the region, and also on different perceptions of these realities. In Asia, Hong Kong is still leading in the pan-Asian film network, with pioneers such as Peter Chan’s Applause Pictures actively lining up investors and production crews in co-production projects. Hong Kong does enjoy some privileges in this regard due to its special position in the Greater China market, but recently Singapore is gearing up for a more active role in forging regional partnerships. A city-state, Singapore has been mostly a consumer of popular culture from its Asian neighbors such as Japan and Hong Kong.3 Since the 1990s, the Singaporean film industry has experienced a revival, the combined result of a government-led institutional reform and increasing international interest in Asian films. The filmmaking ties between Singapore and Hong Kong date back to the studio era of the 1950s and 1960s. As is well-known, the Shaw Brothers and Cathay (later renamed MP & GI) were two major studios with deep connections to Singapore. As one of the “four little dragons” (alongside Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan) in Asia, it seems logical that Singapore would want to reintegrate into the East Asian cultural zone, not only as a consumer but also a producer of popular culture in terms of “East Asia ⫹ 1.”4 Conducted between February and April 2010, the two interviews presented below shed light on the different perspectives on “working through China” from Hong Kong and Singapore, two filmmaking cities trying to reinvent and reposition themselves at a time when Asia’s film industries are entering a new phase of regionalization and globalization. It is hoped that these “insiders’ voices” will contribute to an ongoing dialogue with critical scholarship on East Asian cinemas.

Joe Cheung Tung-Cho Joe Cheung Tung-Cho is a founder and Permanent Honorary President of the Hong Kong Directors’ Guild. A senior member of the Hong Kong film industry,

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he has been one of the most active filmmakers in the last fifteen years in organizing the activities of the Guild as well as other professional associations in the local film industry. He is also the vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards’ organizing committee. JC: Joe Cheung VL: Vivian Lee VL: Asian cinema has been doing very well internationally in recent years, and co-productions seem to have become the dominant mode of operation. In your view, what makes co-produced films so popular in Asia and worldwide? JC: It all depends on where the market is. In the ’70s and ’80s, the socalled hepai (co-production) was about selling copyrights. But of course the practice has evolved since, especially after the opening of the China market (CEPA/WTO).5 In the past, co-pro meant buying quotas from studios. After the implementation of CEPA, filmmakers can take advantage of the special provisions for the Hong Kong film industry. The advantage of co-production is that you can get a bigger share of the profit. After 1997, there are two channels to show HK films in China: as “imported” films or “domestic” films. Imported films are mainly one-time sold-offs to the China Film Group, and the price is arbitrarily determined, usually a tiny portion of the total revenue. But a co-produced film can be directly distributed, and you get about one-third of the total revenue. It makes a lot of business sense to make co-productions as a result. Nowadays Hong Kong-China co-productions are the dominant trend. Those with other countries, such as Japan, are mainly the socalled independent productions, which are much smaller in number. VL: So in the present context Hong Kong-China co-production is mainly a product of government policy, isn’t it? JC: Basically it is. For instance, a foreign film has to go through a much more rigorous censorship process. The script has to be approved by the central authorities. For a “domestic” film, the script only needs to get through the local authorities at the initial stage. Of course, the downside is the need to avoid “sensitive” areas in the content. On the other hand, there’s also the worry that co-productions using “Hong Kong” as a quality trademark is losing its magic—I’d say seven out of ten films released in China today call themselves co-productions. But most are not really co-productions in the real sense. Take, for example, Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are the One. They call

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it a co-production, but I don’t agree. It doesn’t look like a Hong Kong product at all. In my opinion, the most important factor is the creative crew: are they mainly from Hong Kong? You can always tell the difference between a film produced by a predominantly Hong Kong crew and one that only nominally involves Hong Kong personnel. You can tell from the style and the content. VL: What does this tell us about the film industries in China and Hong Kong? JC: Well, I’d say the Chinese film market did not develop under very healthy conditions compared to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, we went through a long process of development from the early days to the big studios era, from the Shaw Brothers and Cathay to Golden Harvest, Cinema City, all the way to the New Wave and independent productions. … We started from low to medium size projects to blockbusters and gradually developed our overseas markets. We were influenced by others and we also influenced others. There has been a process—from the ’70s to ’90s—of coming of age. Those who are in the business now all went through the same process. We grew up in a free environment—which means an environment free of constraints to creative ideas. It’s not that everything creative is necessarily good, but at least you dare to explore and think outside the box. Now we’re having a crisis of creativity—we censor our ideas in anticipation of what the officials will say. … So we no longer have ghosts or vampires or “young and dangerous” gangsters in our films. To us these are just entertainment; we don’t take them for real. But somehow perceptions are not the same in China. Co-productions all focus on “da pian” (big-budget films)—big budget, big stars, big director, expensive props and setting, wide distribution, and many sponsors. Most of these films are historical dramas with a distant setting—but the audience will grow tired eventually if you keep repeating yourself. It might turn into a time-bomb. The problem also exists on the Mainland. I just finished shooting a film in Shanghai. My impression is that the young people there are very hard-working, very dedicated and very diligent. But when it gets to a higher level of work that requires creative ideas, they are lost. Not that they are not good, but they just didn’t grow up in an environment where they were encouraged to think and work creatively. This is the biggest difference between Hong Kong and China.

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VL: This means co-productions have imposed certain constraints on the kinds of films being made, for instance costume dramas and wuxia films. JC: I think the problem is not about genres but what you can do with a certain genre. You can still make a film like Confucius, just like we had martial arts Butterfly Lovers before, but if you do a textbook version of the life of Confucius, who is going to be interested? A passionate and martial arts Confucius can still embody all the virtues, but in a new way. So I think there is a certain self-imposed line not to be crossed among the creative personnel in China today. That’s why I say we need to hold on to the creative spirit and daring attitude that has made Hong Kong films successful. This is our edge. But it’s difficult. It’s not just about creativity, but also about the market and investors’ preferences. VL: How about the Hong Kong government’s support to the film industry? JC: I always criticize the government’s policy. The bureaucrats make decisions inside their offices. For example, they raise the government subsidy to eligible film projects from 12 million to 15 million, but what’s the use of it if a one-third ceiling is also imposed? I’ve been pushing for a 50/50 split. A project with 50 percent of its budget covered will have no problem finding the investors to cover the other 50 percent, but if you only get one-third, it’d be hard. A 50 percent subsidy would greatly help independent filmmakers to move forward. That’s why I said it’s extremely difficult to nurture creative talent.6 VL: Many believe that CEPA has greatly benefited the Hong Kong film industry. Is that true? JC: You can of course see it this way, but those who really benefit from CEPA are the ones with strong financial backing. Ideology on the other hand remains a prime concern. Take for instance Johnnie To’s Election 2. In this film he elevated the narrative to the level of questioning the intellectual’s conscience, and the film didn’t go through. Hong Kong has not made many political films in the past, but even with entertainment films, you have to know what the young people think and do. It’s impossible to make good entertainment films under the supervision of old-fashioned officials.

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VL: In the 70s and 80s, we had a lot of quite successful films with strong local content, from romantic comedies to the New Wave cinema. Nowadays it seems the importance of the local market has been eclipsed. Is it true that it’s getting more difficult to make films that appeal mainly to the local audience? JC: I’d say cinema is multifaceted. It’s not fair just to take the top ten films of the year for the whole picture. Those outside of the top ten are usually the ones that lay the foundation for future top-tens to come. For example Lung Kong’s Better Tomorrow in the 1960s. John Woo’s much later film is an updating and repackaging of the original, and it created a new trend. We need pioneers, and their work should be recognized. I think if you can make a good film with universal appeal, you can make different kinds of films. But of course it also depends on where you are—whether you work in a free environment makes all the difference. In a free environment you can do anything—that’s why we’ve had fascinating martial arts films and supernatural horror, which was not possible in China after 1949. For this reason Hong Kong action choreographers are still in high demand today. In Hong Kong, we have two distinctive advantages: a free environment and kung fu. Kung fu is what brought Hong Kong cinema to the world via Bruce Lee. Afterwards we have Jackie Chan and Jet Li. But now the established kung fu stars are all in their 50s, and just knowing kung fu doesn’t mean you can turn it into a film. That’s why in China there are many martial arts experts but there isn’t a great action choreographer yet. That’s because of the difference in culture and history. VL: How about the next generation of Hong Kong choreographers? Can they take the torch yet? JC: Well, I’m afraid there isn’t a next generation as far as I can see. To do the job well you really need to be in the business at an early age and work hard from the bottom. In Hollywood, you can combine Yuen Wo-ping’s skills with digital technology, but to me that’s different from the human presence of kung fu. Making a kung fu film is expensive. You need a big crew, a lot of planning, and a lot of hard work on the set. If you can’t find the right crew with martial arts training you can’t make such a film.

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VL: Talking about technology, 3D is getting very popular these days. Would technology be a compensation for the scarcity of action choreography talent? JC: I don’t think technology can replace human beings. There is a lack of substance in using technology. That’s why Donnie Yen is so much in demand these days—he is no longer at his prime in terms of physical fitness, but he’s still popular. One reason is that we’re running out of real kung fu stars! VL: So how can this tradition of filmmaking be sustained? I’ve read a newspaper article which says Hong Kong film industry will cease to be a center of content creation, but one of production management. Do you agree? JC: I think management skills can be learned by anyone, inside or outside Hong Kong; it can be nurtured. But what I’m talking about is more deep-rooted. You can call it “nature”, meaning the culture we are born and grew up in as well as individual talent. We have martial arts training programs here, but as I said, you also need to be creative, and talent takes time to develop. Technology can help up to a point, but kung fu has its enduring qualities, too. VL: Are Hong Kong films doing well in the local market? JC: We suffer from a change in the exhibition system. In the old days, as long as they like your film, theaters would give you a fixed slot in screening, so a film could rely on word of mouth to boost ticket sales in time. Now, ever since the Multiplex cinemas took over, a cinema can show a dozen films at a time, so if one film doesn’t do well in the first two days it will be replaced. Many films rely on word of mouth, especially those small budget productions. These films get the biggest blow in the Multiplex system. But you can’t blame the theaters since they are just doing their business. VL: What is the situation in China? JC: China is a hegemonic system—the China Film Group can do whatever they see right. Avatar was taken off the screens to give way to Confucius, but obviously they miscalculated. In China, over 90 percent of local productions are not aimed at overseas markets. The remaining ones are the so-called subversive works.

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VL: What is your experience as an organizer of the Hong Kong Film Awards? Does it still carry the same weight among filmmakers and artists as it used to in the past? JC: The HKFA has gone a long way to become what it is now. I represent the Hong Kong Film Directors’ Guild, and there are representatives from other parties. At the beginning, the HKFA was launched by a group of film critics associated with the Film Biweekly [a popular film magazine in Hong Kong]. But it didn’t really take off because it didn’t have a broad representation. The Film Industry Association was also involved, but its members were mainly theater owners. I objected to the limited representation on the grounds that the HKFA was meant to reward film industry professionals in all aspects of filmmaking so they had to be represented. Soon afterwards different professional associations were founded, and art directors, cinematographers, editors, and others all have their own associations, and each would nominate their representatives to the HKFA Society Ltd. with a right to vote. We also invite film critics and academics to come on board. It may not be the best system, but it is way better than the less desirable options. Every year we try to be objective and transparent in the voting. Each panel has a certain specialization weighting. A good example is the splitting of glory between Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle and Derek Yee’s One Night in Mongkok in 2004. Kung Fu Hustle is a good film, but the directors who voted on the Best Director panel gave the award to Yee. We have a proportional representation system to make sure each award goes through a rigorous and professional adjudication. Individual members’ votes count 50 percent in the first and second rounds. All films that have five screenings in a given year are eligible for nomination. The biggest difference between the HKFA and Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards or China’s Golden Rooster Awards is that we open the process to a much broader base of industry professionals, whereas the Golden Horse is run by academics and professional film critics. China, of course, toes the official line or the so-called mainstream melody (zhuxuanlü). VL: What is your opinion of the HKIFF? JC: I am quite upset by the way the government runs the event. In the past the HKIFF served the official agenda of “internationalization.” They are now handing out lots of awards and cash incentives but the system is not transparent. Although the HKIFF is officially an

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independent agency, it is still serving the official agenda of internationalization, but I don’t think it is very effective. VL: Some people believe that co-production is the future of Hong Kong cinema. Do you agree? JC: Well, if this is going to be an irresistible trend then maybe this is the way forward. After all, filmmaking is a business, and it needs investment and markets. The problem of making films in Hong Kong is the high production cost. The local market isn’t big enough to sustain the film industry. VL: Given the predominance of co-productions and the overwhelming importance of the Mainland and international audiences today, how useful is the term “Hong Kong cinema”? Will it evolve into something very different from what we know at present? JC: This is a question we’ve been asking ourselves for some time. I’d say in the final analysis, the source of creativity is the most important factor. If the production crew is predominantly from Hong Kong, then I’d say it is a Hong Kong film. But of course things will change, and I’m not entirely optimistic. The general conditions of filmmaking are changing, and we all know that co-productions have certain limitations as to what you can film. This will eventually limit creative space. If China doesn’t shed its ideological baggage, the space will continue to narrow. On a more positive note, if a good project can find the necessary support, people can still make all sorts of films. Ann Hui’s Day and Night and Night and Fog are good examples. Night and Fog is a more sensational film about social problems. With funding for this film, Ann was able to film Day and Night, which turned out to be much more successful. VL: I wonder whether this only happens to someone like Ann Hui. What are the chances of a young director making such a film? JC: Ann Hui belongs to a generation that came to filmmaking with a deep humanistic concern. This may be a thing of the past—the younger generation grew up in a very different environment and we cannot expect them to be the same as the older generation. It is therefore difficult to find new directors making the kind of films that Ann Hui makes.

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Man Shu Sum Man Shu Sum is Managing Director of MediaCorp Raintree Pictures. He has held senior management positions in the media industry, among them the then Television Corporation of Singapore, MediaWorks Singapore, the Singapore Film Commission, and the Media Development Authority of Singapore. Prior to joining Raintree, he was the CEO of Mark Burnett Productions Asia. M: Man Shu Sum VL: Vivian Lee VL: You were the Director of the Singapore Film Commission (SFC), where you still serve as a board member, and Director of Strategic Relations of the Media Development Authority (MDA) prior to joining Mark Burnett and MediaCorp Raintree Pictures. Do you see any difference in the way you see your role in the Singaporean film industry then and now? M: Content creation has always been a significant part of my work. When I was at the SFC and the MDA, my job scope involved investments and covered other content-related aspects of production and exhibition. My experiences compliment what I do now. Hence even after working over 30 years in television productions, the transition to film production industry did not make a great difference to me. Cinema may be a new platform for creative work but the nature of my job remains. VL: MediaCorp is wholly owned by Temasek, a government-linked company. Does this make a difference in the business strategy of Raintree compared to other privately owned companies, since it is both as a commercial operation and a public media producer? M: I would agree with that to a certain extent. Public education is part of any kind of media production, be it from a private or public company. Despite being a government-linked company, we need to be financially viable. Public services and commercial value always co-exist in the mass media even though their relative weight may not always be the same. VL: In the past few years, Raintree has been involved in a number of very successful co-production projects with its partners in Hong Kong and Asia. How do you position Raintree in Asia’s film industry?

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M: I’d say we play the role of an active partner in the region. In the past, our role was much more passive, focusing mainly on investments and projects driven by other partners. In future, we will play a more active role in co-producing, which means we will focus more on projects driven by our own creative talent. For instance, the China and Hong Kong crew played the predominant role in the productions of Painted Skin and Infernal Affairs II and we took the back seat as investors and producers, giving advice in the process. We now aim to be in the driver’s seat, lining up strategic partners and creating content. VL: What is your view of the current state of Singapore’s film industry? M: I think it is still in a developing stage. During 1950s and 1960s, Singapore was actively co-producing films for the Hong Kong and Southeast Asian markets, starring top Hong Kong stars such as Lin Feng and Ding Ying. Major studios such as Cathay and the Shaw Brothers had their bases in Singapore, but eventually moved to Hong Kong. The 1970s was the “blackout period,” when Singapore’s film industry started to decline. In the 1990s, the government saw the need to develop a national film industry, thus support was given to produce local films and to nurture new talents. At its peak, there was around 15 movie releases in Singapore yearly. This amount seems insignificant compared to the releases in the US, India and Hong Kong. However, considering our land size and population, we are compatible to other countries such as Australia and Ireland. VL: You mentioned local films. What is your idea of a local film in Singapore? M: By local film, I refer to the context of the film: the chief creative personnel, and even the actors, are from Singapore. These films will target the local market and the Malaysian market. We are currently at an experimental stage. The box-office of these films range from over 5 million dollars [approx 4 million USD] to less than a hundred thousand dollars per movie, but we have to try. It is hard to define precisely what a “Singapore film” is. Unlike horror films in Japan and Thailand, or martial arts films in Hong Kong, the Singaporean cinema has yet to create a clear genre identity, so to say. In other words, we have to keep trying out different genres and different kinds of films.

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VL: To many audiences outside of Singapore, they tend to see the works of Eric Khoo or Jack Neo as “Singaporean films” due to their local content and the multi-lingual script. Would this be a working definition of Singaporean film for the time being? M: At present, yes. However it will be hard to predict in time to come. The examples you mentioned are more about “local flavor” rather than a reputation based on genre, as in the case of Thai horror or Hong Kong kung fu (martial arts) cinema. I tend to see cultural content as a different issue from genre identity. I think we need to find a niche in the genre although at the end we might not find one. VL: Asian cinema has been doing very well internationally in recent years, and co-productions seem to have become the dominant mode of operation. In your view, what makes co-produced films so popular in Asia and worldwide? M: I think co-production is basically an exercise in international financing, risk-sharing, and market-sharing. Partners can tap on each other’s expertise in order to make the project more viable. VL: How does this come into the picture of Raintree’s activities in future? M: We have to play a more active role in co-productions. Instead of accepting proposals from others, we will initiate our own projects and reach out to strategic partners. I refer to this as a “one-stop” operation, from production to distribution, to exhibition and marketing. Working with satellite channels is especially important in regional markets such as Mainland China. These satellite channels own media platforms, the reach of which is huge, and that helps a lot in promoting the film. VL: What are the most difficult problems to resolve in the co-production process, from forging the deal to exhibition? M: Good partners are crucial to all co-productions. You have to identify and get the right people on board who can contribute and bring value to the project. VL: Talking about the China market, it seems more and more Asian coproductions have very strong China content, so that they are more “pan-Chinese” than “pan-Asian”. Is it going to be the dominant trend in Asia?

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M: Every trend has a lifetime and no trend will last forever. The Korean Wave was spreading everywhere a few years ago but recently it has been receding. It is hard to tell what will come in trend next in the media business. The reality is we cannot afford to ignore Mainland China because of its size and market potential. It makes good business sense to focus on China. I think “pan-Chinese” is the academic way to describe the phenomenon. The international film community would like to reach out to the largest possible number of audience, and ride on the fast growing film market trend. VL: What adjustments are to be made when working with, and in, China? M: It is important to understand the market, its culture and collaborate with the right partners there. The most common practice nowadays is to stay on the safe side, that is, to make films that have a proven record of success, for instance martial arts films, historical dramas, and local folklore. I think a potential alternative is the light urban drama that reflects contemporary sentiments, such as the so-called white-collar comedy that used to be popular in Hong Kong. China has a much bigger market for such films. You cannot keep making martial arts films forever. Hence, Raintree is definitely not going into that direction with our own projects. The market for martial arts and other conventional genre films is saturated, that is why a low-budget film such as Hot Summer Days was such a hit in China, grossing over 100 million RMB at the box-office. This shows that audiences are craving more choices and variety. This is what we try to achieve in China. VL: Some commentators say “the rise of Asian cinema” is challenging Hollywood’s global dominance. Do you think so? M: With the huge talent pools in China, the size of the population and fast growing film industry in Asia, anything can happen. VL: What are the most important changes in the Chinese government’s policy toward the film and mass media industry in the last ten years? M: As far as China’s film policy goes, the main direction is to further develop the film industry and to encourage collaborations with foreign partners. I think this is the most important agenda. Opening up the film market is the main direction and once the direction is

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set, other technicalities will fall into place. This has happened to the film industries in other countries before. VL: Will co-production remain the way forward for Raintree in China? M: We will review our position and look at the entire value chain, by which I mean the whole chain of operation from investment, production, marketing, distribution, and exhibition. We have made plans to play a more proactive role in content creation and production in the China market.

Notes Special thanks to Mr. Joe Cheung Tung-cho, co-founder and Permanent Honorary President of the Hong Kong Director’s Guild, and Mr. Man Shu Sum, Managing Director of MediaCorp Raintree Pictures, Singapore, for their support to this project. 1. The 1980s is generally regarded as the beginning of the “new Chinese cinema” in the PRC, and sometimes includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. See Browne 1994: 1–14, and Tam and Dissanayake 1998: 1–10. 2. Chinese-language films or co-productions with a predominant Chinese presence are more frequently used as case studies of pan-Asian cinema in academic discussions. See, for example, Teo 2008and Davis and Yeh 2008: 85–111. 3. Chua 2004. 4. The idea of “East Asia + 1” is from Chua 2004. 5. CEPA is the abbreviation for the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and China. 6. In March 2010, the proportion of government funding for independent film projects was increased from 30 percent to 35 percent, and the total amount of funding was raised from 12 million to 15 million.

Bibliography Nick Browne, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Esther Yau (eds) (1994) New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chua Beng-huat (2004) “Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture,” InterAsia Cultural Studies, 5: 2, 200–21. Davis, Darrell William and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh (2008), East Asian Screen Industries, London: BFI. Tam, Kwok-kan Tam and Wimal Dissanayake (1998) New Chinese Cinema, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teo, Stephen (2008) “Promise and Perhaps Love: Pan-Asian Production and the Hong Kong-China Interrelationship,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 9: 3, 341–58.

Index 007, 7, 87–8, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102 1997, 18–20, 24, 26, 35, 39, 49, 55, 57, 64, 71, 74–6, 81, 85, 88, 91, 112, 139–41, 154, 157, 166, 170, 188, 196, 208–09 4:30 (Tan), 24, 32, 227 A battle of Wits, 189, 197, 199, 200–4, 206–8 A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), 107–08, 134 Abe Shinzo ¯, 163 After This Our Exile, 7, 68, 70–7, 79–80, 82–3, 85 ambivalence, 8, 26, 93–4, 100, 123, 179 Andy Lau, 133, 190, 195, 202–4 Ang Lee (see also Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), 6, 15, 17–9, 28, 43, 121, 133, 196 Anti-Anpo Movement, 147, 163 Applause Pictures, 106, 132, 139–40, 195, 236 art-house cinema, 214 Article 9, 148, 163 Asia, the rise of, 190–1, 207, 247 Asian extreme, 108, 110–3, 115, 121–2 Asian film industries, 104, 191, 197, 228 Asian film market, 5, 104, 192, 194 Asian film, 3, 5, 9, 12, 16, 18, 21, 25–7, 84, 104–5, 110, 122, 124, 131–4, 137, 141, 189, 191–2, 194–8, 208–10, 221–2, 227–8, 230, 233, 235–6 Asian horror, 7, 27, 31, 103–6, 108–17, 121–4 Asianism, 2, 11, 104, 116 Assayas, Olivier (Summer Hours), 20–2, 31 auteur, 3, 6, 18–22, 24, 26, 31, 67–8, 80, 85, 109, 112, 120–1, 138, 140, 235

b.o.m. Film Production, 106–07 Baudrillard, Jean, 85 Bazin, Andre, 85 Bicycle Thieves, 6, 61–6, 68–70, 72, 74–6, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86 Big Man Japan, 157–8, 169 Bollywood, 15, 17, 195, 218 Bong Joon-ho (The Host), 15, 31 border-crossing, 8, 170, 172, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184, 186, 188 brand, 7, 45, 103–06, 108–12, 114–7, 138, 140, 160, 189 Bresson, Robert, 64, 67 Brother, 16, 154–5 Bushido ¯, 150, 154, 164 Café Lumiere, 19–20, 25, 28, 32 Casting of 25, 173, 202, 205–6 CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Agreement), 171, 172, 177, 179, 207, 237, 239 Chen, Kaige, 19, 28, 43, 121, 130, 199, 203, 214, 216, 220 Cheung, Chi Leung, 199 Cheung, Tung-cho Joe (Joe Cheung), 9, 236, 235, 248 China market, 5, 9, 40, 53, 217, 226, 236–7, 246, 248 Chinese cinema, 4, 6–7, 9–10, 26, 31–4, 38, 41, 43–6, 48–55, 61–4, 71, 86, 118, 137, 195, 235, 248 Chinese film industry, 42, 44, 53 Chow, Stephen (Shaolin Soccer), 17, 101 Christopher Doyle, 25, 112 Chu ¯ shingura, 150, 164, 168 cinephilia, 21 city-region, 8, 170–2, 180, 183, 186, 188 colonial, 7, 19, 25–7, 32, 34, 37, 55, 57, 71, 76, 78, 87–8, 90–2, 94–6, 98–102, 121, 123, 133–34, 188–89, 206, 210

249

250

Index

comedy, 7, 17, 53, 87, 89, 97, 100, 152, 157, 247 communist, 65, 69, 71, 75, 86, 89–91, 93, 96, 100, 147 Comrades, Almost a Love Story, 8, 132, 170–3, 187–8 co-production co-production, Asian, 8, 9, 195, 213 cosmopolitan imaginaries, 185 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee), 15–6, 19, 27–8, 43, 133, 196–97, 200 Dankai no sedai, 151, 164 De Sica, Vittorio, 63, 65–6, 68–70, 74, 76 Deleuze, Gilles, 61, 69, 82, 85 Deng, Xiaoping, 71, 76, 89, 91 Detours to Paradise (Rich Lee), 26 diaspora, 62–3, 71, 74, 83, 95, 188 dogme, 95, 62, 80 Doyle, Christopher 25, 112 Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 65 Dumplings (2004), 108–10, 112–14, 117 Durian, Durian, 8, 170–2, 180, 183, 186–7 East Asia (film co-production in), 1–9, 11, 15–32, 62, 84, 116, 118–22, 124, 130–2, 137, 139–41, 161, 168, 189–98, 203, 207–10, 218, 234–6, 245, 248 East Asian cinema, 1, 3–7, 9, 11, 15–32, 62, 118–20, 124, 139–41, 192, 197, 207, 235–6 East Asian film, 3, 16, 18, 25–7, 84, 124, 131–2, 137, 191, 194–5, 197, 208 East Asian popular culture, 2, 11, 248 Eisenstein, Sergei, 61 film historiography, 28, 86 Firefly, 146, 148–9, 162, 166 Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou), 20, 28 For Those We Love, 146, 149, 150, 153, 161, 166, 169 formalists, 61, 201 French New Wave, 20, 22, 63, 80, 82, 201

From Beijing with Love, 7, 87–8, 101–02 Fruit Chan, 63, 85, 108–10, 112, 114, 172, 180, 185, 187–88, 227 genre mobility, 7, 121 genre, 6–7, 16–8, 18, 23, 25–7, 29, 47, 53, 59, 62, 87, 96–7, 103–6, 108, 110–2, 114–21, 131–2 ,134–141, 155, 192–3, 200, 239, 245–7 genre-branding, 103–04, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116, 140 globalization, 4–6, 18, 33–4, 36, 38, 42, 48, 53–5, 57, 104, 116–18, 141, 188, 190–1, 197, 209–10, 213, 231, 236 Go, 159 Grierson, John, 61 Grudge, The, Grudge 2, The, 103, 115, 124–5, 128–9, 130, 139, 141 Guangzhou, 42, 170–3, 178–80, 187 HANA-BI, 154–5 Heisei Japan, 7, 145–6, 148, 150–2, 154,156, 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, Hire, The (BMW), 18 HKFA (Hong Kong Film Awards), 242 HKIFF (Hong Kong International Film Festival), 242 Hollywood, 1, 6, 15–6, 18–9, 21–2, 25–57, 61–2, 71, 96–7, 103–05, 112, 115, 117, 119–21, 124–25, 128, 133–34, 136–28, 140–41, 189, 191, 193, 196–98, 209–10, 218, 221–22, 230, 234, 240, 247 Hollywood’s China strategy, 41–2 Hong Kong cinema, 11, 18, 25, 76, 84–7, 91, 94, 98, 139–40, 188, 190, 240, 243 Hong Kong New Wave, 19, 63–5, 76, 86 Hong Kong, 3, 7–9, 11–2, 15–9, 21, 25, 27, 30–1, 36, 48, 55–6, 62–5, 68, 71, 76–7, 84–98, 100–2, 104–9, 112, 116–7, 119–20, 123–4, 129, 132–4, 136–7, 139–41, 170–191, 193–6, 198–200, 203–5, 207, 210, 216–8, 231, 234–248 Hong Kong-China co-production(s), 237

Index 251 Hou, Hsiao-hsien, 6, 19, 32, 37, 63, 121, 138, 221, 223 humor, 87, 88, 101 hybridized, 89, 96, 99, 133 Hyogaki sedai, 151, 164 immanent, 65–6, 68, 74, 82, 104 import quota, import quota system, 39 improvisational freedom, 65 Infernal Affairs, The (Lau and Mak), 16, 108, 245 international film co-production, 8, 189–91, 196, 210 international film festivals, 20, 61 intertextuality, inter-Asian, 6, 12, 17, 22, 25–6, 28–9 Ishiba Shigeru, 163 Ishihara Shintaro, 145–6, 148, 151, 161–2, 168 Italian Neo-Realism, Neorealists, 63, 65, 69, 71, 82 James Bond, 7, 87–8, 92, 101–02 Jameson, Fredric, 61 Janet Woollacott, 89, 101 Japan Sinks, 152 Japan That Can Say No, The (book), 152, 168 Japanese film, 10, 12, 49, 122, 126, 129, 137–8, 141, 145–6, 148, 163, 166, 168–9, 193–4, 210, 214, 218, 221–2, 226–7, 232 Japanese horror film, 123, 139 Japanese horror movies (or J-horror), 7, 106, 108, 111, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130–2, 134, 136, 138, 140–1 J-horror, 7, 106, 108, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130–2, 134, 136, 138, 140–1 Jia, Zhangke, 6, 63–4, 66, 81, 85–6, 221, 224–5, 229 JSA: Joint Security Area (2000), 112, 137 Ju-on (Ju-on: The Grudge), 7, 18, 115, 120, 122, 123, 124–131, 137 Ju-on, 7, 18, 115, 120, 122–5, 127, 129–31, 137

Kamikaze, 149, 150, 153, 164 Kim Ji-woon, 7, 17, 29, 106–7, 120–1, 131, 134, 137 Kim Jong-il, 157–8 kimchi western, 7, 29, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140 Kitano Takeshi, 121, 146, 151, 153, 162 Kobayashi Yoshinori, 161 Koizumi Junichiro, 145, 148, 159, 163 Korean horror movies, 108 Korean Wave/Hallyu, 3, 11, 140–1, 191, 194, 196, 247 Kracauer, Siegfried, 61 Kubozuka Yo ¯suke, 146–7, 150–1, 159, 160–62, 169 kung fu, 31, 91, 94–7, 101, 120, 134–35, 190, 205, 240–42, 246 Last Life in the Universe (Ratanaruang), 23, 25, 32 Lee Byung-hun, 109, 135 Li Ying, 146, 165 linguistic purity and authenticity, 27–8 loneliness, cinema of, 23, 79 long shot, 62, 70, 93 long take, 24, 30, 62, 70, 78, 92, 121 Madness in Bloom, 159, 167, 169 Man Shu Sum, 9, 244, 248 martial arts film, 120, 134, 137–8, 192–3, 196, 200, 207, 209, 235, 240, 245, 247 martial arts, 3, 16, 43, 94–6, 120, 133–5, 137–38, 190, 192–3, 196–8, 200–01, 207–9, 235, 239–41, 245–7 masculinity, 7, 87, 89–90, 97, 155 Matsumoto Hitoshi, 146, 151, 156–7, 162, 169 media capital, 8–9, 213–4, 234 Media Corp, 244, 248 Miike, Takashi, 108–09, 111, 117, 121, 134 mobile genre(s), 7, 118, 131 modernity, 10–1, 21, 37, 56, 84, 88–9, 94–7, 99–101, 123, 133, 138, 140, 175, 183, 186 modernization, 34, 41, 89, 91, 93, 99 Murdock, Graham, 192, 208, 210

252

Index

Nakagawa Sho ¯ ichi, 163 Nakama ishiki, 154 Nakasone Yasuhiro, 145, 147, 151, 165, 167–9 Nakata, Hideo (The Ring series), 111, 114–15 Nanjing Massacre The, 140, 149, 152, 164, 167 neo-conservatism, 7–8, 145–8, 151, 156, 160–3 Nipponophilia, 190, 194 Nonzee Nimibutr, 106 observational style, 65, 70 omnibus movie, 103, 105, 107–8, 110, 113–4, 140 Ozu, Yasujiro (Shochiku Studio), 4, 64, 118 pan-Asian cinema, 8, 108, 120, 131, 139, 195, 236, 248 pan-Asian filmmaking, 105 pan-Chinese, 5, 105, 236, 246–7 Pang, Oxide and Danny (The Eye; Bangkok Dangerous), 16, 195 Park, Chan-wook (Oldboy; Sympathy for Mr. Vengence), 23, 108–9, 112, 121, 138, 140 Pearl Harbor, 157 Pearl River Delta, 8, 170–1, 188 performance, 45, 67–8, 82, 88, 99, 107, 197, 200 Peter Chan, 105–07, 132, 172–74, 188, 195, 236 Pickpocket, 6–7, 61–2, 64, 66–76, 78–80, 82–4, 86 Ping Pong, 159–60 politics of recognition, 172–3 popular front humanism, 62 postcolonial, 19, 25, 57, 76, 84, 123, 188, 210 post-Deng, 84 post-Mao China, 71, 73, 86 postmodern, postmodernist, postmodernism, postmodernity, 6, 61–3, 81–5, 119 post-war Europe, 71 PRC, 62–3, 68, 74, 76, 92, 101, 248 Pride, 146, 148–50, 166

producer, 8, 36, 90, 105–7, 129, 138, 153, 161, 193, 196, 199, 208, 213–7, 220–1, 223–5, 227, 233–4, 236, 244–5 Promise, The, 28, 189, 197–202, 204, 206–9 propaganda, 46–7, 51, 230 Raintree Productions, 9, 244, 246–8 Ratanaruang, Pen-ek, 23, 30 real, the real, realism, realist, 6, 53, 61–71, 78, 80–4, 86, 129, 149, 155–57, 162, 193, 216, 219, 229, 232, 237–38, 241 regional film, 104, 189, 213 remakes (Hollywood of Asian films), 6–7, 17, 26–7, 103–04, 106, 120, 122, 124–28, 130, 133, 137–38 Ring Virus, The (1999), 106 Ringu (1998), 16, 104, 106, 111, 115, 123–24, 127 Rossellini, Roberto, 65, 69 Schrader, Paul, 6, 64, 77 Scorsese, Martin (The Departed), 64, 67, 85 seers, 82–3 Self Defense Forces, 152 Seven Swords, 134, 189, 197–209 Shanghai “left-wing”, 62 Shaw Brothers, the, 132–3, 192–3, 236, 238, 245 Shenzhen, 56, 92, 98–9, 170–1, 180–4, 187–8 Shimizu Takashi, 7, 120, 124, 131, 137 Shinjinrui, 151, 164 Singapore, 3, 9, 24, 30, 77, 106, 132, 168, 170, 186, 190, 195–6, 209, 218, 235–6, 244–6, 248 Sixth Generation, 63–5, 68, 157 Sonatine, 154–5 Southeast Asia, 6, 24, 30, 84, 132, 139, 161, 190–91, 210, 245 Soviet socialist realism, 62 spaghetti western, 29, 134–6 stasis, 65, 70, 77, 80–1, 83 Stephen Chow, 7, 17, 87–8, 91, 100, 242

Index 253 Summer of the Moonlight Sonata, 149, 162 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), 23, 114 Taiwan New Cinema, 20, 63 TAKESHIS, 155–6 Tam, Patrick, 6, 64, 68, 74, 84–6 Tan, Royston, 32 Tartan Asia Extreme, 109–12, 115 technology, 7, 32, 35, 43–4, 46, 51, 53, 86–7, 89–90, 92, 94–6, 102, 186, 193, 219, 240–1 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 29, 134 The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, 7, 120, 134, 137, 140 the intraregional market, 105 The Lost Decade, 145 Three (2002, aka San Geng), 7, 103, 105–17, 140, 195 Three … Extremes (2004, aka San Geng Yi, or Three, Monster), 7, 103, 105–06, 108–17 Tojo Hideki, 149 Tokyo Trial, 148–9, 164 Tokyo, 8–9, 12, 32, 48, 107, 124–6, 128, 131, 141, 145, 147–9, 151, 154, 164–5, 168–9, 213–4, 221, 234 Tony Bennett, 89 Torihama Tome, 150 transcendental, transcendental style, 6, 61, 64, 67, 69, 71–2, 78, 81–3, 86

translingual filmmaking, 6, 17, 21, 25–6, 28 transnational aesthetics, 6, 59, 124, 131–2, 134, 137 transregional market, 115 Truffaut, François, 20 Truth about Nanjing, The, 152, 163 Tsai, Ming-liang, 20–1, 23, 26, 28 Vertov, Dziga, 61 Visage/Face, 20 Whispering Corridors, The (1998), 106, 123 Wong, Kar-wai, 6, 18–9, 23, 25–6, 93, 121, 194 Woo, John, 6, 16, 18, 28, 43, 48, 121, 134, 136, 141, 240 World Sinks except Japan, The, 152, 158 WTO (World Trade Organization), 33–4, 38–40, 44, 48, 51–4, 237 wuxia (martial arts), 16, 28, 96, 239 Xiao Wu, 7, 24, 64, 67–8, 70–3, 75–7, 79–83 Yakeato sedai, 151, 165 Yamato, 95, 146, 149, 150, 162, 166 Yasukuni, 146–7, 152–3, 163, 165, 167, 169 Zhang, Yimou, 16, 121, 130, 133, 198, 235 Zhang, Ziyi, 16, 27–8, 43 Žižek, Slavoj, 86