Wai-Siam Hee
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888528035
- eISBN:
- 9789882204874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528035.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The fifth chapter discusses how the Singaporean Chinese director Yi Shui created a Malayanised Chinese-language cinema during the 1950s and ’60s and offers a retrospective of the way people in Malaya ...
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The fifth chapter discusses how the Singaporean Chinese director Yi Shui created a Malayanised Chinese-language cinema during the 1950s and ’60s and offers a retrospective of the way people in Malaya and Singapore framed their nation-building discourse in relation to anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism after the Bandung Conference in 1955. This chapter rereads Yi Shui’s OnIssuesoftheMalayanisationofChinese-LanguageCinema, examining its ‘Chinese-language cinema’ against the context of the Third World politics of ‘Malayanisation’ in the 1950s and ’60s. The chapter explores how Chinese-language cinema settles and resolves the diverse linguistic and cultural identities of Singaporean and Malayan Chinese audiences with varying backgrounds. ‘Chinese language’, as a term including both Mandarin and topolects, becomes a bargaining chip for Chinese-speaking peoples to resist the dual political oppression of English- and Malay-speaking groups. This chapter also analyses Yi Shui’s Chinese-language cinema practice through examining contemporary discourse and debates in Singaporean and Malayan periodicals on Malayanised Chinese-language cinema. The semi-documentary Third World film TheLionCity and the melodrama BlackGold, set in a tin mine, feature multiple coexisting Chinese languages and attempt to mediate the misunderstandings rooted in the national boundaries and politics of various topolect groups.Less
The fifth chapter discusses how the Singaporean Chinese director Yi Shui created a Malayanised Chinese-language cinema during the 1950s and ’60s and offers a retrospective of the way people in Malaya and Singapore framed their nation-building discourse in relation to anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism after the Bandung Conference in 1955. This chapter rereads Yi Shui’s OnIssuesoftheMalayanisationofChinese-LanguageCinema, examining its ‘Chinese-language cinema’ against the context of the Third World politics of ‘Malayanisation’ in the 1950s and ’60s. The chapter explores how Chinese-language cinema settles and resolves the diverse linguistic and cultural identities of Singaporean and Malayan Chinese audiences with varying backgrounds. ‘Chinese language’, as a term including both Mandarin and topolects, becomes a bargaining chip for Chinese-speaking peoples to resist the dual political oppression of English- and Malay-speaking groups. This chapter also analyses Yi Shui’s Chinese-language cinema practice through examining contemporary discourse and debates in Singaporean and Malayan periodicals on Malayanised Chinese-language cinema. The semi-documentary Third World film TheLionCity and the melodrama BlackGold, set in a tin mine, feature multiple coexisting Chinese languages and attempt to mediate the misunderstandings rooted in the national boundaries and politics of various topolect groups.
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835941
- eISBN:
- 9780824871574
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835941.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the concept of transnationalism in contemporary Japanese cinema. The term “transnational cinema” has been posed as a substitute for “national cinema,” which has long been ...
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This chapter examines the concept of transnationalism in contemporary Japanese cinema. The term “transnational cinema” has been posed as a substitute for “national cinema,” which has long been criticized for various reasons. While nationalism has been repeatedly invented in popular culture, national borders have become increasingly permeable. Global exchanges have noticeably accelerated with the development of communication technologies. In the case of film studies, the expansion of multinational finance and the diversified distribution beyond theatrical release has put the present framework of national cinema in a tenuous position. This chapter tackles the issue of the paradigm shift on the levels both of the critical discourses regarding Chinese-language and Nordic cinemas and the film texts, with particular emphasis on contemporary transnational films from the East Asian region. It also discusses global localization or glocalization as exemplified by the film Initial D. Finally, it considers what benefit, if any, the framework of transnational cinema brings us over that of national cinema through an analysis of the Japanese film, The Hotel Venus (2004, Takahata Hideta).Less
This chapter examines the concept of transnationalism in contemporary Japanese cinema. The term “transnational cinema” has been posed as a substitute for “national cinema,” which has long been criticized for various reasons. While nationalism has been repeatedly invented in popular culture, national borders have become increasingly permeable. Global exchanges have noticeably accelerated with the development of communication technologies. In the case of film studies, the expansion of multinational finance and the diversified distribution beyond theatrical release has put the present framework of national cinema in a tenuous position. This chapter tackles the issue of the paradigm shift on the levels both of the critical discourses regarding Chinese-language and Nordic cinemas and the film texts, with particular emphasis on contemporary transnational films from the East Asian region. It also discusses global localization or glocalization as exemplified by the film Initial D. Finally, it considers what benefit, if any, the framework of transnational cinema brings us over that of national cinema through an analysis of the Japanese film, The Hotel Venus (2004, Takahata Hideta).
Wai-Siam Hee
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888528035
- eISBN:
- 9789882204874
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528035.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In a work that will force scholars to re-evaluate how they approach Sinophone studies, Wai-Siam Hee demonstrates that many of the major issues raised by contemporary Sinophone studies were already ...
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In a work that will force scholars to re-evaluate how they approach Sinophone studies, Wai-Siam Hee demonstrates that many of the major issues raised by contemporary Sinophone studies were already hotly debated in the popular culture surrounding Chinese-language films made in Singapore and Malaya during the Cold War. Despite the high political stakes, the feature films, propaganda films, newsreels, documentaries, newspaper articles, memoirs, and other published materials of the time dealt in sophisticated ways with issues some mistakenly believe are only modern concerns. In the process, the book offers an alternative history to the often taken-for-granted versions of film and national history that sanction anything relating to the Malayan Communist Party during the early period of independence in the region as anti-nationalist.
Drawing exhaustively on material from Asian, European, and North American archives, the author unfolds the complexities produced by British colonialism and anti-communism, identity struggles of the Chinese Malayans, American anti-communism, and transnational Sinophone cultural interactions. Hee shows how Sinophone multilingualism and the role of the local, in addition to other theoretical problems, were both illustrated and practised in Cold War Sinophone cinema. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chinese-Language Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and during the Cold War deftly shows how contemporary Sinophone studies can only move forward by looking backwards.Less
In a work that will force scholars to re-evaluate how they approach Sinophone studies, Wai-Siam Hee demonstrates that many of the major issues raised by contemporary Sinophone studies were already hotly debated in the popular culture surrounding Chinese-language films made in Singapore and Malaya during the Cold War. Despite the high political stakes, the feature films, propaganda films, newsreels, documentaries, newspaper articles, memoirs, and other published materials of the time dealt in sophisticated ways with issues some mistakenly believe are only modern concerns. In the process, the book offers an alternative history to the often taken-for-granted versions of film and national history that sanction anything relating to the Malayan Communist Party during the early period of independence in the region as anti-nationalist.
Drawing exhaustively on material from Asian, European, and North American archives, the author unfolds the complexities produced by British colonialism and anti-communism, identity struggles of the Chinese Malayans, American anti-communism, and transnational Sinophone cultural interactions. Hee shows how Sinophone multilingualism and the role of the local, in addition to other theoretical problems, were both illustrated and practised in Cold War Sinophone cinema. Remapping the Sinophone: The Cultural Production of Chinese-Language Cinema in Singapore and Malaya before and during the Cold War deftly shows how contemporary Sinophone studies can only move forward by looking backwards.
Gary Bettinson and Daniel Martin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424592
- eISBN:
- 9781474444705
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424592.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Dumplings stuffed with diabolical fillings. Sword-wielding zombies. Hopping cadavers. Big-head babies. For decades, Hong Kong cinema has served up images of horror quite unlike those found in other ...
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Dumplings stuffed with diabolical fillings. Sword-wielding zombies. Hopping cadavers. Big-head babies. For decades, Hong Kong cinema has served up images of horror quite unlike those found in other parts of the world. In seminal films such as A Chinese Ghost Story, Rouge, The Eye, Dumplings, and Rigor Mortis, the region’s filmmakers have pushed the boundaries of genre, cinematic style, and bad taste. But what makes Hong Kong horror cinema so utterly unique? How has this cult tradition developed over time? Why does it hold such fascination for “serious” cinephiles and cult fans alike? And how have Hong Kong horror movies shaped the genre internationally? This book provides answers to such questions, celebrating the classics of the genre while introducing readers to lesser known films. Hong Kong Horror Cinema is the first book about this delirious and captivating cinematic tradition.Less
Dumplings stuffed with diabolical fillings. Sword-wielding zombies. Hopping cadavers. Big-head babies. For decades, Hong Kong cinema has served up images of horror quite unlike those found in other parts of the world. In seminal films such as A Chinese Ghost Story, Rouge, The Eye, Dumplings, and Rigor Mortis, the region’s filmmakers have pushed the boundaries of genre, cinematic style, and bad taste. But what makes Hong Kong horror cinema so utterly unique? How has this cult tradition developed over time? Why does it hold such fascination for “serious” cinephiles and cult fans alike? And how have Hong Kong horror movies shaped the genre internationally? This book provides answers to such questions, celebrating the classics of the genre while introducing readers to lesser known films. Hong Kong Horror Cinema is the first book about this delirious and captivating cinematic tradition.
Brian Hu
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199949311
- eISBN:
- 9780199364749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199949311.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
China’s acclaimed “urban generation” or “sixth generation” filmmakers like Jia Zhang-ke have, through the concept of “on-the-spot realism,” revolutionized how cinema documents people and spaces in ...
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China’s acclaimed “urban generation” or “sixth generation” filmmakers like Jia Zhang-ke have, through the concept of “on-the-spot realism,” revolutionized how cinema documents people and spaces in modern China. However, the films’ concerns with profilmic reality brackets off certain experiences that don’t fit neatly within discourses of realism prevalent in the early 2000s. This chapter examines the filmic sampling of existing karaoke music videos in works like Unknown Pleasures and Xiao Wu and compares them with the sampling—and remixing—of Linda Wong’s karaoke video in Pang Ho-cheung’s Beijing-set film Love in the Buff. The comparison reveals alternate possibilities of experience that exceed the bounds of photographic realism and thrive on more unruly phenomena such as cross-media consumption and production, convergence spaces like the KTV, and intersemiotic articulations of stardom and affect.Less
China’s acclaimed “urban generation” or “sixth generation” filmmakers like Jia Zhang-ke have, through the concept of “on-the-spot realism,” revolutionized how cinema documents people and spaces in modern China. However, the films’ concerns with profilmic reality brackets off certain experiences that don’t fit neatly within discourses of realism prevalent in the early 2000s. This chapter examines the filmic sampling of existing karaoke music videos in works like Unknown Pleasures and Xiao Wu and compares them with the sampling—and remixing—of Linda Wong’s karaoke video in Pang Ho-cheung’s Beijing-set film Love in the Buff. The comparison reveals alternate possibilities of experience that exceed the bounds of photographic realism and thrive on more unruly phenomena such as cross-media consumption and production, convergence spaces like the KTV, and intersemiotic articulations of stardom and affect.
