Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks: Voice, Ethnicity, Power 981160312X, 9789811603129

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Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks Voice, Ethnicity, Power Dorothy Wai Sim Lau

Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau

Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks Voice, Ethnicity, Power

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau Hong Kong Baptist University Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-981-16-0312-9    ISBN 978-981-16-0313-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: AARON TAM / Stringer. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To my father

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Palgrave Macmillan for publishing my book. I thank my editors Sara Crowley Vigneau and Connie Li and their teams who provided professional advice and efficient effort throughout the process. I am indebted to my colleagues and friends who have offered insight and support to this project and to my research work in general. I, moreover, appreciate my research assistants Miss Weijie Zhu, Miss Yuqi Zhang, and Miss Yiyuan Zhang for their help in various stages of this book project. I very much owe my family, particularly my husband Alfred and my son Ari, for their abiding support and unfailing love to me. Research and writing can be a tough journey; without their understanding and tolerance, the completion of this book would not have been possible. Lastly, I wish to extend my thanks to Hong Kong, the place where I was born and grew up and where I pursued my PhD and began developing my academic career. During the time of writing, Hong Kong was undergoing unprecedented challenges and changes. I am privileged to witness such a historic moment that everyone who belongs to this land has strived for what s/he believes and what s/he deserves with courage, creativity, and dignity.

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Notes on Chinese Names and Film Titles

Chinese names of public figures and film talents in this book are romanized differently. The romanization generally follows how the names are commonly known and spelled in the media and scholarship, with reference to the focus of different regions the subjects come from. For example, names like Michelle Yeoh, Jay Chou, and John Woo follow the Western style by putting surnames after the Christian names. Names such as Chow Yun-fat and Wong Kar-wai are the romanization of the native names in Cantonese. Some names exhibit a combination of the two methods, for instance, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Tony Leung Ka-fai, the version adopted by English-language media for the purpose of distinguishing the two actors. Names like Tang Wei and Liu Yifei are the standard spelling in the Chinese pinyin system that is broadly circulated in the English-language materials. Film titles mentioned in the chapters are presented in English, whereas their original titles (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) will be noted in the filmography. Chinese titles are written in traditional characters, regardless of their regions or countries of production.

Contents

1 Introduction: Laying out the Terrain of Voice-Driven Star Discourse in Chinese Cinemas  1 Part I Anglophone Media Space  23 2 Mediating Action and Speech: Michelle Yeoh’s Star Discourse in Pan-Pacific Connections 25 3 Fan Bingbing and the Sound of the Rising China 45 4 From “King of Mandopop” to the New “Kato”: Jay Chou’s Transnational Stardom and His Brand of Coolness 65 Part II Sinophone Cinematic Space  87 5 Tang Wei’s Stardom in and Beyond Sinophone Media Culture: Linguistic Versatility, Public Reception, Chinese-­ Korean Cultural Imagination 89 6 Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Bi-ethnic, Multilingual Screen Persona111

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Contents

7 The Female Voice in Two of Stanley Kwan’s Sinophone Films: Maggie Cheung, Sammi Cheng, and the (Un) translatability of Personae133 Part III Digital Multimedia Space 153 8 Voices of Mulan in Animated and Live-­Action Cinematic Spaces155 9 Can You Hear the Kung Fu Star?: Rediscovering Bruce Lee’s Vocal Persona in the Digital Culture179 10 Conclusion: Reconsidering Chinese Film Stars—Toward a Polyphonic Networked Persona201 Filmography209 Glossary of Chinese Names215 Index219

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Michelle Yeoh plays Aung San Suu Kyi (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C10uGA6btQ) 29 Michelle Yeoh was appointed a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador in 2016. (Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/unitednations developmentprogramme/29917284606/in/photolist-­ MzFUkb-­LFnyqX-­MzFUpQ-­MbKLRC-­MeMJnY-­MvGZbG-­ MvGZ7U-­MvGZfE-­5G28PD-­aqo2BL-­aqkmZp-­aqo2Hq-­ aqkmJg-­aqkmFZ-­aqkmSD-­aqo2RS-­aqo2Kf-­6nsen D-­aoHaLd-­4WS4vQ-­5Gqcw9-­5GqawE-­5Gqb6S-­6nw49J-­6nw1 su-­6nwe5A-­6ns7yP-­6nsiBg-­6nsaTc-­6nrYWk-­6nrWEZ-­6nwsN5-­ 6nwrHS-­6nshzD-­6nwnrd-­6nwd21-­6nwjHh-­6nrU8i-­6nw sd3-­6nrZEz-­6nwaym-­6ns1MX-­6nsnwM-­6nwkdy-­6nwuJC-­6nsg yM-­6ns4PV-­6ns9Ce-­6nsbA4-­6nrULD/) 36 Michelle Yeoh speaks with ease and humor at the World Economic Forum about her experience of working in Hollywood as a non-White talent. (Source: https://search. creativecommons.org/photos/24ffa82b-­139c-­4864-­ bb9e-­8a7b2081d56c) 40 Fan Bingbing’s Cannes debut in the “dragon robe” (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Vl9fo0GYRNs)50 Fan Bingbing as Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vGPYBT4eeWk&t=1s)52

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3

Jay Chou’s “China Wind” (zhongguofeng) image in the MV of “Huo Yuanjia” (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=OTZtyCQnFyk)69 Jay Chou plays the introverted Takumi Fujiwara in Initial D. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/ photos/0cfe09af-­446d-­497e-­af6f-­ f80fe819df79) 72 Jay Chou reprised Bruce Lee’s Kato personality in his Hollywood debut, The Green Hornet (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xtKas3-­ctQ) 73 Jay Chou and Hannah Quinlivan in their wedding (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Q3U7_D4aBZg)81 Tang Wei plays the Shanghai-born heroine in Lust, Caution (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)90 Tang Wei’s minimalist-style performance in Late Autumn (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)98 Tang Wei’s “unadorned” look in her wedding gown (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK-­ GYIqABSg)99 Tang Wei plays a diasporic widow in A Tale of Three Cities (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)103 Takeshi Kaneshiro in Chungking Express. (Source: https:// search.creativecommons.org/photos/843de9e2-­e9b9-­4262-­ b3f7-­8d4679a224cc) 114 Kaneshiro plays the Sichuanese-speaking investigator Xu Baijiu. (Source: Wu Xia DVD (Distributor: We Distributions, Lark Films Distribution)) 117 Kaneshiro in the celebrity endorsement of EVA Air (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=p3mExFjpxuk)125 Maggie Cheung as Ruan Lingyu in Center Stage (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3t6QxjjWA1g)136 Criticism points to Sammi Cheng’s acting and accent in her personification in Everlasting Regret (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skj0j1sIAhI) 140 Sammi Cheng recollaborates with Stanley Kwan in First Night Nerves (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=35eeazhLhk8)146

  List of Figures 

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4

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Ming-Na Wen as the vocal lead for the titular role of Disney’s Mulan. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/ photos/3b1b3464-­15ca-­4a75-­ 80f7-­f7ca29c27c2a) 158 Liu Yifei as the rising actress in China. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/ b77337d3-­2ed8-­4df9-­8c65-­63fae2004551) 167 #BoycottMulan campaign in various countries in Asia, especially among young people. (Source: https://www.flickr.com/ photos/prachatai/50305386342/ in/photolist-­2j DjujX-­2jDjfKh) 170 Bruce Lee cries in the mid-leap in the ending scene of Fist of Fury (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=dgrxZc8Jzto)182 The Lee-cloned figure in a Taiwan-produced commercial of McDonald’s (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=rAQLq1P4WQg&t=3s)186 Lines of Bruce Lee’s “Be Water” speech on a protester’s banner in Hong Kong. (Photo courtesy: Mary Hui) 190 Bruce Lee’s mansion, “The Crane’s Nest,” in Hong Kong was set to be demolished in 2019. (Source: https://search. creativecommons.org/photos/30b7e751-­8d74-­4700-­9054-­ c7a3d7f1c731)195

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Laying out the Terrain of Voice-Driven Star Discourse in Chinese Cinemas

Nearly two decades after the release of the Mandarin-speaking martial arts hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the movie clips that show Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat speaking with Cantonese-accented Mandarin are still being intensely circulated in fans’ circuits. Directed by Ang Lee, the movie became a commercial success that electrified audiences of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds with the martial prowess and stunning acrobatics of the heroes and heroines. Whereas the masterfully choreographed action largely defined the screen performance, a mix of accents variously elicited by the celebrated cast also characterized the star presence. The members of the cast included Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen, who were all ethnic Chinese but “not all Chinese in the same way” (Klein 2004, 37). It was wryly entertaining to hear the superstars like Chow and Yeoh speaking dignified Mandarin in a Hong Kongese–inflected version in the setting of ancient China (Lu 2007), but this evoked negative responses among the audiences in Chinese-speaking regions. The notorious lingual personae were transposed to cyberspace by cinephiles and amateur video makers. These web users readily copied and pasted the dialogue-packed sequences or even created mashups and parodies of the audiovisual texts, sharing them on YouTube and fansites while inviting “likes” and comments. It demonstrated the capability of “dialectal implausibility,” in Sheldon Lu’s trope (2007), to valorize fan identification and social exchange in the cyber community. The phenomenon reveals issues about the (im)pure © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_1

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articulations in relation to Chinese stardom, insinuating the potential interplay between star prominence, ethnic appeal, and linguistic virtuosity in the milieu of border-crossing cinema and international media hysteria. Since Newsweek, in its issue of May 9, 2005, ran a special report called “China’s Century,” gracing the cover with Zhang Ziyi, and predicted a return to an age of international stardom, the visibility and vigor of Chinese film stars in the global arena shows no sign of abating. So far in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Chinese performers continue to exhibit their transnational capacity by making inroads into Hollywood production and exhibition, as well as by winning prestigious awards in international film festivals. A list of the Chinese icons consists of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Gong Li, followed by new sensations like Fan Bingbing, Liu Yifei, Jing Tian, Daniel Wu, and Max Zhang. They are famous for their corporeal agility, kung fu dexterity, and exotic look, as displayed in the Hong Kong martial arts cinema and films by the Fifth Generation of Chinese directors. These performative qualities successfully earned them broad followings all over the globe, spreading their names across various “phonic” cultures. In addition, the advent of celebrity culture, global marketing, and multimedia platforming mobilizes a new perpetual form of public scrutiny of their enunciative capacity and linguistic versatility. Tabloid shows, premieres, film festivals, advertisements, press conferences, and award ceremonies depend on the celebrity presence, which is often supplemented by the actor’s verbal poignancy. Language learning becomes a favorable source of entertainment fodder: journalists are keen on reporting how hard it is for Chinese actors to acquire English-speaking skills and assessing whether their spoken English is up to the standard. Fans enthusiastically discuss, on various Internet forums, the red-carpet appearances and the fashion in which their Chinese idols express themselves in front of the press and the crowd. These occurrences validate the fact that the eloquence of Chinese screen identities marked by specific styles of vocalization and diction is no longer hidden but plays a vital role in accruing the star value. Media texts circulate globally via vast distribution structures of theatrical releases, the DVD market, the Internet, and social media, allowing Chinese personae to cross over linguistic boundaries. Despite the increasing reliance on technologized visuals in high-concept extravaganzas, transnational film industries continue to capitalize on the cultural currency and the commercial appeal of iconic stars in marketing their films (Willis

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and Leung 2014, 2). Hollywood producers continue to bill top Chinese icons in view of the expanding film market in China, making the translingual star discourse burgeon. Hiring dialect coaches has become a predictable strategy to ensure that foreign performers articulate lines of dialogue with the proper pronunciation, stress, tempo, and tenor. The on-the-set dialect training habitually becomes part of the extradiegetic discourse that is repackaged in the special “making-of” features of the DVD version of movies. No doubt, audiences are pleased to see how the car crash in Transformer (2007) was shot in front of a blue cloth and how the “world of Pandora” in Avatar (2009) was synthesized in the computer. But it is equally amusing to see how Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li learned to utter lines of dialogue in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) under the instruction of a dialect trainer, and how Liu Yifei rehearses the script reading in English with Hayden Christensen during the shooting of Outcast (2005). These materials exploit the aural texture of ethnic personae, utilizing linguistic insufficiency as a promotion asset for transnational blockbusters. With the emergence of Sinophone film culture in Asia, the abundance of multistar coproductions accentuates the regionally based, code-­ switching star phenomenon. Consider the main cast of several notable projects: Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro in The House of Flying Daggers (2004); Zhou Xun, Jacky Cheung, and Kaneshiro in Perhaps Love (2005); Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li, and Jay Chou in The Curse of the Golden Flower (2006); Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, and Leehom Wang in Lust, Caution (2007); Tony Leung, Kaneshiro, Chang Chen, Chi-ling Lin, Zhao Wei, and Hu Jun in Red Cliff I and II (2008, 2009); Chow Yun-fat, Ge You, Jiang Wen, and Liao Fan in Let the Bullet Fly (2010); Donnie Yen, Tang Wei, and Kaneshiro in Wu Xia (2011)—the list goes on. These features employ high-powered ethnically Chinese casts from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China who speak the Sinitic language marked by a bewildering variety of region-specific accents. These coproductions aim at maximum audience appeal across the markets for Chinese-language films. The audiences are found in various “phonic” groups: Chinese-speaking settlements in China and Taiwan, Chinese-origin communities that do not speak Chinese in Vietnam, Korea, India, and Malaysia, as well as Chinese diasporas in the United Kingdom and the Pacific and Pacific Rim. The media texts, often labeled “Sinophone,” spawn new sites and visual practices that engage the complex relations between the configurations of Chineseness in terms of “phonic” heterogeneity and fluidity rather than limiting the concept to a question of

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ethnicity bound to nationality. It illustrates a multidirectional critique to the popular construction of fame, attesting to a global visual economy of Chineseness. Recently, the diffusion of words, tongues, and voices in the moving-­ image network has been dominated by digital imagery as much as by cinema, by user-generated materials as much as by corporatized media texts. Broadband infrastructure and Wi-Fi technology afford transmission with enormous speed of not only written words and photographs but also moving images with sounds. The web-based innovations of video-sharing sites and social networking services permit user appropriation and manipulation of star-related materials produced by professional image makers, spearheading novel ways of fan exchange. Celebrity interviews and televised talk shows are available on YouTube. Movie trailers incorporating action and dialogue poached from the motion pictures’ official websites end up on the feeds of individual Facebook users. The free multilingual translation apps and services such as Google Translate have made linguistic boundaries further porous. The capacity to translate texts, speeches, websites, and real-time videos from one language to another facilitates the consumption of star texts by linguistically conscious audiences. With the propagation of media outlets, Chinese celebrities no longer stay within a rigid linguistic boundary but dwell in a capricious multilingual space. The reality of translingual filmmaking and the explosion of communication technologies call for alternative and agile methods to make sense of new star texts as well as alerting us to the instability of the texts’ meaning. In response, this book seeks to suggest a new genealogy in examining how the Chinese star image is constructed and contended in the contexts of global cinema and intermedial relations. My analysis brings forth a set of methodological procedures that work to engage language, dialect, accent, and speech as instruments to mine the ethnic and ideological underpinnings of Chinese stardom. The study of film stars as crucial elements of cinema has proceeded for over thirty years (Willis and Leung 2014, 2), After Richard Dyer, in his groundbreaking book Stars (1979), famously theorized the star image as “a complex configuration of visual, verbal, aural signs,” we confront a sheer scarcity of the latter two types of sign in the scholarship of stardom in general. Even with star studies having undergone constant revision and expansion since the 1990s (Yu 2017, 1), the verbal and the aural still receive far less critical weight than the visual. A similar shortage is evident when it comes to specific groups of stars, including the Chinese ones who

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are gaining increasing visibility in the current cultural environment, which has evolved to be decidedly multilingual, multivocal, and multiaccented. In order to fill the research gap, this book pursues the critical affordability of the “phonic,” analyzing Chinese stardom as something that emerged in the network of sites of popular construction within and across the Chinese-­ speaking worlds. It concentrates on a roster of Chinese personalities who navigate and speak in the spaces of Hollywood cinema, Asian cinema, and digital multimedia. The book serves to assert the “phonic” as a legitimate and potent connection that can generate new vigor in the rumination and reimagination of Chineseness. As the first book-length study that deals explicitly with lingual- and vocal-based star presence, Reorienting Chinese Stars amplifies the discursive parameters of studying Chinese stardom by setting a theoretically viable agenda for investigating the subject in the conjectural moment of polyphonic realities, subjectivities, and expressions.

Negotiating Star Power in Translingual Filmmaking The global crisscrosses of capital, talent, technologies, and aesthetic traditions propel the demand of bi- or multilingual code-switching in screen performance, interrogating the star power of ethnic Chinese entertainers. Recent influxes of Chinese performers in Hollywood who speak broken and accented English have shown that they are struggling at the boundary of the cult of personality. From Jackie Chan’s outtakes focusing on his failure to articulate the English-language dialogue in his Hollywood star vehicles to Zhang Ziyi’s “clumsy” accented speech in the award presentation of the 2006 Oscars, the ability to speak English is fundamental to shape Chinese publicity in the Anglophone entertainment arena. It is widely acknowledged that the poor level of spoken English of Chinese stars often limits the ranges of roles available to them. Even when they are assigned roles, producers may need to tailor-make the script for them. Consider The Replacement Killer (1998), the Hollywood debut of Chow Yun-fat. The executive producer, Mathew Baer, admitted they made the decision to cut long dialogues and monologues to cater to Chow’s limited level of spoken English (Feng 2017, 89). This tactic made Chow fall into the typecasting of a silent action hero, not unlike the stock portrayal of Orientalist action imagery (ibid.). Arguably, driven by the linguistic insufficiency of Chinese stars, Hollywood tamed and restricted their presence. Despite the “English-as-lingua-franca” principle that manipulates the star identity in a crossover environment, certain Chinese personalities

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attempt to mediate their potentially contentious positions in Hollywood by emphasizing their lack of English skills. Jackie Chan has not seemed to mind revealing or even making fun of his own broken English. Many viewers are familiar with Chan’s language bloopers at the closing of his Hollywood features such as the Rush Hour series (1998, 2001, 2007), Shanghai Noon (2000), Shanghai Knights (2003), and The Forbidden Kingdom (2008). In the bloopers, he is heard saying words in a joking fashion, such as “You think I am speak very good English, huh?” (The Tuxedo, 2002) and “I hate English” (The Spy Next Door, 2010). In Rush Hour, he also teases his screen counterpart, Chris Tucker, a Black actor who failed to pronounce Mandarin and had “NG” (“no good”) for several times, by saying, “See?! … He [Tucker] even cannot say three words [in] Chinese …. My English? … Now you know how difficult I am!” While Chan impresses cinephiles with his death-defying stunts, he demonstrates awareness of his limited capacity to handle English dialogue and thus practices a kind of “political agency” over such limitations and “must act with tactical expediency” (Szeto 2011, 8). For a long time, Chan has appeared as less a Hong Kong export than a generic ethnic Chinese in Western film culture (Lau 2014). Nevertheless, he self-consciously performs the linguistic play and forges an “alien” persona, leaving his ethnic status negotiable. Therefore, Chan’s self-deprecating gesture exemplifies that he confronts, yet cooperates with, hegemonic forces to legitimize and fortify his marginalized image in the English-speaking environment. Cultural production and circulation in current times have shifted to a translational context, in which the hegemonic status of English does not vanish but is complicated by the changing global modernity. To position English less as a colonial language than a culture of circulation (Shen 2009, 5), the usage and status of English are closely tied to a “shift of cultural paradigms in the Chinese-language field,” especially against the backdrop of the rising China (Shen 2009, 6). In recent Hollywood films, Chinese performers appear recognizably as subjects who embody problems of translation and miscommunication within a multilingual setting (Rush Hour series), or who inhabit a hybridized linguistic setting where Mandarin is blended into a primarily English-language scenario (Karate Kids, 2010) (Marchetti 2010, 36), or who speak accented English that tends to alienate the audience (Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005). The image manifests how ethnic personalities attempt to bridge the cultural and ideological gaps through their translingual articulations, perplexing the dialectics between being global and being “Chinese.”

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While English functions as a cultural signifier that shapes the star image in a Euro-American setting, the growth of Sinophone media culture from Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong prompts us to rethink the transnational Chinese image without presuming that globalization is always Western. The vocal register of multiple Chinese dialects in Sinophone films is no less performative and ideologically revealing than the bilingual shift between English and Chinese, configuring a shared East Asian popular cultural imagination (Chua 2012). The concept of the Sinophone has received considerable attention in recent years, becoming a vigorous theoretical apparatus to analyze Chinese-language cultural productions in and outside China. The concept was spearheaded by Shu-mei Shih in her groundbreaking volume Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (2007), in response to the expiration of the Chinese language among the Chinese diaspora in the second and third generations. A repertoire of scholarship has identified literature as the key site of Sinophone studies because “literature has been a privileged genre in Sinophone cultures across the world” (Shih 2013, 9). To suggest a different view, Hwee Lim Song prefers locating film, television drama, and popular music, which all include the aural dimensions, as vital avenues to reach the lives of Sinophone subjects (2014, 63). Song continues to explain that the distinguishing effect between Sinitic languages is much more “pronounced and immediate in its sonic form” than in its written form (ibid.). Accents and dialects that are often culturally or regionally specific serve to complicate fame with respect to the question of authenticity. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) reveals that Gong Li articulates ostensibly more “authentic” Mandarin with her Beijing dialect, whereas Chow Yun-fat speaks Cantonese-accented Mandarin and Jay Chou’s has a Taiwanese accent. In speaking of the Sinophone cinematic culture, Song Hwee Lim, moreover, argues that speech often naturalizes the notion of authenticity, with the spoken language usually what gives a film its assumed national identity (2014, 66). Such an identity is not only applicable to a film but also to an individual star. As Lim extrapolates: Often inflected by accents to signify class and region, speech is always already the undisputed market of “origin.” Whereas accents can be put on to varying degrees of success by actors from a different origin, the ability to cross linguistic boundaries, the very feat of performing as a “native speaker,” serves to reinforce the myth of authenticity, an ideal state and status to be achieved. (2014, 66)

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Referring to the example of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that opened this chapter, the Hong Kong–style Mandarin enunciated by Chow and Yeoh sounds impure, or less “authentic,” than the “impeccable” Mandarin (Lu 2007) spoken by the mainlander Zhang Ziyi. Yet what is intriguing is that director Ang Lee refused to compromise on the standard of “native” precision, deciding to keep the actors’ original voices because he alleged that “the emotion conveyed by the quality of the voice is more touching than dubbed standard Mandarin” (my emphasis) (Zhang 2005, 206). The inclusion of a multitude of accents and the deviation from the linguistic “standard” negate the decision to make Mandarin the lingua franca of Chinese-language cinema. This validates the Sinophone approach of the construction of screen personae. The Sinophone, as theorized by Shu-mei Shih, is defined as “a network of places of cultural products on the margins of China and Chineseness” (2007, 4). Highly contentious, Chineseness is a notion which has been de-essentialized and is accented diversely across geopolitical borders (Shih 2007). The multiaccented screen image is a staple of how stars orchestrate a presence in and outside China, navigating within the network of region-specific utterances and insinuating “a facturing of standardness and authenticity” (Shih 2007, 5). Such an image, hence, not only subverts the “phonic” hierarchy in the Sinitic cultures but also heterogenizes and localizes cultural constructs of Chineseness. How, then, do the “phonic” articulations of Chinese screen entertainers strengthen or weaken their status as they steer across myriad film industries? Whereas language and accent erect cultural borders, to what extent do they unsettle the ethnic orientation of the icons? In what fashions do new technologies enable fans to engage with the “phonic” image and give a new reading to it? By and large, in what sense can the star presence be called “Chinese” in the era of multimedia and screen cultures? In order to respond to these questions, this book reconceptualizes Chinese stardom as a linguacentric phenomenon and explores the prospective coupling of the linguacrossing profile with fame. I hypothesize that vocal utterances and code-switching instances compellingly function as a locus of power relations and ideological contestation. The discussion pivots on specific “phonic” modalities—the spoken forms of languages, the associated pronunciation styles, the styles of vocalization, the use of silence—to argue that Chinese stars inhabit an indeterminate, erratic space where the linguistic boundaries are increasingly porous to negotiate the power dynamics and ethnic politics. By registering the critical plausibility of the “phonic,” this book attempts to propel a methodological tool that informs the multidirectional flow of star capital in the global visual economy in a timely and productive way.

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“The Aural” in Star Studies “The aural” has been a marginalized aspect in the critical discourse of stars, as if it operates beyond the perceptible boundaries of stardom. Classical studies of stars have valued image, body, performance, and spectacle more than sound, voice, language, and speech. To consider stars as primarily created by the film medium (Dyer 1979, 16), star studies tend toward the imbalance of image and sound. Sound, as broadly recognized in academia, seems to exist “in the shadow of the image” (Beck and Grajeda 2008, 2). The voice of the actor is one aspect, among many others, of sound in cinema that suffers from general oversight (Song 2014, 6). Dyer has suggested that a star text stresses its structured polysemy that is pregnant with ideological valence (1979, 3), and the post-Dyer efforts, propelled by scholars such as Christine Gledhill (1991, xiv) and Jeremy Butler (1998, 344), have elaborated on the star text as an intertextual construct produced across an array of media and cultural practices. Although Butler’s star semiotics do not explicitly propose a privilege of the visual over the aural, Yingjin Zhang and Mary Farquhar (2010, 6) associate the star appeal with the technicality of screen acting in Chinese cinema in the mid-1920s. The technicality includes components of hand gestures, bodily postures, and facial expressions showing internal feelings (Dai 1996, 45), which are all visually perceptible. Zhang and Farquhar also assert that voice is one of the “less obvious aspects of star performance” (7)—less obvious than costume, makeup, and even typesetting. In the critical discourse of transnational stardom, some studies employ the “phonic” angle to extrapolate the ethnic image, largely Eurocentric and American-oriented, but the effort seems either inadequate or immature. In the edited book Film Stars: The Reader (2004), Ian C. Jarvie’s “Stars and Ethnicity: Hollywood and the United States, 1932–51” presents an empirical survey on identifying methods and criteria to categorize discrete ethnic groups of stars. He postulates that accent is one of the ethnic signifiers, alongside name and appearance, formulating the process of cultural assimilation in the production of images of mainstream America. More recent efforts have included the articles of Mark Gallagher and Liz Czach, anthologized in Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture (2013), edited by Russell Meeuf and Raphael Raphael. Both authors render the “Francophone” as the analytical category of the objects of inquiry. Gallagher purports that Alain Delon’s “cosmopolitan” (81) persona cues specific associations in the French-speaking

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context but, paradoxically, is unfixed from the French cultural and linguistic milieus. Considering Genevieve Bujold as a border-crosser between the French-speaking and English-speaking cultures, Czach posits that Bujold’s accented language allows the actress to embrace an “amorphous ‘otherness’” (97) short of cultural and national specificity. In the exceptional volume Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices (2017), Lisa Shaw’s (2017) analysis on the role of voice of Carmen Miranda’s persona construction in Hollywood is highly relevant too. According to Shaw, Miranda’s heavily accented English and the innovative use of code-­switching between Portuguese and English engendered a linguistic space for agency and self-assertion, functioning against the clichéd vision of Latin Americans. These writings have exuded seminal energy in exploring the relationship between aurality and ethnicity in a transnational context, and the energy is certainly worth continuing. Compared to star studies, more publications deal with voice, a conduit for language (Whittaker and Wright 2017, 1), in the adjacent field of performance studies, of which “certain areas have been more intrinsically concerned with verbal performance” (Whittaker and Wright 2017, 8). In most analyses of cinematic performance, gestures, facial expressions, and vocal qualities are the three crucial territories of an actor’s performance style (Marcello 2006, 59). Reuven Tsur’s Poetic Rhythm, Structure and Performance: An Empirical Study in Cognitive Poetics (1998) approaches the sonorous materiality of verbal performance from the perspective of cognitive poetics. Tsur’s discussion, along with some other sociological studies of voice, casts an implicit influence on Anne Karpf’s successful The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent (2006), a mainstream book on the subject. A recent anthology, Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (2017, 65–104), coedited by Sabrina Yu and Guy Austin, focuses on the transformation and expansion of the field and highlights performativity as one of the dual features of stardom, which is altered and manipulated by the industry, stars, and audiences (3). The volume incorporates “star voices” as one of its seven topics in investigating stardom (Yu and Austin 2017, 65–104). With this substantial body of works delineating strands of star performance in terms of voice, one would expect more critical nuances of the vocal dimension in producing and consuming stars in a culture that sees an enduring appeal of film stars to the public (Zhang and Farquhar 2010, 3). As an outcome of sound-related technological contrivance, dubbing is one theme of star vocals that is often contextualized in transnational

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filmmaking. A growing number of studies have shed noteworthy light on the practice of dubbing in the genre of animation, with the prevalence of digital imagery in cinema. Paul Wells (2003) examines the characters of Woody and Buzz in the celebrated US animation Toy Story (1995) with conditions of authenticity, suggesting that the voice provides the star qualities to animated figures. The vocal performances of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen carry with them the aural signifiers of the preestablished cinematic and television personae (Wells 2003, 94). In a transcultural setting, Jackie Chan, in the 2008 DreamWorks action comedy Kung Fu Panda, performs vocally for Master Monkey, one of the members of the Furious Five, recalling Chan’s well-known action-comedy screen persona. In addition, Locating the Voice in Film more intensely engages in versatile linguistic contexts with the French, Japanese, and Spanish animation dubbing (Denison 2017; Dwyer 2017; Montgomery 2017; Whittaker 2017). Whereas animated figures can be considered as the result of the elision of the physical presence of the “actor,” the practice of industrial-­ based dubbing potentially engenders specific sorts of actorly presence, though in an elusive and slippery manner. These works delineate the possible interplay between human voice and animated imagery in CGI-propelled films, but I am equally intrigued by the participatory practice of recoding the vocal personae in new media as an extension of an established image on film. Intermediality serves to usher in novel types of audiovisual contracts in a culture “where the image bite could replace the integrated performance” (Pomerance 2012, 3). DIY culture and the availability of user-friendly editing software and apps allow web users to manipulate screen promotions in a way that the original voice is reappropriated and repositioned in contexts other than film. Specifically, web users edit, circulate, and assemble anew an icon’s film dialogue or press interviews for the purpose of advancing multiple agendas (social, political, and commercial). The star’s voice becomes a contested ground of fragmented self-reflexive narratives and the audience changes the promotions in innovative and ideologically induced fashions. By engaging with the digitally produced star texts, this book reaches beyond the medium of film, stretching the spectrum of voice acting and bridging the digitally mediated and celluloid universes. Thus, it unravels the polemics of visuality and aurality, body and voice, as well as professional and amateur creativity in the midst of participatory dynamics.

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An Unheard Dimension: The Voice, Language, Dialect, and Accent of Transnational Chinese Stars Numerous studies have examined Chinese stars in terms of hyperkinetic stunts, corporeal agility, and exotic look, but the linguistic versatility, “phonic” articulations, and vocal performance seem subordinate to, if not dispossessed by, the visual-based qualities. To date, there has been a veritable boom of English-language literature on transnational Chinese stardom. This boom has been borne out by several edited volumes situated either in the Chinese cinema or in the (East) Asian cinema since 2010. Farquhar and Zhang’s Chinese Film Stars (2010) offers an imperative effort to seek the non-Western construction of stardom by probing ethnic Chinese performers from the silent era to the time of globalization (2). Two additional publications, Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange (2012) and Meeuf and Raphael’s Transnational Stardom, employ the transnational as the framework for studying stars. Whereas the former stresses North American and Asian instances, the latter is inclusive enough to cover the Eurocentric star phenomenon. Almost at the same time, two other publications have set the critical orientation of stardom in Asia. Lorna Fitzsimmons and John A.  Lent’s edited Popular Culture in Asia: Memory, City, Celebrity (2013) and Wing-fai Leung and Andy Willis’ East Asian Film Stars (2014b) have placed stars in a regional context, investigating the subjects from social, cultural, and industrial perspectives. In addition to edited books, single-­ authored monographs devoted to ethnic Chinese border-crossers have also flourished. Sabrina Yu’s Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom (2012) and Lin Feng’s Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom (2017) analyze two Chinese icons. Leung Wing-fai’s 2014a Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity offers original research on multimedia stardom in Hong Kong in the changing social and cultural landscapes since 1980. My book Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2019) explores the new star-fan interplay and offers a reconceptualization of Chineseness in the emergent and important culturalcyber setting. In view of the growing body of publications encompassing various critical orientations and frameworks, however, limited works consider the aural or sonic performance as the primary focus. Discourse about Chinese stars tends to pursue the visual- or body-based models as the pivot of critical engagement to the issues of ethnicity, race, and diaspora. Euro-American race discourses tend to assume that racial

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identities are principally defined in terms of visual perception of skin tone (Wang 2017, 68). This perception justifies the hierarchy of racialization, eliding the fissure between Chinese ethnicity and linguistic capacity of border-crossing personae as early as 1930s silent cinema (Wang 2017, 69). Contemporary Chinese star analysis, which is dominated by the notion of genre, shows a tendency toward body-oriented approaches. Genre is crucial in the promotion and reception of films as well as star identities (Martin 2014, 19–20). The popularity of martial arts and action genres, together generally considered the physical genre, has pushed Chinese performers to the forefront of star studies in recent times. Various publications explore a constellation of action stars including Bruce Lee (Lo 2004; Berry 2006; Hu 2010; Lau 2016a), Jackie Chan (Fore 1997, 2001; Gallagher 2010; Farquhar 2010; Szeto 2011; Lau 2014), Jet Li (Stringer 2003; Yu 2012), Chow Yun-fat (Feng 2017), Michelle Yeoh (Funnell 2014), and Donnie Yen (Funnell 2013; Hunt 2014; Lau 2016b). A majority of the works emphasize the caliber of the virile body, choreographic spectacle, and hypermobility, accounting for the interplay between corporeality and ethnicity. Parallel weight on physicality is applicable to the crossover talents who inhabit the verge of kung fu stardom yet earn prominence in festival circuits and international markets. Tony Leung Chiu-wai (Gallagher 2010; Martin 2014; Bettison 2015; Zhang 2017), Maggie Cheung (Khoo 1999; Hudson 2006; Chan 2014; Zhang 2017), Gong Li (Reynaud 1993; Lu 2007), Zhang Ziyi (Leung 2014c; Martin 2014; Lau 2018b), and Takeshi Kaneshiro (Tsai 2005; Lau 2018a) are often in the main cast of the films directed by auteurs like Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai and mainland China’s Zhang Yimou, who are acclaimed for cinematic expressivity and visual aesthetics conveyed through the use of colors or still shots. Scholars tend to understand these personalities either as “more physical than vocal” (Gallagher 2010), like Tony Leung, or as a yielding “presence” intended to guarantee box-office success, like Maggie Cheung (Khoo 2010, 127). These discursive accounts have acknowledged the excessive physicality and overt sexuality of the transnational performers, unfolding a predisposition toward visuality in Chinese star making. Having said so, scholarship does not totally omit the exposition of the “phonic” presence of Chinese stars. Iconic in the silent era, Anna May Wong showed her linguistic versatility and unique speech style in negotiating her Otherness, at the time marked by the new medium of sound. According to Tim Bergfelder (2004), Wong negotiates exoticism partly through her intellectual diction and language dexterity, contributing to the

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border-crossing nuances of the image. With a relatively explicit emphasis on the voice, Yiman Wang (2010) examines Anna May Wong’s costumed performance and vocal performance as parallel duality in coordinating the actress’ mediating presence. Wang explains that Wong was capable of speaking English with “the most desirable British accent” (25), which is packaged as a commodity, putting forth a sort of linguistic cosmopolitanism. Also, Wong strategically played into Western ideological assumptions, simultaneously appealing to and subverting those assumptions (Wang 2017). Likewise, Kwai-Cheung Lo (2004) has addressed the elusive and ambiguous screen identities in Hong Kong popular culture, which is celebrated for its production of muscular bodies (115). The ubiquitous presence of Bruce Lee is telling. While Lee is predominantly renowned for his martial authenticity and muscular body build, one may not miss his iconic screams that characterize his fighting presence as a nationalist hero. His animal-like and “mythic” voice becomes an object that is unfixed to any visual object on the screen and cannot be mastered by any individual subject (Lo 2004, 120). His voice orchestrates a “hollow” body, which is void of historical substantiality and exemplary of the loss of “physical dimension” to the increasing dependence on special effects in action features. Most recently, books on contemporary Chinese personalities also explicate the “phonic”-ethno dynamics in Chinese stardom, but the explication has not been deep enough. Sabrina Yu’s (2012) book provides a detailed account of Jet Li’s crossover image in association with the “Asian-as-child” representational politics, borrowing from Julian Stringer’s 2003 analysis of Li’s appeal to the Asian American community. On top of recognizing the “limited English skills” of Li (113–14), Yu (2012) keeps using the twofold terminology of “Chinese-language” films and “English-­language” films, instead of using the geopolitical pairing of “Hong Kong” films and “Hollywood” films in addressing Li’s screen presence, unlike what many other writers do (113, 114, 115, 118). It can be inferred that Yu holds an ambivalent stance on the role of language, without elaborating the language problem and its significance enough. Lin Feng’s monograph (2017) analyzes the glocalization of the Chinese star phenomenon through the case of Chow Yun-fat. He argues that Chow’s image of an Asian hero is burdened by the fame and charismatic appeal established in Hong Kong. In a rather abridged way, the author also notes how Chow’s lack of English reasserts the Orientalist imagination while leading to a dubious image on Hollywood screens (Feng 2017, 89). These critical attempts to explore the lingual-based Chinese personae provided insight to my previous research on the importance of “phonic”

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persona in shaping Zhang Ziyi’s stardom. In my article (2018b), I explored how the “phonic” persona suggests ideological associations and implications of the star image in the global visual network. I specifically argued that Zhang’s speeches marked by broken English that can be found on the web evoke a range of affective and critical responses, from support to disagreement, from sympathy to censure. The subsequent hard-work narrative about her English learning, moreover, proves her elevated worldwide fame, blurring the boundaries between an ethnic actress and a global star. Zhang’s case speaks to the ways that the regime of transnational stardom is troubled by the debates of aural vitality and exoticism in the global cyber context. As an extension of my earlier study, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks aims at offering a critical intervention in the studies of Chinese film stars by advancing a “linguaphonic” model. In counterpoising the privileging of body over voice, this book moves away from a conceptualization of transnational Chinese stardom that is reliant on the centrality of either action or spectacle, pivoting toward voice and language in confronting the ethnic yet global image, which follows a wider network of flows in its trajectory. In order to tease out the notion of the “phonic,” I establish a tripartite framework that outlines different directions and levels of “phonic” shifts of notable Chinese stars. Each of the three distinct yet interrelated spaces—Anglophone media, Sinophone cinema, and digital multimedia—evokes certain connotations about ethnicity and the power dynamics of Chinese personalities (Table 1.1). Table 1.1  Three spaces and corresponding levels of “phonic” shifts of Chinese stars Space

Texts that epitomize the space

Shift patterns Level paradigmatic for the space

Anglophone media space

Hollywood films and Euro-­ American entertainment texts

Interphonic

Sinophone cinematic space

Sinophone-based film texts: Hong Kong productions, Hong Kong–China coproductions, Asian productions Animated films and web-based user-generated texts such as fanmade videos, tweets

Shift between Sinophone and Anglophone articulations Shift within the network of region-­specific, Sinophone articulations Shift between articulations in cinema and digital media space

Extraphonic

Digital multimedia space

Intraphonic

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The book covers an extensive range of ethnic Chinese stars who come from and travel across diverse Chinese-speaking worlds. They also maintain an appeal that has evolved out of a matrix of connecting multiple phonicities. From the most iconic Bruce Lee, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung to the not yet fully fledged Takeshi Kaneshiro, Wen Ming-Na, and Jay Chou to the newest Fan Bingbing, Tang Wei, Liu Yifei, and Sammi Cheng, these stars exemplify the star-making practices in the designated sites of articulation. The analysis argues for the polyphonic presence, which is suggestive of not a monologic star narrative but a dialogic formulation of which myriad agents, texts, and industries converge and interact. Such polyphonicity, decentralized and dispersed into new sites of constructing public personae, appears as fleeting and malleable, revealing a potential undertone of Chineseness. Contained within a broad, multimodal framework of diverse “phonic” spaces, this analysis aims to more fully probe the mobility of Chinese personalities, remapping the contours of ethnic star making at the frontier of global media networks. The book is divided into three parts. Following this introduction (Chap. 1) that lays out the context for the study, Part I concentrates on the “phonic” personae of Chinese stars who have a presence in the American media connections, predominantly the production and circulation of Hollywood films and English-language entertainment texts. Chapter 2 examines the appeal of Michelle Yeoh, a Hong Kong action queen who creates a presence chiefly with her English-speaking flair. I examine how Yeoh engineers her screen image that oscillates between choreography and eloquence, mediating between the Chinese-speaking and Anglophone worlds. Chapter 3 turns to a new name in Hollywood, Fan Bingbing, who rose to fame and notoriety against the backdrop of the global rise of the Chinese film industry. I critically investigate the articulations of Fan in the publicity of her Hollywood blockbuster star vehicles, as well as in the discourse related to the tax evasion scandal. Chapter 4 concentrates on Jay Chou, a top-selling Taiwanese musician who has ventured into Chinese-language cinema and then Hollywood, to scrutinize his vocal style and English utterances. The chapter examines the intricate interplay between foreign tongue and mother tongue, articulateness and wordlessness. Part II shifts to the Sinophone cinematic space to inspect the “phonic” personae of the Hong Kong, Chinese, and Asian film industries and the region-specific articulations, in contrast to the “standard” version of Chinese language, heterogenize and de-familiarize Chinese star identities and cultures. Chapter 5 focuses on the Lust, Caution star Tang Wei, exploring her lingual versatility and its cultural significance. I examine first

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her Cantonese-driven cross-the-border persona and then the star construction and public reception in South Korea. Chapter 6 offers a critical account of half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese film actor Takeshi Kaneshiro and his multilingual and multidialectical appeal in his early Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong films like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, coproduced pan-Chinese films such as Wu Xia and Red Cliff, and commercial media texts. Chapter 7 considers the screen performance of two Hong Kong actresses, Maggie Cheung and Sammi Cheng, in Stanley Kwan’s Sinophone features, Center Stage (1991) and Everlasting Regrets (2005). I examine how the “phonic” switches and twists between Shanghaiese, Mandarin, and Cantonese provoke both doubts about the reputation of the actresses as competent performers and the intriguing interplay with the director’s agentive male voice. Part III emphasizes vocal personae as constructed and contested in a digital multimedia space. In Chap. 8, I focus on Mulan (1998, 2007), Disney’s first CGI animation and its live-action adaptation, to explore the personae of the female (vocal) leads, Wen Ming-Na and Liu Yifei. I analyze the dubbed performance, the voice-body debates, and the cultural politics evoked by the vocal presence of the actresses. In Chap. 9, I explore Bruce Lee’s epic screams in films and his articulation of martial arts philosophy, which have been appropriated and reworked by global users in cyberspace for various purposes including advertising and activism. The book concludes with a picture of Chinese star culture alongside the free flows of languages, words, and voices across boundaries, by encapsulating the methodological shift from the visual- to aural-based vectors of Chinese stardom that this book adopts. It reiterates that languages, accents, and voices serve as a crucial determinant to construct stardom and disentangle power and ideological relations. This book puts forth a form of polyphonicity derived from the global media network through the vocal and “phonic” presence that validates the ways stars engage with new sites of crisscrosses, dialogue, and contradictions.

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Stringer, Julian. 2003. Talking About Li: Transnational Chinese Movie stardom and Asian American Internet Reception. In Political Communications in Greater China: The Construction and Reflection of Identity, ed. G.  Rawnsley and M. Rawnsley Ming-Yeh, 275–290. London and New York: Routledge. Szeto, Kin-Yan. 2011. The Martial Arts Cinema of the Chinese Diaspora: Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan in Hollywood. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Tsai, Eva. 2005. Kaneshiro Takeshi: Transnational Stardom and the Media and Culture Industries in Asia’s Global/Postcolonial Age. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17 (1): 100–132. Tsur, Reuven. 1998. Poetic Rhythm, Structure and Performance: An Empirical Study in Cognitive Poetics. Chicago: Sussex Academic Press. Wang, Yiman. 2010. Anna May Wong: A Border-Crossing‚ ‘Minor’ Star Mediating Performance In Chinese Film Stars, ed. M.  Farquhar and Y.  Zhang, 19–31. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. ‘Speaking in a Forked Tongue’: Anna May Wong’s Linguistic Cosmopolitan. In Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods, ed. S. Yu and G. Austin, 65–83. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wells, Paul. 2003. To Affinity and Beyond: Woody, Buzz and the New Authenticity. In Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, ed. M.  Barker and T.  Austin, 90–102. New York: Edward Arnold. Whittaker, Tom. 2017. Woody’s Spanish ‘Double’: Vocal Performance, Ventriloquism, and the Sound of Dubbing. In Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices, ed. T.  Whittaker and S.  Wright, 119–136. New York: Oxford University Press. Whittaker, Tom, and Sarah Wright, eds. 2017. Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices. New York: Oxford University Press. Willis, Andy, and Wing-Fai Leung. 2014. Introduction: Star Power from Hollywood to East Asia. In East Asian Film Stars, ed. W. Leung and A. Willis, 1–16. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Yu, Sabrina Qiong. 2012. Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Yu, Sabrina Qiong, and Guy Austin, eds. 2017. Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zhang, Kerong. 2005. Li An 李安 (Ang Lee). Beijing: Modern Press. Zhang, Yingjin. 2017. Film Stars in the Perspective of Performance Studies: Play, Liminality and Alteration in Chinese Cinema. In Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods, ed. S.  Yu and G.  Austin, 45–61. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zhang, Yingjin, and Mary Farquhar. 2010. Introduction: Chinese Film Stars. In Chinese Film Stars, ed. M. Farquhar and Y. Zhang Yingjin, 1–16. London and New York: Routledge.

PART I

Anglophone Media Space

CHAPTER 2

Mediating Action and Speech: Michelle Yeoh’s Star Discourse in Pan-Pacific Connections

To start off with, Yes[,] probably I speak English really well, just about right. Malay … because you know I’m Malaysian, and it’s similar to Indonesian, we’re probably the only two countries in the world that speak Malay. I speak Cantonese because I work in Hong Kong a lot, Mandarin because of the China connection because I work in China. And I thought at that time when I was learning Burmese, which is very crucial to playing this role … to convince them …. —Michelle Yeoh, on the experience of shooting The Lady. (Tampubolon 2011)

This quote not only delineates the linguistic trajectory of Michelle Yeoh’s acting career but also demonstrates that a film star who possesses a profile as transnational as Yeoh, needs to shift between different phonic spaces. As a successful and prolific star in Hong Kong action cinema, Yeoh crossed over to Hollywood after the mid-1990s, continuing her choreographic screen persona. While some cinephiles still feel mesmerized by the action heroine crashing a motorcycle while handcuffed to Bond (Pierce Brosnan) in her Hollywood debut Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), others may well remember how broken and accented her Mandarin sounds, especially to the ears of Mandarin-speaking audiences, in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Directed by Taiwanese-American Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is non-English-speaking transnational production that adopts an iconic Chinese setting, period costumes, and martial arts choreography, which are the necessary visuals for making the film © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_2

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“authentically” Chinese (Wang and Yeh 2005, 179). Under the instruction of renowned Hong Kong choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, the stars displayed acrobatic dexterity and corporeal agility, which are far beyond mere wirework. Whereas publicity has highlighted how the heroes and heroines transcend gravity and the limitations of the body to display superb athletic ability, debates involving the language spoken by the panChinese animate fan sites and forums. Hong Kong stars Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh have been criticized for their Hong Kongese–inflected Mandarin dialogue. Yeoh admitted that learning Mandarin was the toughest task for her during the five-month shooting of the film. As a Cantoneseand English-­speaking actress, Yeoh could not read or speak Mandarin that she needed to memorize the dialogue phonetically (Chan 2003). These occurrences reveal that dialect and accent become worth noting even in the martial arts–inspired features like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and for the performers whose fame is built on their action moves, like Yeoh. Previous studies have exhausted the critical scrutiny of Michelle Yeoh’s potent, hyperkinetic persona in the context of transnational cinema or Hong Kong action cinema (Lu 2001; Lo 2005; Funnell 2013). As the foremost leading action actress in the Chinese-language cinema, her compelling physical performance in gunfight extravaganzas like Yes, Madam! (1985) and Police Story 3 (1992), as well as martial arts epics such as Tai Chi Master (1993), not only makes her equivalent to her male crossover counterparts, including Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Chow Yun-­ fat, but also largely defines her global appeal (Lu 2001, 124). With a distinctive screen presence marked by the use of guns, stunt work, and high-risk kineticism, Yeoh earned her first English-language role of Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Hailed in Western media as the first Chinese actress to be the Bond Girl, Yeoh’s portrayal was built on the predetermined sexualized role counterposed with the archetype of an erotic object of the White male gaze. In the American-produced Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yeoh continued her image as a female warrior that simultaneously rendered an Asian female identity that is capable of displaying emotional depth and fulfilling the dramatic demands of the role (Funnell 2014, 47). After 2000, Yeoh was cast in a number of Hollywood blockbuster action movies such as Sunshine (2007), Babylon A.D., and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (both 2008) that banked on her credibility as an action heroine but turned out to be box office failures. In these features, Yeoh’s physical performance was heavily mediated by the computer graphics technology, marking a departure from her past screen

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persona that relied on realism and corporeal ability. This generates an ambivalent image that simultaneously inspires the investigation of dimensions other than actions and physicality in Yeoh’s enduring stardom. This chapter locates Yeoh’s linguistic persona as the avenue to navigate her recent crossover stardom in the Anglophone entertainment arena. It investigates how important linguistic ability is in negotiating Yeoh’s screen personae, and how the personae mediate the Chinese-speaking and English-speaking worlds. I hypothesize that her English-speaking flair not only makes her stand out against other Chinese stars in the transnational Anglophone space but also grants her a unique star presence in the pan-­ Pacific network. The analysis focuses on Yeoh’s Hollywood pictures, which mostly employ English dialogue, to exemplify the significance of Yeoh’s linguistic ability on both diegetic and extradiegetic levels. The chapter examines her personae in English-language features The Lady (2011) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018), as well as her advocacy as a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador. Part of the analysis, moreover, employs a comparative approach to discuss Yeoh’s persona with respect to Chinese stars such as Zhang Ziyi and Jackie Chan. Primary materials for the analysis include films and audiovisual texts like press interviews, online commentary, and fan-generated videos.

The Lady and Michelle Yeoh’s “Suu Kyi’s Accent” The Lady (2011) is the watershed film that facilitated the shift of focus of Michelle Yeoh’s screen persona from choreography to eloquence. Marketed as a biopic of the dignified and controversial Burmese democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, The Lady was named after the heroine’s nickname in her home country. The film centrally charts Suu Kyi’s diasporic life that transforms her from a housewife raising her children in Oxford, England, to a democracy fighter in Burma’s political scene. History tells us that the civilian heroine earned fame internationally because of her steadfast nonviolent resistance against the Burmese military regime for more than two decades after 1989. She also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 with the accolade “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless” (BBC 2020a). Elevated to the level of icons such as Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, Suu Kyi was hailed as the only hope for Burma, which was renamed to Myanmar in 1989. The Lady is a cinematic reconstruction that can be compared with other genres of visual documentation like They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain, a 2012

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documentary feature directed by academic-author-filmmaker Robert Lieberman, which features the director’s interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, revealing her life as a politician in Myanmar’s military regime in the past two decades (Ebert 2012). The juxtaposition of the two films blurs the lines between the fictional and the real, confusing the persona of Yeoh on screen. Framed in an Orientalist portrayal of the Southeast Asian landscape, The Lady’s crossover profile is part of the evidence of Asian-Hollywood connections, reiterating the formula of many American-produced transnational blockbuster features. The film is an English-language French-British coproduction directed by French filmmaker, Luc Besson, who is renowned for making action-oriented sci-fi movies. Its multiethnic cast includes London-based English actors, David Thewlis and Jonathan Woodhouse, Chinese-English actor Jonathan Raggett, and Malaysian-born Chinese actress Yeoh. As a descendant of an émigré family of the Hokkien ancestral connection in Malaysia, Yeoh learned English and Malay as her first languages.1 In her teenage years, she learned ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, which explains her British-accented English. Her culturally diverse upbringing makes her fit for the Suu Kyi character, allowing her, as a personifier, to convey a perceptive resemblance to the personified. Suu Kyi’s image was enlivened in The Lady through Yeoh’s embodied and vocal persona. Reports assert that Yeoh provides an imaginary Suu Kyi with an effort to “match [her] in body and voice” (NPR 2012) (Fig. 2.1). Yeoh’s slender build and deportment are often compared to Suu Kyi’s, proving that the actress “fully … inhabits the role of” or “transforms into” (Tompkins 2011) the real-life heroine. The resembling qualities not only earned Yeoh credentials as a competent actress but also elevated her to be an icon of intelligence. Suu Kyi engineers an “elegant and poised” (Wiener 2012) public image, fueled by her eloquent speeches. One noteworthy example is her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, delivered in Oslo, Norway (Wiener 2012). With her personification of Suu Kyi, Yeoh also earns acknowledgment from fans for the traits of nobility, elegance, and wit, which seem irrelevant to her physical prowess and acrobatic skill. Furthermore, in eliciting mostly English, occasionally Burmese dialogue, Yeoh tries capturing the English lilt in Suu Kyi’s accent (NPR 2012). In real life, Yeoh and Suu Kyi share the experience of leading a diasporic life in the United Kingdom for some years that explains their British-accented, fluent English. This is coherent with Luc Besson’s assertion that the

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Fig. 2.1  Michelle Yeoh plays Aung San Suu Kyi (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C10uGA6btQ)

casting of Yeoh as the female protagonist is considered as instrumental, partly because he identifies Yeoh’s “firm British accent,” one of the resembling qualities between the personifier and the personified (Ebert 2012). On top of the English proficiency, which has already been widely acknowledged, Yeoh attempted to adapt to the Burmese-speaking persona in order to deliver a convincing performance in a fuller sense. The actress studied 200 hours of videos of Suu Kyi and learned Burmese for the role under the instruction of her dialect coach, who is a native Burmese speaker (Tompkins 2011). Speaking of the shooting of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yeoh once compared the experiences of learning Mandarin and Burmese, which sound similarly foreign to her (Tampubolon 2011). Unlike the Mandarin language, which highlights the mastery of the distinct sounds, the Burmese language, as Yeoh perceives, depends on the flow of articulation to eventually determine the emotional value of the speech. Language learning is “sheer hard work” that demands from her “discipline” and “diligence,” as much as acrobatic stunts do (Tampubolon 2011). The rhetoric of hard work often associated with the screen performance given by Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Yeoh herself, who are nearly synonymous with Hong Kong action, is similar. Note that Yeoh was not trained in martial arts; she transformed herself from a ballerina to an action performer after her body was hit by a spinal injury at a young age (Stanway 2018). Stories of her severe physical workout and injuries further authenticate her “female warrior” appeal. In The Lady, the narrative of conscientiousness shifts from a corporeal to linguistic level, validating Yeoh’s status as a successful star.

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Yeoh’s sense of success both parallels and departs from the cultural ramifications provided by other ethnic Chinese counterparts who strive for a presence in the Anglophone-oriented cinematic arena. In his seminal book, Stars (1979), Richard Dyer elucidates the four cornerstones of the “myth of success”: (1) ordinariness as the trademark of the star, (2) the talents and “specialness” approved by the star system, (3) the luck that seems to work at random but can characterize one’s career, and (4) hard work and expertise. Likewise, Diane Negra (2001, 3), in her account of ethnic female stars, suggests that myths of meritocracy are rejuvenated by discourses on labor and sacrifice. In my study of Zhang Ziyi, I employed the model of hard work in analyzing how her notorious image has changed, or been redressed, by the long-term effort of improving her spoken English (Lau 2019). Yet Yeoh’s example paints a different picture from that of Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi. Whereas the quality of industriousness is vital to packaging Zhang and Chan as favored commodities in the global market, the story of Burmese learning makes Yeoh a lucrative flexible asset in the regional cultural order, “adjusting” her already transnational persona from Chinese-Anglophone to Southeast Asian networks. This adjustment also plays up the recent myth of the “rise of Asia,” spearheaded by countries like China and India (Huang 2016). Asian countries are undergoing unprecedented growth, in speed and scale, in terms of economic clout and geopolitical gravity, leading to a hypothetical shift of power from the West to the East. Such growth suggests an alternative or challenge to the established world order dominated by the West, notwithstanding that “the rise of Asia vis-à-vis the decline of the West” hype remains debatable (Pei 2009). It can be inferred that Yeoh’s bilingual (English-Burmese) persona entails not only her potential mastery of the Burmese imagination but also a malleable appeal in regional connections, unsettling the expedient view of Asia-West opposition. To many audiences, Yeoh’s Burmese acquisition in The Lady sounds effective, neutralizing her accented persona. Certain scenes rely on linguistic articulation as the core part of the performance, and Yeoh has demonstrated her self-conscious agency. Recall the scene depicting Suu Kyi’s 1988 noteworthy speech that signposted her unfaltering pro-democracy quest. History reveals that Suu Kyi returned from Britain to Myanmar in 1988 after a twenty-five-year absence because she felt obliged to look after her dying mother. Upon her homecoming, she was captivated by the nationwide protests against decades of military rule. After that, she organized rallies around the country. On August 26 of that year, she gave her

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first speech as leader of the National League for Democracy at the western gateway to Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. This was also her first public address after her prolonged stay in a foreign land for college education and establishing her family. Encapsulated by the catchphrase “freedom from fear,” her speech was a lucid call for peaceful democratic reform and free elections in Myanmar. Recalling and interpreting this piece of real history, Yeoh recounted that it was of utmost importance for Suu Kyi to speak in her mother tongue in order to convince her people that she could not remain indifferent to what was happening in her homeland after all those years of being apart, geographically and culturally (Schwankert 2011). She went on to explain that her accented Burmese uttered while shooting this scene managed to impress one of the Burmese refugee nonactors on the set who was actually present in Shwedagon Pagoda listening to Suu Kyi’s address twenty-two years ago. Yeoh passed for Suu Kyi on screen due to viewers’ affective engagement with the personified, notwithstanding that the personifier’s spoken Burmese still “sounds weird” to the ears of countless natives (Hodal and Hannah 2012). The Lady augmented the star presence of Michelle Yeoh from mainstream theatrical screens to alternative popular-image circuits. The film became an underground hit in the Burmese market (Hodal and Hannah 2012). Prior to its official release in Britain in December 2011 and in America in March 2012, pirated DVDs of the film, with poor-quality images, widely circulated in the street stalls in Rangoon for months (Hodal and Hannah 2012). Film piracy, especially of Hollywood blockbusters and Korean soap operas, is not uncommon in Rangoon, partly due to Myanmar’s tight and prevalent censorship of film content. In 2010, a year before The Lady was released, Myanmar had loosened, slightly yet significantly, the censorship laws for YouTube, Hotmail, and many other websites and digital media. These new media conduits became unblocked for the first time by the country’s Internet providers. Nonetheless, intense censorship of films still remained in order to guarantee sanitized portrayals on screen (Hodal and Hannah 2012). On a scale equating to the blockbuster in legitimate movies, The Lady is part of an illegitimate moving-­ image distribution network, appealing to a cult audience such as the nation’s democracy activists. The film was sold in a special package alongside other banned titles like Rambo IV (2008), in which Sylvester Stallone confronted the military dictatorship, and the 1995 Beyond Rangoon, which reenacted the almost forgotten drama of the student revolt in 1988

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(Hodal and Hannah 2012). This has widened the reach of Yeoh’s screen appeal, fueling her politically nuanced persona. The picture is further painted by the media discourse about the behind-the-scenes anecdotes of Yeoh’s detention at Rangoon’s airport upon her arrival on June 22, 2011, as she headed to film in neighboring Thailand, followed by the Burmese government’s blacklist of Yeoh because of her part in the film (Walker 2011). These instances uncover new nuances, which are hardly accessible in her established status as an action star.

Crazy Rich Asians: Where Has the Singaporean Accent Gone? If Michelle Yeoh’s image in The Lady accentuates her Southeast Asian connections, her persona in Crazy Rich Asians continues to ferment such connections, though in relatively capricious and ambivalent ways. Crazy Rich Asians has quickly ascended to be a sensation in the pan-Pacific regions. Released on August 17, 2018, it topped US box-office receipts for four consecutive weeks, becoming the highest-grossing romantic comedy in a decade (Brevet 2018). Based on the Singaporean-born American Kevin Kwan’s 2013 best-selling book of the same title, the high-profile movie was covered on America’s talk shows, entertainment magazines, and online forums. The lead actress, Constance Wu, graced the cover of the August 2018 issue of Time magazine and was nominated for Best Actress in the Golden Globes in the comedy and musical category together with the Best Motion Picture nomination. As its popularity flourished, Crazy Rich Asians evolved to advance the debate of ethnic politics in Hollywood. Producers and marketers branded the film the next major Hollywood picture with an entirely Asian cast after The Joy Luck Club, Wayne Wong’s 1993 intimate drama about many mother-daughter conflicts in the Chinese American setting (Mokhtazar 2018). Critics generally agree that The Joy Luck Club marked a turning point in Asian representation in Hollywood, going beyond stereotypical personalities who are either kung fu practitioners or laundrymen in Chinatown. In contrast, Crazy Rich Asians was hailed as “Asian Black Panther,” paralleling its impact to that which Black Panther exerted on African representation on American screens, or “more like a movement than a movie,” as its Californian-born Chinese American director Jon M. Chu proudly called it (Gonzales 2018).

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Glorified by its landmark victory in the combat for Asian American visibility on Hollywood screen, Crazy Rich Asians is at the forefront of misrepresenting Asians with the markers of skin color and accent. Set in the city of Singapore, the crossover film depicts the story of a young ethnic Chinese New  Yorker named Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a bilingual speaker who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend Nick’s well-off family. The narrative provides a fantasy of Singapore, a community which seems culturally and ethnically homogenous. As a small yet potent tropical Asian city that enjoys the fourth highest per capita GDP in the world, Singapore has been well known as a multiethnic society of Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Eurasians. Ethnic Chinese is the majority demographically. The cast includes a mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean diaspora actors of various nationalities. While Singaporeans are purportedly proud of such ethnic and cultural diversity, the film reduces it to a lack of ethnic and cultural diversity by representing its characters according to White norms (Tseng-Putterman 2018). The film is inclined to specific “kinds” of Asians, excluding South and Southeast Asians despite their heavy presence in the Singaporean society. The dearth of “brown faces” has given rise to new pseudo-names such as “Crazy Rich East Asians” and “Crazy Rich East Light-Skinned Asians” (Truong 2018) that are broadly circulated in nonmainstream media avenues. Furthermore, some viewers astutely point out that the only Southeast Asian faces in the film are in the roles of servants and guards, aligning with the long-standing Asian stereotypes in Hollywood. Criticism abounds about the film’s evident lack of Singaporean-­ sounding people. Characters in the film utter proficient English in varied forms, notably Nick’s (Henry Golding) British-accented English, Wye Mun’s (Ken Jeong) familiar all-American vernacular, and Goh Peik Lin’s (Awkwafina) fabricated “blaccent,” an imitation of Black English as articulated by non-Black people. The only cast member who speaks full-fledged Singaporean English, or “Singlish,” is Koh Chieng Mun, who plays Goh Peik Lin’s mother (Sim 2018). Erasure of the Asian accent alludes to an upper-class status while showing no hints of grounding the narrative firmly in a distinctive locality. The missing “hallmark” Singaporean accent in the trailer has kept Twitter users doubtful whether the film is genuinely “Asian enough.” What is revealed here is an irony that the film runs the risk of expanding whiteness in the name of Asian storytelling. The dominance of White faces and American or British tongues in the diegesis is suggestive of the idea of White-Asian equivalence, reverberating with the idea that

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the quest for diversity in mainstream pop culture usually ends up with “sameness” instead of “difference and complexity” (Tseng-­ Putterman 2018). Articulating her lines without a Singaporean accent, Yeoh’s performance in Crazy Rich Asians reiterates her earlier Hollywood appearances, exhibiting a vague and elusive Asian identity. Yeoh’s minor yet visible character Eleanor is a matriarch of Singapore’s esteemed Young family who endeavors to guard the name of her family and the fortune of her only son, Nick. In the film, Eleanor disavows her internal vulnerability toward her uneasy past and hard-bitten position in the family. Such a figure can be considered as an extension of her cinematic image of protective and “self-­ sacrificing Chinese mother” (Funnell 2014, 50) in her earlier Hollywood features. From Sunshine (2007) to Babylon A.D. (2008) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), Yeoh’s Hollywood characters are associated with material femininity and nature. In Sunshine, Yeoh personifies a biologist called Corazon, who undertakes a mission to reignite the dying sun. She is responsible for a nursery of what she considers her “babies,” which produce oxygen for the ship. In Babylon A.D., she portrays Sister Rebeka, a nun who adopts and raises an orphan, Aurora, as her own child. Yeoh was cast in The Mummy as Juan Zi, a pregnant witch who curses Emperor Han so as to discontinue his vicious sovereignty in China. These personalities are emblematic of tradition, propriety, and sacrifice in Asian culture. The representational cliché of Asian females continues in Yeoh’s image of a strong woman and tender mother in Crazy Rich Asians. Yeoh’s new role evokes an ambivalent Asian identity, but the actress forges an unambiguous voice for Asian presence in the transnational media network. One example is a YouTube video. titled “Michelle Yeoh Says ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Shares a Proud Heritage,” posted on August 15, 2018. The entry features an interview with Variety in which the star not only talks about her Crazy Rich Asians role but also pinpoints how the film subverts the long-standing stereotypical representations of Asians on Hollywood screens with issues like whitewashing and gender equality. As of January 9, 2020, the day I did the research, the video had garnered 176,417 views and 234 comments. Some comments juxtapose the star’s eloquence with her transnational profile, fueled with tropes like “classy,” “well-spoken,” “graceful,” “articulate,” “respectable,” “elegant,” and “a very natural regal quality” in the commentary (Variety 2018). This kind of fan identification has bridged Yeoh’s onscreen and offscreen existence, both of which attribute to her charisma, nobility, and subtlety (Erbland

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2019). Yeoh’s defense of Asian positions is also found on social media, where celebrities perform their own publicity. After the release of the Golden Globe nominations in December 2018, Yeoh, together with some of her costars including the Malaysian-born Henry Golding, took to social media to express their excitement over the good news. In a post via Instagram, Yeoh thanked her devotees who had been part of the effort to make the movie a success. She wrote, “To my fantastic CRA [Crazy Rich Asians] family around the world! We are part of history! Bravo! Thank q Thank q to everyone who helped in any way to make this happen!” In another news report, Yeoh said: “So thank you and we’re so proud to be a part of history. And congratulations to Constance for getting a nomination, as well!” (Mokhtazar 2018). The actress advocates an Asian voice by connecting herself with her Asian peers in the participatory mediascape.

Yeoh’s Goodwill Image and Voice In recent years, Michelle Yeoh has actively participated in goodwill, resituating her eloquence in relation to virtues of peace-making and benevolence. She was appointed a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador on March 15, 2016, to mobilize the “Sustainable Development Goals” launched in the same year (Fig. 2.2).2 In the name of protecting the planet and wildlife, Yeoh devotes an effort to advocating responsible consumption and production, with a focus on raising the awareness of sustainable fashion in the entertainment industry (UN 2019). The UNDP has been appointing prominent celebrities, artists, and athletes to be goodwill ambassadors and advocates to speak on the significant issues affecting our planet and people. Examples include Spanish-born Hollywood actor Antonio Banderas, American musician Bob Weir, and Ivorian football player Didier Drogba. Among them, Yeoh is one of two Asian female celebrities on the list as of August 2020, alongside Japanese Misako Konno (UNDP n.d.). Yeoh’s ambassadorial image is made clear by her unprecedented speech at the UNDP’s High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, held at United Nations Headquarters in New York on April 24, 2018 (UNDP 2018). At the conference, Yeoh appeared in an executive-style outfit and wore glasses and her long hair up, creating a demeanor completely different from her cinematic image. Although she sounded a bit nervous at the beginning of the speech, she managed to deliver a convincing account in English about pressing global issues such as child refugees, sexual slavery, gender-based

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Fig. 2.2  Michelle Yeoh was appointed a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador in 2016. (Source: https://www. flickr.com/photos/unitednationsdevelopmentprogramme/29917284606/in/ photolist-­M zFUkb-­L FnyqX-­M zFUpQ-­M bKLRC-­M eMJnY-­M vGZbG-­ MvGZ7U-­M vGZfE-­5 G28PD-­a qo2BL-­a qkmZp-­a qo2Hq-­a qkmJg-­a qkmFZ-­ aqkmSD-­aqo2RS-­aqo2Kf-­6nsenD-­aoHaLd-­4WS4vQ-­5Gqcw9-­5GqawE-­5Gqb6S-­ 6nw49J-­6nw1su-­6nwe5A-­6ns7yP-­6nsiBg-­6nsaTc-­6nrYWk-­6nrWEZ-­6nwsN5-­6n wrHS-­6nshzD-­6nwnrd-­6nwd21-­6nwjHh-­6nrU8i-­6nwsd3-­6nrZEz-­6nwaym-­6ns 1MX-­6nsnwM-­6nwkdy-­6nwuJC-­6nsgyM-­6ns4PV-­6ns9Ce-­6nsbA4-­6nrULD/)

violence, and human trafficking. Her rhetoric of advocacy has accentuated alternative aspects of her reputation, bridging philanthropy and entertainment in her public appeal. As a UNDP ambassador, Yeoh also paid multiple visits to Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam, advancing a presence across the Southeast Asian borders. Worth noting is her visit to a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar in 2018. On January 27, 2018, Yeoh joined a Malaysian delegation led by Armed Forces chief, General Tan Sri Raja Mohamed Affandi Raja Mohammed Noor, to the Malaysian Field Hospital. Malaysia had set up the hospital to distribute relief goods to the refugees two months previously. They also journeyed to the Balukhali

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refugee camp nearby to distribute supplies and show care to the Rohingya children (Bernama 2018). Yeoh’s team, comprising fifty-seven representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office and Malaysian Armed Forces and several members from the media, included Yeoh as presumably the only film actress.3 After the event, Yeoh spoke to the press, citing the “despicable” and “tragic” conditions of the illegal migrants (Associated Press 2018). Yeoh, moreover, applauded Prime Minister Najib Razak and the Malaysian government’s efforts to help Rohingya refugees and fight for their plight (Bernama 2018). As a Malaysian-born diasporic celebrity who sojourns in Hong Kong and America most of the time, Yeoh recalibrated the ties to her home country while advancing her voice over a human rights issue in the region. The Rohingya refugees have emerged in the global scene of refugees and have occupied a seat in political and media discourses. Rohingya is one of the many ethnic minorities who have lived in Buddhist Myanmar for centuries and represent the largest population of Muslims there. Statistics show that 1.2 million Rohingya were displaced, and in August 2017, nearly 700,000 fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, seeking asylum. The exodus was mainly due to a fatal crackdown by Myanmar’s military. Hundreds of villages were burned and thousands of civilians were killed. The mass killing, or ethnic cleansing per the United Nations, has made the Rohingya the “world’s most persecuted minority” (Al Jazeera 2018). The crisis has raised a siren among the international public. A UN report issued in August 2018 inculpated Myanmar’s military of executing mass killings and rapes with “genocidal intent.” The International Court of Justice in The Hague called for emergency measures to be taken against the Myanmar military, which is known as Tatmadaw. In November 2018, the International Criminal Court approved a full investigation into the Rohingya case (BBC 2020b). Even amid this clamor against Myanmar’s army, Aung San Suu Kyi refused to condemn Myanmar’s dictatorship or acknowledge accounts of atrocities (BBC 2020b). Her silence has led to widespread condemnation and the loss of her moral standing, positioning her an “unindicted co-conspirator” of the mayhem (Steinberg 2018). There have even been noises urging the Norwegian Nobel Committee to withdraw the honor from her since she betrayed the values that she once championed (Reuters 2018). Yeoh’s goodwill not only complicates, if not politicizes, her star agency but also engenders undercurrents of the dialectics of the personifier and the personified. The spotlight of certain English-language media rested on

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Yeoh’s visit to the Rohingya camp, pinpointing her status as impersonator of Suu Kyi in The Lady. These narratives unveil the stark disparity between the onscreen and offscreen existence of the two real-life personalities. Whereas Suu Kyi, the object of portrayal on screen, fails the moral contract with the Rohingya in reality, Yeoh, as the acting agent, emerges as a surrogate of the humanitarian spectacle. Though unconsciously, Yeoh mimicked Suu Kyi’s “quasi-mystical charisma,” a phrase suggested by Suu Kyi’s economic advisor Sean Turnell, in an extrafilmic realm (Marshall and McPherson 2018). Yeoh’s new role for the offscreen imaginary unravels the intricate relationship between multiple personae: Yeoh, Yeoh as Suu Kyi, and Suu Kyi. Yeoh’s image of benevolence strengthens her global humanitarian appeal while foregrounding her Asian roots. In reporting Yeoh’s visit to the refugee camp, some English-language media highlighted the icon’s Malaysian lineage, whereas others positioned her as a Hollywood actress. The former focus on her ethnic roots, the latter on the crossover performer’s identity. Both approaches, nonetheless, obscure her status as a Chinese woman, simultaneously replotting the contours of the self-Other binary in the global world order. Western Orientalism often constructs an undifferentiated Orient or Asia as the Other (Said 1978, 9). In this case, it can be inferred that the Rohingya victims are coded as the “Oriental Other” within not the “Western Self” but, as I argue, the “Oriental Self” represented by Yeoh. Yeoh, as an ethnic Chinese who has Malaysian heredity, is a member of the imagined Other while speaking the lingua franca of the West, which neutralizes the Orientalizing tendency. It allows her to transcend the Otherness that she shared with other Asian subjects, oscillating and mediating between the West and Asia. Yeoh’s intelligent, articulate image continues to speak as a member of the Chinese or Asian community about ethnic voices in Hollywood. In 2016, Michelle Yeoh was invited to the World Economic Forum, an event dedicated to advocate agendas and conversations about the well-being of the world. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum organization convenes cross-continent meetings that bring together thousands of political leaders, business leaders, economists, journalists, and celebrities to discuss global issues ranging from politics and economics to humanity. Held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the World Economic Forum on ASEAN 2016 summit featured an array of events on the themes of ethnic and gender prejudices (Nicol 2016). Yeoh was invited to a talk to discuss her potent Asian woman screen image and the insight

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of advancing a creative economy in Southeast Asia (World Economic Forum 2016). Her presentation covered her rise to action stardom in Hong Kong and the experience of film diaspora in Hollywood. Her remarks centered on two of her Hollywood movies, Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and The Lady. Both are English-language productions that depict Asian-themed stories and encompass multiethnic crews. Yeoh’s approximately thirty-minute talk was recorded, edited, and posted on various cyber platforms including the World Economic Forum’s official website and the video-sharing site YouTube. One video of the talk, hosted by the forum’s website and subtitled in English, features Yeoh discussing misconceptions of Asian film talents revolving around language. Yeoh said, After I had been quite successful in Hong Kong movies, and Terence Chang and John Woo were just starting out in Los Angeles, [and] they said this is a very good opportunity to come out because they are looking into having more Asian faces in their movies. And I will never forget the first … you know, when you have to go through the things like meeting the agents … and the first he said to me was: “Wow, you speak pretty good English.” Very slowly he speaks to me. I said, “Yes it was a long journey coming out here. I had thirteen hours, so I learnt on the plane.” (World Economic Forum 2016)

Imbued with eloquence and humor, Yeoh’s address made people laugh (Fig. 2.3). Producer Terence Chang and filmmaker John Woo, longtime collaborators in the Hong Kong film industry, were the pioneer Hong Kong emigrés to Hollywood in the early 1990s. In a number of press interviews, Woo has told of the challenges he met in America chiefly because of ethnic biases and cultural differences, restraining his autonomy and status as an action auteur (Lau 2019). As a successful non-European White actress in Hollywood, Yeoh embodies her celebrity agency by reiterating the Asian experience and intensifying the Asian ties in her stardom. The video of Yeoh’s talk was reappropriated and reposted on YouTube, inducing responses similar to those evoked by her Crazy Rich Asians image. The clip was uploaded on June 2, 2016, by “World Economic Forum,” presumably an official channel on a user-generated space. Three types of comments can be identified: general admiration (with expressions like “Michelle Yeoh is the best,” “I love her,” “global superstar”), national or ethnic sentiments (“Malaysian pride”), and allusions to her articulateness and intelligence. A noticeable amount of feedback from users

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Fig. 2.3  Michelle Yeoh speaks with ease and humor at the World Economic Forum about her experience of working in Hollywood as a non-White talent. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/24ffa82b-­1 39c-­4 864-­b b9e-­ 8a7b2081d56c)

acknowledges the intelligent and elegant persona. For instance, user Azlan Rahmat wrote in January 2017, “Very articulate, intelligent and speaks her mind. Beauty with brains ….” Around the same time, user Golfy Park wrote, “Miss Yeoh is so graceful and classy,” echoed by TENG GAO’s “wise and charming lady.” In January 2018, user Surayna 1606 responded, “She so smart n brilliant … genius too … so amazing n inspiring.” Certain comments, moreover, criticize the interview technique of Haslinda Amin, correspondent and anchor, Bloomberg News, Singapore, coding it “disruptive” and “abrupt,” distinct from Yeoh’s approved deportment and articulation. It is illustrative of Yeoh’s persona, which extends to arenas other than film, such as politics, economy, and humanitarianism in the pan-Pacific milieu.

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Notes 1. Although Yeoh’s hometown, Ipoh, is inhabited by a chiefly Cantonese-­ speaking Chinese population, she spoke very limited Cantonese before her arrival in Hong Kong, despite the fact that her Cantonese is fluent now. It is simplistic to consider Yeoh as a “Hong Kong” actress without clearly delineating the relationship between her ethnic lineage, linguistic trajectory, and career-persona configuration. 2. Besides the UNDP, Yeoh is also an ambassador for amfAR, an international nonprofit organization that aims to support AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and the promotion of AIDS-related public policy. 3. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched the Rohingya Humanitarian Aid Mission, which aims to evaluate the impact of assistance provided by Malaysia so far, and to ensure that the field hospital is equipped with adequate resources to tackle the medical situation of the Rohingya refugees (Bernama 2018).

References Al Jazeera. 2018. Star Trek’s Yeoh: Rohingya Plight ‘Despicable.’ 2018. Al Jazeera, January 29. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/star-­trek-­ yeoh-­rohingya-­plight-­despicable-­180128103628359.html. Associated Press. 2018. Michelle Yeoh, Star of Aung San Suu Kyi Biopic, Calls Rohingya Conditions in Bangladesh ‘Despicable.’ South China Morning Post, January 28. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-­asia/article/2130893/michelle-­yeoh-­star-­aung-­san-­suu-­kyi-­biopic-­calls-­rohingya. BBC News. 2020a. Aung San Suu Kyi: The Democracy Icon Who Fell from Grace. January 23. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-­asia-­pacific-­11685977. ———. 2020b. Myanmar Rohingya: What You Need to Know About the Crisis. January 23. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-­asia-­41566561. Bernama. 2018. Michelle Yeoh Praises Najib On Rohingya Issues. New Straits Times (Malaysia), January 28. https://www.nst.com.my/news/ nation/2018/01/329625/michelle-­yeoh-­praises-­najib-­rohingya-­issues. Brevet, Brad. 2018. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Delivers $34M Five-Day Opening; ‘Mile 2’ & ‘Alpha’ Fall Short. Box Office Mojo, August 19. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4429&p=.htm. Chan, Felicia. 2003. Reading Ambiguity and Ambivalence: The Asymmetric Structure of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies. February 8. Ebert, Roger. 2012. The Woman Who Embodies Burma. April 18. https://www. rogerebert.com/reviews/the-­lady-­2012.

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Erbland, Kate. 2019. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Isn’t Michelle Yeoh’s First Crossover Hit, But She’s Still Pushing for Equal Opportunities. Indiewire, January 17. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/01/crazy-­r ich-­a sians-­m ichelleyeoh-­diversity-­inclusion-­1202035847/. Funnell, Lisa. 2013. Fighting for a Hong Kong/Chinese Female Identity: Michelle Yeoh, Body Performance, and Globalized Action Cinema. In Asian Popular Culture in Transition, ed. John A.  Lent and Lorna Fitzsimmons, 171–185. New York: Routledge. Funnell, Lisa. 2014. Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star. New York: SUNY Press. Gonzales, Erica. 2018. Michelle Yeoh Hopes Crazy Rich Asians Will Turn the Trickle of Diversity in Hollywood ‘into a Stream.’ Harper’s Bazaar, August 27. h t t p s : / / w w w. h a r p e r s b a z a a r. c o m / c u l t u r e / f i l m -­t v / a 2 2 7 9 4 9 3 0 / michelle-­yeoh-­crazy-­rich-­asians-­interview/. Hodal, Kate, and Will Hannah. 2012. Aung San Suu Kyi Biopic The Lady is Underground Hit in Burma. The Guardian, February 2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/02/the-­lady-­underground-­hit-­burma. Huang, Jing. 2016. The Rise of Asia: Implications and Challenges. Globalis-Asian, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, July 9. https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/the-­rise-­of-­asiaimplications-­and-­challenges. Lau, Dorothy Wai Sim. 2019. Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2005. Fighting Female Masculinity: Women Warriors and Their Foreignness in Hong Kong Action Cinema of the 1980s. In Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong, 137–154. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lu, Sheldon H. 2001. China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Marshall, Andrew R.  C., and Poppy McPherson. 2018. Special Report: Fading Icon—What Happened to Aung San Suu Kyi? Reuters, December 19. https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-­m yanmar-­s uukyi-­h istor y-­s pecial-­r eport/ s p e c i a l -­r e p o r t -­f a d i n g -­i c o n -­w h a t -­h a p p e n e d -­t o -­a u n g -­s a n -­s u u -­k y i -­ idUSKBN1OI1ET. Mokhtazar, Syahirah. 2018. #Showbiz: Michelle Yeoh and Henry Golding Ecstatic over Crazy Rich Asians’ Golden Globes Nominations. New Straits Times, December 7. https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/groove/2018/12/438219/ showbiz-­michelle-­yeoh-­and-­henry-­golding-­ecstatic-­over-­crazy-­rich. Negra, Diane. 2001. Off-white Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom. London: Routledge.

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Nicol, Murray. 2016. Top Videos from Our ASEAN 2016 Summit. World Economic Forum, June 3. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/ top-­videos-­from-­our-­asean-­2016-­summit/. NPR. 2012. Michelle Yeoh: Portraying an Icon in ‘The Lady’. National Public Radio, April 28. https://www.npr.org/2012/04/28/151525678/ michelle-­yeoh-­portraying-­an-­icon-­in-­the-­lady. Pei, Minxin. 2009. Think Again: Asia’s Rise. Foreign Policy, June 21. https:// foreignpolicy.com/2009/06/21/think-­again-­asias-­rise/. Reuters. 2018. Aung San Suu Kyi Won’t Be Stripped of Nobel Peace Prize despite Rohingya Crisis. The Guardian, August 30. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/aug/30/aung-­s an-­s uu-­k yi-­w ont-­b e-­s tripped-­o f-­n obelpeace-­prize-­despite-­rohingya-­crisisstanway. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schwankert, Steven. 2011. Michelle Yeoh Calls Aung San Suu Kyi an ‘Iconic Female Asian Figure.’ The Hollywood Reporter, November 11. https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/news/michelle-­yeoh-­calls-­aung-­san-­260600. Sim, Sherlyn. 2018. Koh Chieng Mun on Speaking Full-on Singlish in Crazy Rich Asians. The New Paper, August 8. https://www.tnp.sg/entertainment/movies/koh-­chieng-­mun-­speaking-­full-­singlish-­crazy-­rich-­asians. Stanway, Glen. 2018. Top 10 Michelle Yeoh Movie Fight Scenes. Kung-fu Kingdom, January 22. https://kungfukingdom.com/top-­10-­michelleyeoh-­movie-­fight-­scenes/. Steinberg, David. 2018. Aung San Suu Kyi: From Myanmar’s Icon of Democracy to Collaborator in the Rohingya Muslim Genocide. South China Morning Post, September 16. https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-­opinion/asia/article/2165763/aung-­san-­suu-­kyi-­myanmars-­icon-­democracy-­collaborator. Tampubolon, Rama. 2011. Michelle Yeoh Talks Learning Burmese Language for THE LADY and Playing Aung San Suu Kyi. Rama’s Screen, December 3. https://www.ramascreen.com/michelle-­yeoh-­talks-­learning-­burmese-­languagefor-­the-­lady-­and-­playing-­aung-­san-­suu-­kyi/. Tompkins, Jeff. 2011. Michelle Yeoh Transforms Into Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘The Lady.’ Asia Society blog, December 9. https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/ photos-­michelle-­yeoh-­transforms-­aung-­san-­suu-­kyi-­lady. Truong, Alice. 2018. Something’s Missing: The Trailer for ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Has Some Asking: Where Are the Brown Faces? Quartz, April 24. https:// qz.com/quartzy/1260412/crazy-­rich-­asians-­trailer-­south-­asians-­criticizefilm-­for-­lack-­of-­ethnic-­diversity-­and-­singaporean-­accent/. Tseng-Putterman, Mark. 2018. One Way That Crazy Rich Asians Is a Step Backward. The Atlantic, August 23. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/asian-­americas-­great-­gatsby-­moment/568213/. UN. 2019. Goal of the Month: Exclusive Interview with Michelle Yeoh, UNDP Goodwill Ambassador. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals website,

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June. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/06/michelle-­ yeoh-­fashion/. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2018. UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Michelle Yeoh Addresses the UN General Assembly. YouTube video, 9:35. April 24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTj7IY-­vXxA. ———. n.d. Michelle Yeoh. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ goodwill-­ambassadors/michelle-­yeoh.html. Variety. 2018. Michelle Yeoh Says ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Shares a Proud Heritage. YouTube video, 7:03. August 15. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kDCrdKoNfCg. Walker, Peter. 2011. Michelle Yeoh Deported from Burma before Aung San Suu Kyi Film. The Guardian, June 28. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/jun/28/michelle-­yeoh-­deported-­burma-­film. Wang, Georgette, and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. 2005. Globalization and Hybridization in Cultural Products. International Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2): 175–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877905052416. Wiener, Robert. 2012. Aung San Suu Kyi Finally Delivered Her Nobel Acceptance Speech. Vice, June 18. https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/ppqzvy/ aung-­san-­suu-­kyi-­finally-­delivered-­her-­nobel-­acceptance-­speech. World Economic Forum. 2016. ASEAN 2016—An Insight, an Idea with Michelle Yeoh. YouTube video, 34:30. June 2. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OrX369oR53s.

CHAPTER 3

Fan Bingbing and the Sound of the Rising China

In the Backdrop of the Global Rise of the Chinese Film Industry In its February 8, 2017, issue, TIME magazine’s cover story was about the fast-growing film industry in China, subsumed in the headline “How China Aims to Take Over Hollywood.” The report discussed not only how China became the world’s leading box office generator surpassing North America but also how capital flows from China to the world, unlike in the past (Beech 2017). In this timely issue about the global film industry, Chinese film actress Fan Bingbing graced the polished cover in a frontal close-up, greeting readers with her outsized eyes, high nose bridge, V-shaped face, and light skin tone. Described as “China’s biggest celebrity,” Fan has become a household name in her home country. She gained her newfound success in Hollywood during the 2010s. In 2014, Fan Bingbing earned the contract for X-Men: Days of Future Past, in which she played the role of a teleporting mutant named Blink, which helped her earn an estimated US$21 million as well as fame among global viewers. Asked about her involvement in these blockbusters, Fan replied, “The reason I was cast is simple …. [Hollywood] considered the Chinese market, wanted to add Asian faces and found me …. In 10 years’ time, I’m sure I will be the heroine of X-Men.” She is the only Chinese name in Forbes’ 2016 top-ten list of highest-paid actresses in the world, ranking fifth and nestling between Hollywood’s popular actresses Jennifer Aniston © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_3

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and Charlize Theron (GBTIMES 2016). Fan Bingbing’s rising fame illustrates the capital-intensive, “fundamentally mobile and polycentric identities” of the twenty-first-century global cinema (Gorfinkel 2018, 3). Fan Bingbing presents a rich and contested picture of star construction in today’s Hollywood-China interplay. She is a member of the new generation of Chinese actresses who move between China and Hollywood. Making her acting debut at the age of fifteen, Fan began to garner reputation in the television series My Fair Princess (1998–99), which grew popular across mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. After participating in soap operas, she shifted to the film industry after the turn of this century. Titles like Cell Phone (2003), Lost in Beijing (2007), Buddha Mountain (2011), Double Xposure (2012), and I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016) earned her awards in international film festivals, establishing her status in the art-house cinematic circuits. Capitalizing on her domestic fame, she became the favorite celebrity endorser of Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and L’Oréal, all global luxury brands keen to explore China’s market. She, nevertheless, orchestrated a notorious appearance in her Hollywood debut in Iron Man 3 (2013), followed by the relatively visible role of Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Whereas it seemed her limited facility with English would hinder a potent star presence in the Anglophone entertainment environment, the actress managed to earn the contracts of two 2016 star vehicles, Skiptrace, a cop action comedy in which Fan Bingbing costars with Jackie Chan, and L.O.R.D.: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties, a fantasy adventure film with CGI action. In 2018, Fan’s fame was dogged by the domestic scandal of tax evasion. The scandal led to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye for four months before she issued a long letter of apology for her “misconduct.” The scandal not only headlined media reports at home and abroad but also resulted in her potential fall from public grace. This chapter attempts to argue that whereas she is an emblem of the new era of China’s ambition to take over Hollywood, her star agency becomes precarious and contentious by her linguistic limits and her rhetoric provoked by scandals. In this light, the analysis of Fan Bingbing’s vocal persona unravels the intricacies of media censorship, public scrutiny, new film partnerships, and networked culture today. This chapter engages in the inquiry of Fan Bingbing’s star agency as she navigates the terrain of crossover politics today through her “phonic” and vocal presence. Premised on the star discourse that Fan’s public presence is established on physical attractiveness and extravagant fashion, this

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chapter argues that her voice intervenes with such a presence. The discussion begins with the exposition of the image of success of Fan, followed by the analysis of the phonic/vocal phenomenon embodied by her. Dual focuses of the phenomenon are the lack of proficiency in English and the apologetic voice evoked by her tax evasion scandal. These blemishes, nevertheless, work to help the distinct image of Fan in the global scene, exemplifying certain nuances of the new order of Chinese transnational star making. The analysis also proves the complex status of celebrities in the interstitial plane of entertainment and politics. By so doing, this chapter sheds light on disentangling the dynamics between physical beauty and linguistic dexterity, between state scrutiny and public inquiry, between fame and notoriety. All are instructive in understanding the shifting relationship between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry.

The “Bingbing” Sensation: Physical Beauty, Fashion, Success The star discourse of Fan Bingbing is underpinned on physical appearance and sensibility in fashion. As an A-list actress in China, Fan’s physical attractiveness and financial independence help formulate the canon of success for women in China’s cultural market. Fan topped the Beijing News list of the most beautiful people in China and Hong Kong in both 2008 and 2010 (The Diplomat 2013). Fan personifies capitalist success, which is summarized in the recently coined expression bai-fu-mei, literally meaning “pale-skinned, rich, and beautiful” (Aldama 2015).1 Popularized in online communities since the 2010s, the term, sounding commendatory, is often associated with young people who inherit wealth and power from their families rather than making their own fortunes. As a representative figure of the bai-fu-mei culture, Fan Bingbing underscores her caliber by making fortunes through her hard work rather than by being the mistress of wealthy men, counterbalancing the earlier image of “successful” female celebrities (Yan 2015). Upon her rise to stardom in the late 1990s, journalists and devotees have usually praised her for working diligently since her teenage years.2 She is capable of matching her male counterparts in competence and accomplishment. Nicknamed “Fan Ye” (ye is an “old Beijing” honorific trope referring to respectable old gentlemen) initially by fans and widely adopted by Chinese-language entertainment reporters (KK News 2015), Fan personifies a sense of self-sufficiency and a strong work ethic that are bracketed in a modern, pretty, and competent persona.

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Fan Bingbing’s physical bearing is what the public celebrates and criticizes simultaneously. Her countenance, which has become a benchmark of Chinese beauty, suggests a lack of authenticity and individuality in the image (Callahan 2012). Her “perfect” look marked by a pale complexion, cone-shaped face, high nose bridge, high cheekbones, and red phoenix eyes leads to widespread rumors about her having undergone cosmetic surgery (Nguyen 2018). The plasticity in her appeal also catalyzes the “look-alikes” phenomenon. In one case, a young supporter of Fan Bingbing named He Chengxi underwent multiple cosmetic surgeries in eight years in order to “look just like” her idol, and her “new look” has even faked out reporters of the Financial Times and South China Morning Post (General 2018). This story has turned into the fodder of tabloid readers, and, interestingly, He Chengxi herself has become an online celebrity, gaining 1.2 million followers on Weibo (Nguyen 2018). Experts have also employed this story to discuss the caustic impact of celebrities’ plastic surgery on contemporary Chinese beauty (Nguyen 2018), spreading the rhetoric of Fan’s “plastic” beauty. This phenomenon implies that physical beauty can be fake and mutable, putting Fan’s authentic presence at stake and orchestrating a contentious publicity. This debatable type of beauty is modeled on the actress’ obsession with fashion and her participation in concatenated cultural economies. Alongside popular names in the Chinese-language film and television industries like Zhou Xun, Zhao Wei, Maggie Cheung, Li Bingbing, and Zhang Ziyi, Fan Bingbing is one of the hottest cover subjects for the China editions of international fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Marie Claire (McLaughlin 2014). As the fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg suggests, it was Fan’s “innate sense of style” that “has made her a natural to represent global brands” (Schwankert 2017). Fan also represents the new consumer society in China, whose stars are deeply engaged in the fashion and styling industries. In the late 1980s, China launched the Open Door Policy that paved the way for the reemergence of fashion culture and the simultaneous growth of celebrity culture (Leung 2014, 74). Fashion increasingly became a crucial mode of cultural capital in Chinese communities, and the culture of fashion has prospered rapidly in the last decade. Such “China speed,” a term coined by InStyle China Editor-in-Chief Jerri Ng (Hales 2018), facilitates China’s ascendency in the global cultural market. In contrast to the state-salaried performers of the past, celebrities in China can now be seen as part of the “new rich.” In such a context, one observes the need for a consistently

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stylish appearance for stars. Film actresses and celebrities often attend red carpets, fundraising gala events, and fashion shows all over the globe. As an emblem of the maturation of consumer culture and neoliberalism in China, Fan Bingbing has also been visible in the catwalk events of the international giants like Gaultier, Dior, and Louis Vuitton. In addition, personal anecdotes such as the actress’ mother once owning a boutique so she grew up devouring fashion magazines resurface in media discourse (Callahan 2012). This type of star visibility and narrative that underscores taste, identity, and status promotes Fan in transnational consumer communities. Movie premieres, red carpets, and awards ceremonies are the venues for Fan Bingbing to showcase her fashion sensitivity, testifying to her glamorous yet dubious star presence. In high-profile international film events, the actress often steals the media limelight by appearing in extravagant and stupendous apparel by Valentino, Louis Vuitton, or Elie Saab Couture (Hollywood Reporter 2013b). The elaborately elegant gowns are usually ornamented with chiffon, lace, layers, and floral patterns that illustrate what the Hollywood Reporter called the “Cinderella fantasy,” echoed by Fan’s recounting of her “princess-like” experience as “… like I’m Cinderella” (Hollywood Reporter 2013a) in Cannes, a film festival that the star has frequented. Dubbed “Cannes ‘It’ Girl” (Sun 2013), Fan displayed her Chinese star status through her flamboyant garments. In one example, for Fan’s Cannes debut in 2010, she wore an explicitly, if not excessively, Oriental-style gown, or a “dragon robe” (Fig. 3.1). Designed by Laurence Hsu, a Chinese fashion designer who specializes in blending Chinese and Western elements, the dress was bright yellow, embroidered with two leaping dragons and numbers of rolling waves. The gown works to connote a sense of Chinese royalty and seemingly declare the actress’ cultural heritage. This “self-Orientalized” look has been remade into the actress’ waxwork at Shanghai’s Madame Tussauds and the plastic caricature sold at the official Barbie store in the city (Schwankert 2014). Her exaggerating outfits and overstated and sometimes inappropriate looks have sparked heated debate among commentators and viewers. A writer-editor for the New York Post, Maureen Callahan, once described Fan as embodying an “onslaught of glamour” (2012). Some critics derogatively call her a “red carpet moocher,” disapproving of Fan’s recurrent visits to film festivals without representing a film (Pan 2017). Fan’s conspicuous yet notorious image serves to promote her stardom in the star-driven cultural economies that rely on spectacle and consumption.

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Fig. 3.1  Fan Bingbing’s Cannes debut in the “dragon robe” (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl9fo0GYRNs)

The Marvel Diva Whereas there is maturity of the discourse of Fan Bingbing’s domestic fame established on traits of physical attractiveness and fashion receptiveness, her “phonic” presence emerges to be the alternative dimension of her stardom as she crosses over to the Anglophone filmmaking arena. As the actress was accumulating her transnational currency, she made her Hollywood debut appearance in Iron Man 3 (2013), in which her proficiency in English did not go unnoticed. As the third installment of the

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series produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney, the extravaganza casts the most bankable actors and actresses in Hollywood, including Robert Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow. The plot focuses on Tony Stark/Iron Man, who investigates an array of terrorist attacks led by Mandarin, a mysterious character who works to accentuate the language-­ related imagination. First appearing in Tales of Suspense in 1964, the Mandarin character (Ben Kingsley) represents a power-hungry, genius scientist/martial artist who always attempts to conquer the world yet also possesses a strong sense of honor. Intertextuality pervades in Iron Man 3; the hero comes into conflict with an old enemy, Aldrich Killian, while confronting his own flaws caused by the events of The Avengers (2012). Indicating Hollywood’s ambition of conquering the lucrative film market in China, as was mentioned in the opening discussion of this chapter, producers of Iron Man 3 created a Chinese cut made exclusively for Chinese theatergoers, according to a Marvel statement (The Diplomat 2013). The Chinese-made version stipulated a couple of added scenes and Chinese characters, alongside some changes to the character of the antagonist, Mandarin, who was born in China before the communist revolution. Mandarin had a wealthy Chinese father and an English aristocratic mother, both of whom passed away during his teenage years. This backstory reflects a cultural consciousness that works to avoid any potential pejorative insinuations toward the Chinese public. The made-for-China version reached the hit Chinese cineplexes, purportedly breaking the record for midnight screenings upon its theatrical release (Tsui 2013). Bloggers celebrated the record-breaking movie by enthusiastically circulating the unconfirmed numbers for midnight-screening earnings as it launched (Tsui 2013). Nonetheless, the film disappointed audiences and commentators with the out-of-place presence of Chinese performers and its “pointless” product placement (Ashcraft 2013). One scene depicts Dr. Wu consuming a carton of Gu Li Duo, a Mongolian milk drink widely sold in mainland China. Another scene shows Wu having a telephone conversation in Chinese at his office in Beijing, with the television screen displaying Iron Man cheered by schoolchildren in one of the city’s landmarks. Commentators and viewers criticized the film’s redundant Chinese components, juxtaposed with a poor plot (People’s Daily 2013).3 Fan Bingbing’s character can be regarded as part of this redundancy. Capitalizing on the actress’ domestic fame, she gains a minor role, but only for the Chinese version. Her role as an unnamed intern does not enter the plot until a hospital scene near the end. In the scene, Fan appears

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in the hallway for only fifteen seconds, eliciting the line, “He’s [Tony’s] here,” followed by a short exchange with Dr. Wu (played by veteran Chinese film actor Wang Xueqi) in the operation room. She utters in a worried tone, “What if we accidentally kill him? Everyone will know it was our fault.” The line marks her first English-language attempt on the Hollywood screen. Her articulation is too brief for one to assess if her English is close to accurate or not. Fan Bingbing rose to global fame with her next Hollywood star vehicle, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), which revealed even more of the dynamics between ethnic personae and language. Performing in this Fox/ Marvel franchise led her into the Western mainstream (Wakefield 2018). By portraying the character of Blink, a mutant-superheroine who can teleport herself and others at will, Fan can steal some scenes as she is the first and the only Chinese face in the main cast in an X-Men film (Fig. 3.2). Blink is a popular fictional persona who has been replicated in the cross-­ media space, for instance, the Fox television series, The Gifted (2017–19), featuring Asian American TV personality Jamie Chung, and the game version, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, casting Tara Strong for the dubbing voice. Fan Bingbing offered a brief, or in Internet users’ mocking term, “blink-or-you’ll-miss-it” appearance (Chow 2014). Variety critic Justin Chang (2014), moreover, argues that Fan Bingbing offers a “muted

Fig. 3.2  Fan Bingbing as Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGPYBT4eeWk&t=1s)

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performance” that inevitably ushers in an impression that her role is invented and conveyed more through costume and physique than through dialogue and articulation. While Fan Bingbing’s screen performance attracts attention to her appearance, the offscreen circumstances divert attention to her language skills. The film had its international launch and extensive promotion in cities like Singapore, Melbourne, and New  York. The many meet-the-­ press events reveal how her command of English is an issue. Consider a YouTube post titled “IGN Asia: X-Men: Days of Future Past—Fan Bingbing Interview.” Lasting for about three minutes, the video was uploaded by Kenn Leadre on May 20, 2014, five days after the blockbuster’s premiere in Singapore. The entry had attracted 97,389 views and sixty comments in total as of August 4, 2020. Bilingual, the interview features the male host speaking in English and Fan Bingbing answering in Mandarin, with English subtitles. The conversation draws on the public knowledge of Fan’s enthusiasm in fashion and the demands of performing kung fu on screen. The question that opens the interview addresses how Fan engaged in the design of her character by suggesting the hair braiding style in order to accentuate the role’s oriental aura. Next she is asked about her kung fu performance. Never trained in martial arts, Fan reveals little signs of hesitation and answers in her mother tongue, “[A]ctually I really admire Chinese Kung Fu …. Everytime when I trained, it was very difficult, but that prompted me to want to try harder,” with the answer transcribed in English subtitles. Perhaps indicating expectations, many of the comments point to her use of Mandarin Chinese in the interview, as what is revealed in the transnational ethnic stars. Some users praise her eloquence in her mother tongue, acknowledging her resistance in conforming to the global “practice” of speaking English. Some others chide her for her poor command of English, assuming that any stars who go international should be competent in speaking English. Fan Bingbing’s vocal articulation, hence, becomes the locus of fan engagement, focusing on the intersection of language and stardom. Fan Bingbing’s Mandarin articulation is a perceived dialectical act of complicity and resistance to the Anglophone hegemony, a crucial concern in transnational stardom (Lau 2019, 112–18). On the one hand, Fan Bingbing reveals her efforts at English learning, not unlike other Chinese contemporaries who have crossed over to Hollywood. Anecdotes of Fan striving to study the language include, for example, how she squeezes time into her tight schedule such as learning while waiting on the set or aboard

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a plane, how she recites lines of dialogue of other performers in the script as well as her own in order to practice more, and how she memorizes the grammar rules. As her salaried private tutor witnessed, she has gained “marked improvement” in her English level (Landreth 2016). Beginning to learn English at the age of thirty-six, the actress asserted, “It’s never too late to learn English” (Hernandez 2017). The “hard work” narrative resonates with her work ethics, conforming to the widespread assumption of English as lingua franca. It not only reinforces her as an icon of success in her home country but also corroborates her as a viable player in the global arena (123–27). At this point, the comparison between Fan Bingbing and her predecessor, Zhang Ziyi, who has been developing a crossover image in Hollywood since the 2000s, can be used as a lens in investigating the complex Sino-US cinematic interplay. In my previous research into Zhang Ziyi (2019), I probed the politics of language and ethnicity of Zhang as she gained fame internationally with her Hollywood movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), both Mandarin-speaking and English-speaking. Zhang shows clues of shyness in speaking Chinese in front of the foreign press. This reinforces the thesis of Anglophone hegemony that has been crucial in transnational stardom. This also leads to “hard work” narratives such as that Zhang made efforts to improve her spoken English; this becomes the evidence of her viability as a global player (123–27). Such narratives seem to replicate in Fan Bingbing’s instance, reflecting her work ethics and reinforcing her status as an icon of success in her home country. On the other hand, Fan shows clues of intransigence and being absorbed by the Hollywood norms as a border-­ crosser. In certain press interviews about her participation in the X-Men series, Fan has expressed her pride at being famous in her home country. For instance, in a publicity interview conducted at the movie’s premiere in Singapore, the actress emphasized her fame and broad fanbase in her home country and how she earned countless opportunities to make a fortune, or chigekai (吃得開) in Mandarin Chinese (POPCORN Movies 2014). She, thus, described herself as immune to an urge to pursue fortune in Hollywood. She also made fun of herself, saying that she is “a lazy girl” instead of a hard worker; otherwise, she would have made quicker progress in her English learning. In this light, Fan Bingbing embodies a renewed order of Chinese transnational filmmaking and star making that is oriented more to China’s film industry than to Hollywood. Since Fan Bingbing embodies a kind of star power that seems to be not utterly

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assimilating, her media presence in the Anglophone space heralds crossover stars mediating between the phonic cultures in the West and in Asia. It foretells the shifting China-Hollywood connection, with particular respect to the reversed flows of talents, images, and language in the current global arena. Fan Bingbing’s crossover stardom delineates a different trajectory of transnational stardom in the backdrop of China’s rising soft power. According to Joseph Nye (1990, 2004), soft power refers to the ability to attract and persuade rather than coerce and intimidate. The rapid growth of the Chinese film industry is understood as part of the outcome of the soft-power strategy of China, which took shape in the first decade of the twenty-first century when China opened to international investment and coproduction (Peng and Keane 2019). Since the point when China surpassed Japan to be the world’s second-largest economy, Chinese leaders have realized film and storytelling are compelling tools for strengthening the nation and exporting culture and values to the world (Zhou 2015). Modeling itself on how Hollywood plays a visible role in disseminating American ideologies, the Chinese government has sought to advance its soft power through films and other creative industries on the international level (Zhou 2015). Xi Jinping, in 2007 when he was the Communist Party secretary of Zhejiang province, revealed his adoration of Hollywood movies over a dinner conversation with US Ambassador Clark Randt (Landreth 2017). He is also famous for citing pop-culture references from the West in sundry speeches and proclamations. He once extolled Hollywood movies for being “grand and truthful,” providing a clear view of values that demarcate between good and evil. Xi said, “In American movies, good usually prevails” (Landreth 2017). Purportedly, China’s government has encouraged local filmmakers to expand the nation’s soft power by producing films that match Hollywood’s blockbuster commercial hits (Zhou 2018). The head of the National Radio and Television Administration, Zhang Hongsen, also mentioned that China should develop into a “great movie nation” by making films that “promote socialist values and tell good stories about China” (Zhou 2017).

An Apologetic Voice The “make China great” rhetoric and the efficacy of China’s soft-power strategy are undermined by the country’s protective regulations and censorship, which have cast immediate effect on the star’s presence and fame

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(Peng and Keane 2019). In recent years, the stardom of Fan Bingbing has been caught in the tension between artistic freedom and censorship in China, which simultaneously has been the center of many academic and cultural debates. Authorities’ determined effort to ensure the legitimacy of films and film stars is exemplified by the government’s crackdown on corruption and media censorship, and Fan Bingbing’s tax evasion scandal is an intriguing instance. The high-profile celebrity suddenly disappeared from the public eye since July 1, 2018, and her whereabouts have been the subject of intense speculation (BBC News 2018). An investigation by the Chinese tax authorities found that Fan had split her contract to evade taxes of 7.3  million yuan over the payments for her role in Air Strike (2003), a film due to be released in 2018. Such a double-billing system, known as a “yin yang contract,” is a practice where one contract sets out an actor’s real earnings, and another details a lower figure, with the latter submitted to the tax authorities. Since the news broke out, Fan’s agent Mou Enguang has denied such contracts, though he was later accused of obstructing the preliminary investigation by concealing and destroying evidence. On October 2, 2018, the authorities fined Fan Bingbing about 884 million yuan in overdue taxes as a warning to the industry practitioners that they ought to focus on making “good” films rather on pursuing the star-driven formula. The scandal has put the public appearance of Fan and a number of contracts on hold, potentially resulting in the abrupt fall of the megastar. Fan Bingbing’s tax fraud is not an exceptional case in China’s entertainment industry. The official decision was putatively the testament of the government’s eradication of this kind of fraud. President Xi Jinping introduced a large-scale anticorruption campaign after he came to the leadership of China in November 2012. In his inaugural speech as the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) general secretary, President Xi vowed to suppress corruption in response to escalating tensions between rich and poor, as tens of millions of disenfranchised Chinese became disaffected watching a small group of well-connected individuals reap economic gains (Zhu 2016, 245). In the name of “saving the CCP from the ‘bad apples,’” he cautioned his fellow party loyalists that dishonesty would lead to the downfall of the party (ibid., 241).4 In 2015, Xi’s administration undertook a crackdown on corruption and tax evasion by the rich, launching a social credit project piloted in some provinces for tracking ordinary citizens for paying debts and fines. Famous icons including film stars and celebrities are, then, kept in tight surveillance.

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In China, the notion of film stars conjures up associations with fame and luxury, and fame seems to contradict the communist ideology. As the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, mainland Chinese actors and actresses were recategorized as film workers instead of film stars in an attempt to remove any capitalist ties and to reconstruct them to be socialist citizens (Hang 2000, 108). The label alerted the public that the work of film performers is not much different from that of farmers or members of industry labor, as a counterpoise to capitalist overtones. For decades, the film industry relied on Hollywood imports, and film actors were paid on par with factory workers (Hang 2000, 108). As Yingjing Zhang remarks in his analysis of Chinese films in the socialist realism category between 1953 and 1965, “the CCP deployed film as an effective weapon of propaganda and expanded its film operations …” (Zhang 2004, 190). Actors were not associated with commercial products. Rather, their publicity should be firmly anchored in the political discourse (Hang 2000, 110). This demonstrates the intricate relationship between commercial filmmaking and the state media apparatuses. Recent times saw the post-­ socialist commercialization of Chinese films and the ostensible result of neoliberalization of the star image. Nevertheless, the cultural establishment’s close scrutiny over performers’ professional image remains (Hang 2000, 110). The tax fraud is not the first scandal Fan Bingbing’s public presence put into the headlines. As early as 2007, state censors decided to withdraw Lost in Beijing, in which Fan played the female lead, due to several scenes dealing with class conflict and rape (Landreth and Masters 2007). The rape scene, though relatively brief, portrays Fan Bingbing’s character as the victim and leads to the official accusation of the actress for national “treachery” with the charge of participating in the media productions that were perilous to China (Landreth and Masters 2007). A more recent instance saw the authorities intervene in Fan’s titular appearance in a big-­ budget Chinese dynasty drama series called The Empress of China, or The Saga of Wu Zetian, in 2015 and 2016. First broadcast on Hunan Television, the serial drama met censorship because of the excessive portrayal of women’s cleavage. It even made international headlines in January 2015 after the bureau’s heads ordered it to remove the “inappropriate” portrayal (Yan 2015). A number of Chinese bloggers echoed the ridicule by mockingly renaming “The Saga of Wu Zetian” as “The Saga of Wu’s Breasts” (Yan 2015). According to Ying Zhu (2016, 236), television dramas set during the dynasty era actively navigate amid the vying narratives of the

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new Left and neoliberalism, as reflected in intellectual and policy debate. Dynasty dramas, especially those that are politically charged, become a battleground that has registered the moral and political crises of the time, as conformity and cynicism have become overriding (Zhu 2016, 244). As part of Xi’s antigraft campaign, the tightened control over prime-time dynasty dramas serves as a tool to secure diffusion of the party’s ideology and to tame the cultural and ideological percussion invoked by politically sensitive content and debatable personae. In times of adversity, Fan Bingbing advanced a vocal, rather than bodily, presence in the public realm that renders significance to her image. Fan provided a regretful voice, evidencing how stars are assessed against the discursive limits of morality. The tax evasion controversy, quickly catalyzed as an honor-or-shame issue, was settled with an apology publicized by Fan, reinforcing the perpetual star function of propagating the state ideology. Hours after the official report of the tax authority was released, Fan issued a lengthy letter on Weibo, as the first appearance after her absence from public view for nearly four months. In an emotionally charged manner, she confessed to her “wrongdoing”: “Today I’m facing enormous fears and worries over the mistakes I made! … I have failed the country, society’s support and trust, and the love of my devoted fans! … I beg for everyone’s forgiveness!” (Chow and Frater 2018).5 Calling herself “ashamed and guilty,” Fan expressed her regret at disappointing her country and her supporters while praising the Chinese authorities. “For a long time, I did not distinguish between national, social and personal interests …. As a public figure, I should abide by the law, and play a leading role in society and industry …. Without the good policies of the party and the state, and without the love of the people, there would be no Fan Bingbing” (Rose 2018). Saying in a potentially jingoistic tone, the actress is enlightened that celebrities like her should contribute to social causes and be responsible for one’s own wrongdoing. As a voice taming the dispute, the star’s repentant articulation garnered nearly 100,000 retweets in the span of about two hours (Lee 2018). Some Weibo users had a forgiving attitude, whereas some others appeared relatively ruthless, disapproving of the apology. Some users even expressed the desire that the actress quit her entertainment career indefinitely (Lee 2018). As a former official in the British Embassy in Beijing named Rod Wye suggests, entertainers conform to “the new morality,” which is core socialist values, in Xi’s era in China (Ma 2018). Fan’s controversy, therefore, illustrates not only how it

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fuels the star’s love-and-hate dynamics with audiences but also how she traverses between the neoliberal market and national scrutiny. Fan Bingbing’s post-scandal utterance denotes flexibility and mutability that allows the actress to vacillate between the state-scrutinized and neoliberalized media space. Recent cases prove that celebrities in China who violate the laws, such as Jaycee Chan, Wang Quan’an, and Huang Haibo, see flagging careers and can hardly maintain their social status (Dixon 2018). However, there are no signs of the total erasure of Fan Bingbing from China’s entertainment scene due to her “misconduct.” In the course of her career, Fan has been openly friendly with the officials. Moreover, she has fostered influential relationships (guanxi) with the officials due to her family’s longtime involvement in the Communist Party (Jeong 2019). Gao Yitian, a producer who founded the FIRST International Film Festival, also remarked that two of the biggest awards Fan Bingbing has won, namely, the Hundred Flower and the Golden Rooster, are the national awards that best speak the “official opinion” of critics and professionals in the field. The former was a movement begun in 1956 by Mao Zedong’s communist government (Encyclopedia Britannica 2005), whereas the latter was founded by the Chinese Film-­Workers’ Association in 1981 (Tan and Zhu, 65). Hidden from the public scene for several months, as state-run media revealed, Fan had her first public appearance in charity, followed by her attendance at an event for the ninth anniversary of Chinese video-streaming platform iQIYI in April 2019 (Zhuang and Yan 2019). In September of the same year, reports featured Fan as the spokeswoman of Louis Vuitton to promote a new line of bags. Around the time of this writing, reports announced that she is making a comeback in Simon Kinberg’s female-led spy-action film 355, which has a multiethnic cast including American Jessica Michelle Chastain, Spanish Penélope Cruz Sánchez, Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Amondi Nyong’o, and German American Diane Kruger. As an amalgam of patriotism and glamour, Fan’s resuscitated media presence alludes to the imperative, if not defining, attributes of the legitimate image that underpins converging ideological and capitalistic logics. Suffice it to say, Fan’s contested persona implies a love-hate relationship with the Chinese government. It corroborates her status as a viable player in the complicated dialectics between the state apparatus and the fame-making mechanism, as well as a harbinger of evolving star making in the global politics of fame.

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Notes 1. The term emerged in juxtaposition with the other trope, gao-fu-shuai, literally “tall, rich, and handsome,” which applies to men. 2. After Fan Bingbing became established in 2007, she left Huayi Brothers, a China-based leading media corporation, and launched her own studio under her name, which has been prolific enough to create eight productions annually (james T2, 2015). 3. Blogger Beijing Ke’er wrote: “The appearance of Yili [the manufacturers of the Gu Li Duo drink] is really shocking. And I don’t know what that Zoomlion [a brand name which appears in a China-only scene] was—and after an online search I realized it’s a heavy industry enterprise in China…. The advertisements are the shining lights of the film!” (cited in Tsui 2013). Another blogger, Lilijia’s Xiao A-wan, articulates, in a perhaps contemptuous way, that the film “has proved that Chinese medicine is still the best!” She is referring to Stark being treated by a Chinese medical expert in a blend of surgery and acupuncture (Tsui 2013). 4. Xi Jinping’s administration spearheaded the formation of “centrally dispatched inspection teams,” essentially cross-jurisdictional squads of officials whose main task was to gain an in-depth understanding of the operations of provincial and local party organizations, and in the process to enforce party discipline. Over fifty provincial ministerial-level officials have been implicated during a massive nationwide anticorruption campaign, which provides ample raw material for drama. 5. Fan Bingbing elaborated, “For a while, due to my not understanding the relationship between benefits of the country, society, and individual, I and others took advantage of a ‘split contract’ to avoid tax problems, and I am deeply ashamed” (Ma 2018).

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Beech, Hannah. 2017. How China Is Remaking the Global Film Industry. Time, January 26. http://time.com/magazine/asia/4650870/february-­6th-­2017-­ vol-­189-­no-­4-­asia/. Callahan, Maureen. 2012. The Fan Bingbing Sensation. Vanity Fair, July. https:// archive.vanityfair.com/article/2012/7/the-­fan-­bingbing-­sensation. Chang, Justin. 2014. Film Review: ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past.’ Variety, May 12. https://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-­r eview-­x -­m en-­d ays­of-­future-­past-­1201177971/. Chow, Vicky. 2014. Don’t Blink or You’ll Miss Her; Fan Bingbing’s Appearance in X-Men. Schema Magazine, September 2, 2014. http://schemamag. ca/2014/09/02/dont-­blink-­or-­youll-­miss-­her-­fan-­bingbings-­appearance-­ in-­x-­men/#.W-­jZCdUzbIU. Chow, Vivienne and Frater, Patrick. 2018. Chinese Actress Fan Bingbing Is Fined Millions for Tax Evasion. Variety, October 2. https://variety.com/2018/ film/asia/china-­fan-­bingbing-­fined-­for-­tax-­evasion-­1202966663/, Dixon, Robyn. 2018. Chinese Actress Fan Bingbing Apologizes for Tax Evasion and Is Ordered to Pay Fines. Los Angeles Times, October 3. http://www.latimes.com/world/la-­fg-­china-­fan-­bingbing-­20181003-­story.html. Encyclopedia Britannica. Revised July 22, 2005. Hundred Flowers Campaign. https://www.britannica.com/event/Hundred-­Flowers-­Campaign. GBTIMES (Beijing). 2016. Fan Bingbing Ranked 5th Highest-Paid Actress in World. August 24. https://gbtimes.com/fan-­bingbing-­ranked-­5th-­highest-­ paid-­actress-­world. General, Ryan. 2018. Woman Who Got Plastic Surgery to Look Like Fan BingBing Gets Mistaken for the Real One. Nextshark, June 8. https://nextshark.com/ woman-­got-­plastic-­surgery-­look-­like-­fan-­bingbing-­gets-­mistaken-­real-­one/. Gorfinkel, Elena. 2018. Introduction: Global Cinemas in a Time of Networks. In Global Cinema Networks, ed. Tami Williams, 1–20. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hales, Clay. 2018. The Chinese Celebrity Stylists behind Glamour of Fan Bingbing, Zhang Ziyi, Zhao Wei, Shu Qi and Other Stars. South China Morning Post, January 20. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-­luxury/article/ 2129456/chinese-­celebrity-­stylists-­behind-­glamour-­fan-­bingbing. Hang. 2000. Zhong Xinghuo: Communist Film Worker. Chinese Film Stars. ———. 2017. For Jackie Chan & Fan Bingbing, It Is Never Too Late to Learn English. Yibada, January 20. http://en.yibada.com/articles/188030/20170120/for-­jackie-­chan-­fan-­bingbing-­it-­is-­never-­too-­late-­to-­ learn-­english.htm. Hollywood Reporter. 2013a. Cannes Confidential: Fan Bingbing on Living Out a Cinderella Fantasy. May 20. http://cyberspaceandtime.com/ESesYSMxZZg. video+related.

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———. 2013b. Fan Bingbing: 14 Red Carpet Looks from Cannes’ Fashionable ‘It’ Girl. August 5. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/ fan-­bingbing-­cannes-­film-­festival-­519525/9-­louis-­vuitton-­bustier-­gown. Jeong, May. 2019. The Big Error Was That She Was Caught”: The Untold Story behind the Mysterious Disappearance of Fan Bingbing, the World’s Biggest Movie Star 2019. Vanity Fair, March 16. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/the-­u ntold-­s tor y-­d isappearance-­o f-­f an-­b ingbing-­ worlds-­biggest-­movie-­star. KK News 每日頭條. 2015. Celebrity Story: Why Bingbing Fan Is Being Called Fanye? 明星故事|范冰冰為什麼被稱為范爺? June 22. https://kknews.cc/zh-­ hk/entertainment/eavv29z.html. Landreth, Jonathan. 2016. Q&A: Rian Dundon, English Tutor to China’s Leading Lady Fan Bingbing. China Film Insider, September 2. https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2016/09/02/qa-­r ian-­d undon-­e nglish-­t utor-­c hinas-­ leading-­lady-­fan-­bingbing. ———. 2017. Does Xi Jinping Go to the Movies? ChinaFilmInsider, March 7. http://chinafilminsider.com/does-­xi-­jingping-­go-­to-­the-­movies/. Landreth, Jonathan, and Charles Masters. 2007. Chinese Censors Demand Cuts to ‘Lost in Beijing’. Reuters, February 8. https://www.reuters.com/article/ film-­china-­film-­dc-­idUSN0623815820070208. Lau, Dorothy Wai Sim. 2019. Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lee, Jan. 2018. Chinese Movie Star Fan Bingbing Fined Millions in High-Profile Tax Evasion Case; Fan Apologises for Action. Straits Times (Singapore), October 3. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-­asia/china-­fines-­actress­fan-­bingbing-­for-­tax-­evasion-­xinhua. Leung, Wing-Fai. 2014. Zhang Ziyi: The New Face of Chinese Femininity. In East Asian Film Stars, ed. Leung Wing-Fai and Andy Willis, 65–80. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ma, Alexandra. 2018. Vanished Chinese Actress Fan Bingbing Broke Her Silence with a Groveling Apology to the Chinese Government, Which She Owes $129 Million. Business Insider, October 3. https://www.businessinsider.com/ fan-­bingbing-­apology-­tax-­evasion-­fine-­2018-­10. McLaughlin, Kathleen E. 2014. Who Are China Magazines’ Cover Stars? WWD: Women’s Wear Daily (Los Angeles) 208 (35): 13. Nguyen, Dao. 2018. Opinion: Beauty Codes Are Changing as China Embraces ‘Noble Face.’ Jing Daily, April 9. https://jingdaily.com/beauty-­codes-­ noble-­face/. Pan, Yiling. 2017. Meet Fan Bingbing, Cannes Juror and the Darling of Luxury Brands. Jing Daily, May 19. https://jingdaily.com/meet-­fan-­bingbing-­ cannes-­juror-­darling-­luxury-­brands/.

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Peng, Weiying, and Michael Keane. 2019. China’s Soft Power Conundrum, Film Coproduction, and Visions of Shared Prosperity. International Journal of Cultural Policy 25 (7): 904–916. People’s Daily. 2013. Iron Man 3 Attracted the Audience to Comment: This Special Kind of Chinese Version Is Not Worth Mentioning 《鋼鐵俠3》引觀眾吐槽:這 種中國特供版不要也罷, May 2. http://media.people.com.cn/n/2013/0502/ c40606-­21336425.html. POPCORN Movies TW. 2014. Hugh Jackman vs. Wolverine? Which One Would You Choose? Fan Bingbing: I am Popular in China! Singapore Interview on X-Men: Days of Future Past. 休傑克曼還是金鋼狼?大肌肌給你選你會選?范冰 冰:我在中國很吃得開!《X戰警:未來昔日》新加坡好精采專訪趕快看│【爆 米花電影院】14-05-23. YouTube video, May 23. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=8OWXgwNz7cE. Rose, Steve. 2018. Fan Bingbing’s Mysterious Disappearance: What It Means for China’s Elite. The Guardian, October 4. https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2018/oct/04/fan-­b ingbing-­m ysterious-­d isappearance-­c hinese­film-­star-­elite. Schwankert, Steven. 2014. Fan Bingbing Becomes China’s First Barbie Doll. The Beginner, June 4. https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2014/06/04/ fan-­bingbing-­becomes-­chinas-­first-­barbie-­doll. ———. 2017. Fan Bingbing Joins Cannes Jury, Makes Time Magazine List. China Film Insider, April 26. http://chinafilminsider.com/fan-­bingbing-­joins-­ cannes-­jury-­makes-­time-­magazine-­list/. Sun, Rebecca. 2013. Fan Bingbing: The Chic Life of a Cannes ‘It’ Girl. Hollywood Reporter, August 5. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-­girl­fan-­bingbing-­inside-­505668. The Diplomat. 2013. Fan Bingbing Cut out of Iron Man 3… Except in China. March 29. https://thediplomat.com/2013/03/fan-­bingbing-­cut-­out-­of-­ iron-­man-­3-­except-­in-­china/. Tsui, Clarence. 2013. ‘Iron Man 3’ China-Only Scenes Draw Mixed Response. Hollywood Reporter, January 5. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ iron-­man-­3-­china-­scenes-­450184. Wakefield, Jess. 2018. Fan’s Fans: Who Is Fan Bingbing, What Is the X-men Actress’s Net Worth and What Other Movies Has She Been In? The Sun, October 4. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6923971/fan­bingbing-­x-­men-­net-­worth-­movies/. Yan, Alice. 2015. China’s ‘X-Men’ Star Fan Bingbing Joins Forbes’ List of Hollywood’s Biggest-Earning Actresses. South China Morning Post, August 21. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-­w ealth/article/1851363/ chinas-­x-­men-­star-­fan-­bingbing-­joins-­forbes-­list-­hollywoods. Zhang, Yingjin. 2004. Chinese National Cinema. London: Routledge.

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Zhou, Yuxing. 2015. Pursuing Soft Power Through Cinema: Censorship And Double Standards In Mainland China. Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9 (3): 239–252. Zhou, Viola. 2017. Beijing’s Big Screen Dream: Making China a ‘great Movie Nation.’ South China Morning Post, October 20. https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/policies-­p olitics/ar ticle/2116331/beijings-­b ig-­s creen-­ dream-­making-­china-­great-­movie. ———. 2018. Patriotic Action Movie Wolf Warrior 2 Tops China’s Box Office for 2017 But Foreign Films Gain Ground. South China Morning Post, January 1. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/ar ticle/2126366/ chinas-­box-­office-­hits-­us86-­billion-­2017-­boosted-­service-­fees. Zhu, Ying. 2016. Corruption and Its (Dis)Content: The Rise and Fall of Chinese Officialdom Television Dramas. Screen 57 (2): 235–249. Zhuang, Pinghui and Alice Yan. 2019. Has China Forgiven Tax Cheat Fan Bingbing? South China Morning Post, November 27. https://www.scmp.com/news/ china/society/article/3039612/has-­china-­forgiven-­tax-­cheat-­fan-­bingbing

CHAPTER 4

From “King of Mandopop” to the New “Kato”: Jay Chou’s Transnational Stardom and His Brand of Coolness

Dubbed the “King of Mandopop” (Tan 2020) by English-language media, Jay Chou has gained vast fame in the Chinese-speaking world with his iconic “cool” image and “a distinctive sound” (Zhou 2010). Chou began his music career in the first decade of the twenty-first century and quickly rose to fame in Chinese-speaking Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, as well as in Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. He is also one of the most prolific entertainers in the region. His record sales often top the list, and the spectacle of his concerts has become phenomenal.1 In addition, the idol has launched concert tours since 2001 that journey across Asia, North America, and Australia, and his performance has been praised as a combination of “good acoustics and stunning visuals” (Ang 2018).2 With the prevalence of digital technology, Chou perpetuates his fame on various online platforms; he is the most-streamed artist on Spotify in Singapore (Kamil 2019). As an icon of youth coolness (Fung 2007, 71–72), Chou is acclaimed for his unique musicianship marked by an agreeable mix of rock, hip hop, rap, blues, Chinese, and classical music. The wide spectrum of music styles is coupled with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables, unclear articulations, and improvised rhythms, resulting in the “Chou Style,” a term popularized by the Sinophone media. Nicknamed “Chou Dong,” literally meaning “President Chou,” Chou has colossal status in the Chinese pop scene, banking on charismatic vigor and mercantile potential. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_4

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Riding on his popularity in Mandopop, Jay Chou expanded his career into film, and his lingual persona captured public attention. Titles like Initial D (2005), Kung Fu Dunk (2008), and Secret (2007) have solidified a covetable celluloid appeal which has linked to his offscreen persona. His subsequent Hollywood roles inaugurate his acting profile in an Anglophone setting. He was cast in The Green Hornet (2011) and Now You See Me 2 (2016), which gained him international fame while revealing his fairly limited facility with English. His linguistic performance can fit into the larger discourse of ethnicity, confusing his Chinese star identity. This chapter examines Jay Chou’s phonic persona as he traverses from Mandopop to Chinese-language cinema to Anglophone popular entertainment. The analysis takes account of two aural signifiers: the slurred enunciation in his musical persona and his English speaking in his crossover image. First, I will outline Chou’s signature “murmured” rap that centrally shapes his brand of “coolness.” Next, we will explore iterations of reticent, alienated personae in his Chinese-language films, as an extension of his extrafilmic life. The chapter then focuses on Chou’s Hollywood persona, investigating how proficiency in English becomes a locus of debating Chineseness in the fan-based communication circuits. By extrapolating Chou’s evolving and versatile image, this chapter argues that his vocal persona occupies a uniquely productive space where foreign tongue and mother tongue, and articulateness and wordlessness, coexist. The sources of analysis come from the texts such as Chou’s movies, albums, and press interviews, as well as user-generated materials like online videos and commentary.

Sounding “Cool”: Jay Chou’s “Murmured Rap” When I was 12, 13 and about to enter middle school, every classmate of mine—literally everyone—was listening to Jay Chou. During the era where all the Chinese pop songs were about falling in loves [sic] and break-ups, Jay Chou’s rap (or mumble, to a lot of Chinese parents) about Chinese Kung Fu was like a breath of crispy air into our daunting, high-pressured school life. I had no idea what Hip Hop was back then, but Jay Chou’s music was so cool that I begged my parents to get me a Walkman so I could play it all day. [my emphasis].—Bo Yin, “The Past and Future of Chinese Hip-Hop,” Elephant Room, 2017

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This quote from a fan of Jay Chou who probably is a knowledgeable listener of Chinese popular music succinctly encapsulates the features of the idol’s musical persona. Music is pivotal in Chou’s stardom, and he considers it as “the source of his charm” (Drake 2003). Hip hop and rap are the staples. These quintessentially African American elements have been adopted by other Chinese singers preceding Chou. Yet allegedly it was Chou who introduced them into the Mandopop mainstream (Zhou 2010). His hybridized musical persona epitomizes the recent rise and fad of rap in the Chinese cultural scene. Reportedly, Chinese rap was popularized by the iQIYI competition TV show in 2017, The Rap of China (Zhongguo You Xiha 中國有嘻哈, literally “China Has Hip Hop”), which styles itself as the first music show in China themed on hip hop (The World of Chinese 2017). Imported from the West, hip hop grew to be a popular form of musical expression for Chinese youngsters in the 1990s, which coincides with the emergence of Chou’s popularity in the region (Bo 2017). As a forerunner of Chinese rap music, Chou choreographs an image for the “GenY” generation, whose members emerged as millennials and whose lives have primarily focused on themselves and their own benefit, formulated as a question of meaning (Scholz 2019). Chou’s songs largely appeal to these young listeners who are eager to seek outlets for their anger, struggle for identity, and present challenges to authority and adulthood. Titles such as “Second Class of Year 3” (2003), “Bullfight” (2000), “In the Name of Father” (2003), and “Coward” fuel perceptions of iconoclasticity and unconformity, insolence and youth defiance (Fung 2007, 71–72), illustrative of how Mandopop tunes can deviate from standards by standing apart from the romance- or break-up-themed songs that populated the Chinese-language pop scene in the 1990s. Imbued with the “diao” feature, Chow is branded as a cultural symbol of coolness, which largely appeals to youth fandom. Diao is Taiwanese slang literally meaning “penis” and is habitually translated as outrageous or “cool.” It also connotes the capacity to astonish others and perform in one’s own way (Liu 2008). Diao is a trope that Chou himself uses to describe his attitude toward life. Once he said, “It’s my personal philosophy … but it has nothing to do with religion. It means that whatever you do, you don’t try to follow others. Go your own way, you know?” (Drake 2003) The diao style makes him a canonized, “cool” star at the juncture of regional consumption and global capitalism. Coolness is a cultural logic intimately tied to popular culture that allows individuals to consume uniqueness and individuality in the wake of commercialization (Zhang

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et al. 2004, 3–12). Along this logical thread, the conquest of coolness and counterculture lie at the core of contemporary capitalism. It gives rise to “cool capitalism,” as Jim McGuigan (2009) theorizes, which renders itself as disapproval of capitalism itself, showing nuances of insurgence and thus neutralizing antagonism with the current system in society. Drawing on Thomas Frank’s (1997) idea of “the conquest of cool,” McGuigan contends that “coolness” resides at the forefront of capitalism and demonstrates how consumers deal with the social and economic vicissitudes in this time of intense globalization (McGuigan 2009, 7–8). In the realm of popular productions including film and music, the cool aesthetics affect how audiences construct sociopolitical and cultural meanings in the consumption of stars on both individual and collective levels. Chou’s musical image is tellingly relevant. His image has been turned into a saleable commodity, packaged and marketed for the brand of “coolness,” allowing him to participate in concatenated cultural economies and consumer communities, both locally and regionally. It is also a vital staple of the border-­ crossing fame of the singer, as a Taiwanese who has garnered a strong fanbase in multiple Chinese-speaking communities. The construction of the “cool” image is characterized by Chou’s “mumbling” of lyrics. While the slurred articulation may sound like cacophony to older listeners, this highly individualistic and subversive disposition enthralls young fans as something charming, soothing, and spirited (Asianfanaticfans 2008). The blurry articulation is plausibly not caused by Chou’s deficiency in diction, as one may note that his love ballads do not exhibit the “enunciation problem.” It can be inferred that he magnifies the diction’s imprecision as part of his persona or “a form of vocal acting” (Zhou 2010). As Chou explained in an interview with CNN TalkAsia, a weekly television show that focuses on interviews of celebrities in Asia-Pacific regions, he decidedly creates the unclear pronunciation to underscore how he uses his voice as an instrument (Jeneration18 2012).3 Some of his numbers deemphasize the meanings of the lyrics, reducing the recital of lyrics to sound effects. He has occasionally opined that this “trademark” should not block listeners’ comprehension of his songs because one could always read the lyrics printed in the album booklets, allowing the reader to appreciate the beauty of the words (Jeneration18 2012). Provided latitude in interpretation, it can be argued that the more refined the lyrics, the more Chou’s voice de-essentializes and confounds the Chinese language. In brief, central to his slurred style is the perceptual rather than textual capacity of Chou’s voice to generate meaning.

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Jay Chou has been dubbed “Father of China Wind (zhongguofeng).” His signature-mixed music styles and slurred utterances both celebrate and obscure the Chinese traditions connoted by his songs such as “Nunchucks,” “Herbalist’s Manual,” “East Wind Breaks,” and “Blue and White Porcelain.” As an emergent trend in the scene of Chinese-language pop in the 2000s, the “China Wind” owes its production and circulation as a discursive formation endorsed by mainstream talents, markedly from Taiwan, as much as to its vogue among audiences in Greater China (Chow and de Kloet 2010). It is a musical subgenre featuring songs with distinct Chinese characteristics, as defined in both musical and lyrical terms (Chow and de Kloet 2010).4 Musically, the “China Wind” tunes juxtapose classical Chinese melodies with trendy global pop styles, particularly R&B and hip hop, akin to Chinese rap, whereas lyrically, the songs display “traditional” Chinese cultural elements such as legends, classics, and languages, implicitly or explicitly in contemporary contexts. As Wei-Hsin Lin (2013) asserts, it is the lyrics that uncover the quintessence of Chineseness in “China Wind” tunes (207, 210). Vincent Fang, Chou’s long-term collaborator and the purported “most important lyricist of China Wind pop” (Chow and de Kloet 2010, 60), is acclaimed for his works’ overt allusion to Chinese tradition. One worthy example is “Huo Yuanjia,” the theme song that shares the same title in Chinese as the 2006 martial arts movie, Fearless (Fig. 4.1). Like many other of Chou’s songs, “Huo Yuanjia” is a

Fig. 4.1  Jay Chou’s “China Wind” (zhongguofeng) image in the MV of “Huo Yuanjia” (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OTZtyCQnFyk)

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Jay Chou-Vincent Fang collaboration, exemplary of how Chou exploits Chineseness through his artful amalgam of Chinese kung fu and rap music. The feature, directed by Chinese American Ronny Yu, stars Jet Li as the titular hero. Set in the Qing dynasty in Shanghai in 1910, the film is a biopic of the historical figure Huo Yuanjia, a martial artist who founded the Jingwu School of martial arts (note the connection to Bruce Lee’s character in Fist of Fury). Huo fought for his nation’s honor after the First World War against threatening foreigners, the symbols of imperialist power from Japan and America. On the semantic level, the lyrics of the song align with the jingoistic theme of the diegesis, retelling the story of Huo and his enlightenment by the kung fu philosophy, connoting that only when one’s conscience is rid of egotism can one transform to be a man of virtue and integrity. However, the theme is obscured and destabilized by Chou’s woolly delivery. In delivering the lines, Chou shows the rapid tempo of the rapped lyrics. The verses contain frequent iteration of words of similar vowels, “huo” (referring to the family name of Huo) and “wo” (meaning “I”). If “China Wind” songs reveal the proclivity to engage in hegemonic versions of Chineseness, Chou’s murmured raps hybridize and trouble any essential claims on Chineseness.

Chou’s Early Cinematic Personae Public attention on Chou’s vocal persona carries over to his cinematic appeal. After attaining fame in Mandopop, Chou made a foray into film and commercial acting. He won his debut role in Initial D (2005), a Hong Kong blockbuster codirected by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, who became renowned with their Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002 and 2003). The D in Initial D stands for the “drifting” technique, popularized in motor racing and the street racing subculture that originated in Japan and spread across various regions, from California and Hawaii in the United States to Victoria and New South Wales in Australia. Drifting also becomes part of the speed spectacle in recent cinematic sensations like the French-­ language minor-hit film Taxi, produced by Luc Besson (Shackleton 2004). Hiring Chin Ka-lok, a Hong Kong–based former racing driver, as the choreographer, Initial D counts on a panoply of racing scenes that incorporate Fast-&-Furious-like spectacle. The singer-turned-actor’s screen debut has engendered such fanfare that his fans even creatively modify the title, calling the film “Initial J” for Jay (Lo 2011, 53).

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According to Kwai-Cheung Lo (2011, 52), Initial D offers a new twist to Hong Kong’s appropriation of Japanese culture, chiefly due to its cross-­ ethnic and cross-lingual casting. Adapted from Shūichi Shigeno’s popular Japanese manga series of the same title, Initial D is loosely a continuation of director Andrew Lau’s manga-inspired sensation in The Storm Riders (1998). It is filmed in Japan, casting a cluster of (semi-)Chinese-speaking actors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and US backgrounds, such as Edison Chen, Shawn Yu, Gordon Chan, and Jay Chou, to play the Japanese roles, whereas all female characters, as a sexual-ethnic contrast, are played by Japanese actresses. Reportedly, all the male performers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan delivered their lines of dialogue in their mother tongues during shooting, with postproduction dubbing in one single language for theatrical release (Lo 2011, 195). Although the idea of casting Chinese-­ speaking actors for Japanese roles may frustrate ethnicity-conscious viewers, it may not sound odd, as Lo points out, to Hong Kong and Taiwan cinephiles, especially youngsters, whose daily lives are penetrated by the ubiquitous presence of Japanese popular texts such as dubbed dorama and translated manga (Lo 2011, 52–53). Put another way, young cinephiles find themselves easily identifying with the Japanese fictional personalities even if they are played by performers of different ethnicities. Jay Chou’s “cool” quotient is showcased in Initial D’s alienated, reticent persona, supplemented and raveled by a sense of insouciance and self-consciousness (Fig.  4.2). Chou personifies Takumi Fujiwara, a high school student who is able to master the technique of drifting as he performs late-night tofu deliveries in an obsolescent Toyota AE86 down the twisty roads of Mount Akina in Gunma Prefecture (Fung 2007, 72). The character is socially inept and unduly restrained about his own views and opinions, loosely mirroring the actor’s juvenile experiences.5 Chou’s aloof and casual performance seems acceptable chiefly because “the script wisely doesn’t demand too much of an acting effort of him” (Selzer 2006). A lack of facial expressions and his lethargic comportment, however, attract criticism of poor acting. The debatable acting skill makes Chou an intriguing costar of Anthony Chau-sang Wong, who impersonates Takumi’s father named Fujiwara Bunta, a former number-one racer who now runs a tofu store while coaching his son in racing in offbeat ways. Wong is a veteran Eurasian Hong Kong film star who is reputed for his profound and poignant acting. Beginning his acting career in theater and television, he was active in the 1990s in the local film industry and became prolific in collaborating with world-renowned Hong Kong auteurs including Ann

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Fig. 4.2  Jay Chou plays the introverted Takumi Fujiwara in Initial D. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/0cfe09af-­4 46d-­4 97e-­a f6f-­ f80fe819df79)

Hui, Tsui Hark, and, most notably, Johnnie To. He also plays characters spanning across genres from gangster to comedy, from horror to martial arts. Compared to Wong, Chou exhibited an alleged lack of acting technique, grappling with, if not marginalizing, his status as a film actor. In Chou’s next film, Kung Fu Dunk (2008), Chou’s screen image stemmed from perceptions of a compelling extrafilmic personality. Directed by Taiwanese Kevin Chu, Kung Fu Dunk ushers an amalgam of sports and kung fu that invites associations with Stephen Chow’s well-­ known Shaolin Soccer (2001) because both movies contain action-packed scenes and comic sensitivity. As a sports-themed movie, the action spectacle relies on choreography and wirework (instructed by internationally acclaimed and prolific Hong Kong choreographer Ching Siu-tung) as well as CGI (produced by the Beijing team that undertook the 2001 Hollywood blockbusters Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter). Sports-movie fans are also impressed by the cameo appearance of Yao Ming, a professional

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Chinese basketball player who joined the NBA from 2002 to 2011. As a pan-Chinese coproduction, Kung Fu Dunk features an ensemble cast from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China including Eric Tsang, Charlene Choi, and Bolin Chen. Similar to Initial D, Kung Fu Dunk was inspired by the Japanese manga series named Slam Dunk, depicting a story of an orphaned kung fu trainee who possesses incredible gifts in basketball. Marketers packaged the film as a Jay Chou vehicle, underscoring Chou’s enthusiasm for basketball. Entertainment news sources announced Chou’s effort to line up Taiwanese counterparts such as Blackie Chan, Will Liu, and Alan Ko, as well as NBA stars like Kobe Bryant, to engage in basketball matches for either charity or entertainment. There are connecting elements between the rapw culture in China and the emergence of streetball, a hip hop version of regular basketball. Chou’s role in Kung Fu Dunk sourced materials of the celebrity’s composite public presence that crisscrosses music, film, sports, and philanthropy.

The New “Kato” Personality With his noticeable success in Chinese-language cinema, Jay Chou ventured in the West and made himself better qualified as a transnational star. His Hollywood debut in The Green Hornet (2011) was a box office hit, elevating his fame in American audienceship (Fig. 4.3). Originating as a

Fig. 4.3  Jay Chou reprised Bruce Lee’s Kato personality in his Hollywood debut, The Green Hornet (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=3xtKas3-­ctQ)

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radio program in the 1930s, The Green Hornet has been made into multiple comic books, television shows, and movies. The 2011 feature was directed by Michel Gondry, a French filmmaker who is well known for works as the US-France coproduced Human Nature (2001) and Hollywood’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Repeating the formula of superhero action comedies, The Green Hornet portrays Britt Reid (played by Seth Rogen, who is also the screenwriter of the film), the spoiled son of a Los Angeles newspaper proprietor, who leads a dissolute bachelor life but later clandestinely becomes the masked crime fighter the Green Hornet. As the only Chinese face in the main cast, Jay Chou plays a sidekick-like yet important role, Kato, a martial arts expert who turns out to be the Green Hornet’s valet and partner. To most Chinese audiences, the character of Kato does not seem unfamiliar, because he was depicted by Bruce Lee in the television series aired on the US television network ABC from 1966 to 1967. Lee’s potent screen presence of flying kicks and corporeal prowess began the cult of the idol back in Hong Kong, where the producers then turned Kato from a sidekick to a key character, renaming the TV show The Kato Show as it was shipped overseas (Ellis 2015; Smallwood 2018). In his reprisal of Kato in the 2011 action comedy, Chou, an actor with no martial arts background, emulates Lee’s kung fu virtuosity yet “fights like a wild dog,” in Gondry’s phrase (Wallace 2009). Kato was, furthermore, marketed as Chou’s “dream role” since his childhood (Wallace 2009), fathoming connections between onscreen and offscreen personae. Chou’s Kato impersonation markedly melds his musician’s profile and his previous music-driven celluloid appeal. A couple of sequences exploit Chou’s performance of Chopin’s concertos and chamber pieces for solo piano, the pieces that the star is enthusiastic and good at. One example features Chou playing Franz Liszt’s étude no. 39 (“Un Sospiro”) on his date with Lenore, which, perhaps loosely, is reminiscent of his image in his Mandarin-speaking directorial debut, Secret, which exhausts the icon’s brand as a music talent. The Green Hornet portrays a high school romance set in Taiwan with a time-travel narrative. Costarring with Taiwanese actress Gwei Lun-mei, Jay Chou was the male lead, playing a piano prodigy who is introverted and keen on expressing himself through music (a detail that is sourced from Chou’s teenage life). Chou’s Mandopop songs are included in the soundtrack. The film’s ending credits are accompanied by first The Greenhornes’ “Saying Goodbye” and second by Jay Chou’s “The Nunchucks,” a Mandarin song he composed in 2001 on the theme

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of the martial arts weapon popularized by Bruce Lee. The acoustic elements make Chou’s vocal profile perpetuate on Hollywood screens, permitting the star to oscillate between the musical arena and the cinematic arena. As with many Chinese crossover stars, the public responded to the state of Chou’s linguistic skills. Certain audiences derided his poor command of English in the interviews with the Western media (Huang 2011). Consider the interview conducted by Collider, an entertainment website and YouTube channel founded by Steve Weintraub in July 2005. The interview was first clipped and publicized on the Collider website, later finding its way onto YouTube with the title “The Green Hornet Interview—Jay Chou” on January 11, 2011, five days before the theatrical release of the film (Weintraub 2011; YouTube 2011). A six-minute conversation takes note of Chou’s reputation in Asia, his experience of reprising Bruce Lee’s “Kato,” and the power struggle he underwent in Hollywood. The interview opens with Chou’s confession of his limited English proficiency, promptly followed by the White host’s verbal relief of the star’s worry by joking around about the language barrier he might otherwise confront. Then the host cites Chou’s concert given a day before in town and asks about the singer-actor’s feelings of shifting between different performing statuses. The rest of the dialogue concentrates on Chou’s new film. Throughout the entire English-led dialogue, Chou appears tongue-tied, occasionally supplementing his words with the Mandarin language. At times, Chou sought help from his assistant, who stayed out-of-screen, for interpreting the reporter’s questions. In these extrafilmic occasions, Chou’s linguistic limits immediately surface, contesting identity and ethnicity in a translingual setting.

Dearticulating “Taiwaneseness” Chou’s questionable English skills inevitably dominate users’ commentary (itself containing numerous language errors) to this YouTube entry, with concomitant debate about the star’s ethnic identity. In December 2015, user “ImJustXuan” explained, “The only reason I can to this video is because I want to hear him speak English.” Certain users, moreover, drew on their experiences of speaking foreign languages. For instance, in December 2014, user “harryginnyalways” expressed, “his english isn’t that bad, really. It’s waaaaay better than my chinese, which I’ve be+++en learning for MUCH longer than his one month.” Likewise, user

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“johnkevin1104” wrote, “i can only imagine how hard it is for jay. i went to china knowing limited chinese and i could barely express what i wanted to say,” acknowledging the artist’s effort. Earlier in 2013, a wave of comments similarly focused on the concern of “Taiwaneseness.” Part of the exchange reads, “YungBasedOnion”: “Lol all these mad “Taiwanese” people, haha so ashamed of their own race. Ridiculous.” “Haha only 12% of all countries recognizes Taiwan as a country. Take your rebel shit some where else jay chou is proud to be Chinese.” “Gotentk4”: “it is not TECHNICALLY a country. Go to U.N and ask about it.” “taiwanese as nationality but ethnicity is chinese that’s why he goes in chinese “shoudi” not in taiwanese “shoudi” taiwanese is just means someone come from that country like american it’s not a language or an ethnic” “Kpop Fan Boys”: “Taiwan is a country. It has it own nationality and own culture. China only claim that Taiwan is one of them” “chasewithhigh5”: “that hasn’t been true for the past 60 years” “Lichuan Xiao”: “Taiwan is part of China! Even though they have their so called “PRESIDENT”, even they have passport, even some of them do not admit they are Chinese, or whatever, they are still part of China. And, Jay Chou don’t ever said “I’m Taiwanese not Chinese.” So shut your fuckmouth!”

The interaction of these users, whose national and ethnic origins could not be verified, attests that the language abilities of a celebrity can precipitously feed into the Taiwan Straits concern and the politics of nation-­ making. English-language scholarship has extrapolated the topic of ethnic relations of contemporary Taiwan in two contexts: first, conflicts among subethnic groups including those between immigrants and their descendants, and second, the long-term separation and rivalry between mainland China and Taiwan. The second context seemed more relevant to the users’ exchange here. Tu Weiming, in his analysis of Taiwan’s national identity after 1949  in Cultural Identity and the Politics of Recognition in Contemporary Taiwan (1996), posits that “Taiwaneseness” is often set against “Chineseness.” Such an opposition that works to justify the motivation of the divisive identities of the mainland and Taiwan is the political antagonism between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Tu 1996, 1115–40). Since 1945, when the KMT leadership took over Taiwan, the leadership has advocated Chinese nationalism, underscoring Chinese identity instead of

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local cultural identities. Such a contentious relationship is also exemplified in the advocacy of language on the island. In the course of the pursuit of a Chinese identity, the Kuomintang (KMT) government successfully labeled Taiwanese culture and language as indecent, backward, and illegitimate (Chang 1997, 116, 117). Mandarin, spoken by the homogenous Chinese group, became the official language and was forcibly imposed, while other dialects, chiefly Taiwanese, were sternly discouraged in education, media, and official institutions. In practice, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin suggested that the speaker was less than cultivated. The execution of rigid restrictions on presenting vernacular programs on television and radio, furthermore, led to the loss of Taiwanese local dialects in the young generation, making them identify themselves differently from their Taiwanese-speaking parents. They could hardly master the local dialect that was assumed to be the mother tongue but yet became a second language (Chang 1997, 116).6 In the public domain, linguistic polish aided the solidification of Taiwaneseness. For example, some political figures spoke Mandarin-­accented Taiwanese on public occasions.7 These nuances coincided with the blend of Mandarin and Taiwanese used in talk shows and soap operas, followed by the relinquishment of the regulation on language use in Taiwanese radio and television in July 1993 (Chang 1997, 122–23). The recognition of a Taiwanese-accented Mandarin as a “genuine” and more intimate tongue for the Taiwanese people was regarded as a “mother tongue education program,” launched in July 1996 by the Ministry of Education. Far from signifying the existence and legitimacy of Taiwaneseness, Jay Chou’s appeal registers no rigid traces of region-specific consciousness, neither Taiwan huayu nor Taiwan’s other local dialects. Chou speaks Mandarin, a lingual category that unfolds a sort of evocative Chineseness, which seems flexible and malleable enough to address the homogenous group of Chinese people. Such flexibility and malleability are manifested in his stammering utterances, leaving the linguistic root seemingly insignificant. Consider how Chou is readily distinguished from other Mandopop singers such as Hong Kong’s Khalil Fong, mainland China’s Huang Zitao (a.k.a. Z. Tao), Taiwan’s Yoga Lin and Crowd Lu, Malaysia’s Wang Guang Liang, and Singapore’s Wayne Lim (a.k.a. JJ Lin), not through the versions of the Mandarin he speaks but through his unique musical style and way of reciting the lyrics. Therefore, it can be postulated that Chou de-­ articulates the star identity as a Taiwanese person, earning him privileges to navigate in the fan territories of Mandopop. In other words, his star

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phenomenon implies no simple equivalence between identity-making and linguistic configuration, keeping his ethnocultural identity de-­essentialized, abstract, and equivocal. While the cross-strait contention has long occupied the center of political and cultural discourse, the debate about Taiwan independence has extended to scenes of popular entertainment in recent years. A dispute sparked at the star-studded Golden Horse Awards in 2018, for instance, turned it into a highly politicized occasion. Speeches given by certain awardees at the ceremony made international headlines. Chinese actor Tu Men called Taiwan “Taiwan, China,” which precipitated an outcry from thousands of Internet users in the territory. Furthermore, it promptly led to a post on Facebook by President Tsai Ing-wen, which reads: “We have never accepted such a saying as ‘Taiwan, China’ and will not accept it. Taiwan is Taiwan” (Teng 2018). Filmmaker Fu Yue, the champion of honor of the best documentary, in contrast, made the pro-independence declaration in her winning speech that caused the immediate cessation of the live-streaming of the program in China (Apple Daily 2018). After the event, sources revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has banned the film talent who have China’s citizenship from participating in the following year’s award ceremony (Apple Daily 2018). All these instances signal that the internationally reputed film event became a platform for film workers to speak up on social and political issues while continuing under tight scrutiny by the PRC authorities (Teng 2018). Situated in the politically seasoned entertainment culture, Jay Chou’s downplayed ethnopolitical orientation potentially preserves his prominence in the Chinese-speaking market. His Taiwanese identity enables him to flourish in the popular music industry in the PRC, which relies on both state approval and corporate support. As Anthony Fung (2007) remarks, in China, both state and market forces are vital for the success of cultural products. Products of popular music are assumed to meet the political agenda of the regime prior to their dissemination to the public (Fung 2007, 71). By this logic, celebrities who target the widest possible audienceship should abstain from mentioning political controversy. An example is Chou’s peer, Mandopop queen Chang Hui-mei, who was banned by the Beijing officials for a year because she sang the self-governed island’s anthem at anti-China President Chen Shui-bian’s inauguration ceremony in 2000 (Jennings 2007). Taiwan’s celebrities who are politically vocal may be shunned by the governments of the PRC and Taiwan. In contrast, Jay Chou’s consciously crafted persona is inclined to less politically laden

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nuances such as shared cultural traits or the personal realm of emotions such as love, loneliness, and heartbreak. Even though his songs and his image display ideas of individualism, personal freedom, and nonconformism, his version of defiance is “lighter” and “more subtly expressed” than certain musicians like the mainland Chinese rock singer Cui Jian (Lin 2013, 211–12). Suffice it to say, Chou has managed to avoid stepping on the red line—that of being appraised as using popular culture to “westernize, globalize, and pervert China in some way” (Fung 2007, 71). Such awareness of the latent pitfalls seems crucial, even in the fairly open environment of the Mandarin music industry, for the star to survive and thrive in the Chinese entertainment industry.

The “Almost”-Bilingual Persona in the Post“Kato” Period Jay Chou’s “Kato” personification shows his capacity to adroitly navigate within the Anglophone boundaries. Five years after his Hollywood debut, Chou successfully gained the contract for the blockbuster thriller, Now You See Me 2 (2016), directed by Jonathan Murray Chu, who also made the phenomenal Crazy Rich Asians (2018; see further discussion of the film in Chap. 1). Following the plot of the first installment in 2013, Now You See Me 2 depicts the Four Horsemen, who are forcibly recruited by a tech genius to pull off grand theft. Set in Macau, the so-called Eastern Las Vegas, the gambling-themed narrative is considered by critic Matt Zoller Seitz to be an Anglophone coupling of the Hong Kong action comedies of the 1980s and 1990s, best typified by the God of Gamblers series, starring Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau (Seitz 2016). This time, Jay Chou plays a supporting role as a Macanese magic shop proprietor named Li, a pun on the surname of Bruce Lee, revitalizing the Chou-Lee link akin to the one presented in The Green Hornet. The main cast is dominated by White performers including Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, and Lizzy Caplan. Jay Chou’s strategic, though minor, appearance is presumably helpful to the film’s targeting of a wider non-Anglophone market. Capitalizing on Chou’s cultural status in Mandopop, Now You See Me 2 renders Chou’s Mandarin song of the same title as the theme song, which is considered “groundbreaking” and “the film’s highlight” (Xi 2016). The soundtrack features a fusion of electronic, rap, Indian, and Chinese, as well as the singer’s familiar fluid voice and “mumbling”

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enunciation. This time, the high-profile “China Wind” is “internationalized,” as one YouTube user described it. Chou’s celluloid persona was coded in accordance with Hollywood’s long-established stereotypical Chinese or Asian image, which is often casually defined by linguistic abilities. One example cites the scene of the Horsemen’s first visit to Iong’s magic shop. Soon after the scene begins, Chou-as-Li emerges as a bilingual speaker, conversing in English with the Caucasian heroes and in Mandarin with his grandmother, or Bu Bu, personified by Tsai Chin, the veteran Chinese-born British actress who was cast in Wayne Wong’s 1993 The Joy Luck Club. At one point, Jesse Eisenberg’s Daniel speaks in English to Bu Bu, assisted by rough hand gestures. In turn, the old lady, in an indifferent manner, murmurs in her mother tongue. Li then clarifies: “She said just because you’re talking slowly and moving your hands doesn’t mean she can suddenly understand English.” Lula May, played by Lizzy Caplan, immediately clarifies, “So sorry, he’s racist.” Right after this exchange, Bu Bu reveals that Li and herself are members of the Eye, a secret organization of magicians, and that she is, in fact, able to comprehend and speak English. This scene mocks the mysterious and exotic portrayal of emigré Asians, ethnicizing vocal attributes and attitudes with the “easily identifiable foreignness” (Wong 2004). Hinting at chameleon-like mobility, Chou-as-Li demonstrates a surplus, rather than a lack, of spoken English, mediating between the English-speaking and Mandarin-speaking cultures. This lingual image on screen ushers in an evident shift in lingual orientation in Chou’s stardom, engendering malleable and slippery characteristics. As a Mandopop sensation who enjoys a vast fanbase in Asia, Chou’s charisma exhibits the resistant, rather than coalition, politics that impedes global Chinese identity construction. He once expressed his perceived indifference to global fame, which demanded his complicity in the politics of language use. In the 2003 Time Asia interview, Chou was asked about expanding his career in the United States. In his response, Chou seemed indifferent to learning English and unconcerned with the producers who beseech him to make a film (Drake 2003). In a later press interview in 2009, furthermore, Jay Chou was asked about the possibility of teaming up with the US hip hop group, the Black Eyed Peas. He decidedly replied, “If I have to sing in English, wow, it will take a lot of time …. If they don’t mind, I’ll sing in Chinese and they can sing in English. That would be a better match” (Reuters and AP 2009). He continued, “For the international market, you have to study English ….” Well cognizant of the rules

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of the game, Chou indicates a languid stance in adapting to an Anglophone star presence, or what I call an “almost” bilingual persona, which extends the “Chou Style” from music to film in certain ways. Hence, the procrastinated, if not resistant, approach to fame engenders a specific transnational star presence while appearing to be tamed in Chou’s post-“Kato” image in Hollywood. Alongside his growing visibility in Hollywood, Chou’s lingual image is accentuated by the media coverage pertaining to his marriage, which allegedly helped improve the singer-turned-actor’s proficiency in English. Reporters revealed in November 2014 the confirmed relationship of Jay Chou with Hannah Quinlivan, a Taiwanese model-actress who engineers a crossover profile. Born to a Chinese-Korean mother and an Australian father, Quinlivan, also known as Kun Ling at home, holds dual Taiwanese and Australian citizenship. Tabloids often focus on the fourteen-year age gap between the younger Quinlivan and the older Chou. In January 2015, the two celebrities got married, and the wedding quickly headlined Chinese- and English-language entertainment news (Fig. 4.4). Managed by the renowned celebrity wedding planner Sarah Haywood, the ceremony was held in Yorkshire and was dubbed by the Taiwanese press as “the wedding of the century” (York Press 2015). The spectacular event was kept secret from the public until Chou released photographs on Facebook, branding the couple as the subjects of the fairy-tale imaginary.

Fig. 4.4  Jay Chou and Hannah Quinlivan in their wedding (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3U7_D4aBZg)

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Chou’s English skills have continued to grow as a point of public attention after their marriage. Quinlivan’s personality is developing, especially with her recent casting in a couple of multilingual transnational action extravaganzas, S.M.A.R.T.  Chase (2017) and Skyscraper (2018), both involving an Asian cast of hybrid lineage. Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, Skyscraper is an American thriller set in Hong Kong, world-­famous for its skyscrapers, which casts the model-turned-actress alongside Singaporean American actor Chin Han. Quinlivan plays Xia, an assassin who works for a Scandinavian terrorist called Botha, a role that demands highoctane choreography and swift body movement from her. While reporters show interest in the fights Quinlivan performs, her English proficiency is at the center of discussion. See a YouTube video titled “Interview Hannah Quinlivan Skyscraper,” posted by Kinowetter, an entertainment website, on July 9, 2018 (Kinowetter 2018). In it, Quinlivan interacts with the host in her Australian-accented English with intelligence and poise. The clip has garnered 278,561 views and 542 comments. A majority of the comments, polarized on a spectrum of sympathy to scorn, point to her facility with English in terms of the range of vocabulary, intonation, accent, and manner. Praises of her English as if she is a native English speaker proliferate. Some users, moreover, jokingly said that she should “teach” her husband English so that he could be better qualified to work in Hollywood. Jay Chou has retained, if not recalibrated, his star presence in Hollywood as his English proficiency has resurfaced in the interactive discourse on social media. Chou reactivated his Instagram account in August 2017, and in a post dated October 12, 2017, he released a letter of support to his wife for her success in casting in Skyscraper only two days after she gave birth (Hsia 2017). As reflected in the running commentary, some fans acknowledged Chou’s improved English literacy, while some others doubted it, guessing it was Quinlivan who wrote for Chou. In the same post, Chou also explained that he changed his Instagram handle from “jay_chou” to “jaychou” to allow his Hollywood peers to easily identify him (Hsia 2017). In May 2020, Chou launched a self-branded travel show on Netflix—titled J-Style Trip—followed by his new musical attempt at a Cuban-flavored Latin-pop blend in his new number called “Mojito,” which went viral in the digital musical circuits (Tan 2020). Chou has expanded his star presence in the global media networks, showcasing how a Taiwanese sensation is turned into a global star. It attests that his vocal persona becomes a privileged site for constructing, interrogating, and rebranding the pop icon in the cultural markets across the Pacific.

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Notes 1. Since 2000, Chou has been the top-selling singer for eight consecutive years, with record sales of more than 30 million copies to date and music downloads exceeding those of his Western counterparts like Madonna, Rihanna, and Eminem. In 2004, Chou’s album Jasmine, released by Sony Music, sold 300,000 units, topping the sales lists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the PRC. The record of success continued in the following year with his album Chopin of November, which sold 2.5 million copies in Asia. In 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, he won the acknowledgment of Best-Selling Chinese Artist at the World Music Awards in Las Vegas, for the albums Common Jasmin Orange, Still Fantasy, and On the Run (WorldKings.org 2020), showing his fame in the Western pop scene. 2. Chou’s 2009 concert in Sydney involved the highest production cost and the largest audience, exceeding the concert by Beyoncé (Zhang 2017). 3. Other celebrities in Anglophone and Asian entertainment industries who have been on the show include Lady Gaga, Michelle Yeoh, and Big Bang. 4. “Lady” (Nianzi, 2000) is a song featured in his 2000 debut album. “East Wind” (Dong Feng Po, 2003) features an archetypal Chinese melody, partly performed with a Chinese pipa yet in R&B style. The lyrics connote melancholy and loneliness subtly, in a way recalling traditional Chinese poetry. “Fragrance of Rice” (Dao Xiang, 2008), a tune released in 2008, is another instance. A slow rap-like beat is juxtaposed with the sounds of nature, specifically cricket noises. 5. Tabloids have revealed Jay Chou’s parents’ divorce when he was fourteen, which resulted in his partially becoming an introvert in a single-parent family. The experience partly, yet significantly, shaped his tremendous interest in music. 6. Invoked as an alternative to the unconvincing and unsatisfying Chinese consciousness, the Taiwanese consciousness celebrates the cultural uniqueness of the Taiwanese people and opposes the KMT administration, which adopted Chineseness to secure its political privileges and legitimacy. 7. In 1992, the newly appointed Governor Song Chuyu, a mainlander, spoke some Mandarin-accented Taiwanese in his first appearance in the Assembly as a means to win the locals’ trust.

References Ang, Benson. 2018. Concert Review: Good Acoustics and Stunning Visuals at Jay Chou Gig. Straits Times, January 7. https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/ enter tainment/review-­g ood-­a coustics-­a nd-­s tunning-­v isuals-­a t-­j ay-­ chou-­concert.

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Apple Daily. 2018. The Claim of Taiwan Independence in the Golden Horse Award Made China Instantly Stop the Livestream. 金馬獎頒獎現「台獨」言論 中國直播嚇到即時暫停, November 18. https://tw.appledaily.com/new/ realtime/20181118/1468490/. Asianfanaticfans (blog). 2008. Vincent Fang Talks About “Chinese Flower Pot”, Defends Jay Chou’s Unclear Pronunciation. August 12. http://asianfanaticfans.blogspot.com/2008/08/vincent-­fang-­talks-­about-­chinese-­flower.html. Bo, Yin. 2017. The Past and Future of Chinese Hip-Hop | The Magnifier. Elephant Room: Make China Relatable website, August 16. http://elephant-­room. com/2017/08/16/chinesehiphop/. Chang, Huei-Yuan Belinda. 1997. A Theatre of Taiwaneseness: Politics, Ideologies, and Gezaixi. TDR 41 (2): 111. https://doi.org/10.2307/1146628. Chow, Yiu Fai, and Jeroen de Kloet. 2010. Blowing in the China Wind: Engagements with Chineseness in Hong Kong’s Zhongguofeng Music Videos. Visual Anthropology 24 (1–2): 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/0894946 8.2011.525492. Drake, Kate. 2003. Cool Jay. Time, March 3. http://content.time.com/time/ world/article/0,8599,2047401,00.html. Ellis, James. 2015. The Kato Show: Bruce Lee as the Green Hornet’s Sidekick. Newsweek, November 20. https://www.newsweek.com/bruce-­lee-­king-­fu-­ martial-­arts-­390811. Frank, Thomas. 1997. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fung, Anthony Y.H. 2007. Western Style, Chinese Pop: Jay Chou’s Rap and Hip-­ Hop in China. Asian Music 39 (1): 69–80. https://doi.org/10.1353/ amu.2007.0047. Hsia, Heidi. 2017. Jay Chou’s [sic] Amazes Fans with Long English Post. Yahoo! Lifestyle, October 12. https://sg.style.yahoo.com/jay-­chou-­apos-­amazes-­ fans-­062400733.html. Huang, Annie. 2011. Taiwan’s Jay Chou spices up ‘The Green Hornet.’ The San Diego Union-Tribune. January 27. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ sdut-­taiwans-­jay-­chou-­spices-­up-­the-­green-­hornet-­2011jan27-­story.html. Jeneration18. 2012. 周杰倫CNN專訪Jay Chou on CNN Talk Asia. YouTube video, 26:20. September 30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WhgeckEKos. Jennings, Ralph. 2007. Once Banned Taiwan Pop Star Re-emerges in China. Reuters, September 14. https://uk.reuters.com/article/life-­taiwan-­amei-­dc/ once-­banned-­taiwan-­pop-­star-­re-­emerges-­in-­china-­idUKTP8766320070913. Kamil, Asyraf. 2019. Mandopop King Jay Chou Is Again Spotify’s Most-Streamed Artiste in Singapore in 2019; Senorita Is Most-Streamed Song. Today (Singapore), December 3. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ m a n d o p o p -­k i n g -­j a y -­c h o u -­a g a i n -­s p o t i f y s -­m o s t -­s t r e a m e d -­a r t i s t e -­ singapore-­2019-­senorita-­most.

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Kinowetter. 2018. Interview Hannah Quinlivan Skyscraper. YouTube video, 4:48, July 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4qkFJaYfU. Lin, Wei-Hsin. 2013. Jay Chou’s Music and the Shaping of Popular Culture in China. In Popular Culture in Asia: Memory, City, Celebrity, ed. Lorna Fitzsimmons and John A. Lent. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Liu, Wei. 2008. Jay of All Trades. China Daily, July 31. http://www.chinadaily. com.cn/cndy/2007-­07/31/content_5446219.htm. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2011. Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions. Albany: State University of New York Press. McGuigan, Jim. 2009. Cool Capitalism. London: Pluto. Reuters and AP. 2009. Jay Chou in No Hurry for Global Fame. The Hollywood Reporter, January 22. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ jay-­chou-­no-­hurry-­global-­78102. Scholz, Chris. 2019. From Gen Y Finally to Gen Z. The Generation Z, April 2. https://the-­generation-­z.com/from-­geny-­finally-­to-­genz. Seitz, Matt Zoller. 2016. Now You See Me 2. Rogerebert.com, June 10. https:// www.rogerebert.com/reviews/now-­you-­see-­me-­2-­2016. Selzer, Manfred. 2006. Initial D. Asian Movie Web. http://www.asianmovieweb. com/en/reviews/initial_d.htm. Shackleton, Liz. 2004. Catching the Drift—Jay Chou Delivers the Goods as Road Race Ace. South China Morning Post, January 11. https://www.scmp.com/ article/440799/catching-­drift-­jay-­chou-­delivers-­goods-­road-­race-­ace. Smallwood, Karl. 2018. Bruce Lee Is Nobody’s Sidekick. Factfiend, January 26. http://www.factfiend.com/bruce-­lee-­nobodys-­sidekick/. Tan, Jou Teng. 2020. 5 Reasons Why Jay Chou Is Called the King of Mandopop. South China Morning Post, July 31. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/ s t y l e / c e l e b r i t y / a r t i c l e / 3 0 9 5 3 5 7 / 5 -­r e a s o n s -­w h y -­j a y -­c h o u -­k i n g -­ mandopop-­taiwanese-­superstar. Tu, Weiming. 1996. Cultural Identity and the Politics of Recognition in Contemporary Taiwan. The China Quarterly 148: 1115–1140. Teng, Pei-ju. 2018. Taiwan President Weighs In as Chinese Actor’s Statement at Golden Horse Awards Sparks Outcry. Taiwan News, November 18. https:// www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3578339. The World of Chinese. 2017. The Rap of China. July 11. https://medium.com/@ WorldofChinese/the-­rap-­of-­china-­1e2f4d94f596. Wallace, Lewis. 2009. Green Hornet Gets Its Kato: Asian Pop Star Jay Chou. Wired, July 8. https://www.wired.com/2009/08/green-­hornet-­gets-­its-­kato­asian-­pop-­star-­jay-­chou/. Weintraub, Steve “Frosty” 2011. Jay Chou Exclusive Video Interview the Green Hornet. Collider, January 10. https://collider.com/jay-­chou-­interview-­ green-­hornet/.

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Wong, Sau-ling. 2004. When Asian American Literature Leaves ‘Home’: On Internationalizing Asian American Literary Studies. In Crossing Oceans: Reconfiguring American Literary Studies in the Pacific, ed. Noella Brada-­ Williams and Karen Chow. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Worldkings—World Records Union. 2020. Common Jasmin Orange (Jay Chou): The Best-Selling Album in China. May 12. http://worldkings.org/news/ world-­b est-­a cademy/worldkings-­w orld-­b est-­a cademy-­c ommon-­j asmin­orange-­jay-­chou-­the-­best-­selling-­album-­in-­china. Xi, Wei. 2016. ‘Now You See Me 2’ Takes Aim at the Chinese Market. Global Times, June 23. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/990182.shtml. York Press. 2015. Jay Chou & Hannah Quinlivan Marry in Selby Abbey. January 19. https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/11732849.Jay_Chou___Hannah_ Quinlivan_marry_in_Selby_Abbey/. YouTube. 2011. The Green Hornet Interview—Jay Chou. Video, 6:00. January 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAg8qW6GggA. Zhang, Ju. 2017. Jay Chou: The Actor and ‘King of Asian Pop’ That Outsells Madonna and Beyonce. The Telegraph, April 16. https://www.telegraph.co. uk/music/artists/jay-­chou-­actor-­king-­asian-­pop-­outsells-­madonna-­beyonce/. Zhang, Luqing, Meng Zhaoqiang, and Tang Han. 2004. 新人類: 酷的一代 / Xin Ren Lei: Ku de Yi Dai. 民主與建設出版社. Beijing: Min Zhu Yu Jian She Chu Ban She. Zhou, Raymond. 2010. Ja(y)Ded Time Ahead. China Daily, July 1. https:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-­07/01/content_10050278.htm.

PART II

Sinophone Cinematic Space

CHAPTER 5

Tang Wei’s Stardom in and Beyond Sinophone Media Culture: Linguistic Versatility, Public Reception, Chinese-Korean Cultural Imagination

Introduction: The Rise to Fame of the Lust, Caution Heroine In a Straits Times (Singapore) report, the journalist quotes director Ang Lee, who discusses Tang Wei, the female lead of his Mandarin-speaking pan-Asian Lust, Caution (2007), “I don’t know if audiences will take to her. I just felt like she look[ed] like someone who would do such as [a] thing as Wang Jiazhi did …. She has a face that doesn’t sell here” (my emphasis) (Tan 2007). Elaborating on Lee’s remark, Roseanna Ng writes, “Odd though it may sound, I understood what he meant. His Wang Jiazhi would not be a cookie cutter of the current movie stars: no oval face, no big-eyed Barbie, no long-limbed willowy mannequin” (Ng 2007, 249). New York Times’ film critic Manohla Dargis echoed by remarking that it was precisely her ‘terribly ill suited’ physical comportment and unfamiliar facial beauty that added to the affective confusion of her cinematic performance, and thus to the erotic suspicion that sustains both the interest of Yi and our interest in her as spectators (Dargis 2008). Costarring with the A-list Hong Kong film actor Tony Leung Ciu-wai, Tang Wei, in her debut appearance, played a Shanghai-born undercover student activist named Wang Jaizhi who studies and sojourns in Hong Kong and the Japanese-­ occupied China during the Second World War1 (Fig. 5.1). The cluster of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_5

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Fig. 5.1  Tang Wei plays the Shanghai-born heroine in Lust, Caution (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)

professional responses corroborates Tang Wei’s appearance as an underrated quality in her celluloid presence, distinguishing her from her contemporaries like Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Fan Bingbing, who have attracted attention, both at home and abroad, primarily with their physical charisma and exotic allure. This, too, allows the lingual persona to emerge in the star construction of Tang. As an emerging star in Chinese cinema, Tang Wei navigates across various linguistic and cultural coordinates in potent and intriguing ways. After graduating from Beijing Film Academy with a directing major, Tang was discovered by Ang Lee to be the female lead of Lust, Caution. The film gained her overnight fame, due to not only her restrained yet poignant performance that established the acknowledgment of her as an art-house actress but also the explicit sex scenes that led to the PRC’s blacklist of her following the film’s release in 2007 (Yu 2014, 145).2 During her notorious two-year ban in the media, she returned and participated in a number of Hong Kong features, which helped to enhance her cross-the-border star identity. In 2010, she had newfound success with Late Autumn, an English-language Korea-US coproduction directed by Kim Tae-yong, whom Tang married four years later. Her screen persona in the transnational film facilitates an East Asian cultural imagination, gaining her a wide

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fan following in South Korea. In the mid-2010s, she worked in Sinophone filmmaking on an array of pan-Chinese films, challenging her star identity as a diaspora Chinese. As a native Mandarin speaker, she exhibits her multilingual competence in the Cantonese, English, and Korean languages, which strengthens her transnational currency. She is well known for her code-switching skill in her screen roles. As a Zhejiang province (southeastern China) native, she was able to speak Shanghaiese “graceful[ly]” and with “restraint” in Lust, Caution (Li 2007). She won the “all-around applause from Hong Kong audience” with her Cantonese-speaking performance in Crossing Hennessy (2010) (Wang 2014, 36). Moreover, she shows eloquence in English at international film festivals and in press interviews, while displaying her facility, though limited, for Korean. Commentators, in addition, attribute her audience rapport less to her looks than to her versatility with languages. Tang’s cross-lingual ability helps bolster an ingenious and talented public image that operates beyond the boundary of physical beauty, fueling the parameters of reinterpreting and reappraising her persona in multiple contexts within and beyond Sinophone cinematic culture. In view of the increasing popular attention given to Tang Wei’s multilingual flair, no parallel degree of attention is shown in critical discourse. Analyses of Lust, Caution have shown an emphasis on the visual configuration of the body and the discursive body politics animated by the performers. For example, Mila Zuo (2015) argues that Ang Lee adopts sexual performance, specifically the choreography of sex, to portray Japan’s occupation of China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, allowing one to understand history through movement and gesture. She also finds the film exemplary of how history is configured through instigating lived, physical intimacies with individuals (Zuo 2015, 42). Likewise, Susan Leigh Foster (1995) extrapolates, “To choreograph history, then, is first to grant that history is made by bodies, and then to acknowledge that all those bodies, in moving and in documenting their movements, in learning about past movement, continually conspire together and are conspired against” (10). In this light, many scholars focus on the three highly explicit and graphical sex scenes with Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi (Tony Leung Ciu-wai), in which the female body becomes a venue for contesting national identification and affective confusion (Zuo 2015, 58). As the lead actress, Tang Wei is responsible for the bodily labor that approximates the pleasures and pains of the sex act as much as possible through sexual acrobatics, distortions of bodies and facial expressions, and the involuntary, physiological markers

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of pleasure or pain on the actors’ bodies, such as Tang’s flushed red face and the visible sweat beads on both actors’ bodies (Williams 1999). These critical works emphasize the physical dimensions of Tang Wei’s screen presence, situating the character in the matrix of history, sexuality, and body politics (Zhu 2014, 2). However, to date, few studies focus on the linguistic persona of Tang Wei and its significance in the multilingual, multidialectal, and multicultural milieu of star construction and consumption. In order to fill this gap, this chapter aims to probe Tang Wei’s lingual-­ crossing performance, within and outside of the Sinophone space, and how it functions to propel her star mobility and crossover fandom. The chapter first discusses Tang Wei’s Cantonese-speaking screen identity and its extension to her offscreen life as a migrant to Hong Kong, a territory that incessantly contests identity, insinuating the mainland–Hong Kong complexity. An analysis of Tang’s translingual persona in Late Autumn follows—the film that gained her a wide following in South Korea and helped propel a Chinese-Korean imaginary in the realm of popular entertainment. The chapter then shifts to examine Tang’s performance in the Sinophone production A Tale of Three Cities, scrutinizing the narrative of rootlessness and the possibility of resuscitating the negotiation of the Sinophone identity. In so doing, this chapter demonstrates how Tang’s lingual versatility and fluid identity have contributed to her currency across borders in the network of Sinophone media cultures.

From a “Widow Migrant” to a “Quality Migrant”: Tang Wei’s Cantonese-Speaking Personae Tang Wei’s early celluloid personae helped construct her cross-border identity, reimagining the China–Hong Kong connection. Described as a “[s]pectacular career comeback” (Lee 2017) after the media ban by her home country, Crossing Hennessy helps construct Tang Wei’s image on Hong Kong screens (“Crossing” in the film title connoting the cross-­ border personality, whereas “Hennessy” refers to the Hennessy Road, a road in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai, an area that was under the government’s philistine and mundane urban renewal project and where the story is primarily set). The low-budget film was packaged in the genre of comedy melodrama, providing an early form of romantic-heroine archetype. Bill Kong, head of Edko Films and executive producer of Lust, Caution,

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decided to relaunch Tang with Crossing Hennessy by “presenting a brand new” (Irugnotmis 2010) image. The feature was scripted and directed by Ivy Ho, a local female film talent who also wrote for Peter Chan’s award-­ winning Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), a movie produced at the dawn of the city’s apocalyptic handover, depicting a pair of mainland Chinese migrants in Hong Kong who seek to move to America for a future. On the extradiegetic level, Crossing Hennessy coincides with a proliferation of Hong Kong–China coproductions. In a 2009 speech titled “The Outburst of Chinese Cinema,” Yu Dong, president of the Beijing Polybona Films Distribution Co. Ltd., astutely pointed out that the rise of mainland productions has led to a new era of Chinese cinema. He added, “Hong Kong filmmakers are commissioned to produce films of Mainland themes and stories” given the vast market potential (Chu 2015, 117). In this context, Crossing Hennessy is positioned as a Hong Kong production exhibited in China as an import film instead and premiered at the year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival, one of the territory’s major film events (Wang 2014, 36). As the female lead of Crossing Hennessy, Tang Wei offers a low-key performance of which her Cantonese articulation is a part. The urban drama depicts Tang Wei’s Oi Lin, a widow migrant from mainland China who has a romantic encounter with a local middle-aged man named Loy, played by Jacky Cheung. Cheung is the Cantopop king who has been providing occasional impressive appearances in an array of Hong Kong auteurs’ pictures spanning the pre- and post-Handover eras of Hong Kong, for instance, Wong Kar-wai’s As Tears Go By (1988), John Woo’s A Bullet in the Head (1989), Ann Hui’s July Rhapsody (2002), and Peter Chan’s Perhaps Love (2005). Tang Wei brings an appearance that radiates “a natural charisma,” a phrase coined by Screen Daily critic Mark Adams (2010), through her “simple and plain” (Dargis 2008) look on screen. Tang also speaks her own Cantonese throughout the film, a practice different from her mainland Chinese counterparts like Zhang Ziyi, Xu Jinglei, Zhou Xun, and Zhao Wei, the popular divas who are active in the film industries across the border and often use dubbing for their screen roles in Cantonese-­ speaking films because of their limited facility with the tongue. As a native Mandarin speaker, Tang speaks Cantonese in her own voice, vaunted as “close fidelity, though accented” (Anonymous 2008), while the accent is perceived as sensible primarily because it matches the character’s background. Critic James Marsh, furthermore, suggests that Tang “avoid[s] […] [the] omnipresent niggle in  local productions of sloppy audio

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dubbing” and provides a “pleasant surprise” to the viewers (2010). These responses facilitate the construction of Tang’s crossover identity, which is largely built on her accented, yet legitimate, articulations. Tang Wei’s Hong Kong–tied identity extends to the offscreen sphere, signposting her quest for cross-border publicity. Following Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun as well as pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi, Tang Wei became a Hong Kong resident through the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (QMAS) in 2008, one year prior to the filming of Crossing Hennessy. First announced by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) in 2006, almost a decade after the Handover, the QMAS allegedly functions to strengthen Hong Kong’s economic competitiveness in the global market (Immigration Department 2020). The scheme targets exceptional talent and professionals including entertainers, Olympic medalists, and Nobel Prize winners from mainland China, exempting them from regular residency application requirements (Immigration Department 2020). The new residency not only enables Tang Wei to work in a relatively censorship-free market (Lee 2017) but also positions her in the elitist migrant discourse, highlighting her mainland Chinese origin and concomitant engagement to Hong Kong, both geographically and culturally. As a metropolis that is de facto a place of transit, Hong Kong’s population consists of descendants of migrants whose arrivals were identified in an array of major migration waves. In cultural studies, migration of newcomers is often associated with marginalization and vulnerability (Storm 2008). Distinctively, Tang’s migrant image appears less acquiescent than dominant, less assailable than resilient, displaying the strategic use of the star-migrant discourse in the border-­ crossing milieu. A decade after her acquisition of Hong Kong residency, Tang Wei was appointed the ambassador of the QMAS in 2018, promoting the image of the Special Administrative Region to the public in mainland China. Tang’s appointment capitalizes on her multilingual flair, which is reappropriated and repurposed in an array of publicity materials. Among others, a series of promotional videos titled “Make Your Dreams Come True” are the key audiovisual reprisal of a China–Hong Kong experience configured by global capitalism (Immigration Department 2019). The short film exhibits, if not exploits, Hong Kong’s cityscape, articulating notions of connection, mobility, and fluidity while tendering the city’s status as a multicultural and multiethnic community. The video marshals a plethora of clichéd visuals including spectacular skyscapes, trademark architecture, and the

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historic tramway of Hong Kong, juxtaposed with the fast-shifting images of various iconic cities in China. The visual composition collapses the boundary between Hong Kong as a global city and Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region of China, advancing an image in the Hong Kong–China–the World nexus. The “Make your dreams come true” video was made with three versions in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and Tang Wei dubbed her own voice for the scripted narrative in all three languages, showcasing her capacity to steer and mediate a compound of linguistic and cultural orientations. The trilingual productions imply the intricate identity politics embedded in the “bi-literacy and tri-lingualism” system advocated after the territory’s reversion to China. Since 1997, schoolchildren in Hong Kong need to learn Putonghua (modern standard Chinese) in addition to English as part of the curriculum, contrasting with the colonial days that made learning Putonghua not mandatory. Official discourses assert that the change of the educational requirement uncovers the new identity tied to China (Immigration Department 2020). This assertion resulted in the 2014 anti-PMI (Putonghua as the medium of instruction) movement, loosely as a repercussion of the 2010 pro-Cantonese campaign that took place in Guangzhou, a Cantonese-speaking region in southern China in which approximately half of the population speak Cantonese as their first language (Chu 2018, 92). Anti-moral and anti–national education demonstrations then emerged in Hong Kong. The gist of the campaigns worked against the monolithic nature of Mandarin as a “standard” Chinese, rejecting the myth of Putonghua as the only spoken Chinese and Cantonese as a dialect. Against such a backdrop, the video configured Tang Wei, a celebrity with an origin in mainland China, as an “intrusive” presence in the Cantonese-speaking culture in Hong Kong, ostensibly reconciling the gap between the two linguistic cultures and portending a China–Hong Kong rapport. Providing an accented voiceover that is laden with confidence and eloquence, she embodies the dialectics of mainlander versus Hongkonger that her persona recodifies—the myth of becoming a Hongkonger aspired to by many mainland Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s. What she exemplifies, instead, is “becoming a mainlander who resides in Hong Kong,” without rescinding the colonial rhetoric that Hong Kong is the window to the world. It, nonetheless, perpetuates that rhetoric in a modified form, postulating that Hong Kong struggles to be a more viable player in the global arena by connecting with China.

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Toward an East Asian Imagination: Tang Wei’s “Inarticulate” Persona in Late Autumn and Her Reception by the Korean-Speaking Public Tang Wei’s linguistic persona is further complicated as she expands her presence from the Chinese-language cultural scene to South Korean popular entertainment. Her championing of commercial potential and fan recognition in South Korea was achieved mainly through Late Autumn (2011), directed and written by Kim Tae-yong. As “one of the most influential narratives in the history of South Korean cinema” (Yu 2014, 144), the story of Late Autumn has been adapted to film three times, in 1966, 1975, and 1982. The scripts of these three versions were composed by the same screenwriter, Kim Cho-hon. The films cast South Korea’s established personalities as the female lead: Moon Jung-suk, Kim Ji-mee, and Kim Hye-Ja. Therefore, it was exceptional for Tang Wei, a Chinese-born actress who speaks limited Korean, to win the female lead role. Costarring with Korean actor Hyun Bin, Tang Wei personifies a Chinese American woman named Anna who is burdened with a traumatic past of being abused by her husband, resulting in his murder and, thus, her jail term. Her performance won her the Baeksang Arts Award; she was the first foreign performer to gain this award, alongside ten other honors for acting in South Korea. The movie became a box office hit both domestically and overseas and was the highest-grossing Korean film released in China. Late Autumn is an exemplary production that emerges against the backdrop of the rise of East Asian cinema. The past two decades have witnessed a new mode of pan-Asian filmmaking defined by cross-casting, coproductions, and transborder directing in Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea (Yu 2014, 143). In this context, China-­ Korean coproductions increasingly feature rising Chinese celebrities who possess broad pan-Asian appeal. Indicative examples are Cecilia Cheung in the romance-drama, Failan (directed by Song Hae-sung, 2001); Zhang Ziyi in the historical epic, The Warriors (Kim Sung-su, 2001); Shu Qi in the gangster feature, My Wife Is a Gangster 3 (Cho Jin-gyu, 2006); and Gao Yuanyuan in the female-centric melodrama, A Good Rain Knows (Hur Jin-ho, 2009). Following the trend, Late Autumn cast Tang Wei, a nascent face in this regional network, which, otherwise, suggests novel nuances of imagining Chinese femininity in the global expansion of Korean cinema.

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Packaged as a crime thriller–romance with a transnational appeal, Late Autumn is positioned in the multilingual space that encompasses English, Korean, and Mandarin, requiring its performers to switch between tongues. The romantic encounter in the film is set in Seattle (loosely or arbitrarily mirroring the famous 1993 Hollywood romance, Sleepless in Seattle), and the two stars, Tang Wei and Hyun Bin, do not speak each other’s language and communicate in a foreign tongue, English, for most of the film. In contrast, the mother tongues of the hero and the heroine are presented to a limited degree, not to mention that Tang’s Mandarin dialogues are repurposed as a mnemonic cue for what is repressed (Yu 2014, 36–37). Although some English-language media like the Hollywood Reporter perceived “awkwardness of hearing English dialog by two leads who are obviously not native speakers” (Lee and AP 2010), the narrative treatment seems justifiable in the diegesis. It is, arguably, the director’s strategy to shift the setting from South Korea to the United States, tendering an interethnic romance. Tang Wei’s lingual persona provides an alternative model of transnational acting. Sabrina Yu has argued that Tang adopts an “unspoken and minimalist acting style” (2014, 141), which renders deep-rooted East Asian aesthetic and cultural traditions (Fig. 5.2). Her vocal performance, whether unemotional or passionate, is defined neither by her command of English nor by the quantities of words spoken, but through her use of nonverbal vehicles such as meter, pitch, tone, and speed of delivery (141). Specifically, this contrasts with Hollywood-centric film acting, where realist acting is the norm and a good command of English is expected as a presumed lingua franca in transnational performance. Inspecting the narrative closely, moreover, one notes that a substantial portion of Tang’s screen performance is marked by silence. The limited lines of dialogue are often restricted to basic and terse expressions like “yes,” “I know,” and “why” (Yu 2014, 147). In three scenes of emotional outbursts, for instance, Tang speaks fairly long lines that are not articulated in English at all. Even for the English-speaking dialogue, language is used in a metaphorical or dramatic manner (ibid., 148). Put another way, Tang retains a linguistically reserved presence that makes English nonfunctional (ibid.). In this manner, Tang’s performative persona appears parallel to the screen acting of the silent era, when actors did not necessarily depend on dialogue to act. This nonfunctional attribute of the English language in Late Autumn matches Tang Wei’s offscreen existence in the South Korean popular scene, where proficiency in the Korean language seems irrelevant or

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Fig. 5.2  Tang Wei’s minimalist-style performance in Late Autumn (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)

redundant. In most of her public appearances in South Korea, Tang speaks in English rather than Korean. Yet Tang unusually fulfills the role of promoting Korean culture. For instance, in 2012, Tang was an honorary ambassador for the twentieth anniversary of China-ROK diplomatic relations (Chung 2015). She was also the hostess of the opening ceremony of the Seventeenth Busan International Film Festival, being the first non-­ Korean celebrity for the position in the festival’s history (Haps 2012). Two years later, Tang won the prestigious Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI) award, alongside the Korean speed skating sensation, Shim Suk-hee, for her endeavor to improve Korea’s image to the world (Jung 2014). This seems intriguing: official publicity by CICI once acknowledged that the Korean language is a stepping stone for promoting Korea due to the global demand to learn the language (Im 2018). Comparing with the latest awardees in 2019, YouTubers Josh Carrott and Ollie Kendal, also known as Korean Englishmen, who introduce Korea’s culinary cultures in fluent Korean language, Tang Wei acts as a spokesperson without relying on how much or how well she speaks the language.3 Tang’s ambassadorial appeal shows linguistic limits, which, paradoxically, function as culturally productive for her stardom.

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The popularity of Tang Wei in South Korea culminated in her marriage to the director of Late Autumn, Kim Tae-yong. In August 2014, Tang Wei’s agency released several wedding pictures on Weibo and announced the filmmaker-actress union (Hsia 2014). Furthering Tang’s screen appeal, the wedding pictures portrayed the actress in “an unadorned look,” according to the Straits Times (2014), wearing a Vera Wang gown with simple design (Fig. 5.3). Sources, moreover, reveal that a private and simple ceremony was held at the house of the late border-crossing director Ingmar Bergman, on the remote island of Fårö in Sweden, echoing the

Fig. 5.3  Tang Wei’s “unadorned” look in her wedding gown (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK-­GYIqABSg)

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film-related profiles of the newlywed. Fans welcomed the news, and Tang Wei, who was once foreign both culturally and linguistically, now becomes highly identified and idolized, being hailed as “daughter-in-law” to the Korean public. The relationship evokes a kind of fantasy, asserting Tang’s integrity as a Chinese star of cross-cultural interest. Realizing interethnic love (mirroring the “Late Autumn” narrative) seems like something more than romance. The marriage is a site of star power in the intricate dynamics of geopolitics and cultures. Contemporary history witnessed the Chinese-Korean relationship that has been entangled in the web of historical, economic, and cultural forces. After the iron curtain was lifted through the Korean War in the early 1950s, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan on the one hand and the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Mongolia on the other were positioned in an antagonistic confrontation that made a consensus of ideas and ideologies almost impossible (Sun 2012, 260). Since then, official contact between China and South Korea was absent until the end of the Cold War. Reciprocal interactions between Korea and China were increasingly evidenced in the 1990s and the following decade, with diplomatic relations established in 1992. More recent international and regional interplay shows that the Republic of Korea is involved in Sino-US relations and China’s relations with North Korea. Economically, China has been South Korea’s top trading partner in the second decade of the twenty-first century. In 2010, exports to China made up one-quarter of the total export of South Korea (Sun 2012, 264–69). In addition to the political and economic issues, the rise and growth of Korean Wave, or hallyu, has been phenomenal and significant. First driven by the expansion of K-pop and K-drama, hallyu has taken many Asian countries including China by storm since the 1990s. Young consumers in China indulge in K-pop, fashion, and the lifestyle of pop stars, whereas senior Chinese citizens are enthralled by Korean dramas that celebrate Confucian values and traditional family dynamics. With the proliferation of online social networks and online video-sharing conduits, texts about Korean entertainment have reached a sizable viewership across borders. K-dramas, made available via streaming platforms, offer subtitles in various languages. K-pop music videos have become ubiquitous on YouTube and Vimeo, mobilizing the global fad since around 2005. In such a volatile picture, the marriage of Tang Wei and Kim Tae-yong is intriguing to illustrate how popular stardom reinvigorates the Sino-­ Korean cultural imaginary that burgeoned after the 1990s but began to

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decline after a decade. Intellectuals and audiences often perceive the Tang-­ Kim marriage as a means to propel cultural exchange and understanding between China and Korea. Fan Xiaoqing, a Chinese film scholar who has lived in South Korea for several years, notes, “Because of the news [the marriage of Tang and Kim], the public will get to know more about South Korea and its people rather than the stereotypes …. For example, many South Koreans that I met have a good impression of China. In South Korea, especially in Seoul, more and more students are learning Chinese” (Lin 2014). A wave of immigration to South Korea for marriage happened at the end of 2013, shortly before Tang’s marriage (Lin 2014). Demographics show that a majority of the migrants were women, and among them, Chinese made up the largest numbers, followed by Vietnamese, Japanese, and Filipinos (ibid.). In fact, Tang and Kim are not the only case of Chinese celebrities getting married to talents of the South Korean entertainment industry. To cite a couple of examples: Taiwan pop singer Valen Hsu was engaged to Choi Jae-sung, the senior manager at South Korea’s top music agency SM Entertainment; and the South Korean actress Park Chae-rim got married to Chinese actor Gao Ziqi when they worked together on a Chinese TV series, which happened in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The phenomenon of interethnic marriages of both cultural elites and grassroots is partly accounted for by the cultural proximity between China and South Korea and that both cultures focus on such Confucian values as filial piety and family-oriented relationships. It can be considered as part of the outcome of the vibrancy of hallyu and the shifting patterns of regional consciousness in East Asia, in which star power is remarkable. Tang’s transnational credentials are enhanced by her evident English flair, allowing her persona to occupy cross-cultural and cross-linguistic frontiers. Journalists are keen on spreading the news about Tang Wei’s exile in London after China’s blacklist, where she got the chance to learn drama and polish her English (The Telegraph 2011).4 Tang’s superb command of English has been demonstrated at international film events. For instance, when Peter Chan’s 2011 martial arts picture Wu Xia, which cast Tang Wei as the female lead, had a premiere at the Sixty-Fourth Cannes Film Festival, she exhibited her fluent English in press interviews. As the interviews were transposed to social media, they attracted massive acknowledgment of Tang’s language competence from users.5 Linguists, furthermore, have used one of the Cannes interviews (Pegasuswill 2011) as a showcase of how Chinese-speaking celebrities communicate in English in

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particular circumstances, illuminating Chinese-English code-switching in the structure of spoken interaction, according to the comments on YouTube entries. One study shows that comments discussed Tang’s language use and its appropriateness to her social and cultural status (Benson 2015, 93).6 Her language use helps to create her polysemic public image in the nexus of language, media culture, and pedagogy. Tang’s English ability can, furthermore, cash in on the English-learning craze in China. In July 2017, she was selected to be the spokesperson of “Hitalk,” an adaptive learning brand tailored for adult English learners, launched by Hujiang EdTech, China’s leading online education company (Hujiang EdTech 2017). The new brand targets professionals who are financially stable, tech-savvy, and pursuing a higher level of cultural or linguistic capital. This validates Tang’s exquisite and sharp-witted star caliber, which is subsumed in her linguistic proficiency, evidently shown within and across China, East Asia, and the transnational arena.

A Tale of Three Cities, Rootlessness, and the Resuscitation of Tang Wei’s Sinophone Persona Tang Wei has been active in Sinophone cinema in the post–Late Autumn period. A highlight of her cinematic performance so far came in 2011, a so-called Tang Wei year, in which she participated in three pan-Asian productions (Zhu 2014, 1). Besides Late Autumn, Tang performed in Peter Chan’s Wu Xia, with iconic border-crossers Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Jingle Ma’s Speed Angels, with Hong Kong’s Cecilia Cheung and Taiwan’s Rene Liu. Four years later, Tang’s prolific acting career was evident when she was cast as the female lead in Fang Yuan’s Only You, Johnnie To’s Office, Raman Hu’s Master Hunt, and Mabel Cheung’s A Tale of Three Cities (all 2015). As a China–Hong Kong coproduction under the high-profile partnership of IM Global and China’s Huayi Brothers since 2013 (Tartaglione 2014), A Tale of Three Cities aspired to the markets both in and outside mainland China. It was promoted alongside Love on the Cloud (2014), starring Angelababy and Chen He; Women Who Flirt (2015), featuring Huang Xiaoming and Zhou Xun; and Abducted (2015), with Andy Lau and Jing Boran, as vehicles of the corporation’s transnationalizing projects. Scripted by Hong Kong–born Mabel Cheung and her longtime collaborator, Alex Law, A Tale of Three

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Cities is inspired by the director’s 2003 documentary film called Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and his Lost Family, a screen portrayal of the kung fu megastar’s family history. Based on the love story of Chan’s parents in real life, A Tale of Three Cities depicts the star-crossed affair between Chen Yuerong (Tang Wei), a strong-willed widow who traveled from Anhui in eastern China to Hong Kong to seek her lover named Fang Daolong (Lau Ching-wan), an anticommunist hired gun who went into exile in Hong Kong after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 (Fig. 5.4). Set against the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution, the narrative downplays the politically laden plotlines, purportedly shadowed by the fray over the production of the director’s 1997 historical epic The Soong Sisters. Telling a story of the troubled history of China in the first decades of the twentieth century, the 1997 film met grave censorship by the Chinese authorities (Tooze n.d.). Its theatrical release in China and Hong Kong was postponed for more than a year, following heavy Beijing-imposed cuts (Elley 1997). Unlike the previous film, A Tale of Three Cities skipped the censorship quibbles and is packaged as a war-time romance epic, with its publicity stressing the film’s behind-the-­ scenes inspiration.

Fig. 5.4  Tang Wei plays a diasporic widow in A Tale of Three Cities (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXweV9_0AQ)

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Set in three cities—Wuhu, Shanghai, and Hong Kong—A Tale of Three Cities encompasses the highly diasporic characters who crossed over the dialectal boundaries of Eastern Mandarin, Northern Mandarin, and Cantonese. The hero and the heroine meet in Wuhu, a city in Anhui Province in eastern China in the 1930s, separate in Shanghai in the 1940s, and finally reunite in Hong Kong in the 1950s. According to Mabel Cheung, a shift of dialects is both necessary and strategic to emphasize the change of place in the diegesis (Asian CineVision 2016), revealing the close ties of language and space. Paradox emerges because the shift of places is not indicated through subtitles but via voice dubbing. The lack of synchronicity, in terms of dubbed voice and subtitling, leaves out non-­ Chinese-­speaking viewers, warranting the legibility of partial viewership. Furthermore, dubbing is applied to the male lead, the Cantonese-speaking Lau Ching-wan. The dubbed role is characterized by an attempt to acquiesce to the normative status of Mandarin Chinese, which suppresses the heterogeneous or even delocalized agency. However, as Cheung remarks, applying accent-free Mandarin to the hero (and thus the voice dubbing) is not a concern in delivering a convincing performance because in real life, Lau-as-Fang speaks “de-standardized” Mandarin with a blend of Shandong (northwestern China) and Anhui (eastern China) accents, resonating with Fang’s unverified origin (Qu 2015). Cheung also elaborates that, during his stay in Hong Kong, Fang spoke in a tongue that sounded more like Mandarin than Cantonese, subjecting his speaking persona to a kind of incomprehensibility and ambiguity. Therefore, the dubbed Mandarin articulations merely function as communicative cues, distancing Lau’s performance from the linguistic referent that manifests “impure,” hybridized utterances of Mandarin Chinese, while putting at stake the authenticity of his star appeal. In other words, the dubbing repurposes the practice of dubbing and de-reifies the code-switching enunciation, which serves neither a performative purpose nor for authenticating the persona. Beyond Lau Ching-wan’s performance, the Mandarin that Tang Wei speaks is not necessarily standard, echoing her dialectal performance in Lust, Caution. Rendering the “alter-centering” approach in the Sinophone cinema, as Yiman Wang (2014) theorizes, Tang Wei’s performance in Lust, Caution treads across dialectal territories of Shanghaiese, Southern Mandarin, and Cantonese (36). This crossover persona suggests not only the thesis of region-specific heterogeneous articulations under the rubric of Mandarin Chinese but also a resurgence of questions about the actress’ border-crossing status. As Tang has expressed in press interviews, she

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refuses to consider Mandarin Chinese her mother tongue (Bastille Post 2015), fitting with her culturally and linguistically diverse background. Born and raised in China’s southeastern Zhejiang, she studied in Beijing when young and later gained citizenship in Hong Kong before getting married to a South Korean man. Thus, Tang embodies a highly mobile life that bolsters her versatile and equivocal image. Reflecting on her rootlessness in life, she once recounted, Like me, many mainland Chinese are rootless …. When I was young, it was strange that I seldom met my kin. After I moved to Beijing, I studied drama and learned the language of the others. In fact, from the beginning I acted with Mandarin language which may not be easier than with Cantonese. I feel that I do not possess a mother tongue. My root has disappeared and I am always a foreigner. (my translation and emphasis) (Bastille Post 2015)

Refusing the Beijing-centric perspective of considering language and culture, Tang considers Beijing-based Mandarin as a tongue of “the others.” Like the heroine she personifies, Tang moves from one place to another as a diasporic subject whose presence is regarded as foreign even in her native country. Her image defies a root-based, centripetal perspective of “Chinese culture” (Tu 1991, Shih 2011), implying a conception of home and belonging that is traced by a border-crossing route. The absence of roots and unavailability of a homogenous version of mother tongue, therefore, provide Tang with an opportunity to exhibit heterogeneous or even delocalized agency in reimagining China.

Notes 1. Notwithstanding the controversy evoked around Lust, Caution, Tang’s impressive performance “already made her an Asian movie-star to rival Zhang Ziyi” (Bradshaw 2008). 2. Lust, Caution was censored and became controversial mainly due to its explicit sex scenes. As the female lead, Tang Wei is the first Chinese performer whose film appearances were embargoed because of the portrayal of excessive sexuality, not to mention the nuanced Japanese stance (BBC 2008). Other actresses such as Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing have performed sex scenes and subsequently incurred public censure, yet they were never subjected to punishment and a ban order by China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT). Furthermore, Lust, Caution’s director, Ang Lee, was spared blacklisting purportedly because he

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is an artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics. The disparity of the treatment of Ang Lee and Tang Wei is suggestive of power politics related to gender, which lies beyond the scope of this study. 3. These online personalities created hype through their own channel, which attracts more than 3 million subscribers. 4. Tabloids also underscore Tang Wei’s choice to perform in a Shakespearean play as her graduation project during her study of drama in London. 5. In the video, titled 汤唯戛纳英語訪談 [Tang Wei in Cannes] (http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=pMJHT3t4Pc4), the words immediately draw viewers’ attention to its language focus. 6. Here I quote one thread of user exchange, which reads: A: To be honest she’s speaking neither British nor American accent. It’s still very PRC-ish, but it’s great enough. There’s no need to imitate any accent just to make yourself sound professional. B: I can’t agree more, accent does not matter, Elegance matters.

References Adams, Mark. 2010. Crossing Hennessy. Screen Daily, March 22. https://www. screendaily.com/crossing-­hennessy/5011978.article. Anonymous. 2008. Tang Wei neng shuo yue hu ying duozhong yuyan; guangao shenjia da liuweishu 湯唯能說粵沪英多種語言廣告身價達6位數 [Tang Wei Can Speak Multiple Languages Including Cantonese, Shanghai Dialect and English; Comprehension for Her Commercial Has Reached Six Digits]. Diongna kuaibao [Southeast Newspaper], January 9. Asian CineVision. 2016. Interview with Mabel Cheung and Alex Law of A TALE OF THREE CITIES.  August 6. https://www.asiancinevision.org/ interview-­mabel-­cheung-­alex-­law-­tale-­three-­cities/. Bastille Post. 2015. Tang Wei Drifted Around and Tells Her Suffer from Rootless 湯唯四處漂泊 道盡無根之苦, September 4. https://www.bastillepost.com/ hongkong/article/810310-­湯唯四處漂泊-­道盡無根之苦. Benson, Phil. 2015. Commenting to Learn: Evidence of Language and Intercultural Learning in Comments on Youtube Videos. Language Learning & Technology 19 (3): 88–105. Bradshaw, Peter. 2008. Lust, Caution. The Guardian, January 4. https://www. theguardian.com/film/2008/jan/04/worldcinema.drama3. Chu, Yiu-wai. 2015. Toward a New Hong Kong Cinema: Beyond Mainland– Hong Kong Co-Productions. Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9 (2): 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2014.994352. ———. 2018. Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

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Chung, Ah-young. 2015. Tang Wei Connects Cultures through Films. Korea Times, January 12. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/12/ 719_171600.html. Dargis, Manohla. 2008. A Cad and a Femme Fatale Simmer. New York Times, January 6. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/arts/16iht-­28lust. 9258477.html. Elley, Derek. 1997. The Soong Sisters. Variety, March 15. https://variety. com/1997/film/reviews/the-­soong-­sisters-­1200449222/. Foster, Susan Leigh. 1995. Choreographing History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Haps. 2012. BIFF News: Tang Wei to Host Opening Ceremony. Haps Magazine Korea, September 7. https://www.hapskorea.com/biff-­news-­tang-­wei-­host-­ opening-­ceremony/. Hsia, Heidi. 2014. Tang Wei Releases Wedding Photos, Announces Marriage. Yahoo News, August 20. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/tang-­wei-­releases-­ wedding-­photos-­announces-­marriage-­093100235.html. Hujiang EdTech. 2017. Hujiang EdTech Launches New Adaptive Learning Brand Hitalk for Adult English Learners. PR Newswire (press release), July 27. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-­releases/hujiang-­edtech-­launches-­new-­ adaptive-­learning-­brand-­hitalk-­for-­adult-­english-­learners-­300495287.html. Im, Eun-byel. 2018. Cici Announces 2019 Award Winners. Korea Herald, December 11. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=2018121 1000642. Immigration Department. 2019. Quality Migrant Admission Scheme—Make Your Dreams Come True—Script (Audio Description). Hong Kong government website, April 23. https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/multimedia/av-­clippings/ QMAS_short_video.html. ———. 2020. Quality Migrant Admission Scheme | Immigration Department. Hong Kong government website. https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/services/ visas/quality_migrant_admission_scheme.html. Accessed 15 May 2020. Irugnotmis. 2010. ‘Crossing Hennessy,’ Will Tang Wei Cross Back to the Mainland Market? Blog, January 18. https://iurgnotmis.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/ crossing-­hennessy-­will-­tang-­wei-­cross-­back/. Jung, Celena. 2014. Tang Wei Wins CICI Award for Improving Korea’s Image to the World. Korea Bizwire, December 24. http://koreabizwire.com/ tang-­wei-­wins-­cici-­award-­for-­improving-­koreas-­image-­to-­the-­world/26937. Lee, Maggie. 2017. Tang Wei’s Spectacular Career Comeback after Being Banned in China. Los Angeles Times, August 25. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-­ca-­mn-­tang-­wei-­china-­20170825-­story.html. Lee, Maggie, and AP. 2010. Late Autumn -- Film Review. Hollywood Reporter, October 14. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/late-­autumn-­film-­ review-­30160.

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Li, Dahan. 2007. A Journey of Ang Lee from Brokeback Mountain to Lust, Caution. 一山走過又一山 : 李安・色戒・斷背山. Taipei: Ru guo chu ban she 如果出版社. Lin, Xu. 2014. More Chinese Celebs and South Korean Stars Are Getting Hitched—Here’s Why. The Star (Malaysia), August 11. https://www.thestar. com.my/lifestyle/people/2014/08/11/more-­c hinese-­c elebs-­a nd-­s outh­korean-­stars-­are-­getting-­hitched-­heres-­why/. Marsh, James. 2010. Hkiff 2010: Crossing Hennessy Review. Screenanarchy, March 22. https://screenanarchy.com/2010/03/hkiff-­2010-­crossing-­ hennessy-­review.html. Ng, Roseanna. 2007. Mai-Tai-Tai, Pleased to Meet You! In Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film, ed. Ailing Zhang and James Schamus, 240–249. New York: Pantheon Books. Pegasuswill. 2011. Tang Wei’s English Interview in Cannes 湯唯戛納英語訪談. YouTube video, 5:19, May 16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= pMJHT3t4Pc4. Qu, Haoran 翟浩然. 2015. A Tale of Three Cities Talks About Love in Troubled Times: Tang Wei Believes Sean Liu’s Pair of Hands 三城記談亂世情 湯唯相信 青雲的一隻手. Mingpao, September 18. http://www.mingpaocanada.com/ tor/htm/News/20150918/wea1_r.htm. Shih, Shu-mei. 2011. The Concept of the Sinophone. PMLA 126 (3): 709–718. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2011.126.3.709. Storm, Carsten. 2008. Dominant Migrants in Taiwan: Migrant Discourse, Settlement, and Identity. China Information 22 (1): 39–65. https://doi. org/10.1177/0920203x07087721. Straits Times (Singapore). 2014. Chinese Star Tang Wei Releases Her Wedding Pictures. August 19. https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/ chinese-­star-­tang-­wei-­releases-­her-­wedding-­pictures. Sun, Ge. 2012. Reconceptualizing ‘East Asia’ in the Post-Cold War Era. In The Trans-Pacific Imagination: Rethinking Boundary, Culture and Society, ed. Naoki Sakai and Hyon Joo Yoo, 253–278. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific. Tan, Dawn Wei. 2007. Caution: Lee Ang at Work; a Stickler for Detail. Straits Times, February 6. Tartaglione, Nancy. 2014. Cannes: IM Global, China’s Huayi Brothers Pact for International Sales. Deadline, May 15. https://deadline.com/2014/05/ cannes-­im-­global-­chinas-­huayi-­brothers-­pact-­for-­international-­sales-­730826/. The Telegraph. 2011. Profile: Tang Wei. May 13. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/8511775/Profile-­Tang-­Wei.html. Tooze, Gary. n.d. Aka ‘Song Jia Huang Chao’—Literal Translation ‘Soong Family Dynasty’. DVDBeaver.com. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview2/ soongsisters.htm. Accessed 9 Sept 2020. Tu, Wei-ming. 1991. Cultural China: The Periphery as Centre. Daedalus 120 (2): 1–32.

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Wang, Jian. 2014. Shaping China’s Global Imagination: Branding Nations at the World Expo. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, Linda. 1999. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yiman, Wang. 2014. Alter-Centring Sinophone Cinema. In Sinophone Cinemas, ed. Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo, 26–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Yu, Sabrina. 2014. Film Acting as Cultural Practice and Transnational Vehicle: Tang Wei’s Minimalist Performance in Late Autumn (2011). Transnational Cinemas 5 (2): 141–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/20403526.2014.955669. Zhu, Xinchen. 2014. The Construction of Tang Wei as a Star in Contemporary China: Performance, Context, Reception, and Politics. MA dissertation, National University of Singapore, Singapore. https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/48735345.pdf. Zuo, Mila. 2015. Trans/National Chinese Bodies Performing Sex, Health, And Beauty in Cinema and Media. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9rk8m7n0.

CHAPTER 6

Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Bi-ethnic, Multilingual Screen Persona

Introduction: A Star That Can Hardly Be Defined Culturally and Linguistically As an A-list Asia-based actor (Drake 2003), Takeshi Kaneshiro engineers a star profile that has crossed ethnic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Born to a Japanese father and a Taiwanese mother, he is famous for his assets of bi-ethnic lineage and an exceptionally “gorgeous and cool” look (Sogabe 1998, 20). His facial features, such as oval-shaped eyes, thick eyebrows, straight nose, and thin lips, make his face exceptionally photogenic, branding him as a male diva on Hong Kong and Japanese screens. He engineers a mystique that is the center of fan adoration and engagement, yet one can hardly place him in a definite cultural category. Moreover, his seeming mixture of both Eastern and Western facial features (Wang 2001, 92) also results in screen cosmopolitanism that elevates him to be the ubiquitous celebrity endorser of international brands, such as Emporio Armani, Prada, Citizen, Toyota, Sony, BioTherm, Pocari Sweat, and JAA, that endeavor to explore and exploit Asian markets. He is regularly branded as a fashion icon, characterized by a rich sense of modernity. Epithets such as “the Asian film industry’s Johnny Depp” (IMDb) and “the Asian Keanu Reeves” (Drake 2003) suggest not only his border-­ crossing fame but also his ambivalent ethnic status, which he shares with his Hollywood counterparts Depp and Reeves. Kaneshiro’s polysemic

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charisma enables him to occupy a unique space in the arenas of Sinophone filmmaking and popular entertainment in Asia. While Takeshi Kaneshiro is famous for his physical charms and screen cosmopolitanism, it has been increasingly evident that his multilingual flair in Japanese, Mandarin, Taiyu, Cantonese, and the Sichuan dialect is part of what constructs the star’s mobility and versatility. He is one of the few film stars whose image successfully traverses media cultures in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Japan.1 Since the inception of his entertainment career, the media has cast a spotlight on his bi-ethnic lineage and multilingual proficiency. In the early 1990s, Kaneshiro broke into the Mandopop and idol-making industries in Taiwan with a light-hearted, innocent image imbued with a bentu (“local”) quality (Tsai 2005, 107). Some of his songs involve a mix of Taiyu and Japanese lyrics, and some are adaptations of Japanese hits, indicative of the pop cultural exchange between Japan and Taiwan in the 1990s. The mid-1990s witnessed Kaneshiro’s successful transition to film. His onscreen image operates on the interstitial plane of vocality, visuality, and affectivity. From Chungking Express (1994) and Sleepless Town (1998) to Wu Xia (2011) and Red Cliff 1 and 2 (2008, 2009), Kaneshiro is cast as a covetable range of characters who speak Cantonese, Sichuanese, and Mandarin Chinese. His linguistically diverse personae in a plethora of Hong Kong, Hong Kong–China, Hong Kong–Japanese (co)productions not only package him as highly saleable to a pan-Asian market but also galvanize a reconsideration of crossover identity in the region. This chapter aims to offer a critical intervention to the star discourse that is dominated by his physical attractiveness and bodily spectacle by hypothesizing language and accent as new points of departure in appraising his crossover image. Given that Kaneshiro is not unknown to the critics and audiences in North America and Europe, his stardom is characterized by his mobility in Asia. Unlike other Chinese action stars like Donnie Yen or Chow Yun-fat, Kaneshiro’s transnational fame does not readily translate to Hollywood. Kaneshiro does not aspire to shine as a Hollywood star, where he speculates he would be compelled to repeat clichés. In press interviews, he has expressed how he is consciously reluctant to be limited by typecasting and the relatively narrow range of roles offered to him as an Asian performer (CNN Talk Asia 2006). It is true that Kaneshiro’s performance in the films made by internationally renowned filmmakers such as festival auteur Wong Kar-wai and cult director John Woo can bring Kaneshiro’s name outside Asia. Kaneshiro’s performance, defined by his vocal persona, also

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evinces, in Eva Tsai’s phrase, “his embeddedness in Asia” (2005, 102). In addition, even though he is capable of speaking fluent English, his spoken English is criticized by audiences for its thick Mandarin and Japanese accents.2 Such criticism not only reveals the debatable transnational appeal of Kaneshiro but also provokes further contemplation of what role language and dialect play in the star identity in Asian mass cultures, especially when it comes to the icons whose persona configuration is contained, if not confined, within regional borders. By considering Kaneshiro’s lingual persona as a site of contestation of his star identity, this chapter probes his stardom as negotiated and contended across various phonic cultures in Asia. It adopts the dual notions of strategic passing and strategic mediation as the critical lens of investigating his code-switching status. The concept of passing has been useful in analyzing racial or ethnic identities in diaspora studies, in particular Asian American studies. In the critical discourse of film stars, passing is also a nodal point of inquiry to explore the interplay between ethnicity, language, and identity. In her analysis of notable transnational Chinese star Maggie Cheung, Yiman Wang (2007) examines how the actress’ performative passing contributes to problematizing the hegemonic logic, be it championed by Euro-America or by Asian regions. To borrow and expand Wang’s notion, this chapter explores Takeshi Kaneshiro’s lingual articulation as part of his performing agency that orchestrates his Asia-based star profile within and beyond the Sinophone mass cultures. Reflecting on this, I extrapolate from Kaneshiro’s code-switching performances in the Cantonese-speaking features Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1996), as well as Mandarin-language films like Wu Xia (2001) and Red Cliff (2008), Japanese TV shows, and multilingual advertisements. As this chapter argues, on the one hand, Kaneshiro’s half-fledged Cantonese and Sichuanese are not concealed but revealed, or strategized, reinventing him as passing not as a native but a legitimate foreigner. On the other, his proficient Mandarin and Japanese utterances reinforce his mediating role in the Japanese and Chinese popular cultures. I hypothesize that while performative passing suggests the elision of the space of disjuncture, performative mediation implies staying and negotiating in that space, of which both instances strategically construct his star agency. As a result, this analysis sheds light on how his border-crossing identity outlines an East Asian imaginary where linguistic, ethnic, and cultural split can be passed or bridged.

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Kaneshiro’s Early Cantonese-Speaking Cinematic Presence Since his debut appearance in Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 Chungking Express, Kaneshiro often plays characters who move to reside in Hong Kong, and he usually speaks accented Cantonese in his own voice (Fig.  6.1). This film, Wong Kar-wai’s second feature, is one of the auteur’s early titles that demonstrate the strategic use of voice in star performance (Tsai 2005, 114). In the film, Kaneshiro portrays a Hong Kong–based, Taiwan-born cop, He Qiwu, also code-named Cop 223. He Qiwu is a subject of the trauma of love who postpones the heartbreak from a failed relationship by neurotically collecting canned pineapples with the expiry date of May first, one month after the breakup, hoping for his lover’s return on his birthday after consuming the pineapples for thirty days. Imbued with subdued affectivity, Kaneshiro appears as an emotionally fragile hero who often expresses his interiority in his mother tongue through voiceovers, a signature aural vehicle in Wong Kar-wai’s oeuvre. The fictional hero’s obsession

Fig. 6.1  Takeshi Kaneshiro in Chungking Express. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/843de9e2-­e9b9-­4262-­b3f7-­8d4679a224cc)

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with a lost relationship is followed by his encounter and interaction with a melancholic woman (Taiwanese actress Brigitte Ching-Hsia Lin) involved in drug deals. As a major part of the diegesis is set in Hong Kong, Kaneshiro articulates lines of dialogue in heavily accented Cantonese in his own voice in many scenes, unlike his costar Lin, who has her voice dubbed for the bilingual appeal as well as to match the foreign performers in many other dubbed Hong Kong films. It exposes, or even intends to highlight, Kaneshiro’s accented articulation, seemingly keeping the authenticity of the star presence. It is also the film that first introduced Kaneshiro to non-­ Cantonese-­speaking audiences including those in his home country, Japan. It was marketed with the Japanese form of the actor’s name, “Takeshi Kaneshiro,” notwithstanding the premise that the icon does not seem as culturally attached to Japan as is often assumed. Thus, the feature propels a pan-Asian storytelling and market integration in the flexible regional distribution system. The subsequent film similarly portrays Kaneshiro as an intimate visual subject who concomitantly renders a soulful voice delivering dialogue and voiceovers while stretching into the Cantonese-speaking and Mandarin-­ speaking spaces. Fallen Angel (1995), another urban drama directed by Wong Kar-wai, employs the façade of a gangster noir while realizing the auteur’s visual experimentation and voiceover narration. Often considered a loose sequel of Chungking Express, Fallen Angel displays a panoply of reprises of the 1994 feature, or the use of multiple intertextualities (Tsai 2005, 112), inviting the viewers to “do double takes that permit the pleasure of déjà vu,” as Ackbar Abbas insightfully suggests (1997, 56–58). This time, Kaneshiro plays a mute jailbreaker called He Zhiwu, with the same name and same ID number as the previous character. The new He Zhiwu is suffering from a broken relationship, not in heterosexual romance as in Chungking Express but with his widowed father, who is also a proprietor residing in the Chungking Mansion (another clue referring to Chungking Express). Inspired by a Japanese restaurant owner who used to be a filmmaker, the mute hero of Fallen Angel attempts to reestablish the familial connection by producing a video chiefly about how his father runs the everyday business. Later his father died, and the loss has disturbed, if not traumatized, He Zhiwu. As the plot gradually unfolds, the protagonist manages his emotional relationship visually rather than linguistically. One scene, for instance, depicts He Zhiwu staying in a hotel room, revising the video he has shot about his father. Through his voiceover elicited in eloquent Mandarin, He Zhiwu expresses his fear of growing up and his

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unarticulated emotional attachment to his father, unpacking intricate dynamics between articulation, memory, and visuality. In pragmatic terms, Kaneshiro’s portrayal of a mute ostensibly releases the Taiwanese-Japanese actor from the burden of speaking Cantonese dialogue. It provides a linguistic twist to his screen appeal, seemingly reminding the audience that the actor’s mother tongue is Mandarin Chinese. Kaneshiro’s Cantonese-speaking appeal seems to be highly performative, attesting to how well the actor has assimilated into the system of Cantonese-speaking cinema by performing not the “standard” but aberrant articulations. Media often note his multilingualism as a speaker of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Mandarin, but they rarely include Cantonese on the list. Although Kaneshiro’s Cantonese articulation sounds far from authentic, Hong Kong filmmakers do not mind featuring his broken Cantonese. Aficionados, likewise, appear to readily accept the “inaccurate” Cantonese elicited by a range of Kaneshiro’s roles, such as the smart “G team” member Jackal in Downtown Torpedoes (1998) and the local neighborhood piano tuner Chan Kar-fu in Anna Magdalena (1998). Kaneshiro’s screen roles are indicative of his passing for native in various situations, disrupting verisimilitude while foregrounding the performative process. As a one-directional phenomenon, passing represents a performative movement out of the marked group into a hegemonic one (Sasson-­ Levy and Shoshana 2013, 448). It entails a twofold meaning covering both one’s cultural or linguistic origin and the concealment of that origin by mimicking another phonic group. The act of mimicry elides its inherent discrepancy, blurring the distinction between native and nonnative speakers. In Kaneshiro’s case, since most Hong Kong audiences are Chinese, the passing applied to Kaneshiro’s screen appeal is more cultural or linguistic than ethnic (Lau 2019, 143). Acting “Cantophone” becomes the cultural script offered by the Cantonese speakers in the habitus of the Hong Kong cinematic system. It also draws cultural and affective proximity between Kaneshiro and members of the Cantonese-speaking audience.

Kaneshiro’s Sichuanese Persona in Wu Xia and Its Playfulness Takeshi Kaneshiro’s screen “passing” is further corroborated in Wu Xia (2011), a Hong Kong–China coproduced martial arts title that incorporates a mix of Mandarin and Sichuanese. Drawing on the enduring prominence of the martial arts genre, the film reinvents the genre by

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“modernizing” it with the groundbreaking use of visual effects in Chinese-­ language cinema. The film was directed by the Thai-Chinese director-­ writer-­producer Peter Chan, who is acknowledged for his transnational profile and vision. Chan teamed up with Kaneshiro again after their collaboration in the “Moulin Rouge”–like blockbuster musical Perhaps Love (2005) and the epic war drama The Warlords (2007). Wu Xia’s narrative is set in the late Qing Dynasty around 1917 and in Yunnan province in southwestern China. Kaneshiro plays an idiosyncratic detective named Xu Baijiu, who attempts to seek the truth of a murder and the suspect called Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen), a quiet papermaker who is a long-dormant killer for a clan of martial fighters. Kaneshiro’s role epitomizes a synthesis of Western science like forensics, physics, and psychology with Chinese medicine like meridians (jingluo) and herbal medicine. Consider the very presence of the myriad medical concepts and practices in an array of scenes: Liu’s killing of the two outlaws, Xu’s inquiry into the murder case, Liu’s fake death as a tactic to escape the arrest of the 72 Demons, and the final duel between Liu and his villainous father. Adopting a CSI-modeled investigative plot, the feature exploits the notion of the gaze and explicates the dynamics of the gaze and the body as mediated by simulationist image-­ making apparatuses, engaging an alternative vision of the cinematic Wu Xia. In the film, Kaneshiro’s Xu is a vital agent in performing the technologically mediated gaze, but his screen presence is augmented through the “impure” articulation of Sichuanese, a Mandarin dialect spoken by the population in southwestern China (Chew 2011, Heskins 2011) (Fig. 6.2).

Fig. 6.2  Kaneshiro plays the Sichuanese-speaking investigator Xu Baijiu. (Source: Wu Xia DVD (Distributor: We Distributions, Lark Films Distribution))

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Reportedly, the adoption of Sichuanese is the producer’s strategic choice to accentuate the peculiar and exotic qualities of the private-eye character without denying the plot its plausibility (SPH Razor 2013). Such treatment is acknowledged by some audiences: “[t]he stresses, tones and built in emotionality of a Sichuan accent made his character more comical and quirky” (HK Auteur 2012). It also compensates for the limitation that his “good looks often distract viewers from his acting” (Chew 2011). Kaneshiro’s star discourse has testified a long-standing debate about icons who look handsome and are interpreted as poor actors, and mediocre-­ looking stars as skilled actors. Critics doubt Kaneshiro’s capacity to act well, assuming that his fame depends on his appearance rather than his talent. Even Kaneshiro himself once confessed, “I’m too pretty for my career” (South China Morning Post 2008). In Wu Xia, Kaneshiro’s code-­ switching persona allows the actor to deliver a convincing and competent performance. As Peter Chan remarked, the character of Xu goes beyond the type of roles Kaneshiro used to play, partly limited by his handsome, pristine image (WeDistribution HK 2011). In this light, his Sichuanese articulation is highly functional, calibrating not only the characterization but also the screen performance by strategically bridging the incongruence between the actor and the character. The use of the “impure” voice is tellingly illustrative of how the actor’s accented speech evades the operative principle of fidelity but gestures toward a sense of playfulness. Unlike his voiceovers in Wong Kar-wai’s films, which are delivered in his mother tongue, in Wu Xia, Kaneshiro speaks a foreign dialect, making his lingual performance unfamiliar and imprecise. The performance depends on the purported randomness in the code-switching process, which becomes one of the foci of making-of footage and press interviews. Not unlike the approach of countless blockbuster films, Asian or Hollywood, producers of Wu Xia hired a dialect coach for the actors who must speak foreign tongues, aiming to ensure fluency and keep from wasting time with prospective postproduction dubbing. Yet Kaneshiro’s dialect learning was not dictated by presumed fidelity and seriousness in dialogue recitals. In a self-mocking manner, Kaneshiro once expressed, “On the set, my Sichuan dialogues are articulated in a fortuitous and contingent manner that makes postproduction dubbing difficult. Those who understand the Sichuan dialect would feel amused about my arbitrary articulation” (my translation)3 (Su 2015). Kaneshiro’s performative articulations reject a presupposed inherent essence, highlighting dissonance and slippage. Emphasizing the significance of playfulness

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instead of fidelity, it informs the star’s position as a cultural or ethnic foreigner at the onscreen/offscreen threshold. Kaneshiro provides consciously playful speech as part of his acting, potentially generating imaginary information, for both the performer and the spectators, about the fictional persona. Kaneshiro’s Sichuanese persona insinuates the significance of the play element on the semantic level (Wolfson 1988; Cook 2000). In his analysis, Guy Cook (2000) argues that language play works on three interlocking levels: the formal, the semantic, and the pragmatic (5). The semantic level, referring to our proclivity to create fictions and fantasies and be attracted rather than repelled by new, unknown, or opaque uses of language, seems relevant here. I contend that Kaneshiro’s playful utterances create spaces that enable us to enjoy the incongruous, random, and absurd components of language and the temporary freedom from conventional meaning and the tyranny of rationality that governs most of our social interactions. Random elements, alongside other elements like disconnection with reality and disruption of social structures, are considered something far from futile (Cook 2000). They generate discursive and cultural significance, like provoking creativity and imagination and providing an antidote to language’s utilitarian use (Forceville 2001). Rather than being culturally oppressive, language play is personally liberating (Cheng and Winston 2011). Playfulness, therefore, is not only necessary but motivated, echoing Cook’s assertion about manifestations of language play: “perhaps why we are so fond of them, even though they are forbidden” (Cook 2000, 5). But Kaneshiro’s “spontaneously” constructed utterances of Sichuanese are part of the scripted monologue. What is suggestive here is that the fluidity of the tongue is embedded in the structured scaffold of utterances, aiding to make sense of the “foreign” dialectal experience and to legitimize the problematic passing and performative (mis)identity of Kaneshiro. Takeshi Kaneshiro’s acting concentrating on dialectal articulation deviates from the paradigms of appearance-based performance and action-­ based performance, revealing a disparity from the established screen personae of both Kaneshiro himself and his costars Donnie Yen and Wang Yu. Yen and Wang are the megastars of two generations in the martial arts genre from their respective periods: 1960s to 1970s versus 1990s to 2010s. Both of them are acclaimed for their physical virility and chivalrous caliber. Hiring Yen as Wu Xia’s key actor and the choreographer signals the presence of “real” martial arts techniques in the film. Peter Chan, in an interview, recognized Yen’s action style, saying, “Donnie’s work has

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always been realistic because his action has always been very grounded, you know, very powerful but yet very realistic. It’s humanly possible. We never see Donnie’s film where … everything defies physics and human possibility” (sentieriselvaggi 2011). Although the choreography is a combination of “real” kung fu, wirework, and CGI, Yen’s screen appeal gives rise to the body-oriented action spectacle that is often celebrated. Yen’s character in Wu Xia makes the film a self-conscious homage to One-­ Armed Swordsman, a martial arts hit that propelled its hero, Jimmy Wang, to stardom (Heskins 2013). As the Shaw Brothers’ veteran actor-director-­ producer, Wang is a prominent Hong Kong–Taiwan talent who has retained enduring visibility on screen, from the 1960s and 1970s to date, in Hong Kong and Taiwan (Williams 2015, 322). He has also been called “a big superstar of the calibre of Donnie Yen and even Bruce Lee before him” (Heskins 2013), a defensive response to the oft-underrated status of Wang suggested by scholars and critics. Wu Xia sees a resurgence of the screen image of Wang, who personifies a vile killer and the domineering patriarch. As the Master of the 72 Demons, he is approached by his blooded son-disciple, Liu Jinxi, who intends to cut all ties with the gang and severs his left arm as a form of declaration. Impressive is the climactic confrontation between the Master and Liu, whose one-arm physique offers chances to showcase the choreographed, close-contact, highly graphic fighting style of the traumatized hero, who is meant to kill with a single strike. Even in old age, Wang manages to exhibit some forceful moves, recalling his earlier kinetic appeal. Whereas cinephiles are electrified by the screen choreography exhibited by Yen and Wang, they do not miss the fact that Kaneshiro is not the same kind of action performer as his predecessors. Kaneshiro’s Xu even depends less on his distinctively good looks than in his previous screen roles. Thus, various personae from different films and periods can overlap and diverge.

Kaneshiro in Red Cliff and Extrafilmic Publicity: Toward Bridging the Sinophone and Japanophone Media Cultures When it comes to the Legend of the Three Kingdoms, China and Japan are on the same page …. The Three Kingdoms is a topic that crosses borders of country and race.—Jiang, a Fukuoka-based restaurant owner who comes from Guilin City, China. (Asianbeat.com 2008)

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Takeshi Kaneshiro’s linguistic competence and star agency perpetuate and evolve in the public discourse burgeoning around the historical war epic series, Red Cliff 1 and 2 (2008, 2009). Adapted from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Cliff is exemplary of a cross-­ media text traversing national and cultural boundaries. The story portrays the turbulent epoch in China’s warlord history, from the end of the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE) to the reunification of the country in 280, and restages the struggle and formation of the three powers led by Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan. Called one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature,4 Romance of the Three Kingdoms is allegedly the most widely read historical novel in both late imperial and modern China (Ng and Wang 2005). Its popularity was exported to multiple countries, including Japan as early as the Edo period (1603–1867). Translated in 1687 by Konan Bunza with the title Tsūzoku Sangokushi (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Vernacular Language), it was the first foreign edition of the text (Xie 2017). Moreover, it became a best seller in the period and was reprinted many times (Ng 2013, 237). The narrative has been converted to a plethora of cultural products: paintings, novels, illustrations, and kabuki plays. Recent years have witnessed a revival of the visibility of the Three Kingdoms story in Japan’s cultural scene (Asianbeat.com 2008). Japanese press reports that local readers find Three Kingdoms familiar, partly because it is included in junior high and high school curricula, parallel to the way schoolchildren in Britain grow up surrounded by works of Shakespeare (Shoji 2008). Cult fans, in addition, learn of the story through manga, video games, and puppet plays. For instance, the game series of the same title, or Sangokushi in Japan, initiated by the Japanese game developer Koei on the Nintendo Entertainment System, consists of eleven editions in the Japanese- and Chinese-speaking regions in East Asia (Koei Wiki n.d.). The intertextual nuances validate crossover reception of the Chinese classic, functioning well to bridge the popular discourses in Japan and China. Red Cliff successfully recreates the fictionalized world of the Three Kingdom heroes in the era of Chinese-language blockbuster films. It is coscripted by Chan Khan, Kuo Cheng, and Sheng Heyu, and directed by John Woo, the émigré pioneer from Hong Kong to Hollywood since the early 1990s. It is allegedly the first movie the Guangdong-born auteur shot in China in his more-than-four-decades-long career. The media promoted it as his “late arrival” in his “triumphant return to Chinese film after sixteen years in Hollywood” (Otago Daily Times 2008). Red Cliff reprises his trademark doves, double-sword (instead of a gun) duels, and

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heroic bloodshed spectacle. In contrast, the famous battles are rendered in CGI and contrived kinetic live action, which seem alien to cinephiles. In his oeuvre of urban action dramas, Woo is fond of exhibiting the physical vigor and the potent acrobatics, foregrounding the corporeal capacity of the heroes. Many audiences observe the film’s reliance on visual technology in orchestrating the screen action as compromising the merit of Woo’s signature; only a few critics acknowledge the director’s skill in balancing all the technical ostentation (Lee 2009). Packaged as a pan-Asian blockbuster project, Red Cliff is a Mandarin-­ dubbed star vehicle that encompasses performers from both the Chinese-­ speaking and Japanese-speaking film industries. The cast comprises Tony Leung Chiu-wai from Hong Kong; Chang Chen and Chi-ling Lin from Taiwan; and Zhang Fengyi, Zhao Wei, and Hu Jun from mainland China— none of whom speak standardized versions of Mandarin Chinese. The only non-Chinese-speaking member in the main cast is Shidō Nakamura, a Japanese actor who plays the role of a military general named Gan Ning serving under Sun Quan. Nakamura’s cinematic presence aroused a strand of familiar, if not clichéd, controversy, particularly over the (in)appropriateness of casting a Japanese performer for a prominent Chinese figure.5 However, the casting of Japanese-Chinese Kaneshiro for the role of Zhuge Liang, the chief military strategist in Liu’s leadership, illustrates a perhaps more complicated issue. In Chinese cultures, Zhuge has long been one of the most intriguing household names, and the character has often been played by “handsome, well-known actors” in most of its adaptations (Sun 2018). As part of the export to Japan, the fictional character was broadly welcomed by artists in as far back as the eighteenth century in Japan’s traditional theater, like the bunraku play named Shokatsu Ko ̄mei kanae gundan (Zhuge Liang’s Military Talk on the Three Kingdoms, 諸 葛孔明鼎軍談, 1724), a work created by the independent playwright Takeda Izumo during the severe economic crisis of the Takemoto troupe (Xie 2017). In performing a role that animates such deep popular and artistic connections in both cultures, Kaneshiro inevitably evokes questions and debate about whether casting him was a suitable choice. For instance, an online poll titled “Should Takeshi Kaneshiro Play Zhuge Liang” was launched on a fan forum called Koei Tecmo Warrior by user “Mingchan” on March 15, 2007, to solicit views from multilingual fan networks. Results showed more votes opposing than supporting Kaneshiro’s casting. The phenomenon can be attributed to the actor’s equivocal ethnic and cultural identity. In his account of Kaneshiro, Kobi

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Sogabe (1998) describes the actor’s reception in Japan and Hong Kong as “the greatest mystery of all” (20). Japanese devotees find his domestic fame odd because they position him as a renowned star in Hong Kong, and vice versa. His cultural rootlessness evidenced in Hong Kong or Japan mediascapes confuses his star phenomenon in both ethnic and cultural terms (Lau 2018). Regarding his portrayal of Zhuge, it can be inferred that Kaneshiro may not be easily put in the same category as Japanese actor Shidō Nakamura nor Chinese costar Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Since cinephiles are unsure where to position Kaneshiro, attention is directed toward how handsome he is, the most trivial and mutable dimension of the star phenomenon. Ambivalence remains as Kaneshiro’s persona in Red Cliff treads beyond the diegetic boundary and arrives at the threshold of publicity. Upon the film’s release, events such as the premiere, press conferences, and television interviews that largely capitalize on the celebrity presence took place across Japan. Box office records proved the film a commercial success, due not only to the currency of the original novels and characters but also the relatively meager circulation of pirate copies and the low interest in the importation of DVDs without Japanese subtitles (Gray 2009).6 The historical epic, furthermore, captivated the film critics. It was selected to be the opening movie of the Tokyo Film Festival on October 18, 2008 (Shoji 2008). In addition to all these events, the star power in advancing an imaginary that crisscrosses the Japanese-speaking and Chinese-speaking mass cultures bears significance. In 2008, for instance, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu-wai appeared as guests on Bistro SMAP, previously SMAPxSMAP, a long-running prime-time television variety show (1996–2016) on Japan’s famous Fuji TV. Themed on cooking and eating, the program orchestrates a mix of sketch comedy, celebrity interview, and games. Drawing primarily on the celebrity presence, Bistro SMAP is hosted by SMAP, a popular Japanese boy band launched in 1988 under Johnny & Associates, a leading Japanese talent agency that develops fame on Japanese television as well as for popular music, radio, theater, and film, with a wide fanbase in Asia.7 As an iconic television show, Bistro SMAP displays its transnational appeal by featuring a broad array of famed entertainers, filmmakers, and athletes, most notably Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, David Beckham, Will Smith, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry. Part of Red Cliff’s promotional narratives in Japan highlights Kaneshiro’s status as a cultural and linguistic translator, strategically

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functioning to efface cultural foreignness. It featured Leung’s debut appearance on the show and Kaneshiro’s second appearance, following his earlier one around the release of his 2002 Japanese-language sci-fi blockbuster, Returner. The two actors were asked to discuss their new film in terms of the roles, the shooting, and the collaboration with other cast members. The Red Cliff narratives also intersected with casual conversations about the actors’ culinary preferences and experiences. Leung and Kaneshiro spoke in their mother tongues, Cantonese and Japanese, respectively. Whereas Leung appeared almost tongue-tied, Kaneshiro was able to express himself eloquently in a way that brackets his mediating presence between Sinophone filmmaking culture and Japanese audiences, or vice versa. Tony Leung has no small reputation in Japan. He engineers a crossover stardom largely with Wong Kar-wai’s award-winning features, simultaneously building connections to the Japanese entertainment industry. As the show began, Leung was introduced as a leading Hong Kong film actor who wowed the Cannes Film Festival with his Best Actor performance in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), as well as the costar of Takuya Kimura, one of the hosts of the show, in Wong’s 2046 (2004). With such a profile, however, Leung develops a less engaging presence than Kaneshiro in the context of increasingly converging cultural markets in Asia, chiefly because of his lack of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic affinity to the public. Speaking Japanese proficiently, Kaneshiro demonstrated the star agency that allows him to negotiate and propitiate the cultural and industrial gaps in the new regional interactions. Code-switching fame lasts in the global media networks. Transmedia adaptations of the Three Kingdoms story have been proliferating in recent years. One example is Growling Tiger, Roaring Dragon (2017), loosely echoing Ang Lee’s celebrated Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), a recent streaming drama series aired on iQIYI, China’s version of Netflix. Like a majority of the Three Kingdoms stories, Zhuge Liang remains as one of the key characters, played by a famous Chinese actor, Wang Luoyong. Wang Luoyong posted a video to his Weibo account in December 2017 that featured him clearly reading the translation of Zhuge’s renowned essay “Northern Expedition Memorial” in crystal clear English (VideoChinaTV 2017). Written in 227  CE and recorded in Zhuge’s biography in The Records of Three Kingdoms, a third-century historical text, the essay was frequently cited as evidence of Zhuge’s loyalty and determination. What is significant here is the Chinese personifier of a Chinese character speaking English, creating a new foreign presence of a

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familiar figure. Wang Luoyong’s eloquent and poignant recital won him worldwide applause from global users. Living in the United States for more than a decade, Wang was the first Chinese actor to play a major role on Broadway, and he performed in a number of television dramas themed on the global martial arts star Bruce Lee. The recital testifies to how English-language articulation can re-enliven a fictional character, and it promotes the live performer, enabling both personalities to virtually steer and reside in the global digital space.

Kaneshiro’s Multilingual Stardom in the Context of an Imaginary Asia Kaneshiro’s screen image does not predominantly entertain an English-­ speaking presence, but his existence in advertisements does offer such an opportunity. His image reveals links between myriad phonic worlds, as vindicated product endorsements. Advertisers and magazine editors often poach and brand Kaneshiro as a desirable star commodity, owing to not only his bi-ethnic status but also his ubiquity in the commodified culture. As Tsai (2005) explains, Kaneshiro’s multiple star meanings are appropriated and accentuated in the transnational commercial culture (123). The 2013 global campaign “I See You” of the Taiwanese international airline, EVA Air, is one of those instances (Fig. 6.3). On the theme of seeing, the

Fig. 6.3  Kaneshiro in the celebrity endorsement of EVA Air (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3mExFjpxuk)

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advertisements in this campaign present a series of landscapes, nature, and culture, among which Kaneshiro freely navigates and passionately discovers. A montage of postcard-like images of landmarks in France, Japan, and Taiwan marshals an arbitrary yet clichéd representation of the world or “cosmos.” Part of the narrative shows Kaneshiro photo-shooting in a Shinto shrine that the hero acts as both subject (diegetic level) and object (extradiegetic level) of seeing and engaging in the discovery of the world. This campaign produced three versions of the advertisement in Chinese, Japanese, and English, and Kaneshiro dubbed the monologue himself for each one, reminiscent of his well-known voiceover in Wong Kar-wai movies. The advertisements, hence, draw on the actor’s crossover image, in particular his established vocal persona on cinematic screens. This series of advertisements garnered sizable acknowledgment and has been copied and distributed on social media (Inside.com 2013). As of February 4, 2020, the day I researched the topic on YouTube, the pertinent video entries, all posted by EVA Air, attracted diverse comments from users on the star’s multilingual virtuosity. The English version was posted on June 18, 2013, with the title “I SEE YOU Change the way you see the world” (EVA Air 2013a). Among the eighty comments, a noticeable number focuses on the accented English of Kaneshiro. For instance, user “Kiyo” expressed, “His English has Japanese accent haha,” in April 2014. This piece of feedback is echoed by another user named “Rutherford Huang” who wrote two years later in Chinese, “The English sounds so much like Taiwanese-Mandarin ….” (那麼台灣的國語 …). Some other users praised Kaneshiro’s command of English, for example, “I love it when he speaks English …” or “love the way he speaks in any language.” Likewise, the Japanese version of the advertisement, titled “EVA Air I SEE YOU—三分鐘完整版(日文發音)” and uploaded nearly half a year later on December 31, 2013, similarly attracted fans’ acknowledgment with tropes as general as “great,” “wonderful,” and “awesome” (bang 棒). Some specific feedback, intending to stress his sentimental voice, wrote, “Kaneshiro’s voice in Japanese” is “deep and sexy” (EVA Air 2013b). The Mandarin version of the commercial entitled “I SEE YOU 你的眼界 可以轉動世界” has evoked responses that focus more on Kaneshiro’s irresistible charms than other themes. Posts written in Chinese with terms like chao shuai 超 帥, hao shuai 好帥, and tai shuai le 太帥了, all literally meaning “extremely good-looking,” dominate the commentary. Another unmistakable set of comments concentrate on the locale of the shooting in East Taiwan, which many users feel fascinated by while paying not much attention to the scenes shot in France and Japan.

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In order to probe the star image in this series of commercials, it is useful to compare it with that in the advertisements broadcasted in the late 1990s, a time that coincided with the formulation of the “well-­orchestrated promotional mechanisms that project a desire for modern Japanese lifestyles” (Chian and Shou 2001, 86). In the late 1990s, Kaneshiro gained renewed fame in Taiwan after becoming a star in Japan for several years, and the star became a favorite marketing subject for many Taiwan-based advertisers from 1998 to 2004 (Tsai 2005). As Tsai postulates, his appeal was engineered through the routine commodification and hybridization of Japanese popular culture in the everyday life of postcolonial Taiwan in that period (2005, 108). She goes on to remark that those advertisements display the highly personalized performance of Kaneshiro that authenticates the down-to-earth, “natural and familiar” image (Tsai 2005). The advertisements have situated Kaneshiro in Taiwan’s nostalgia and fascination with Japan, as a response to the simultaneous rise of “Japanized cultural ambiance” from 1995 to 2005 (Tsai 2005, 110). Typical is his presence in a domestic setting that has a traditional Japanese-style aura, as indicated in the commercials for Ericsson mobile phones in 1998 and Brand’s Chicken Essence in 2003 (Lanwally 2010). In the 2010s, as illustrated in the EVA Air commercial series, the postcolonial ethos was subdued, and his appeal is recoded in a wider regional context, allowing one to reimagine Asia in the commodified culture evoked by the airline industry. Although it may be imprudent to argue that Kaneshiro’s stardom and a tourist image interconnect, his persona in the advertisement reflects his regional-yet-global star identity with regard to the East Asian capitalistic context. According to Barry King (1991), stardom can be perceived as “a strategy of performance” (127) that adjusts to the pressures and restrictions of different economies. His multilingual performance and a culturally mobile appeal can be reciprocated to strategically shape a crossover discourse in a polyvalent and volatile mediascape.

Notes 1. There have been debates about whether Sichuanese is spoken as a dialect of Mandarin or as a language of its own right. Sichuanese’s embarrassing status is chiefly due to the shifting definitions of languages and dialects and the disparate political and cultural agendas that influence the use of these labels (McKeon 2017). Linguistically, most words are phonologically similar or even identical to their Mandarin counterparts, except for the tone. Moreover,

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it has a mixture of northern and southern characteristics in pronunciation (Liu 2014). In addition to its relatively short history, Sichuanese could be regarded to be a dialect of Mandarin. Although socially and culturally Sichuanese is likely to be recognized as a language, supported by the fact the regular code-switching of Sichuanese people between Sichuanese and Standard Mandarin, many scholars and critics situate Sichuanese as a dialect (Hsu 2008; Ma and Tan 2013; McKeon 2017). I follow the trend in sociolinguistic studies in this book. 2. See the comments on Kaneshiro’s interview in English that was posted on YouTube (FunkSoulBrother 3 2008). 3. Original (in Chinese): “我在現場是亂講的, 後面配音配得好辛苦啊, 聽得 懂的人會覺得很好笑, 因為我亂講一通.” 4. The other three novels include Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber. 5. Sources revealed that Japanese Ken Watanabe was originally cast for the role of Cao Cao. However, due to the clamor of objections from the audience, John Woo replaced Watanabe with Zhang Fengyi, veteran Chinese actor (Moviechat.org n.d.). 6. Red Cliff topped the Japanese box office in the first weekend of November, defeating Suspect X’s four-week number-one record (Gray 2009). 7. SMAP consists of five members, including Masahiro Nakai, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Shingo Katori, and perhaps, most notably, Takuya Kimura.

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Tsai, Eva. 2005. Kaneshiro Takeshi: Transnational Stardom and the Media and Culture Industries in Asia’s Global/Postcolonial Age. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17 (1(Spring)): 100–132. VideoChinaTV. 2017. Northern Expedition Memorial recited by Luoyong Wang 出师表. YouTube video, 5:02, December 28. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=haAYHWon7cg. Wang, Ying-Shun. 2001. The Satellite-Style Idol Who Carries No Historical Burden 不背歷史包袱的衛星型偶像. Business Next, March 1. https://www. bnext.com.tw/article/7970/BN-­ARTICLE-­7970. Wang, Yiman. 2007. Screening Asia: Passing, Performative Translation, and Reconfiguration. Positions: Asia Critique 25 (2): 319–343. WeDistributionHK. 2011. 《武俠》花絮—金城武篇 Wu Xia—Making Of (Takeshi Kaneshiro). YouTube video, 3:42, June 4. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=yVaXKwilax4. Williams, Tony. 2015. Transitional Stardom: The Case of Jimmy Wang Yu. In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau, 322–340. Malden and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Wolfson, Nessa. 1988. Perspectives: Sociolinguistics and TESOL. Boston: Heinle & Heinle. Xie, Kai. 2017. Dramatizing Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Japanese Puppet Theatre: Zhuge Liang’s Military Talk on the Three Kingdoms. Asian Theatre Journal 34 (1): 26–47. https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2017.0003.

CHAPTER 7

The Female Voice in Two of Stanley Kwan’s Sinophone Films: Maggie Cheung, Sammi Cheng, and the (Un)translatability of Personae

Introduction: Two Films, One Imaginary—An “Old” Shanghai Through the Lens of Stanley Kwan While the previous two chapters focused on the code-switching personae that cast an influence inside and outside of the Sinophone cinema, this chapter adopts a different approach to discuss the female voice in two specific Sinophone films directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan. Center Stage (1992) is one of Kwan’s films that has been critically exhausted, with particular focus on cinematic reconstruction and female voice (Stringer 1997; Reynaud 2003; Cui 2004; Hjort 2006). Set in 1930s Shanghai, the biopic charts the trajectory of the life of Ruan Lingyu, chronicling her rise to stardom, her star-crossed romance in private life, and her suicide at the age of twenty-five as she confronted intense scandals and a public trial. The film unfolds a pastiche-like metanarrative structure that encompasses images and stories in the past and present. It presents a blend of archival and newly reconstructed materials, including excerpts from Ruan’s original films like The Goddess (1934) and New Women (1935), interviews with witnesses who knew Ruan, the self-reflexive scenes from Kwan’s shooting of the remake, and Kwan’s production talk with his cast. The cast includes a number of Chinese-speaking performers who are quite visible and experienced in the film industries in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. So the film presents a mix of dialects of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Shanghaiese articulated by various interlocutors. As the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_7

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female lead who incarnates the tragic star who strove for a voice in the silent era, Maggie Cheung provided a poignant performance that won her the Best Actress award in the Berlin International Film Festival, the first Chinese female recipient of the honor. The wide acclaim of the film also projected Kwan’s profile outside of Asia as a transnational auteur. Thirteen years later, Kwan directed Everlasting Regret (2005) as a continuation of his endeavor to rescreen Shanghai and carve a female voice in the imaginary space. Based on A Song of Everlasting Sorrow, a 1995 novel written by Taiwanese female author, Wang Anyi, the film portrays the life of a woman named Wang Qiyao in the period from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s, retelling the ballad of unrequited love for the heroine, similar to Center Stage. This time, Kwan cast Sammi Cheng, a Cantopop queen, to play the Shanghai-based heroine. Cheng, alongside her fellow actors who either are Mandarin natives or use dubbing, speaks broken Mandarin in her own voice, which resulted in clamor among audiences in Chinese communities about her competence and fidelity in acting. By focusing on the interrogative portrayal of women, Center Stage and Everlasting Regret unveil a link between the fictional and real-life personae. The female voice in and about the two films is shaped on multiple levels— metafictive, diegetic, and extradiegetic—intertwining with the vision and the voice of Stanley Kwan as the authorial figure. This originates not only from the directors’ deconstructive “high style” but also, more importantly, from the moments when the linguistic skills of Cheung and Cheng come to the foreground in the public discourse. What is the significance of the dialectical shift in the diegeses in suggesting the nuances of the two Cantonese-speaking actresses’ performances? How is the potency of the female vocal personae accounted for? What is the possible interplay that revolves around dialect and accent between the onscreen and offscreen lives of the stars? These are the questions that this chapter probes. This chapter examines the dialectically coded personae of Maggie Cheung and Sammi Cheng in Center Stage and Everlasting Regret by mobilizing a linguistic agency, which vacillates in the space of (un)translatability. Maggie Cheung and Sammi Cheng are icons from two generations of actresses in the Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong cinema, but both of them engineer profiles that pose questions about the significance of the female voice in the Sinophone filmmaking scene. The linguistic proficiency (or deficiency) of the actresses gives shape to the localized and heterogeneous female-centered configurations and produces alternative imaginaries in the Sinophone cinematic scene. The imaginary is manifested in two

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forms: opaque translatability and translucent untranslatability. As this chapter posits, the articulation of the Cantonese-speaking Maggie Cheung in Center Stage appears translatable between the personifier and personified, but this translatability is obscured by a kind of slippery mimicry. In contrast, in Everlasting Regret, Sammi Cheng speaks accented Mandarin, conspicuously making her image not translatable into the Mandarin-­ speaking narrative world that is, nonetheless, redeemed by a flexible and mutable vocal existence. Unraveling the dialectics of the obscure and the conspicuous, I contend that both linguistic proficiency and linguistic deficiency can be culturally productive in registering and negotiating a decentered, heterogeneous discourse. The analysis concentrates on the dialogue recital in the two films, together with the media discourses about Cheung and Cheng. Thus, this chapter unpacks the complex interplay between star identity and the Sinophone articulation, reengaging with new sites of pondering star narratives and rerouting female stardom in the Sinophone cinematic arena.

Ruan Lingyu’s Silenced Body and Maggie Cheung’s Voiced Embodiment Maggie Cheung’s persona in Center Stage displays an intricate relationship between a silent actress in the past and a popular star in her own right in the present. As one of the most prominent actresses in 1930s Shanghai, Ruan was notable for her iconic body gestures and facial expressions on the silent screen. Kwan’s 1992 remake reconfigures Ruan through the contemporary impersonator Maggie Cheung, who transforms the silent image from memory to narrative (Fig. 7.1). Intellectual interest has rested on the dialectics of the silenced body of Ruan Lingyu and the voiced embodiment of Maggie Cheung, as well as the connotative potential of the female image. For example, Li Guo studies the disempowered woman’s voice in relation to the images of Ruan’s impersonated body, unfolding the profound exclusion of the woman from symbolic potency (2012, 72). As Guo suggests, Kwan’s film involves certain scenes taken from Ruan’s original features, evoking a dialectical interplay between the diachronic narrative of the actress and Kwan’s synchronic cinematic reconstruction. She argues that the body and voice of Ruan as an imagined character are both fictionalized and endowed with vibrant realism (Guo 2012, 72).

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Fig. 7.1  Maggie Cheung as Ruan Lingyu in Center Stage (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6QxjjWA1g)

As an enunciating agent of a silent star, Maggie Cheung presents a vocal match of Ruan in the remake. As archival materials reveal, Ruan Lingyu was a Cantonese native who was raised in Shanghai. She spoke Cantonese at home while speaking the Shanghai dialect in work settings only (Reynaud 2003, 34). There are parallels between the star personae Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung. Born in Hong Kong, raised in London, and then returning to Hong Kong at the age of twenty-one, Cheung has displayed a lingual presence marked by her skills in speaking Cantonese and English, but not Mandarin or Shanghaiese. As one of the most accomplished and prolific actresses in the Chinese-language cinema, Cheung had already personified diasporic characters in films since the 1980s, such as Farewell China (1990), Song of the Exile (1990), and Full Moon in New York (1989), embodying the “mobile aura” in her performance, in Yiman Wang’s expression (2012, 958). Studies have explored her proficiency in language as part of the transnational coproductions like Irma Vep (1996), Hero (2002), and Clean (2004) (Hudson 2006; Wang 2007, 2012; Chan 2014). In the offscreen arena, moreover, her foreign-­language profile has become manifest in media discourse, particularly lubricated by her short-lived marriage from 1998 to 2001 to French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, who directed Irma Vep (1996) and Clean (2004). Her roles in these two foreign-language productions capitalized on the cultural and

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ethnic foreignness in her image. As such a Western profile, interestingly, Cheung did not follow the same trajectory as some of her contemporaries, like Michelle Yeoh, who migrated to Hollywood after their rise to fame in Greater China.1 Critics account for Cheung’s “restrained” crossover image in relation to the fact that her screen persona often draws upon her Hong Kong profile and is considerably tied to the Sinophone context (Chan 2014). Susan Dominus (2004) likewise employs Cheung as an example to illustrate how success and acknowledgment in one industry cannot be translated into another in the transnational cinematic culture. Hence, Cheung’s versatile presence reveals the ambivalence that resides between the transnational and the local, onscreen and offscreen, and the Anglo/ Francophone versus the Sinophone. Scholars have elucidated the relationship between the Hong Kong– related nuances embodied by Cheung and Center Stage’s film text or character. Mette Hjort (2006) postulates that Cheung expresses an energetic, pragmatic, and essentially forward-looking Hong Kong sensibility, making her the antithesis of the actress tragic films like Center Stage would appear to require (2006, 18). On a similar note, Guo (2012) posits that Cheung’s Hong Kong upbringing readily helps deliver an authentic performance, restoring the performance of the silent star in a vividly impressive, “organic” manner (76). Bérénice Reynaud, furthermore, asserts that Stanley Kwan “reclaims” (2003, 33) Ruan’s Cantonese origins through the casting of Cheung. Kwan once revealed his original intention to cast the Cantopop queen Anita Mui as Ruan Lingyu, motivated by a hunch that struck him when he found an archival photograph of Ruan during a visit to Shanghai and perceived a resemblance between them (Cuorenucleare 2013). Dubbed “the Daughter of Hong Kong” (Lei 2014), Mui was the most celebrated and bankable female singer the director could find who embodied an intimate link to Hong Kong. In the 1980s and 1990s, Mui dominated the Cantopop music scene alongside her male counterparts like Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, and George Lam. She has been active in Hong Kong cinema, participating in action, comedies, and romance. She was also the female lead of Rouge, Kwan’s 1992 movie costarring Leslie Cheung. Mui plays the character of a courtesan of the 1930s who returns as a ghost to modern Hong Kong to seek her lover, embodying a story that alternates between 1930s China and the present Hong Kong. Notwithstanding the subsequent change of cast for Center Stage, it can be argued that Kwan’s penchant, though unconscious, of casting a lead actress who engineers a Cantonese-language Hong Kong–based profile to

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incarnate the Cantonese-native silent star continues. By displaying a lingually competent persona, Cheung shows proximity to the personified subject, potentially redressing the discursive and ideological disempowerment of women as connoted through the persona of Ruan. While Cheung seemingly has a linguistic match with her role, the translatability became obscured by her accented Mandarin, interrogating the (im)plausibility of female utterances. Center Stage is a mainly Cantonese-­ speaking picture involving the reconstruction of certain scenes in the 1930s in which some lines of dialogue are inevitable. It is not difficult to observe that Cheung’s occasional Mandarin-language delivery is “unnatural utterance” (Guo 78), questioning the seamless translatability in the personification. One example belongs to the frequently quoted scene of the shooting of the hospital scene for The New Woman (1935) directed by Cai Chusheng. The New Woman was based on the real-life story of Ai Xia, an actress and writer, who committed suicide after performing in A Modern Woman (1933), for which she wrote the script. The tale was rehabilitated and retitled as The New Woman, starring Ruan as the tragic heroine named Wei Ming. The drama depicts the adventures of Wei Ming including her escape from home after a broken relationship, earning a living on her own through teaching and writing, her loss of job, and her return to prostitution in order to buy medicine for her child who was desperately suffering from pneumonia, all of which had led to extensive scrutiny and gossip from the public. After her dual attempts at suicide, Wei Ming, on her deathbed, bemoaned the injustice and oppression in society. In Kwan’s remake, the scene is reconstructed with overt clues of self-­ reflexivity by foregrounding the auteur’s intervention and the mechanical reproducibility. Yet I propose that an additional aspect of self-reflexivity is the noticeable shift of dialects in the metanarrative frame. The scene shows Cheung-as-Ruan-as-Wei being instructed by Leung-as-Cai and then lifting her voice and shouting, “I want to live! I want revenge!” In the 1935 silent feature, the final outcry of Ruan, in her presumably accented Mandarin, is unheard, and even “unseen,” as no intertitles were shown in the original version. It can be inferred from such invisibility that Ruan’s voice fails to be rendered as intelligible (Guo 2012, 78). In Kwan’s remake, Cheung makes Ruan’s “unheard” voice audible, and with an accent, when she articulated her lines in Mandarin. The actress performs three times due to the insufficient intensity of her outcry, following Leung-as-Cai’s instructions. The actress’ repeated speech in broken Mandarin, a foreign tongue to both Ruan and Cheung, seeks to redeem the intelligibility, yet marginally and abstrusely.

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The voice of Cheung-as-Ruan functions as a vehicle to contend for the space of the female voice and becomes elusive. As non-Mandarin speakers, both Ruan and Cheung strive to be the speaking subject with accented articulation. As informed by archival materials and then restaged in Kwan’s feature, Ruan did not speak Mandarin, though she did try to master the tongue so as to speak with her fellow actresses, such as Li Lili and Chen Yanyan. According to the scene of the farewell party for the American film expert Mr. Skinner, who introduced the recording facilities to the Lianhua studio, the silent actresses were excited about speaking in their own voice in movies. At the metalingual moment, Ruan fervently announces that she was invited to speak in Mandarin at a girls’ high school on International Women’s Day on the topic of Chinese women’s liberation from the 5000-­ year history of patriarchy. In the rehearsal of her speech, she put deliberate emphasis on the word fankang, literally meaning resistance. But her inaccurate pronunciation was corrected immediately by her Mandarin-speaking counterpart, Li Lili. What reveals here is dual levels of connotation: the articulation of the word “resistance” (literally) and the articulation itself as resistance (metaphorically), as spoken by a female subject. At this point, accent is pivotal, exhibiting a detour from the “standardized” route of the utterances. Cheung-as-Ruan’s accented articulations of/as resistance are illustrative of a sense of slippery mimicry, complicating the translatability between the silent star and the voiced star, between the standard Cantonese and the accented Mandarin. Shifting onscreen and offscreen, the female persona and the mimicry footnote the doubtfully authentic performance with an attempt to cast one’s own voice in a precariously privileged position. Resonating with the principle of heterogeneity and decentering, the slippery existence of Cheung-as-Ruan is aligned with Maggie Cheung’s polysemic and potent stardom. As Yiman Wang (2012) elucidates, Center Stage marshals a “decentralizing agenda” by employing a Hong Kong actress to prescreen the Shanghai past (975). Kwan posits a movie center, Shanghai, which is coupled by a surrogate center, Hong Kong. His restaging of the 1930s, the golden era of Shanghai cinema, seems to subscribe to a mainland-centric, monolithic conception of “Chinese cinema” (Wang 2012, 975). Nonetheless, that conception is problematized by his Hong Kong perspective and the casting of Maggie Cheung, who offers a heterogeneous, localized Sinophone celluloid persona. In this manner, he mobilizes both parallels and divergence between the two personalities, Ruan and Cheung, which appear equally equivocal and versatile.

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Cantopop Queen Sammi Cheng in Everlasting Regret The ambivalent female presence is evident in Everlasting Regret (2005), another Sinophone feature of Stanley Kwan that uncovers dynamics of accent, affect, and performance. Everlasting Regret continues Kwan’s cinematic reconstruction of twentieth-century Shanghai and primarily uses Mandarin Chinese, spiced with snippets of Cantonese and Shanghai dialects. Sammi Cheng portrays the ill-fated Shanghai woman named Wang Qiyao; her performance reveals a lack in a twofold sense: acting and accent. The entertainment media generally lament that Cheng’s performance “lacks passion” (Fainaru 2005) and that she was “out of her depth” (Elley 2005), despite Cheng’s confession that personifying Wang Qiyao was a tough task for her (Fig. 7.2). In addition, Cheng faces difficulties in delivering her lines in proficient Mandarin Chinese. Her Mandarin-speaking performance invites negative feedback, pointing to an inauthenticity and a “lack of fit” for the role. Prior to the shooting, Cheng apparently received dialect training aiming to remove her Cantonese accent and acquire the “standard” Mandarin (Huang 2005). Nevertheless, Cheng’s speech remains highly accented, indicating a disjuncture between the personifier and personified. It even leads to the debate about whether Stanley Kwan

Fig. 7.2  Criticism points to Sammi Cheng’s acting and accent in her personification in Everlasting Regret (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Skj0j1sIAhI)

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miscast Cheng for the title role. Cheng’s accent conspicuously does not pass for the real thing, inevitably engendering a jarring effect that makes her character linguistically distanced or disowned. Also, it alienates the character from the Mandarin-speaking viewers. The discrepant performance becomes “part of the game,” rather than being concealed in the repertoire of iconographic cues. It debilitates her screen performance, making her half-fledged acting further questionable. Stark linguistic and cultural dissonance between Sammi Cheng’s established persona and her role in Everlasting Regret unsettle the Cantonese-­ based star’s identity. As a Hong Kong–born singer, Cheng established her image straddling the Cantopop and Mandopop markets. She began her entertainment career at the age of sixteen, when she won the second runner-­up in the seventh “New Star Singing Contest,” a long-standing and popular Cantopop event in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, she has presented herself as a “girl next door,” with a youthful and amicable appeal. She rose to stardom in 1995 with her album called Can’t Let You Go, released by Warner Music. Topping the list of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for six weeks, the album became one of the best sellers of 1995 (Fung 2009, 237). While adding to her reputation and fanbase in the Cantopop industry, she also expanded her famed presence in the Mandopop scene and has been the top-selling performer with both Cantonese and Mandarin oeuvres for Warner Music. Reportedly, her strongest markets are Hong Kong and Taiwan, with additional sales in overseas Chinese communities like Canada, where inhabitants speak multiple dialects.2 Among others, her electronic dance tunes appeal to Mandarin-speaking fans. From 1996 to 2003, she released seven Mandarin-language albums of her celebrated electronic dance tunes before her brief retirement during the first decade of the twenty-first century, due to the frustrating shooting experience of Everlasting Regret. Everlasting Regret (2005) can be regarded as a watershed film that transforms Cheng’s screen persona, with language playing a prominent part. It is one of the few of Cheng’s non-Cantonese-language films that signals a departure from her signature performance in romantic comedies on Hong Kong screens. The singer-turned-actress’ first few cinematic appearances in the 1990s perpetuated her already-established cosmopolitan, feminized image. Feel 100% and its sequel Feel 100% … Once More (both 1996) are urban romances with a conspicuous appeal to young audiences. Her character, named Cherie, exhibits a sort of modern femininity and possesses a strong desire for love. She has her breakthrough role

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in Needing You (2000), directed by Johnnie To, a Hong Kong auteur who is famous for gangster noirs while producing films in a wide range of genres.3 Categorized as an “office romance,” Needing You casts Sammi Cheng as an office lady (“OL”) called Kinki, a name that already evokes certain Japanese, not to mention English, connotations (Teo 2007, 149). Suffering from nervous psychosis caused by her ex-boyfriend’s decision not to marry her, Cheng-as-Kinki is a sexually unfulfilled woman who seeks redemption from a male dream lover. The film turned out to be the highest-grossing film of the year, continuing the archetype of screen femininity and shaping Cheng’s status as a “comedic actress” (Tham 2018). After the noteworthy reception of Needing You, Cheng appeared in a series of commercial hits directed by To and his collaborator, Wai Ka-fai, including the Chinese New Year comedies Wu Yen (2001) and Love for All Season (2003), as well as the special-effect farces, Love on a Diet (2001) and My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002). In addition, she participated in the low-budget, lesser-known Summer Mo Mo Tea (2000), Fighting for Love (2001), Marry a Rich Man (2002), and Good Times, Bed Times (2003), partnering with some of the region’s top-flight stars, like Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau. With such an acting profile, she rose to be one of the most visible and prolific actresses in the commercial cinema in Hong Kong. However, with her dubious Mandarin skills, Cheng became an intriguing counterpart to the male costars who are active and mobile in the Sinophone cinema. One of the key protagonists in Everlasting Regret is played by Hong Kong–based actor Tony Leung Ka-fai, who was cast in Center Stage as the prominent Shanghai filmmaker, Cai Chusheng.4 Leung portrays a professional photographer named Cheng Shilu, the one who discovers Wang Qiyao and recommends her for entry into a beauty pageant. Throughout the film, Leung articulates the Mandarin dialogue in his own voice with a fluency similar to that of his Mandarin-native, mainland-­ Chinese peers like Hu Jun, Huang Jue, and Su Yan. Also, the hero offers a voiceover, assuming the expository position to uncover the thoughts chiefly of himself and of Wang Qiyao. The vocal narration suggests that the male presence and participation both precede and juxtapose the female voice, though in a relatively subtle and sporadic manner. The male enunciative clout is troubled by certain ellipses in Leung-as-Cheng’s viewpoint. This not only implies a distant and impossible affection of Leung-asCheng for the heroine but also leaves Kwan’s choice of Cheng Shilu’s perspective to tell Wang Qiyao’s story doubtful (Kozo 2005).

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Another actor, Daniel Wu, an American-born man of Chinese/ Shanghaiese descent, offers an equally perplexed male presence in the narrative. Born to a migrant family in California in the United States after the Chinese communist revolution in 1949, Wu has been branded as a multilingual, cosmopolitan celebrity. As a new face on Hong Kong screens, Wu was initially marketed as an overseas Chinese actor and a return migrant to Hong Kong after 1997, who appeared as a native English speaker.5 Wu’s evolving star image in subsequent years demonstrated a shift in his linguistic publicity. After the turn of the millennium, his appeal became increasingly localized and integrated into the intermedial (ge-ying-shi, or music-film-television) star system of Hong Kong (Funnell 2014). His increased proficiency in Cantonese is evident in a number of high-octane action films that serve as transnational promotion of Hong Kong’s local popular culture. In recent years, he has been actively participating in Mandarin-language Chinese productions that usually feature a pan-­ Chinese crew, further adjusting his appeal from a transnationally to a regionally coded one. In Everlasting Regret, purportedly Wu’s first Mandarin-speaking picture, he plays a side character, the son of a Shanghaiese wealthy businessman named Kang Mingxun, partly echoing the actor’s provincial lineage. As one of the men with whom Wang Qiyao seeks refuge, Kang emerges and impregnates Qiyao after the heroine’s first lover, Counsellor Li, disappears and departs following his family’s loss of fortune. Dubbing plays an intriguing role in Everlasting Regret in formulating screen identities. Wu has his dialogues dubbed in Mandarin that fathomed an ambivalent ethnic and cultural appeal, which arguably functions to dissociate his Chinese American status developed since the inception of his acting career in late 1999 (Funnell 2014, 166). In action vehicles like 2000 A.D. (1999), Purple Storm (1999), and Gen-X Cop (2000), Wu plays an array of roles of overseas returnees that function as intermediaries between Hong Kong and the West. During that time, Hong Kong filmmakers showed a tendency to avoid voice dubbing and used the real-life voices of their actors assisted by subtitles (Funnell 2014, 168). Considering the limited fluency of Cantonese of the returnee-performers, the dialogues often exemplify a blend of languages by cutting Cantonese lines short and adding some English phrases. Such strategy manifests Hong Kong’s status as and the hub of international trade and cultural exchange, highlighting a kind of transpacific experience which propagated on the post-1997 Hong Kong screen. Everlasting Regret ushers a different case that the film

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belongs to the phase of which Wu distanced himself from the multilingual and urbane image and was (re)marketed as a prominent actor in the Chinese-language cinema, of which many films were Hong Kong–mainland Chinese co-funded projects. Instead of underscoring Wu’s transnational and transcultural profile through language, dubbing is applied to his Everlasting Regret role that not only muddles linguistic and cultural differences but also imposes a mode of linguistic uniformity on the cinematic persona. In his analysis of dubbing culture and the contested authenticity, Tom Boellstorff (2003) posits that dubbing ostensibly engenders a “fusion” beyond the differences, assuming “no prior state of pure synchrony and no simple ‘conversion’ to another way of being” (41). Nonetheless, the “fusion” sounds “awkward,” whereby the very notion of the “original” is problematized (Boellstorff 2003, 41). Following this logical thread, Wu’s dubbed voice functions less as a remedial strategy for non-Mandarin speakers than a marring tool of authenticity. Ironically, Wu is of mainland Chinese pedigree and proficient in Mandarin. The practice of dubbing obscures the plausibly authentic voice of Wu, making the potent star identity not easily available in the dubbed cinematic space. Unlike the practice of Daniel Wu, dubbing is not applied to Sammi Cheng, resulting in the revelation of the actress’ accented Mandarin and legitimizing slippage and elusiveness. If the use of dubbing in Wu’s character is partly for distancing the star from his previous multilingual, transnational image, it can be postulated that dubbing is not as much as desired in Cheng’s case because Cheng does not possess such translingual profile like Wu that needs to be palliated in order to make the personification on Chinese screen more convincing. The “imperfect” Mandarin Cheng, as a Hong Kong celebrity, speaks, to a certain extent, recalls the abstract and flexible persona that vacillates between the entertainment industries in Hong Kong and mainland China. Reportedly, dubbing was originally intended for Cheng’s role but was canceled because Cheng’s Mandarin was “completely in tune,” as Kwan explicates (Huang 2005). Hailed as part of the marketing discourse, the purported “in-tune” performance of Cheng is exploited to brand the personality in a way that redeems the linguistic mismatch between the actress and the character. Whereas many viewers may feel skeptical of and deny such redemption, I do not intend to claim that Cheng’s accented performance should be assessed as precarious and futile. Rather, I hope to uncover the dialectical polemic that Cheng’s accented persona appears highly abstract and, concomitantly, culturally productive, strategically counterpoising the

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Mandarin-centric performance. From the critical perspective of the Sinophone, Cheng’s accented enunciations disavow a standard mode of linguistic access, gesturing toward a self-consciously adopted and localized position. It is indicative of multifarious articulations under the rubric of Mandarin Chinese, interpellating an alternative “presence.” It associates with the Lacanian theory that speech produces “a presence made of absence,” and through the word, “absence comes to be named” (Lacan 1977, 65). In this instance, Cheng acts as a speaking subject uttering a language that she loses grip of, whereas she is inclined to exploit the loss so as to provide an advantage for the movie and the persona to cross borders in the Hong Kong–mainland sphere. In this fashion, the accented persona has demonstrated what I term “a voice of expediency” that hints at an effort seeking a liberating female subjectivity. This expedient tendency allows an elusive and evasive vocal presence that is made of a linguistic absence as one enters into language as a subject. It bestows a “phenomenal fading” (Silverman 2005, 8) on screen that can paradoxically be enabling in a world where borders shift and evolve.

A Melancholic Voice To elaborate in Lacanian terms, the loss of language is recouped by the reworking of the loss either through the subject’s own writing of the trauma in relation to the fear of physical loss or through the projection of this trauma onto the woman, who figuratively suffers the lack. At this point, Cheng’s struggle to exhibit her agency in both discursive and emotional thresholds is relevant. During the time of shooting Everlasting Regret, tabloids uncovered that the actress was too immersed in her ill-­ fated, forlorn role and suffered from depression. The painful experiences led to her sabbatical in the subsequent two years. Stories of the actress’ trauma perpetuated, though in a sporadic manner, in the media discourse of subsequent years, showing how closely and continuously the onscreen and offscreen personae can relate. At the same time, reporters were keen on revealing Cheng’s blog articles loosely chronicling her experiences of battling depression with the strength gained from her religious faith as well as recording her personal reflections on life. Under Cheng’s self-code of “Mi,” an abridged and intimate version of “Sammi,” the writing pieces were later consolidated into a book published by a local press in 2010. While Cheng’s celluloid persona entails an overt inadequacy in the Mandarin language, creative writing becomes an emergent terrain for reasserting the woman’s voice recounting her own experience.

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The melancholic voice of the heroine resurfaced and was utilized during the release of Stanley Kwan’s latest film, First Night Nerves (2018). As a so-called comeback movie after a long hiatus, the 2018 feature resuscitates the auteur’s vision and expertise in filming female-centered narratives, explicitly indicated in the Chinese film title, literally “eight women and one drama.” But this time, Kwan blends his narrative with LGBTQ themes by, in a forthright fashion, encompassing a cluster of transsexual or lesbian characters such as the trans woman theater director (played by Hong Kong actor-producer Kam Kwok Leung) and the admirer of Xiuling (mainland Chinese actress Bai Baihe). Sammi Cheng impersonates Yuen Xiuling, a high-maintenance actress who comes out of semi-retirement for a theater role and confronts her stage rival named Yuwen who readily eclipses her (played by Hong Kong singer-actress, Gigi Leung) (Fig. 7.3). Imbued with comedy, the story can be viewed as self-parodic of the Hong Kong entertainment industry and its yellow journalism elite. The publicity for First Night Nerves not only celebrates the return to collaboration of Stanley Kwan and Sammi Cheng thirteen years after Everlasting Regret but also reminisces about Cheng’s previous emotional disorder. For example, at the movie premiere of First Night Nerves at the Twenty-Third Busan International Film Festival in October 2018, Cheng recalled the 2005 launch of Everlasting Regret at the same place, uttering, “Last time I was here, I was quite sick. I think I threw myself in too deeply to the film and the character. Since then, I’ve had time to recover.” Kwan echoed, “In ‘Everlasting Regret,’ Sammi got too far into the film and suffered both

Fig. 7.3  Sammi Cheng recollaborates with Stanley Kwan in First Night Nerves (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35eeazhLhk8)

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mentally and physically” (Frater 2018). This reiteration reflects the intertextual nuances and the proximity of onscreen appeal and private life, attesting to how emotionally laden existence is utilized in (re)constructing stardom. As the auteur’s latest film, First Night Nerves signposts Kwan’s engagement in Hong Kong–mainland coproductions of which dialectal articulation is a mainstay of the construction of female screen identities. The film exemplifies how Sinophone cinema production operates nowadays: it is financed by Chinese investors, directed by a Hong Kong–China border-­ crossing filmmaker, shot in Hong Kong, starring a pan-Chinese cast, and distributed in the Asian festival circuit including festivals as famous as those of Busan and Singapore. Moreover, the film incorporates a blend of Cantonese and Mandarin, targeting a wider viewing community in the Greater China region or Asia as a whole. Without promising to bridge the different languages or accents at all, the feature takes a step further in exhibiting Sinophone cinema’s refocus on the heterogeneous, interconnected, and localized sites of cultural practices, with no evidence of the director’s desire to remedy the gaps of the lingual performances and splitting female subjectivity. This reverberates with how Kwan has endeavored to redefine the identity of Hong Kong cinema in the Sinophone entertainment culture over the past decades. Emerging from the Hong Kong “New Wave,” Kwan is one of the pioneers who avails himself of the Hong Kong– China coproduction model, embodying close ties between the two film industries (Shim 2018). Acclaimed as an auteur of “women’s pictures” (Cui 2004, 487), his female-centered narratives are often placed in the setting of Hong Kong’s sociopolitical transitions in the 1980s and 1990s, a period witnessing escalating anxiety among people there and the simultaneous proclivity of the territory’s filmmakers to seek intersections between history and identity through screen images. Scholars have already shown the interpretive slant of Center Stage’s metastructure and the star image to the sociopolitical predicament of contemporary Hong Kong. Julian Stringer posits that the rewriting of the biopic and the adoption of multiple tongues, in relation to the search for subjectivity, reflect the undertones of the volatile power dynamics in the face of sociopolitical transformation (1997, 39). Furthermore, Kristen Harris (1997) describes Kwan’s rendering of Center Stage as “a documentary lament,” shot mainly in Cantonese, accentuating “a bleak parallel with the fate of contemporary local filmmakers as they confront a Mainland Chinese film industry dominated by Mandarin and Beijing” (298). The film reveals Kwan’s attempt

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to convey his own voice in the fin de siècle moments as one speculated about the historical, cultural, and linguistic changes the city would undergo (Guo 2012). Kwan’s struggle to making his voice heard extends to his films’ undertones of gay identities and subcultures at that historical juncture. His documentary feature made just before Hong Kong’s Handover, titled Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema, interrogates the missing father in both his personal life and on Chinese screens, acknowledging his homosexual identity while addressing the issues of transsexuality and transvestism. The revelation of his “coming out” story also extends to his subsequent features such as Hold You Tight (1998) and Lan Yu (2001), contributing his vivacious input to the queerscape of Hong Kong cinema. As an openly gay filmmaker, Kwan feels reluctant to highlight his sexual orientation in view of the potential thwarting of his marketability as a filmmaker (Debruge 2018). In an interview, Kwan once expressed, “For me, at least, I don’t want to be identified only as a gay filmmaker, because the Mainland China market is there, and my opportunities in China will be limited if I am only seen as a director of gay films” (Bettinson 2017). The auteur’s fear of losing his voice serves as an intriguing match to the “voice of anxiety” (Guo 2012, 73) that the heroine in Center Stage embodies. As a Cantonese native, Ruan Lingyu spoke no fluent Mandarin and worried that she lost her presence on screen after the advent of the sound era, when actors’ proficiency in Mandarin was assumed (ibid.). As the cross-cutting and mise-en-scène of the ending sequence suggest, furthermore, the frustrated attempt of Cantonese Ruan to speak Mandarin for the Shanghai cinema partly caused her silent death (Cui 2004, 505–506). It can be inferred that a sense of “discursive interiority” entraps the female character’s voice in Center Stage (Guo 2012, 73–74). The interiority continues in Everlasting Regret, but in an altered version exemplified by a flexible, aberrant voice. If it is the case that Center Stage implies the cinematic anxiety of “losing one’s own voice” on either the diegetic (character) or extradiegetic (filmmaker) level before Hong Kong was to be handed over to China, Everlasting Regret, a film made after the Handover, can be regarded as a panacea for such anxiety, turning the restrained and stringent into the liberating and de-essentialized. Suffice it to say, the female vocal personae in the two films operate intricately with the director’s vision and voice in formulating a multifarious and volatile existence. Both the obscurity and ubiquity of female articulations animate specific kinds of Sinophone-based imaginary that can converge and collude in multiple ways.

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Notes 1. As Felicia Chan (2014, 84) elucidates in her analysis, it is interesting to discover that Maggie Cheung is not immediately recognized or widely acknowledged in Anglophone Europe and America. New York Times Magazine’s 2004 feature article “Why Isn’t Maggie Cheung a Hollywood Star?” by Susan Dominus is another attempt at answering this intriguing question, interpolating the ways success and acknowledgment in one industry can be translated into another. 2. According to Warner, Sammi Cheng’s cumulative album units sold from 1995 to 1998 were 1.5 million for Cantonese and 1.3 for Mandarin albums, on top of an enormous number of copies under license in mainland China (Tsang 1998). 3. To is famous for his highly stylized and personalized cop and gangster features, typified by his Milkyway productions, which could frequently earn the entry of sundry film festivals. At the same time, he “keeps his eyes carefully trained on the market” (Teo 2007, 145) and concentrates on the less risk-­ taking attempts to avoid the pitfalls of box office failure. 4. As one of the recognizable personalities on Sinophone celluloid screens, Tony Leung Ka-fai has made over 150 movies across genres like crime thriller, historical epic, and melodramas since the beginning of his acting career in the early 1980s (Lee 2018). His fame is largely regional as he collaborates with Hong Kong’s celebrated filmmakers such as Wong Kar-wai, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To, Peter Chan, and Ringo Lam. Though he is a Cantonese native, his flair in Mandarin enables him to take part in a plethora of Chinese productions including the recent The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014), Who Is Undercover (2014), and Lost in White (2016). 5. In the backdrop of the Asian financial crisis and the changes in the East Asian film market in the post-Handover era, the Hong Kong film industry developed a new slate of young, multilingual, and cosmopolitan stars such as Asian Americans Stephen Fung and Maggie Q, as well as Asian Canadians Edison Chen, Charlene Choi, and Nicholas Tse, who migrated back to Hong Kong and were incorporated into the post-1997 entertainment industry (Funnell 2011, 164–65). This new production model can be considered as part of the strategic response to the industry crisis spearheaded by Thomas Chung, the CEO of the conglomerate Media Asia (ibid.). Instead of depending on voice dubbing, filmmakers have curtailed the extent of the Cantonese dialogue for their overseas returnee actors by blending it with English phrases because some of them, like Wu, lack fluency in Cantonese (Funnell 2011, 169).

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References Bettinson, Gary John. 2017. Posthandover Hong Kong Cinema: Interviews with Stanley Kwan, Herman Yau, and Gordon Chan. Cineaste 42 (4): 28–31. Boellstorff, Tom. 2003. I Knew It Was Me: Mass Media, ‘Globalization,’ and Lesbian and Gay Indonesians. In Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia, ed. Chris Berry, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue, 21–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chan, Felicia. 2014. Maggie Cheung, ‘une Chinoise’: Acting and Agency in the Realm of Transnational Stardom. In East Asian Film Stars, ed. L. Wing-Fai and A.  Willis, 85–95. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9781137029195_6. Cui, Shuqin. 2004. Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage: The (Im)possible Engagement Between Feminism and Postmodernism. In Between Home and World: A Reader in Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Esther M.K.  Cheung and Chu Yiu-wai, 484–508. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cuorenucleare. 2013. Center Stage—An Interview with Stanley Kwan. YouTube video, 11:38, June 18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAPQ3G8AF1U. Debruge, Peter. 2018. Film Review: ‘First Night Nerves.’ Variety, October 5. h t t p s : / / v a r i e t y. c o m / 2 0 1 8 / f i l m / r e v i e w s / f i r s t -­n i g h t -­n e r v e s -­ review-­1202970144/. Dominus, Susan. 2004. Why Isn’t Maggie Cheung a Hollywood Star? New York Times Magazine, November 14 (2004): 110–115. Elley, Derek. 2005. Everlasting Regret. Variety, September 9. https://variety. com/2005/film/markets-­festivals/everlasting-­regret-­1200523393/. Fainaru, Dan. 2005. Everlasting Regret (Changhen ge). Screen Daily, September 12. h t t p s : / / w w w. s c r e e n d a i l y. c o m / e v e r l a s t i n g -­r e g r e t -­c h a n g h e n -­g e / 4024285.article. Frater, Patrick. 2018. Busan: Stress and Sexuality on the Agenda for Stanley Kwan, Sammi Cheng. Variety, October 5. https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/ busan-­stress-­and-­sexuality-­stanley-­kwan-­sammi-­cheng-­1202969951/. Fung, Anthony Y.H. 2009. Rocking Gender Values: Sammi Cheng’s Androgynous Persona. International Journal of Chinese Culture and Management 2 (3): 235. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijccm.2009.029404. Funnell, Lisa. 2014. Repatriation of Overseas Chinese Stars in Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema: Daniel Wu, a Case Study. Transnational Cinemas 2 (2): 163–178. Guo, Li. 2012. Rethinking the Female Voice and the Ideology of Sound: On Stanley Kwan’s Film Center Stage (1992). Film International 3: 72–81. Harris, Kristen. 1997. The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai. In Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, ed. Lu Sheldon, 277–302. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

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Hjort, Mette. 2006. Stanley Kwan’s “Center Stage”. Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press. Huang, Yiping. 2005. Sammi Cheng Shows Her Mandarin in Everlasting Regret 鄭秀文《長恨歌》溜國語. Apple Daily, February 21. https://tw.entertainment.appledaily.com/daily/20050221/1593972/. Hudson, Dale. 2006. Just Play Yourself, ‘Maggie Cheung’: Irma Vep, Rethinking Transnational Stardom and Unthinking National Cinemas. Screen 47 (2): 213–232. Kozo. 2005. Everlasting Regret. LoveHKFilm.com. http://www.lovehkfilm. com/reviews_2/everlasting_regret.htm. Lacan, Jacques. 1977. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications. Lee, Edmund. 2018. In Pictures: Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Four-Time Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor, Turns 60. South China Morning Post, February 1. h t t p s : / / w w w. s c m p . c o m / c u l t u r e / f i l m -­t v / a r t i c l e / 2 1 3 1 4 9 9 / pictures-­tony-­leung-­ka-­fai-­four-­time-­hong-­kong-­film-­awards-­best. Lei, Chin Pang. 2014. Anita Mui: The Daughter of Hong Kong 最後的蔓珠莎華: 梅艷芳的演藝人生. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (Hong Kong) Company Limited. Reynaud, Bérénice. 2003. Centre Stage: A Shadow in Reverse. In Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes, ed. Chris Berry, 31–38. London: British Film Institute. Shim, Sun-ah. 2018. Hong Kong Filmmaker Stanley Kwan Speaks About ‘First Night Nerves’. Yonhap News Agency, October 5. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/ AEN20181005009700315. Silverman, Kaja. 2005. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stringer, Julian. 1997. Center Stage: Reconstructing the Bio-Pic. CineAction 42: 29–39. Teo, Stephen. 2007. 杜琪峰与香港动作电影 = Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film. 復旦大學出版社. Shanghai Shi: Fu Dan Da Xue Chu Ban She. Tham, Sean. 2018. Sammi Cheng Says Depression Changed Her for the Better. Herworld, December 13. https://www.herworld.com/features/hong-­kong-­ actress-­sammi-­cheng-­depression-­story. Tsang, Ann. 1998. Cheng Renews Contract with Warner. Billboard, November 21. Wang, Yiman. 2007. Screening Asia: Passing, Performative Translation, and Reconfiguration. Positions: Asia Critique 25 (2): 319–343. ———. 2012. The Palimpsest Body and the S(h)ifting Border: On Maggie Cheung’s Two Crossover Films. Positions: Asia Critique 20 (4): 953–981. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-­1717717.

PART III

Digital Multimedia Space

CHAPTER 8

Voices of Mulan in Animated and Live-­ Action Cinematic Spaces

Introduction: Mulan on Hollywood Screens As Disney’s first CGI animation, the 1998 Mulan epitomizes the simultaneous rise of digitization in global entertainment culture. It was produced in Disney’s renaissance period spanning from 1989 to 1999, when the studio, after its heyday in the 1930s to 1950s, resumed making high-­ profile animated films that were chiefly based on household stories in various cultures.1 Mulan retells an age-old folktale about a female warrior named Hua Mulan who disguises herself as a man to replace her father on the battlefield, ultimately bringing honor to her family and nation. It is exemplary of how Disney embraced the cultural myth of heroes and heroines and simultaneously explored the global market. The animated feature was a high-grossing film both at home and overseas, earning US$304.3 million in total, in addition to a number of Golden Globe and Oscar nominations (Box Office Mojo n.d.). Its commercial success also led to a 2005 direct-to-DVD sequel of the same title, along with adaptations in operas, television series, and movies in different cultures. Almost two decades after the launch of the phenomenal animation, Disney officially announced the live-action remake. Packaged as an action-­ packed blockbuster with an exotic flavor, the new film exemplifies Disney’s ambition to explore and exploit China’s market. The new “Mulan” character can be understood as the fleshed counterpart of the animated heroine, with the presence bridging the digitally mediated world and the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_8

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live-action celluloid world. In both the 1998 and 2020 versions, the voices of the stars provide a vital avenue for imagining the character and for probing the cultural politics derived from the films, casts, and the constructed personalities. The actresses’ voices suggest how star identities are represented, negotiated, and contended both within and out of the celluloid and digitized cinematic spaces. This chapter focuses on the vocal persona of the two Chinese actresses, Ming-Na Wen and Liu Yifei, who play Mulan in the animated and live-action versions, respectively, and examine the importance of the personae in shaping the power dynamics within and beyond the Mulan films. Mulan is an object that has been academically exploited. The character becomes the object of inquiry in the debates over globalization and hybridization (Wang and Yeh 2005), cultural appropriation and translation (Tang 2008; Yin 2011; Xu and Tian 2013), linguistic deformation (Tian and Xiong 2013), Disney’s political economy (Yu 2015), and politics of race and gender (Towbin et al. 2004). However, scarce attention has been paid to the idea of star presence and the role of voice in their personae. This chapter works to fill the gap by expanding the critical scrutiny of how the vocal personae in animated and live-action versions plausibly intersect and interact. My premise is that the transformed representation of Mulan from an animated figure to a live-action one is intrinsically interrogative of the boundaries of the star persona. This chapter begins with an exposition of Ming-Na Wen’s dubbed performance in the animated Mulan, followed by an analysis of the dialectics of body and voice in cinema and the cultural politics entailed by Wen’s vocal performance. It expands to the live-action adaptation of Mulan and focuses on the contested voice of Liu Yifei, the leading star in Mulan’s remake. It analyzes how Liu’s public presence is complicated by her political posture and affective discourse during the coronavirus pandemic. By doing so, this chapter elucidates how the voices of Chinese crossover stars are hybridized, problematized, and politicized in the paraphonic space marked by the coexistence of live-action images and digitally mediated images.

The Use of Star Voice in Hollywood Animations Animation features produced in Hollywood arrive at the forefront in the debate over embodiment, voice, and star value. Stars regularly voice animated films in America today, and it has been a phenomenon that high-­ budget animations employ the star voice as “shorthand” for character

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development or as a replacement for dialogue and storytelling (Denison 2005). These productions underscore the signifying elements of the personalities and screen characters, allowing the audience to recognize the characters with specific social types or prior film roles (Summers 2018). Riding on the signifying capacity, the voice helps give an identity to the animation and accentuate the marketability of the films in the capitalistic logic of filmmaking. As the leading player of the market, Disney has crucially shaped animation’s reliance on star voices. Disney has a long history in animation filmmaking starting with its first full-length animation titled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Throughout several decades, Disney attained the position as the most financially competent animation studio, particularly after acquiring Pixar in 2006. It is also well known to employ famous actors and actresses for voice dubbing. Ubiquitous examples include Robin Williams as Genie in Disney’s 1992 Aladdin, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Maui in Disney’s 2016 Moana, and Tom Hanks as “Woody” and Tim Allen as “Buzz Lightyear” in Pixar’s 1995 Toy Story. On the one hand, the animations bank on the fame and charisma of voice talents, guaranteeing the distribution and promotion of the films. On the other, the vocal performances can be helpful to add extra value to the star status because once the actor’s voice gets matched with the animated counterpart, it can overcome any physical limitations (Jung 2020). Reciprocal relationships between the animated personalities and the live actors pivoting on the presence of voice are evident. Not only the animated features produced by Disney but also animations from other countries and in other languages capitalize on the voices of stars. One noteworthy example is Princess Mononoke (1997), the English-dubbed version of Mononokehime (1997), created by renowned Japanese auteur-animator, Hayao Miyazaki. In his home country, Miyazaki gained huge fame and is an icon in the animation industry. He joined the animation industry in the early 1960s and was the creative engine of celebrated animations including Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Porco Rosso (1992), and he gained vast fame at home in the 1980s and 1990s. Mononokehime was the first of Miyazaki’s films to be released internationally by Disney subsidiary Miramax. The English-language version employs such high-­ profile actors as Gillian Anderson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Claire Danes, who provide convincing voice acting for the characters. This is also one of the first Japanese animated films for which acclaimed American stars were

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used to provide the voice talent (Denison 2005). The star voice is one of the components, in addition to the different marketing campaigns, that can offer Japanese animation a new identity (Denison 2005).

Ming-Na Wen’s Dubbed Vocal Performance in Mulan Chinese American actress Ming-Na Wen vocally performs Mulan in its 1988 version, buttressing her distinctive appeal that straddles the live-­ action film world and the virtual media world (Fig.  8.1). Since the mid-­1990s, Wen has been featured in a repertoire of cultural texts ranging from movies and television series to video games and web series. She was cast as Jing-Mei Cheng in the medical drama series ER (1995–2004), Melinda May in the ABC action drama series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013 to present), and Chun-Li for the game-adapted movie Street Fighter (1994). Besides the live-action appearances, she also serves as the voice

Fig. 8.1  Ming-Na Wen as the vocal lead for the titular role of Disney’s Mulan. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/3b1b3464-­15ca-­4a75-­ 80f7-­f7ca29c27c2a)

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talent in animations such as Dr. Hirano in the Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb, Savannah in Milo Murphy’s Law, Vega in animated television series Sofia the First, and, most notably, Aki Ross in CGI-animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) (more discussion later). Wen performed her debut voice acting in Mulan, and she reprised the Mulan role in Mulan II (2004) and the video game called Kingdom Hearts II (2005). She has established a dubbing presence in American popular entertainment. Ming-Na Wen resides at the margin of a voice actor, negotiating her power through voice. Starr A. Marcello (2006) has noted the difference between the celebrity voice actor and the professional voice actor in American animation. Marcello argues that professional voice actors produce multiple vocal styles that “do not share a base effort of action,” whereas celebrity voice actors are required to bring with them a preexisting vocal style (64). Furthermore, voice stars are expected to display specific oft-repeated vocal techniques across multiple texts within a franchise, providing an identity (Denison 2005, 112). In Mulan, Wen manages to render the voicing techniques to traverse the bodily borders between male and female in the dubbing. Part of the plot depicts the heroine disguising herself as a man to be enlisted in the army, as a substitute for her father. It also allows the central romance between Mulan and her commanding officer named Li Shang. Li is implied to be attracted to Mulan, even though Li perceives Mulan as a man, positioning Li Shang as a sort of LGBTQ icon (But 2020). In the cross-dressing sequences, Wen impersonates a figure in the form of Mulan’s male alter ego named “Ping.” Wen’s mutable vocal persona can provide a convincing portrayal, unlike the fashion of adult women vocally portraying young boys, which is frequently found in Japanese anime (Denison 2005, 111). In this light, Wen’s flexible voice offers her a privilege, as compared to her vocal counterpart Lea Salonga, who provides the singing voice for Mulan. Moving across Asia and the United States, Filipina Salonga has engineered a crossover profile in her career. She is best known for her portrayal of Kim in the musical Miss Saigon, which she performed in the West End in London and then on Broadway in New York. She is heard, too, in the English-language version of the celebrated Japanese anime My Neighbor Totoro (1998). Her Disney connection is evident in her vocal performance for Jasmine in Aladdin (1992), an animation that was once at the forefront of the debates over Middle Eastern or South Asian stereotypes (Galer 2017). In Mulan (1998), Salonga creates a potent singing

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presence of the fictional heroine Mulan through her recital of songs, most notably the theme song “Reflection,” written and produced by Matthew Wilder and David Zippe. “Reflection” coincides with the film’s thematic focus of female self-consciousness, generating dramatic and affective impacts that facilitate fans’ identification with the character. According to Thomas Hischak, author of Disney Voice Actors: A Biographical Dictionary (2011), Disney originally cast Lea Salonga to perform both speaking and singing for Mulan. But while recording, the directors found that Salonga’s soprano voice does not work for the Mulan-as-Ping impersonation (Hischak 186). Instead, Wen possesses a voice that lies in the middle of a normal female range, allowing her the flexibility to dip into a female alto performance, sounding closer to the imagined tone quality of Mulan in her disguise as a male.

Dialectics of Animated Body and Human Voice Ming-Na Wen’s dubbed persona in Mulan reveals the contested relationship between physical embodiment and vocal performance. Scholars have argued that animation offers an augmented avenue for the invention of vocal persona without the presence of the body (Denison 2005). The Mulan character is rendered in animated form within a computer-­generated aesthetic, provoking reconsideration of the star’s corporeal presence. Lev Manovich adopts live-action cinema as his contrasting example for animation (2001, 302). Animation, as “cinema’s bastard relative,” serves as an antipode of traditional cinematic images, “foregrounding its artificial character [and] openly admitting that its images are mere representations” (Manovich 2001, 298). Animation’s “crudely rendered characters,” in Manovich’s phrase (298), are prosthetic phenomena that embrace all the credentials of performance, persona, and proto-meaning and transcend the context that produced them, operating in a comparatively new cultural space that allies them with the virtual logics of computer games and cyber worlds. Mulan is primarily understood as the legendary figure in folklore, with no material referents in the extradiegetic “real-world” environment. Its representation is predicated only through modes of artifice, only existing as their iconic form. Mary Ann Doane (1985) contends that cinema fetishizes the synchronization between sound and image (162), that characters become a graphic signifier that entails a presence with the body. Animation, nevertheless, potentially subverts rather than conforms to, diminishes rather than reinforces the synchronization, which illuminates

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the “totality” of the audio and the visual, as well as the ideological determinations that emanate from it (55). Put another way, voice in animations does not necessarily evoke the corporeal presence or guarantee the pervasive nature of the ideology, the way live-action films suggest. This mobilizes a sense of disembodied stardom, a phenomenon highly crucial in the realm of animated visuals. Mulan illustrates a potential mix between “fantasy” and “reality” (Welles 2003), enlightening how the voice functions to engage the fertile yet complex interplay between fleshed individuals and animated figures. In an interview, Wen once compared her experience of personifying Mulan and Aki Ross, the Final Fantasy heroine, stating, “When my voice came out of ‘Mulan,’ it was something I was familiar with. When it came out of Aki Ross, it was jarring because she was so photorealistic. It was as if I’d been cloned” (Hamill 2001). Aki Ross is the heroine of Final Fantasy, an instance of Columbia-Sony’s venture into video-game-to-film extravaganza, which portrays a familiar alien-invasion, end-of-the-world, phantasmagoric sci-fi love story. Engineering hype among both cinephiles and gamers, the digitally synthetic character has graced the cover of Maxim magazine and has been named as “It Girl” by Entertainment Weekly, turning Wen into a “virtual-reality heroine” (Hamill 2001).2 It seems that the animated Mulan is comparatively closer to a human form, being capable of emanating a sense of perceptive reality. Nonetheless, such a sense is arguably a disguise. Mulan is an animated character emphasizing artificiality and illusion, not unlike the “post-human” star postulated by Paul Welles (2003). Although the persona construction of Mulan was meant to include traditional Chinese values like filial piety and patriotism that are associated with the impression that it possesses “human traits,” the persona is, in fact, a “fictional construct performing acts outside of the human capacity” (Welles 2003, 97). In other words, the animated figure is a result of the elision of the physical presence of the star. To elaborate, in many senses, there is no “actor” who substantially influences the iconography. It, thus, hints at a problematized corporeal presence on celluloid screens. Studies prove that the voice triggers the memory of the star’s physical person, but it cannot save screen personae from having no corporeal presence. For example, Sam Summers’ (2018) analysis of the animated body and human stars posits visual resemblances between the animated characters and their respective performers (164). It is efficacious to market an actor as a star vehicle by adopting the star image as “shorthand” for character development, facilitating audience identification with the character

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by engaging prior film roles and particular social types (Wright 2019). Whereas the performance of voice actors carries with them the aural signifiers of the established media personae, it reveals the challenges of entailing a physical presence. Martin Barker (2003) suggests that stars “can voice a character, and thus transfer to it some of the resonances of their established persona. But they cannot own it” (20). Here, the “disowning” underpins the potential ambivalence of the star voice. In Paul Welles’ (2003) analysis of the renowned Toy Story, he argues that Woody and Buzz must be aligned not with a phenomenology of “Hanks” or “Allen,” or what may be termed the traditional mode of “star” defined by the economic, artistic, and sociocultural parameters, as discussed by Richard Dyer (2007) and Christine Gledhill (2003). Rather, it should be associated with the phenomenology of Lara Croft and the burgeoning conception of the “cyborg” (Welles 2003, 95). Likewise, the Mulan role has evoked a phenomenology that is not contained in stardom in any conventional sense. It portends a new star presence, or a “star absence,” which both embraces and transcends all the performance, persona, and photorealistic nuances. In other words, it renders a prosthetic occurrence operating in a novel cultural space that aligns with the virtual apparatuses of digital games and cyberspace.

Vocal About Asian American Identity Politics Ming-Na Wen’s vocal performance for Mulan shows undertones of the debate over Asian American identity. Besides Wen, the voice cast of Mulan’s English-dubbed version includes Chinese American performers B.D. Wong for Mulan’s commanding officer General Li Shang and James Hong for Mulan’s fellow soldier Chi Fu. Disney’s choice of voice talent is proof of its, and Hollywood’s, brand of diversity, and its overt stance of conquering ethnic Chinese viewing communities (Wang and Yeh 2005, 181). Dubbing the Mulan character Disney’s “first Asian princess” (Mtime 2018), the publicity discourse emphasizes the signifying essence of the original Mulan story and the ethnic status of Wen as an Asian, exploiting the simplified parallel of the cultural images of the fictional character and the live voice actress. In an interview, the director Tony Bancroft once confessed: “She [Mulan] represented Chinese values, she was more dramatic, she was close to her father, very respectful. So, she had to be cast so that she had that voice, that very Chinese character. So, Ming-Na Wen was perfect for that” (Noyer 2008). Without being substantiated in any

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historical or cultural contexts, the “very Chinese character” remarked by Bancroft seems highly abstract and is trivialized, seeking no credentials from the performance and persona per se. Equally noteworthy is the inclusion of the African American Eddie Murphy to be the mini-dragon Mushu that illuminates nuances of the racial politics. According to the producer, Mushu is designed as an “African American character,” a counterpart to Mulan as “an Asian character,” in order to silhouette the ethnic picture of the ensemble of the characters (Noyer 2008). Mushu is a key role that guides Mulan to transition from the “traditional” Chinese world to the “whole new world,” in which sundry cultures and values converge (Noyer 2008). It was voiced by Eddie Murphy, a New York–born Hollywood actor and singer. His dubbed performance reverberates with his established screen image in comedies and family-oriented features. By incorporating an array of ethnic icons, Mulan not only corroborates how the dubbed persona works intimately with the established star image but also has taken the inquiry a step further than a simple focus on marketability of the performers’ voice to the power dynamics evoked by the racial identity of the performers. It can be posited that the use of Ming-Na Wen as the leading voice actress in Mulan is, to a certain extent, because of her American-accented English. Accent can inscribe voice performers geographically and racially. Unlike the famous instances of Robin Williams’ voice acting as Genie in Aladdin (1992) and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s performance in Moana (2016), where animators may utilize the “extra-textual persona or prior filmography of its performers” (Summers 2018, 171) to build the characters, Mulan is a type of character that is already rooted in deep literary and cultural traditions and seems to be loosely built upon Wen’s established image, particularly in relation to her linguistic competence. Wen’s proficient English is part of the evidence of her transnational star profile, giving her the privilege of speaking to the Asian American identity that is insinuated in her celluloid image. Born in Macau of Chinese descent, Wen moved to the United States at the age of four. She grew up as an Asian American in New York and then settled in Pittsburgh, where her family ran Chinatown-Inn restaurant. Not long after her acting career began, she was widely known as part of the main cast of Wayne Wong’s 1993 The Joy Luck Club, a watershed film for the cinematic representation of Asian Americans in Hollywood. Adapted from Amy Tan’s acclaimed novel, The Joy Luck Club was the first Asian American–fronted film produced by a major studio (Ramos 2018), marked by an Asian ensemble of talents

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including director Wayne Wong, producer Janet Yang, and the entire cast, including Tsai Chin, Rosalind Chao, Lisa Lu, and Ming-Na Wen. The film narrated a story about the relationships between Asian mothers and their American-born daughters, predominantly revolving around Wen’s character named June. Wen articulated clipped, precise English, making her pass linguistically as Asian or Chinese. Furthermore, she has noted and credited the recent sensation Crazy Rich Asians (2018), with its own all-Asian cast (see Chap. 1 of this book). Suffice it to say, Wen’s lingual facility with English functions to distract viewers from the potential of Orientalizing portrayals of both Mulan and Wen herself, permitting the actress to negotiate Asians’ continuous struggle against racial exclusion and subordination as “Orientals” in reality. Ming-Na Wen is overt in making a posture for the status of Asian Americans against the backdrop of the multiplication of viewing conduits in the digital milieu (Tang 2008, 154). A recent example cites a press interview that featured Wen’s complaint about the omission of her name and that of her Chinese American costar B.D. Wong in the cast list of the 2019 Netflix version of Mulan (Sharf 2019). Mulan (1998) was launched on Netflix in January 2019, alongside live-action titles like Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), Gothika (2003), and Magic Mike (2012), as well as animated features such as Hercules (1997) and Monster House (2006), and was removed after its launch on the platform for eight months (Schaffstall 2019). Wen openly criticized Netflix for being racially inclined for such a “major oversight,”3 as she called it, and she also mobilized her fans to tweet Netflix about the mistake. Netflix gave a prompt response to fix it by putting the two names back on the list. The incident shows that Wen’s vocal potency lies less in the character than in her real-­ life persona, allowing one to ponder the meaning of the Asian or Chinese image in popular entertainment dominated by white-oriented discourse.

The New Mulan The Mulan character crosses the disciplinary boundary of existing as both animated figure and live-action figure, which evokes the debate over the interplay of persona, accent, and fanfare. Following Beauty and the Beast (2017) and Aladdin and The Lion King (both 2019) in the live-action cinematic space, the remake of Mulan developed its key character with a plausible corporeal presence on screen. Unlike many other animation-­ adapted films, Mulan is categorized not as a musical but as a historical epic

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driven by the vehicle of martial arts actions. Bearing in mind the emphasis of the visuals, it is nevertheless worth noting how accent plays an intriguing part in understanding the film. Considering the producer’s decision to audition Mandarin speakers exclusively for Mulan, actors and actresses are expected to speak not American-accented English but “a Chinese-­ influenced American dialect” (Prime 2020). Specifically, Mulan’s American performers need to learn “how to bring a sort of a Mandarin accent to it” (Szany 2020). The initial casting call has already focused on Mandarin- or Cantonese-speaking talents because producer Jason Reed is inclined to reproduce the “authentic voice,” “no pun intended” (Prime 2020). The “authenticity” seems abstract and fluid, unfolding no clues of congruence between the performers’ onscreen and offscreen existence. Rather, it is largely a tool for reconstructing an imaginary China on the acoustic level. In a nutshell, “getting the Chinese accent right” (Prime 2020) interrogates the legitimate parameter of language and personality construction in transnational ventures in the milieu of the growing market in China. Mulan’s shifting emphasis on accent is part of the evidence of the film’s refocus on the Chinese-speaking audienceship. From executive producer Bill Kong (the producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to stuntmen (from China as well as Mongolia and Kazakhstan, two countries covered by China’s One Belt One Road Initiative) to performers, the cast has expertise in Chinese blockbuster filmmaking.4 Particularly, the cast incorporates ubiquitous names in the Chinese cinema that add caliber to the transnational profile of the film. It stars Jet Li as the emperor of China, Donnie Yen as Commander Tung (Mulan’s mentor), Gong Li as the powerful villainous witch, Cheng Pei Pei as Mulan’s grandmother, Jason Scott Lee as warrior Bori Khan, and Liu Yifei as Mulan (Szany 2020). After Disney’s official announcement of the live-action remake, the cast for the titular role drew a massive spotlight. Disney started a global search for the female lead and intended to cast a talent who possesses proficiency in both English and Mandarin Chinese as well as choreographic dexterity (Szany 2020). Finally, the Chinese American actress, Liu Yifei, also known as Crystal Liu, successfully won the role, purportedly over 1000 aspirants (McClintock and Couch 2018). The studio unveiled the first image of Liu-as-Mulan on Twitter on August 14, 2018, and countless responses from users flooded in (McNary 2018). Liu’s conquest of the new Mulan role brings gravity to her cult appeal, elevating her status in the American mass entertainment arena.

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Casting Liu as Mulan for the remake implies the importance of her voice in her star construction. For casting a household name in certain cultures, audiences often seek verisimilitude between the personifier and the personified. Aficionados acknowledge Liu as a perfect choice for the legendary heroine, and the acknowledgment is found widely in the publicity about Liu. On YouTube, for instance, an entry titled “Liu Yifei Interview—May 2016 in Cannes, France” was posted on May 14, 2016 (Liu Yifei Taiwan Fans 2016). The interview was conducted by Dior, a French luxury brand. As the interview opens, the White male host greets Liu in French, who reciprocates in the same language. The Chinese-born actress then spoke fluent English in the rest of the conversation, recounting her experience participating in transnational productions. The entry attracted copious comments even long after the posting date; most were posted after Liu’s choice for Mulan was publicized. Not a few comments express an acknowledgment of the casting, portending the imaginary parallel between the fictional Mulan and the live actress. Feedback is marked by such phrases as “best choice for Mulan,” “Mulan in Real life,” “exactly how I imagined Mulan,” “She’s Mulan,” “a good choice for Mulan,” and “Perfect Mulan” proliferated. Specifically, certain responses point to the voice of the actress, for example, “[h]er voice reminds me of Mulan already!” and “her voice like mulan in disney cartoon.” Such responses inspire questions: When fans evaluate Liu as “perfect” for Mulan, what is the basis of the evaluation? When they perceive Liu’s voice as similar to that in the Disney animation, to what extent do they point to Wen’s vocal performance or the texture of Wen’s voice? What makes them show affinity? Does the voice they consider as referent ever exist? Whereas the voice of Mulan sounds arbitrary and works on an imaginary plane, Liu’s voice proffers a reference point, to which the imaginary of Mulan anchors and grapples with. As a new icon of Chinese blockbuster filmmaking, Liu Yifei is a versatile talent who gained fame in her home country and the West (Fig.  8.2). Graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 2006, Liu established her polysemic image spanning across television, film, singing, and modeling. She began her acting career in television, which enabled her to establish cult followings across the country. Due to her delicate, pristine image, local media widely call her “Fairy Sister.” She is also one of the “New Four Dan Actresses”5 in mainland China, alongside Huang Shengyi, Yang Mi, and Wang Luodan, and Liu is probably the one whose profile is the most transnational. In 2007, she crossed over to Hollywood to make her debut in the fantasy kung fu film, Forbidden Kingdom (2008), for the dual role

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Fig. 8.2  Liu Yifei as the rising actress in China. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/b77337d3-­2ed8-­4df9-­8c65-­63fae2004551)

of Golden Sparrow and the “Chinatown girl,” costarring with megastars Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Her subsequent appearances in A Chinese Ghost Story and White Vengeance (both 2011) as well as For Love or Money and Outcast (both 2014) aggrandized her fame at home and abroad. In addition, she won the celebrity endorsements for an array of international brands like Garnier, Tissot, Pantene, and Dior Prestige. She is also fluent in English and French, in addition to her mother tongue. Dubbed by some English-language media “the Emma Watson of China,” Liu engineers an image imbued with youthful beauty, Oriental femininity, and cosmopolitan ethos that can sell among transnational moviegoers.

Politicizing the Chinese Heroine’s Voice and Image When Liu headlined a major Hollywood-produced crossover blockbuster, her Mulan-related persona became politicized in a way that is connected to ethnicity, gender, democracy, and the pandemic. Cinephiles and critics

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consider the success of Liu Yifei in landing the role of Mulan as a triumph over Hollywood’s “whitewashing.” Hollywood’s casting White performers for Asian roles has been a decades-long issue, not showing signs of abating in recent years. For example, Emma Stone’s role as Allison Ng, a woman of Hawaiian and Asian heritage, in Cameron Crowe’s 2015 romantic comedy Aloha, sparked anger from viewers. In 2017, moviegoers were displeased to see Matt Damon playing the key character for the epic Great Wall, directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. In the same year, the remake of Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell (2017) that casts Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanaqi led to a petition, calling for substituting the American actress with an Asian star that garnered more than 72,000 signatures. Death Note (2017), a re-creation of Tsugumi Ohba’s manga series, was set in a Seattle high school and starred White actors for the leads, igniting a boycott of Netflix (Ehrlich and Nguyen 2017). Hollywood’s racist bigotry appears in Disney’s animations, too. In 2018, Disney was criticized for “whitewashing” the character of Princess Tiana, an African American heroine in The Princess and the Frog (2009). As the Guardian critic Bidisha (2010) explains, Princess Tiana, the first Black cartoon star, appears one-dimensional, not deviating much from the long-standing racialized representation on Hollywood screens. Disney manages to show consciousness in employing the non-White cast in some of its live-action remakes. In 2019, Halle Bailey gained the breakthrough role of Ariel in the live-action version of Little Mermaid (Agence France-­ Presse 2019). However, these examples remain rare. Gender occupies a central seat in the discursive politics of the 2020 Mulan. As media expert Michael Lee (@IamMichaelJLee) remarks, the live-action remake honors the ancient Chinese ballad and the 1998 animation by modernizing themes of female empowerment. One illustration is the teaser trailer debuted during the Women’s World Cup final game in July 2019, which garnered more than 650,000 tweets for approximately one day (South China Morning Post 2019a). The live-action film rode on the wave of the #MeToo movement, an anti-sexual harassment and sexual assault campaign that has gained vibrancy in America and around the world since 2006.6 Reportedly, the #MeToo movement caused the omission of Li Shang, a sexually ambiguous central character from the original version (BBC News 2020b). Producer Jason Reed noted that Li Shang’s flourishing romance with Mulan does not seem to make sense in the #MeToo era, owing to anticipated sensitivity to the power dynamics in the Mulan–Li Shang relationship (Szany 2020).7 On top of the feminist

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sensibilities, Mulan (2020) has been strongly shaped by the discursive parameter of gender politics today. Liu Yifei’s contentious voice was displayed in the recent scene of activism in and beyond Hong Kong. In August 2019, colossal disputes targeting Mulan began due to the exposure of Liu’s voiced support of Hong Kong police during the territory’s anti-extradition law movement, which had exploded two months previously (BBC News 2019). On Weibo, where the actress has gained more than 65 million followers, Liu shared a post on August 14 released by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Communist Party, with the original quote, “I support Hong Kong police. You can beat me now,” supplemented by her English-written comment, “What a shame for Hong Kong,” ornamented with heart and strong-arm emojis (South China Morning Post 2019b). As the magnitude of the protests continued, the Hong Kong police were broadly condemned for excessive use of force against the protesters, as has been covered by media both local and international. The police’s deeds also attracted concerns from political and human-rights institutions overseas, including the United Nations human rights office and Amnesty International, which requested an independent inquiry into the law enforcers’ handling of the demonstration. Liu’s controversial post resulted in massive and bifurcated public responses. Chinese-backed news channels held up Liu as a symbol for the country and its administration. Countless tweets with the hashtag #SupportMulan began circulating, with many of the posts coming from nationalist users (Davis 2019). Concomitantly, Liu’s voice incited transnational calls to boycotts. The hashtag #BoycottMulan was trending on Twitter shortly after the release of Liu’s post, featured in more than 21,000 posts from all over the globe, of which more than 16,000featured Liu’s name (South China Morning Post 2019b). A novel wave of #BoycottMulan and #BanMulan activities swept through Taiwan and Thailand starting in April 2020, including those organized by members of Milk Tea Alliance, a newly formed regional network that endeavors to counteract China-based propaganda and nationalist rhetoric on social media (Wit 2020) (Fig. 8.3). Physical boycotts also took shape. On July 1, 2020, the Handover anniversary of Hong Kong, a consortium of civic groups and college students in Seoul held a rally at Walt Disney Company Korea for the purpose of urging Disney to abandon plans to release Mulan in South Korea. A protesters’ statement pinpointed the reasons for the escalating abhorrence, reading, “as someone who contributed to suppressing the people of Hong Kong, she cannot become the protagonist of

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Fig. 8.3  #BoycottMulan campaign in various countries in Asia, especially among young people. (Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/prachatai/50305386342/ in/photolist-­2jDjujX-­2jDjfKh)

Mulan” (cited in Liu 2020). It also averred that the leading star’s ideals intrinsically contrasted with the wider message of the narrative, which is “about overcoming discrimination” (cited in Liu 2020). The concurring users’ feedback from different cultures not only keeps resurfacing Liu’s vocal support of the Hong Kong police but also makes the celebrity a battleground for contestations of multiple voices, especially among young, tech-savvy, and politically sensitive audiences. The ambivalent identities of Mulan and its main actress exemplify the entanglement between China and America on political, cultural, and industrial levels (Faughnder 2020). China has consciously expanded its global soft power, and its growing influence in Hollywood has coerced the United States to wrestle with fundamental questions involving values, artistic integrity, and creative freedom (Magnier 2020). Hollywood has revealed an inclination to China with its effort to gain access to the

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lucrative Chinese market, probably at the stake of performing self-censorship (Faughnder 2020). The US government officials, political allies, and critics have already cautioned and criticized many Hollywood studios including Disney for their “kowtowing” to Beijing (Faughnder 2020). Moreover, Disney has credited a handful of Chinese authorities that helped with the film, including the Public Security Bureau of the city of Turpan in Xinjiang and four Chinese Communist Party propaganda departments in the region, the site of some of the world’s most contentious human rights issues today (Fish 2020). Certain respondents have even asserted the United States ought to confront China on its doubtful engagement of human rights issues at the price of worsening economic relations with China (Silver et al. 2020). These instances perpetuate the debate derived by the Disney venture and reinforce the politicized nature of the movie. Controversy snowballs in view of the growing US suspicion of China during the presidency of Donald Trump, and especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic (Magnier 2020). In December 2019, the coronavirus-­caused COVID-19 disease was found to break out in China and steadily spread through Asia, Europe, North and South Americas, Australia, and Africa (Zhu et  al. 2020). It has infected over 29 million people and killed more than 930,000 at the time of writing, an unprecedented threat to the world. The pandemic eruption has recharted the routes of global expansion and had a big impact on the US entertainment industry. It has resulted in cancellations of countless high-profile entertainment events, the closure of movie theaters, and the forced shift of films’ exhibition to online conduits (Alexander 2020).8 Positioned as a blockbuster film in China, the much-anticipated Mulan had its star-studded red carpet premiere on March 27, 2020, in Hollywood. However, since then, Disney announced the postponement of the global launch of the feature three times, followed by the decision to launch it through the studio’s subscription service, Disney Plus, starting September 4, 2020, making the film the first blockbuster to go straight to streaming in response to COVID-19 shuttering movie theaters (Vary 2020). Moreover, Mulan and its leading star have become the outlets of the racial and ethnic abuses spawned by the coronavirus. Statistics have already shown that COVID-19 discrimination has been directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States in the course of the pandemic development (Norlian 2020). Also, women are more likely to be targeted than men (Fenton 2020). According to a survey conducted by

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Pew Research Center, Americans increasingly fault China for the spread of the virus, followed by the questioning of President Xi Jinping’s competence in managing world affairs (Silver et al. 2020). The inimical view is echoed, if not accentuated, by President Trump’s frequent rhetoric, which stresses what he calls “the country’s failure to contain the outbreak” (Silver et al. 2020). Amid the racial or ethnic bigotry, one can, moreover, witness the intertwined pandemic narratives and star narratives. English-­ language media place Liu Yifei under a spotlight with respect to the fact that the epicenter of the virus outbreak, Wuhan in China, is Liu Yifei’s birthplace, where she spent her first ten years of life (Ford 2020). The Chinese actress has expressed her affection toward her hometown and parents, and worries about the virus threat in general. In an interview conducted by the Hollywood Reporter, for instance, Liu said, “It’s really heavy for me to even think about it …. People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I’m so touched actually to see how they haven’t been out for weeks. I’m really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon” (Ford 2020). The juxtaposition of love and hatred, care and fear, has added another layer to the star discourse in Hollywood. Liu’s affective rhetoric does not seem to redeem her reputation from the political controversy. At the time of writing, Liu Yifei and her new movie reignited a new round of boycotts after a new national security law was passed in Hong Kong on July 1, 2020. Controversial enough, the law has been castigated by Europe, Australia, and the United States, being considered as a means to reinforce Beijing’s grip on the governance of the territory and its power to crack down on dissenting voices. On August 11, Hong Kong activist Agnes Chow was arrested and detained on a charge of “colluding with foreign forces” over social media, alongside another eight activists including Hong Kong media tycoon, Jimmy Lai. Dubbed “the goddess of democracy,” twenty-three-year-old activist Chow has endeavored to pursue democratic reforms in Hong Kong. After the news of her arrest broke out, it was rapidly tweeted and evoked enormous responses chiefly in Hong Kong and in Japan, where she has gained a sizable following. A series of #FreeAgnes campaigns, furthermore, were launched among web users. Her supporters hailed the young activist as the “true Mulan” because of the bravery and authenticity she embodies in the quest for democracy while bringing honor and pride to her hometown (Reynolds 2020). Memes then quickly arose on social media that compare the

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ordinary heroine Chow with the famed actress Liu Yifei, who has been notorious for supporting police brutality and the Chinese Communist Party (BBC News 2020b). Author-researcher Jeff Wasserstrom, an expert on the social history of China and protests, remarks in one of his tweets dated August 11, 2020: “The idea of Agnes Chow as the true Mulan is showing up in all sorts of ways (in varied languages and Tweets from varied places) on the Internet” (BBC News 2020a). The notoriety of Liu does not seem to disappear; the narratives of activism keep evolving across tongues and cultures, replotting the alternative contours of ethnic stardom in a moment of global crisis.

Notes 1. Tony Bancroft, one of the twin-brother directors of Mulan, worked at Disney Animation for over twelve years during the renaissance period of Disney. Other Disney-branded animated films of that time, in chronological order of release, include The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), and Tarzan (1999). 2. While most animated productions seek photorealism, Final Fantasy is criticized for its human characters’ lack of it and the uncanny effect created on the bodies, such as the technology that produced a “dead eye” effect (Lin 2014, 36). It has been widely recognized that the style of Hollywood seeks realism through lifelike movement, plausibility, and believability in terms of movement. It seeks an appeal to the desire of immediacy that allows spectators to have the most direct relationship with the content of the medium (Bolter and Grusin 2003, 318). 3. It is noticeable that the Netflix credits bar on a film’s streaming web page rarely include the entire cast, and it usually features the names of only three or four cast members. In its credits section, the Mulan page featured three other actors, including Miguel Ferrer, Harvey Fierstein, and June Foray, all non-Asian American actors. 4. Disney approached Ang Lee, the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Jiang Wen, the actor of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), for the director’s role, but they declined (Lee 2017). The film was finally directed by Niki Caro, a New Zealand female filmmaker-scriptwriter. 5. “Dan,” a term derived from Beijing Opera, or jingju, in mainland China, refers to a female character (Li 2010, 11). Now the term is generalized, meaning the most bankable actresses who often play leading roles.

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6. The #MeToo movement was sparked by the exposure of the extensive sexual abuse allegations about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. It began to spread virally as a hashtag on social media. He was found guilty on two counts in February 2020, right before the global launch of Mulan (Alter 2020). 7. Reed stated that depicting a male commanding officer that is also of sexual interest is considered “inappropriate” (Szany 2020). 8. Approximately 7000 screens across China since the peak season of movie sales during the festive Lunar New Year (Wallace 2020).

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Lin, Fabia Ling-Yuan. 2014. Doubling the Duality: A Theoretical and Practical Investigation into Materiality and Embodiment of Meaning in the Integration of Live Action and Animation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Liu, Narayan. 2020. Mulan: South Korean Boycott Launched in Support of Hong Kong Protests. CBR, July 2. https://www.cbr.com/mulan-­south-­korean-­ boycott-­support-­hong-­kong-­protests/. Liu Yifei Taiwan Fans. 2016. Liu Yifei Interview—May 2016 in Cannes, France. YouTube video, 2:30, May 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= JxR5EZ_GY1o. Magnier, Mark. 2020. Soft Power, Hard Cash: The China-Hollywood Tango Comes into Sharper Focus. South China Morning Post, August 5. https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3096054/soft-­power-­hard-­ cash-­seductive-­china-­hollywood-­tango-­comes. Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marcello, Starr A. 2006. Performance Design: An Analysis of Film Acting and Sound Design. Journal of Film and Video 58 (1–2): 64. McClintock, Pamela, and Aaron Couch. 2018. Live-Action ‘Mulan’ Pushed Back More Than a Year to Spring 2020. Hollywood Reporter, March 1. https:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-­vision/live-­action-­mulan-­pushed-­back-­ more-­a-­year-­spring-­2020-­1090015. McNary, Dave. 2018. Disney Unveils First Look at Live-Action ‘Mulan’. Variety, August 13. https://variety.com/2018/film/news/disney-­mulan-­first-­look-­ liu-­yifei-­1202903589/. Mtime 時光網. 2018. 20年前的她成為改變迪士尼公主規則的女戰士 For Twenty Years She Becomes a Female Warrior Who Changes the Rules of Disney Princesses. Mtime 時光網, June 20. https://www.luoow.com/dc_hk/107551527. Norlian, Allison. 2020. Despite Covid-19 and Anti-Asian Racism, This Chinese Mother-Daughter Duo’s Handcrafted Business Is Thriving. Forbes, August 20. h t t p s : / / w w w. f o r b e s . c o m / s i t e s / a l l i s o n n o r l i a n / 2 0 2 0 / 0 8 / 2 0 / despite-­covid-­19-­and-­anti-­asian-­racism-­this-­chinese-­mother-­daughter-­duos-­ handcrafted-­business-­is-­thriving/#6fe65fc233fa. Noyer, Jérémie. 2008. Tony Bancroft Balances the Yin and the Yang in Directing Mulan. Animated Views, August 14. https://animatedviews.com/2008/ tony-­bancroft-­balances-­the-­yin-­and-­the-­yang-­in-­directing-­mulan/. Prime, Johanan. 2020. Mulan Producer Discusses Importance of Getting the Chinese Accent Right. Lowyat.net, March 6. https://www.lowyat. net/2020/207213/mulan-­p roducer-­d iscusses-­i mportance-­o f-­g etting­the-­chinese-­accent-­right/. Ramos, Dino-Ray. 2018. Ming-Na Wen Reflects on ‘The Joy Luck Club’ 25 Years Later, Praises ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ as Another ‘Historical’ Moment. Deadline, August 16. https://deadline.com/2018/08/ming-­na-­wen-­joy-­luck-­club-­ anniversary-­25-­crazy-­rich-­asians-­agents-­of-­shield-­mulan-­1202446156/.

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Reynolds, Isabel. 2020. Japan’s #FreeAgnes Campaign Shows Support for Hong Kong Activist. Japan Times, August 12. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2020/08/12/national/japan-­free-­agnes-­chow-­hong-­kong/. Schaffstall, Katherine. 2019. Netflix: Movies and TV Shows Leaving in September. Hollywood Reporter, August 30. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ netflix-­september-­2019-­movies-­leaving-­tv-­shows-­expiring-­1233542. Sharf, Zack. 2019. ‘Mulan’ Star Ming-Na Wen Gets Netflix to Fix Cast List after Omitting Asian-American Leads. Indiewire, January 3. https://www.indiewire. com/2019/01/mulan-­m ing-­n a-­w en-­n etflix-­a sian-­a merican-­l eads-­ credits-­1202031909/. Silver, Laura, Kat Devlin, and Christine Huang. 2020. Americans Fault China for Its Role in the Spread of COVID-19. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, July 30. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/07/30/ americans-­fault-­china-­for-­its-­role-­in-­the-­spread-­of-­covid-­19/. South China Morning Post. 2019a. First Live-action Trailer of Mulan Starring Crystal Liu Yifei: The Big Takeaways, and Fan Reaction to Teaser of Disney Film. July 8. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/ 3017654/first-­mulan-­live-­action-­trailer-­big-­takeaways-­and-­fan. ———. 2019b. Crystal Liu Yifei, Star of Disney’s Mulan, Backs Police in Hong Kong, and Film Faces Boycott Calls, with Officers Accused of Using Excessive Force on Protesters. August 16. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3023061/disneys-­m ulan-­f aces-­b oycott-­c alls-­a fter-­s tar­crystal-­liu. Summers, Sam. 2018. Intertextuality and the Break from Realism in Dreamworks Animation. PhD dissertation, University of Sunderland, UK. Szany, Wendy Lee. 2020. ‘Mulan’ Producer Jason Reed on Making a Live-Action Version that Appeals to All Audiences. Collider, March 5. https://collider. com/mulan-­interview-­jason-­reed-­casting-­changes/. Tang, Jun. 2008. A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Production and Reception of Disney’s Mulan through Its Chinese Subtitles. European Journal of English Studies 12 (2): 149–162. Tian, Chuanmao, and Caixia Xiong. 2013. A Cultural Analysis of Disney’s Mulan with Respect to Translation. Continuum 27 (6): 862–874. Towbin, Mia Adessa, Shelley A.  Haddock, Toni Schindler Zimmerman, Lori K.  Lund, and Litsa Renee Tanner. 2004. Images of Gender, Race, Age, and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 15 (4): 19–44. https://doi.org/10.1300/ j086v15n04_02. Vary, Adam B. 2020. Disney’s ‘Mulan’ Gamble: How Much Can It Make by Skipping Theaters? Variety, August 6. https://variety.com/2020/film/news/ mulan-­box-­office-­pvod-­profits-­potential-­1234727271/?fbclid=IwAR3hbRz1 ST1zvO0I9X1aQAG9T8pCbMhs1tzQgNbFJr_FTX5KVaYGtPerat8.

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Wallace, Anne. 2020. Star of Disney’s ‘Mulan’ Speaks Out about Coronavirus. Deseret News, February 27. https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/ 2020/2/27/21156459/disney-­mulan-­coronavirus-­covid-­19-­china-­wuhan. Wang, Georgette, and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh. 2005. Globalization and Hybridization in Cultural Products. International Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2): 175–193. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877905052416. Welles, Paul. 2003. To Affinity and Beyond: Woody, Buzz and the New Authenticity. In Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, ed. Thomas Austin and Martin Barker, 90–102. London: Arnold. Wit, Alex Dudok D. 2020. The #BoycottMulan Movement Spreads in Asia as Tensions Rise in Hong Kong. Cartoon Brew, July 6. Wright, Julie Lobalzo. 2019. Animation and the Star Body. Film-Philosophy 23 (2): 194–211. https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2019.0109. Xu, Mingwu, and Chuanmao Tian. 2013. Cultural Deformations and Reformulations: A Case Study of Disney’s Mulan in English and Chinese. Critical Arts 27 (2): 182–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2013.783956. Yin, Jing. 2011. Popular Culture and Public Imaginary: Disney vs. Chinese Stories of Mulan. Javnost—The Public 18 (1): 53–74. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13183222.2011.11009051. Yu, Hongmei. 2015. From Kundun to Mulan: A Political Economic Case Study of Disney and China. ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 22 (1): 12–22. https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.100. Zhu, Hengbo, Wei Li, and Ping Niu. 2020. The novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. Global Health and Research Policy 5 (6). March 2. https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7050114/.

CHAPTER 9

Can You Hear the Kung Fu Star?: Rediscovering Bruce Lee’s Vocal Persona in the Digital Culture

Introduction: An Underexplored Dimension of Bruce Lee’s Stardom The potent body and martial authenticity have been the defining characteristics of the screen persona of Bruce Lee, the “world’s most idolized star” (Hu 2010, 166). Cinephiles usually become mesmerized by how his physique looks spectacular, expressive, and sometimes peculiar. In films, Lee exhibits his hyperbolic kung fu actions, typified by rapid kicks and hard punches. In a narcissistic overtone, moreover, Lee delights in displaying his body and the palpable muscular density in his films (Berry 2006, 218). One may easily recall the martial arts hero stripped to the waist, lean muscles, and poised to pounce. Academically, most extant literature about Bruce Lee does not afford excluding the star’s martial arts body or any possible varying forms of it. It becomes a vantage point of inquiry that evokes discussions spanning a range of genealogical frameworks such as the martial arts genre (Bordwell 2000; Desser 2000; Law 2000; Anderson 1998; Morris 2001; Hunt 2003), fandom and cult (Hunt 2007), decolonization and racism (Kato 2007; Ongiri 2005), masculinities (Lo 2001; Berry 2006), queer culture (Bolman 2010), and transpacific nomadicism (Maeda 2017). Extending the idea of the kung fu film as a genre of the body, scholars do not abandon a set of bodily aesthetics and allegorical connotations that are more important in the studies of Bruce Lee than those of other stars. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_9

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Whereas scholarship reveals a dominance of corporeality and choreography in Bruce Lee’s kung fu stardom, the significance of the megastar’s voice or speech is underexplored. One may readily recall the notable Coliseum duel between Lee and Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon (1972): Lee elicited screams of aggression, demonstrating his strong will and exceptional physical potency. As an audio presence in film, Lee’s shout has not completely been omitted from academic research. Studies have shown that such an audio signifier conveys certain importance on multiple levels—pragmatic, aesthetic, and metaphorical. In his formalist exposition, David Bordwell notes that Lee’s powerful high kick denotes centrality in the star image and his battle cry helped Lee “grip” his body for maximal energy and raised the dramatic pitch of a fight (2000, 32). Cheng Yu (1984) also postulates that the shriek possesses a transformative capacity that turns combat into opera and is irreproducible (24). On a similar note, Kwai-Cheung Lo (2004) describes the cry as “mythic” and unmasterable by any speaking subject, highlighting the unruly feature of the shouts (120). Marilyn Mintz (1978, 82), furthermore, elucidated how Lee’s “expressive demeanor” and whole-body performance stemmed from his experience of being an actor and a martial artist. All these intellectuals have noted the “wild” and expressive qualities of Lee’s high-pitched shout, which is reminiscent of the sound of an excited or agonized animal (Bordwell 2000; Cheng 1984; Lo 2004). These critical accounts have attempted to illuminate how Lee’s shrieks, enduring and unique, can be considered as an alternative double of the physicality as a visual entity, forming a part of Lee’s forceful attack. Whereas these accounts contemplate how potentially significant the sound is, they are inclined to position it as supplementary to his kinetic persona, not to mention the brevity of their writing as compared to the effort given to Lee’s bodily presence in diegetic space. Lee is a knowledgeable martial artist that his eloquence philosophizes the extradiegetic image. Philosophical bearings penetrate the popular discourse of Lee in a way that distinguishes him from his contemporaries and to his followers. Drawing on his philosophy-major college education in the United States, Lee exhibited the capacity to formulate his martial arts philosophy, a mix of Western and Eastern ideals, applauding the virtue of a full mastery of one’s self. He invented his own martial arts style, called Jeet Kune Do, literally meaning “the way of the intercepting fist,” which is the culmination of his erudite vision. As a “non-classical” composite,

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Jeet Kune Do blends a range of martial arts principles and fighting methods like boxing, judo, Muay Thai, and Wing Chun. It also highlights certain physical-oriented principles such as economy of motion. In multiple press interviews, Lee, in a confident, succinct manner, explained his belief of martial arts as “the expression of the human body” (Black Belt 1994, 31), or, in Douglas Farrer’s term, “embodied knowledge” (Farrer and Whalen-Bridge 2012). As Lee’s philosophical discourse has persisted throughout recent decades over the increasingly networked cultural order, one may ponder how is Lee’s philosophical persona adopted, emulated, and negotiated in realms other than film, such as activism? This chapter posits Bruce Lee’s sound as a point of departure that allows one to further explore how the star presence, on both diegetic and extradiegetic levels, is reinvented and contested in different phonic and media spaces. The premise is that Lee’s voice becomes an integral part of the fighting or martial arts presence and is crucial to the incessant (re) construction of Lee’s stardom beyond the celluloid screen. This chapter focuses on the aural persona reworked in the fan-oriented digital space and examines the interpretive and receptive tendencies of Lee’s specific vocal articulation. It hypothesizes the presence of screams and speeches, of which either realistic or artificial ramifications are emphasized, facilitates or even underpins the live-body experience, becoming the aural counterparts that make the kung fu bodily presence intact. In this light, a number of questions arise: To what extent are Lee’s grunts imitative? How far does it valorize the cult image-making of the star? How are the iconic shouts and the philosophical articulations poached, utilized, and reworked as they are transposed to the user-generated virtual space? In what ways do they expand Lee’s established image? In order to respond to these questions, this chapter investigates the mocking and reproducible potential of Lee’s aural traces, nonverbal and verbal, in the cyber frontiers. The discussion first examines the cinematic screams of Lee, followed by the exposition of how the screams are poached and reworked by online users in fan-generated digital videos. My argument extends from the onscreen to offscreen spaces to locate his famous “be water” speech, the audible remnant of his martial arts philosophy. It investigates how the speech is reappropriated to the arena of social movement, channeling the philosophical voice to be the dissenting voice. Throughout, this chapter validates the relevance of aural signifiers as part of the relentless star (re)construction.

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“Sound of Fury” No aficionado misses the shrieks and wails Bruce Lee emits during his fights in the ending scene of the celebrated 1972 Fist of Fury (Fig. 9.1). The scene follows a climactic contest that depicts Lee’s Chen Zhen confronting a Russian champion introduced by the Japanese school. In the middle of the battle, the police emerge to arrest Chen Zhen and give rise to a confrontation with the hero. Consecutive shots show the police pointing with guns at the hero, who returns a solemn, determinate look to his opponents. Soon after a brief gaze, the agonized hero runs into them and toward the camera. He is captured in a freeze-frame mid-leap as he simultaneously let out a furious scream, followed by the hail of police gunfire. The scene and the entire film then close. This is a landmark scene in Lee’s filmographic profile that cements his screen image as a nationalist hero. It shows Lee fixing his piercing gaze on his enemy (Hunt 2003, 43), followed by a grunt, exuding the physical and emotive power of a nationalist hero in a fight. This scene exemplifies how gaze and groan work reciprocally to orchestrate a potent fight, formulating a dialectics of the fighting presence on screen. The scream is unique to Lee, not readily shared or reproduced by other kung fu actors (Cheng 1984, 24). Martial arts icons Jackie Chan and Jet Li have been positioned widely as successors to Lee. They are notable for their

Fig. 9.1  Bruce Lee cries in the mid-leap in the ending scene of Fist of Fury (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrxZc8Jzto)

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stunt choreography and martial prowess, and their kinetic presence is characterized by specific bodily aesthetics, showing no overt audio cues. Donnie Yen only adopts Lee’s epic yelling in his reprisal of Lee’s celebrated role, Chen Zhen, in the 1995 television series Fist of Fury and the 2010 quasiremake Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen. Reportedly, the intentional inclusion of nunchaku and the yelling serve as a token of tribute to Lee (Wu-jing.org 2010). It is apparently an imitative take that serves more to be reminiscent of his predecessor than to construct Yen’s original screen presence by incorporating the component of sound. Lee’s shouts, as the “sound of fury,” forge the nonverbal screen presence of Lee. Human scream, as an aural signifier, possesses strong emotional charge and connotes anger, fear, excitement, and pain without involving words. Starting with his debut show, the 1966 American television series called The Green Hornet, Lee played roles that were barely dialogic. The characters appear taciturn and inarticulate, indirectly giving way to the emphasis of the body and physical movement. Lee once expressed, “To me a motion picture is motion. You got to keep the dialogue down to a minimum” (quoted on CBS News 2014). The shout works to compensate for the inept speaking persona, filling the gap in sonic space in the process of persona construction. To borrow from Jacques Derrida, it can be argued that Lee’s shouts, purely acoustic in nature, are a wordless communicative sign, “neither … a semantic or conceptual content, nor … a semiotic operation, and even less than a linguistic exchange” (Derrida 1982, 309). Yet his shouts are part of the “phenomena of meaning or signification” (Derrida 1982, 309) that have the capacity to inspire cultural readings of the star persona. Lee’s thundering cry forms a stark contrast with silence, which functions in parallel to Lee’s bodily presence interlaced with strong corporeal violence and cardinal calmness. In many combat scenes, Lee fights and stops, advances and retreats, showcasing highly rhythmic actions. One of the exemplary instances is the prolonged battle in Enter the Dragon between Lee, the character of the same name as the megastar, and Han’s subordinates. In the scene, Lee systematically and skillfully conquers the hordes of assailants with both bare hands and nunchaku. During the fight, he screams to prepare his body to fight. After a brief fray, he finds himself running into a vault and is trapped by steel doors slamming around him. He abruptly sits down and pulls his feet onto his thighs, employing a meditative lotus posture while hanging his nunchaku around his neck. He turns to utter solemnity in front of his enemies, who try to entice him to

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join his gang. Underlining the polarity of ecstasy and tranquility, the movement-pause pattern is reinforced by the shout-silence pattern, orchestrating the dialectics of the visual and the audio aspects of the fighting body. Screams possess both practical and symbolic imperatives in Lee’s martial arts presence. Loud shrieks emitted during a fight are more than a strategy to aid the screen representation but point to certain degrees of indexical significance. To convey the gravity of a fight, martial artists often create high-pitched sounds as they execute a technique or attack, according to martial arts experts (General 2018). Like a discipline or a style, a forceful shout plays a vital and integral part in myriad forms of martial arts, from karate and tae kwon do to Muay Thai and Western boxing (General 2018). On the physiological level, screams, which are produced from the contraction of the diaphragm, facilitate rapid exhalation that can tighten the core muscles and help the body to move efficiently (Reynolds 2018). Furthermore, screams augment the sense of rhythm and athleticism. Grunting during physical activities that demand sudden, short, sharp bursts of power provides additional power in offensive and defensive motions (Stevens n.d.). On the signifying level, the shout acts as a fighter’s proclamation of confidence, meant to either perturb an opponent or express a battling spirit.

Appropriating Lee’s Heroic Screams in Online Fanmade Videos Lee’s screams encompass their theoretical and practical underpinnings whereas it is imbued with a sense of artificiality. The high-decibel cry elevates the dramatic effect, working paradoxically to the realism that Lee’s bodily persona is famously predicated on. Academics and critics broadly acknowledge Lee’s commitment to realism without using wirework, trampolines, or editing tricks in his screen choreography. His action denotes body-centered authenticity and martial dexterity through rapid movements and levelheaded exchanges. However, the screams, perceived as vocally disruptive, may seem exaggerated to some audiences, dramatizing or virtualizing the star presence. They magnify the performative outcome of the screen fights. Sometimes, they also aggravate the comic potential of the star’s kinetic performance. Enthusiasts and marketers have shown interest in contemplating how Lee’s shrieks can potentially generate new

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meanings, especially in a parodic way. Consider how widely the cry has been adopted in the form of Bruce Lee “clones,” starting with the proliferation of the Bruceploitation films in the decade subsequent to Lee’s untimely death in 1973 (Hu 2010, 167). The reprisals of the cry also show the industry’s ambition to appropriate and re-narrate Lee’s persona in a repertoire of posthumously produced texts. Titles such as The New Game of Death (1975), The Dragon Lives Again (1976), and Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976) remade and exploited Lee’s characters and produced a series of “lookalikes” of Lee, “Leealikes,” or “Bruce lookalikes” (Hu 2010, 170), hailing Lee as a cult hero in the atmosphere of Chinese and African American cross-identification. The performances reveal a mimicry of Lee’s massively muscled body, facial expressions, and moves like kicks and punches, as well as his shrieks, the elements that all together work to artificially create a “Bruce Lee” brand.1 To emulate the brand in the global media arena, another category of popular texts, the online fanmade video, seems noteworthy, especially in terms of manifesting and realizing the imitative potential of Lee’s shouts. With the ubiquity of digital screens and the rise of DIY culture, the Bruce Lee persona is easily poached, edited, and posted in the media space with certain attempts capitalizing on Lee’s epic yelling. There is no shortage of fanmade videos (sometimes called fanvids), emphasizing Lee’s scream as the key element of the star image. For the purpose of this analysis, I conducted a keyword search with “Bruce Lee scream” on YouTube on August 21, 2020, yielding 79,100 results. One of the top entries, titled “Bruce Lee Kick”’ and uploaded by “omegadies” on May 26, 2008, illustrates the capacity of fanmade creative works to emulate Lee’s persona by augmenting the aural components, or specifically, the cry. Shorter than two minutes, the video is a collage of disparate scenes from Robert Clouse’s 1973 Enter the Dragon, Lee’s fourth feature, poached and reedited in a semi-amateur fashion. Lee’s agonized cry is the focus. The uploader even cautioned the audience in the caption about the disproportionately high volume of the soundtrack.2 The video maker magnifies the presence of the sound while including the repetitive display of the “kicks” in Lee’s films. The caption also remarks that the video maker’s intent is to dedicate this creative work as a token of remembrance to his lost friend who is the “funniest guy you could have ever met” (omegadies 2008). The genre of fanvids is often regarded as a set of generative conditions of possibility for certain sorts of encounters. In this way, Lee’s persona is

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sourced through user appropriation and manipulation of the image, allowing crisscrosses of public image, personal memory, and cult appeal. YouTube also houses fanmade videos that poach and recontextualize the mimicked persona of Bruce Lee with a highlight of his yelling in commercial media. The video titled “Why ‘Bruce Lee’ always scream when fighting” displays the dramatization of Lee’s cinematic presence in contemporary commercial media. Posted by user “Wynn Wynter” on February 19, 2014, the entry reposted a Taiwan-produced commercial of a new offer of spicy fried chicken from McDonald’s, an American-owned brand epitomizing the corporatization and homogenization of cultures. The entry had attracted 17,433 views and thirty-three comments as of the day I conducted the research. The commercial reinvents the setting of the Jingwu School, the narrative space of Lee’s Fist of Fury. It opens with a panning shot of the interior, exhibiting the mundane objects such as a pinup of an unknown martial artist and an array of combat weapons, Chinese and Western, specifically spears, leather boxing bags, and nunchaku, all reminiscent of Lee’s personality of Chen Zhen in the film. A high-pitched sound, ambiguous to the extent that it is uncertain whether it is verbal or nonverbal, emerges offscreen. A “Lee”-cloned figure then appears, with a somber look, sitting up straight at the dining table and eating the chicken alone (Fig.  9.2). With the chick apparently both

Fig. 9.2  The Lee-cloned figure in a Taiwan-produced commercial of McDonald’s (still from YouTube). (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAQLq1P 4WQg&t=3s)

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gratifying and unpalatable, the “imitator” of Lee bites into the chicken, followed by a cry for water, elicited in a vague fashion, in order to soothe his mouth from the burning sensation. Highly commodified, Lee’s heroic image is extended from cinema to the fast-food industry in the backdrop of the convergence of martial arts films, advertising, and star culture. User comments, in general, indicate respect for Lee’s cry in relation to his cult appeal. A majority of comments underline the comical capacity of Lee’s image, without forsaking the star power of Lee as a martial arts expert. Specifically, some comments read, for example, “Bruce Lee screams while fighting not just to do it for more power or something. But to fully express himself. To the Maximun!,” written by “KaOtic One” in January 2017. User “EngaPheniks” responded two years later, saying “Another reason is Intimdation of the opponent.” Another entry posted by “Jayvon Otey” in January 2018 echoes, “Gratitude for the legendary dragon himself bruce lee why he scream.” These responses concentrate on the potency of Lee’s cry, which reiterates the nationalist image and serves as the pivotal point for fan exchange. In this stance, Lee’s heroic scream is transposed to first advertising and then interactive cyber mediascape. What was once dramatic or semiotic cliché is now decontextualized and reinvented with technological mediation. The presence of Lee and his “sound of fury” is exempted from the ideological burden of honoring a nation and avenging his people, although users inevitably bring attention back to Lee’s cinematic persona. Therefore, the persona vacillates in the space between the diegetic and the extradiegetic, the original kung fu persona and the parodic persona.

“Be Water, My Friend!”: Bruce Lee’s Philosophical Elocution and His (Revitalized) Star Presence in Hong Kong’s Protest Space His [Bruce Lee’s] very presence on the screen is a protest.—Be Water (2020), a documentary of Bruce Lee

In the interactive, borderless cyberspace, Bruce Lee’s vocal persona has moved from celluloid to digital screens, from cinema to activism. As a martial arts practitioner and philosopher, Lee was articulate in disseminating his knowledge and vision of martial arts during his short-lived stardom. One can observe the rejuvenation of Lee’s expression of his martial

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arts philosophy in the recent antigovernment social movement in Hong Kong. In June 2019, a series of protests erupted in Hong Kong in opposition to the extradition bill that would allow deportation to a host of countries, including mainland China. Opponents consider that the law would undermine judicial independence, exposing Hongkongers to the risk of unfair trials and violent treatment. They are also concerned that the bill would give China greater influence over Hong Kong and, therefore, endanger dissidents and journalists. Inspired by Lee’s martial arts philosophy, the protesters have adopted the notion “be water” as a key tactic. The notion of “be water” finds its roots in the renowned interview of Bruce Lee on the 1971 Pierre Berton Show. Lee discussed his role of a martial arts instructor named Li Tsung in the American television series Longstreet. He said: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless—like water …. Now, you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or creep, or drip, or crash. Be water, my friend” (Black Belt 1994). To the Hong Kong activists, “be water” means adapting swiftly to circumstances and creatively coming up with modes of civil resistance. The trope “be water” was, moreover, elaborated as “strong like ice, flow like water, gather like dew, and disperse like fog” (Hong 2019), suggesting high degrees of volatility, mobility, and agility. They move “fluidly” in unanticipated waves, “flowing” from one location to another, including government offices, police headquarters, and major thoroughfares (Lam et  al. 2019). The water analogy signifies protesters’ resistance to the authoritarian regime of the PRC in a leaderless, decentralized, and flexible mode. This mode of demonstration allegedly derives from the lessons learned from Hong Kong’s 2014 Occupy Central Movement. More widely known as the Umbrella Movement, the Occupy Central was a seventy-nine-day civil disobedience campaign that began on September 26, 2014. Launched as the “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” campaign and spearheaded by local figures including law professor Benny Tai, sociologist Chan Kin Man, and pro-democracy priest Chu Yiu Ming, the campaign involved a series of sit-in street protests to demand for universal suffrage from the Hong Kong government. Demonstrators occupied key areas in town such as Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok, bringing traffic to a standstill. Furthermore, they turned the occupied zones into a local community by setting up tents for staying overnight and establishing study areas for students who boycotted normal school, as well as furnishing public bathrooms with supplies of bath lotion, shampoo, and skincare products. The

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movement ended with the police’s forced clearance of the occupied zones. The outcome is often evaluated as a disappointment, or as an event “doomed to ‘failure’” (Chan 2014, 578), chiefly because the campaign did not lead to genuine universal suffrage, nor did the Chinese Communist Party make any concrete or substantial concessions (Kong 2017). Furthermore, the “failure” was often attributed to the occupying strategy’s too-rigid nature. In the 2019 movement, which is known as “Umbrella 2.0” or “Occupy 2.0” (Tan 2019), protesters drastically changed their strategies. They gave up guarding the occupation areas and adopted guerilla tactics, which were believed to more effectively drain the government’s resources and keep the momentum. In the entire course of strategy transformation, the “be water” mentality is of central importance. Since the launch of the social movement, “be water” has become a buzzword in online posts and messages disseminated among the cyber public. Young, tech-savvy protesters deliberated their strategies on LIHKG, a Reddit-like local forum, and the encrypted messaging platform Telegram to brainstorm protest tactics, solicit views, vote on decisions, and disseminate the consensus. They, in addition, turned to alternative peer-to-peer technologies, in particular the “AirDrop” feature that enables iPhone users to send images to each other over Bluetooth connection without the need for a mobile connection (Dapiran 2019). In social media, the philosophical message of Bruce Lee has been extensively reposted and tweeted, often labeled with #BeWater. Web users also employed and transmuted the catchphrase into myriad cultural forms. In its most creatively visual forms, it was replicated in countless publicity pieces for the demonstrations, including posters, cardboard signs, and banners (Fig. 9.3). Protesters composed songs, mostly Cantonese, for the protests, too. The song called “Ziyou (自游),” a Cantonese pun on the word “freedom,” was coupled with the term “Be Water” as the English title (deenlomusic 2019). The so-called anthem song for the protests titled “Glory to Hong Kong” (願榮光歸香港) has been recreated and multiplied into different versions, one of them called the “Be Water version” (ImprovFusic HK 2019). On online social networks, a Facebook page named “BeWater HK” had attracted more than 50,000 follows as of June 2020, and it has been staying active. Penetrating the digital media space, Lee’s philosophical articulation is transmuted in various forms, gaining its ubiquitous presence in the campaign. Be Water was adopted as the title of the latest documentary of the martial artist, released on ESPN, underlining the rebellious spirit of Lee’s

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Fig. 9.3  Lines of Bruce Lee’s “Be Water” speech on a protester’s banner in Hong Kong. (Photo courtesy: Mary Hui)

philosophical image. Premiered at Sundance Film Festival and released as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series on June 7, 2020, the documentary uncovers the diasporic life of Lee in the 1970s. Directed by Bao Nguyen, a New York–based Vietnamese American filmmaker, the feature chronicles Lee’s early encounters, including his uneasy childhood, his first foray in America into teaching kung fu, and his rise to film stardom after returning

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to Hong Kong. Situated in the cultural climate worldwide, the story highlights the racial and ethnic stereotypes that dogged Lee and thwarted his embryonic success in Hollywood, reflecting America’s and the world’s history of anti-Asian ethos (Topel 2020). The historical nuances, moreover, serve as the cultural background for understanding Lee’s underdog appeal on Hong Kong screens. According to Chris Berry (2006), each of Lee’s films, from the debut The Big Boss to the incomplete Game of Death, is a variation on the theme of the triumph of the underdog (220). Such an image engendered repercussions among the US ethnic minorities such as African Americans, Latin Americans, and Caribbean Americans, giving shape to the pop cultural scenes of hip hop. Furthermore, critics contemplate that the “be water” principle by Lee was designed for “penetrating a racist world” because of the powerful nature of water and its capacity to evade physical damages (Topel 2020). Lee’s anti-imperialistic persona, wedding diasporic consciousness with martial arts’ philosophical vision, oscillates between the spaces of cinema and activism. Hong Kong demonstrators’ “be water” tactic was exported and has influenced movements across continents, from Spain to Chile, from Lebanon to Belarus, resuscitating the star image in border-crossing terms. The Hong Kong demonstration generates repercussions in the sphere of activism globally. One notable example is Catalonia, a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Spain, and its battle for independence, which was aggravated in 2017. For a period of time, the Catalonian activists studied closely the techniques employed by the Hong Kong demonstrators, assessing to what extent they could be effectively applied to their campaign.3 An activist group called the Democràtic Tsunami launched there in September 2019 (loosely resonant, the word tsunami insinuates the water tactics) for the purpose of advocating massive civil disobedience actions to safeguard the freedom of the citizens. In the attempted occupation of Barcelona’s El Prat airport after the verdicts sentencing nine leaders to jail terms, protesters have used the text-messaging platforms of Twitter and Telegram and exercised large-scale blocking of traffic and key thoroughfares (The Local 2019).4 Tsunami Democratic admitted they have borrowed ideas from Hong Kong activists’ “be water” tactics, which they described as “radical” (Burgen and Jones 2019).5 Some protesters, chiefly the youth, also asserted, “Let’s do a Hong Kong!” (Dominguez 2019).6 In solidarity, Catalonian flags appeared in an array of Hong Kong’s mass rallies, accompanied by slogans to support the residents of the Spanish region. Furthermore, the Chinese government has turned a disparaging voice to

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the protests in Hong Kong by mentioning Catalonia.7 Parallels between the movements in Hong Kong and Catalonia are explicit, with Lee’s “Be Water” expression serving as an operational nexus. This corroborates how Lee’s articulation vacillates between philosophy and politics in the transnational arena.

Beyond the Erudite Eloquence: Relocalizing Lee’s Star Identity The reappropriation of Lee’s philosophical eloquence in Hong Kong’s protests calibrates new links between the star and the locale or identity of Hong Kong. Although Lee rose to stardom in Hong Kong kung fu cinema, his connection to the place or culture of Hong Kong was never overt or solid. As a California-born star, Lee had a Hong Kong lineage and was raised in the city. He began his acting career in the Hong Kong film industry and performed as a child actor. After his college education in the United States, he returned to Hong Kong and was cast in a number of martial arts films, which his fame pivoted on. However, the association between Lee’s image and Hong Kong, in both physical and cultural terms, seems slippery and ambivalent. In his analysis, Kwai-Cheung Lo (2004) notes that Lee’s cinematic persona uncovers cultural ambivalence and problematizes local identification. Lo (2004) theorizes Lee’s body as “foreign” or “alien,” unlikely to signify a stable link or positive causality (118). Although Lee, as “a token for Hong Kong action cinema,” earned his stardom in Hong Kong kung fu movies, he was widely recognized as a “Chinese hero” who employs the vigor and philosophy of kung fu to conquer foreign enemies (Lo 2004, 118). The characters he animates are often “more generically ‘Chinese’ than distinguishably ‘Hong Kongese’” (ibid.). Specifically, it is also not plausible “to offer a solid ground for locating a specific entity, ‘Hong Kong’” (119–20). Metaphorically, Lee’s body possesses a “hole punched out,” with the sound of Lee’s shouts seemingly coming from nowhere, as it is “looking for a body to fill out” (120). This “coming-from-nowhere” quality is also indicated in Lee’s dubbed persona in his Hong Kong–produced kung fu features. Mandarin is used in the first run of his Hong Kong movies instead of Cantonese, the tongue of the largest local population. As Lee explained on the Pierre Berton Show, “I speak only Cantonese, you see … and the Cantonese have a different way of saying things—I mean different from the Mandarin, so

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I have to find, like, something similar to that in order to keep a kind of feeling going behind whatever scene I am playing—something, you know, matching the Mandarin deal. Does it sound complicated?” (Black Belt 1994, 27). Such aural evasiveness, derived from the collision of technology and the star voice, is perhaps due to the technical limitations of the post-synched soundtrack, but the importance stretches beyond the technicality (Lo 2004, 120). Lee’s unfitting voice becomes prevalent and free floating, “unfixed to any definite visual object on the screen” (ibid.). It signifies a loss of control, counterpoising notions of discipline and mastery that are well associated with Lee’s public persona. Lee’s vague Hong Kong identity continues to be appropriated, utilized, and remade in physical and visual space. For example, a bronze statue of Lee was erected on the Avenue of Stars in Kowloon, Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui, the cultural and commercial hub of the city, in 2005. As a memorial figure to honor Lee and his legacy, the statue features Lee with a bare torso and his signature weapon, the nunchaku. It replicates Lee’s famous “ready-to-fight” pose found in Fist of Fury, described by BBC News as “classic” (BBC 2005). Iconicity in the urban space denotes a sense of cultural oblivion. Materialized and decontextualized, the Lee figure only appears as a tourist spectacle, sharing no knowledge of Hong Kong cinematic history or martial arts tradition. Another example is an exhibition titled “Bruce Lee: Kung Fu, Art, Life,” which has been hosted by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum since July 2013. Presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Hong Kong government, this themed exhibition was a commemoration event for the forty-fifth anniversary of the passing of Bruce Lee. An array of archival and collection pieces about Lee’s life and career is on display. A publicity video features Lee’s daughter, Shannon, who describes the megastar’s growth, his founding interest in kung fu, his rising fame prompted by the projects by the Hong Kong–based studio Golden Harvest, and his discipleship with Ip Man, a Foshan–Hong Kong diasporic Wing Chun master, all highlighting the star’s links to the place (HKPublicMuseums 2013). While Lee’s bond to Hong Kong resurfaces in various discourses, both popular and official, it becomes a form of legitimate identification and cult consumption without being historicized or substantialized. In short, either as a façade or as a cliché, the star image remains spectacularized and culturally ambivalent. Bruce Lee’s image and its associative meaning seem to contrast with those of another Hong Kong martial arts megastar, Jackie Chan. As a

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leading action star, Chan has engineered a Hong Kong–related cinematic profile since he rose to stardom on Hong Kong screens before the reunification with China in 1997. Many of Chan’s action features in the 1980s and 1990s, including the celebrated Project A (1982, 1987) and Police Story (1985, 1988, 1992, 1996) series, feature Chan as a loyal civil servant of Hong Kong. These personifications can be considered as homage to Hong Kong’s colonial identity in view of the impending Handover (Pang 2006, 207). Since the mid-1990s, Chan’s appeal connotes shifts from a colonial identity to an image of a global citizen (ibid.). During the most recent decade, Chan’s publicity has increasingly unveiled nationalistic leanings to mainland China. His films and albums target that market. Chan is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is predominantly composed of affiliates of the Chinese Communist Party. Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, Chan’s public persona has been problematized and at times surrounded by controversy due to the politically provocative speeches he has publicly presented. He has engineered a pro-Beijing image and presents himself as disdainful of the democracy movement. One example is his remark given at a panel discussion at the annual Boao Forum for Asia held on Hainan Island in April 2009, supporting Chinese government’s control of her people. “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled … If we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want” (Jacobs 2009). Chan’s utterance enraged journalists, academics, and citizens in the Chinese-­ speaking communities across the Strait. Acrimonious responses and a series of boycotts of Chan’s branded products followed. As flattery to China’s authority, the comments as such mar Chan’s public image, making him the subject of the Hong Kong public’s displeasure. Seen another way, the social upheaval in Hong Kong emulates Lee’s filmic persona on a new horizon through revitalizing crisscrosses of the star presence and Hong Kong identity. Contemporary history reveals that Hong Kong dwellers have endured a lengthy identity crisis since the 1980s in view of its handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and continuing to recent years. Commentators have noted that the 2019 social unrest offered a chance to resist the Beijing-backed government and manifest the anti-­ authoritarian ethos. As the movement lasted for months, the demonstration carved its values into the rubric of contemporary Hong Kong culture and allowed a new identity as Hong Kong people, or “Hongkongers,” to sprout (Wilson 2020). From a philosophical expression to activism-related

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rhetoric, Lee’s “be water” advice plays a role in illustrating resilience, efficiency, street-smartness, and flexibility, the attributes that reshape Hong Kong identification and reinterpret the discourse of Hong Kong as home (ibid.). The rising momentum of the social unrest coincided with fans’ appeal to the Hong Kong government to save the place of the idol’s former residence in Hong Kong from being demolished, calling attention to the issue of identification (Fig. 9.4). In July 2019, reports revealed that Lee’s mansion, called “The Crane’s Nest” and located in Kowloon Tong in the central downtown, in which the star spent his final years with his family, was set to be bulldozed in two weeks’ time to make way for a Chinese studies center (Cheung 2019). A fan network named the Bruce Lee Fan Club has launched an international petition to urge the government of the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region to preserve the building, with the

Fig. 9.4  Bruce Lee’s mansion, “The Crane’s Nest,” in Hong Kong was set to be demolished in 2019. (Source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/30b 7e751-­8d74-­4700-­9054-­c7a3d7f1c731)

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owner offering no objection, if not approval. The petition was to be followed by crowdfunding the money to purchase the site (Chan 2019). Prolonged efforts to convert the building into a commemorative museum were observed, too (Lhatoo 2015). The spokesperson for the club explained at a press conference, “The building symbolizes our collective memory of Bruce Lee, which should be treasured by Hong Kong people and the world. I hope the Hong Kong government will preserve the trace of this influential actor, martial artist and philosopher” (Chan 2019). To many fans, the removal of Lee’s old home is the immediate erasure of the evidence of the star’s sojourn in Hong Kong. Moreover, it signifies a threat to the connection of Lee to the locale and identity of Hong Kong, although it may appear capricious and equivocal. Such a connection aligns with the vital call of the protesters, politicizing Lee’s erudite utterances while illustrating an attempt to rectify their cultural emptiness.

Notes 1. One can identify three cycles of Bruceploitation films; one cycle may be more reputable than the others. They include, first, hagio-pics endowed with a particularly permissive dramatic license; second, unofficial sequels to Fist of Fury and bogus versions of Game of Death; and third, stories of successors and avengers of Lee like Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (Hunt 2003, 77). 2. The original caption, written in all capital letters and barely punctuated, reads: “Caution: This video can be very loud if you are about to watch this and [you currently] have headphones on please turn them down or if you have speakers and there is [someone] in the room that will beat the tar out of you for any noise they hear once again please turn it down! Enjoy.” 3. In late September 2019, the grassroots-oriented group Assemblea Nacional Catalana organized a public forum titled “Experiences of the use of new technologies in the nonviolent struggle: The case of Hong Kong” (Hui 2019). 4. On October 14, 2019, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan leaders to jail terms ranging from nine to thirteen years for sedition and misuse of public funds for their role in a failed 2017 independence bid. After the verdicts were announced, Tsunami Democratic used Twitter and Telegram to initiate an attempted occupation of Barcelona’s El Prat airport. Two hundred forty thousand users of Telegram received a message and rapidly amassed at plazas and on the streets, blocking traffic and key thoroughfares on their way to Barcelona’s El Prat airport (The Local 2019). 5. Tsunami Democratic explained, “It’s about knowing how to adapt, creatively and generously, to each new circumstance” (Burgen and Jones 2019).

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6. The Tsunami Democràtic activated a new Telegram channel to distribute 130 boarding passes to allow protesters to circumvent security controls and enter the airport (Bori 2019). It was a deed reminiscent of certain Hong Kong demonstrators who bought cheap flights so as to go into the airport to evade a court ban on rallies at buildings (Hui 2019). 7. On October 21, 2019, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “We see violence today in Hong Kong being reproduced in other places. In Catalonia, they publicly declare that a second Hong Kong will be created in Catalonia and that they are inspired by what’s happening (in Hong Kong)” (Teng 2019).

References Anderson, Aaron. 1998. Kinesthesia in Martial Arts Films: Action in Motion. Jump Cut 42: 1–11. BBC. 2005. Hong Kong’s Honour for Bruce Lee. BBC News, July 24. http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4711947.stm. Berry, Chris. 2006. Stellar Transit: Bruce Lee’s Body or Chinese Masculinity in a Transnational Frame. In Embodied Masculinities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures, ed. Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich, 218–234. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9780824862329. Black Belt. 1994. Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview Is Found! June, 27–31. https:// books.google.com.hk/books?id=xM8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27& dq=To+me+a+motion+picture+is+motion.+You+got+to+keep+the+dialogue+ down+to+a+minimum+bruce+lee&source=bl&ots=HkIkKkSUYJ&sig=ACfU 3U24DjZ8R6izqSFhYutyyHz7LR1qEQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwju94 qLjc7pAhVCzIsBHWEVB9EQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=To%20 me%20a%20motion%20picture%20is%20motion.%20You%20got%20to%20 keep%20the%20dialogue%20down%20to%20a%20minimum%20bruce%20 lee&f=false. Bolman, Paul. 2010. Sick Man of Transl-Asia: Bruce Lee and Rey Chow’s Queer Cultural Translation. Social Semiotics 20 (4): 393–409. Bordwell, David. 2000. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bori, Cèlia Forment i, 2019. El Tsunami Democràtic Llama a Detener la Actividad en el Aeropuerto. El Nacional (Catalonia), October 14. https://www.elnacion a l . c a t / e s / p o l i t i c a / t s u n a m i -­d e m o c r a t i c o -­d e t e n e r -­a c t i v i d a d -­ aeropuerto_429782_102.html. Burgen, Stephen and Sam Jones. 2019. New Generation, New Tactics: The Changing Face of Catalan Protests. The Guardian. October 18. https://www. theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/new-­generation-­new-­tactics-­the-­ changing-­face-­of-­catalan-­protests.

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CBS News. 2014. The Immortal Bruce Lee. Sunday Morning, March 9. https:// www.cbsnews.com/news/the-­immortal-­bruce-­lee/. Chan, Johannes. 2014. Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. Round Table 103 (6): 571–580. https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2014.985465. Chan, Athena. 2019. Bruce Lee Fan Club Appeals to Hong Kong Government to Save Kung Fu Legend’s Former Mansion at Kowloon Tong, which Is Soon to Be Demolished. South China Morning Post, July 19. https://www.scmp.com/ news/hong-­kong/society/article/3019386/bruce-­lee-­fan-­club-­appeals-­hong-­ kong-­government-­save-­kung-­fu. Cheng, Yu. 1984. Anatomy of a Legend. In A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, ed. Li Cheuk-to, 18–25. Hong Kong: The Urban Council. Cheung, Gary. 2019. Bruce Lee’s Former Hong Kong Mansion to Be Torn Down to Make Way for Chinese Studies Centre. South China Morning Post, July 13. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­k ong/society/article/3018440/ bruce-­lees-­former-­kowloon-­tong-­mansion-­be-­torn-­down-­make-­way. Dapiran, Antony. 2019. “Be Water!”: Seven Tactics that Are Winning Hong Kong’s Democracy Revolution. New Statesman, August 1. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/08/be-­w ater-­s even-­t actics-­a re-­w inning-­ hong-­kongs-­democracy-­revolution. Deenlomusic 癲佬音樂. 2019. 「自游」| “Be Water” | 致香港人的原創歌曲 | An Original Song Dedicated to Hkers. YouTube video, 4:23, September 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7AZdzXXJQc. Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Bass, Alan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Desser, David. 2000. The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception. In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Fu Poshek, 19–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dominguez, Íñigo. 2019. Let’s Do a Hong Kong!. El Pais. October 15. https:// elpais.com/politica/2019/10/14/actualidad/1571045907_337578.html. Farrer, Douglas, and John Whalen-Bridge. 2012. Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. General, Ryan. 2018. Why Some Martial Artists Shout When They Attack. Nextshark, January 24. https://nextshark.com/spirit-­shout-­traditional-­ martial-­arts/. HKPublicMuseums. 2013. Bruce Lee and Hong Kong. YouTube video, 1:03, November 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0iwv_-­LzoI. Hong, Brendon. 2019. Hong Kong Protesters, Inspired by the Late Great Martial Artist Bruce Lee, Stun Beijing. Daily Beast, August 6. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hong-­k ong-­p rotesters-­i nspired-­b y-­t he-­l ate-­g reat-­m artial-­ artist-­bruce-­lee-­stun-­beijing. Hu, Brian. 2010. ‘Bruce Lee’ after Bruce Lee: A Life in Conjectures. In Chinese Film Stars, ed. Mary Farquhar and Zhang Yingjin, 165–179. London: Routledge.

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Hui, Mary. 2019. Hong Kong Is Exporting Its Protest Techniques around the World. Quartz, October 16. https://qz.com/1728078/be-­water-­catalonia-­ protesters-­learn-­from-­hong-­kong/. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower Press. ———. 2007. Han’s Island Revisited: Enter the Dragon as Transnational Cult Film. In Unruly Pleasures: Cult Film and Its Critics, ed. Xavier Mendik and Graeme Harper, 301–308. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. ImprovFusic HK. 2019. 願榮光歸香港-Be Water 版 Glory to HK (Be Water Version) by ImprovFusic. YouTube video, 1:47, October 18. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=FzBZFvtex88. Jacobs, Andrew. 2009. Jackie Chan Strikes a Chinese Nerve. The New York Times. April 23. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/asia/24jackie. html?_r¼1&. Kato, M.T. 2007. From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalisation, Revolution and. Popular Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kong, Tsung-gan. 2017. The Umbrella Movement after Three Years: So Much Accomplished, and Much Still to Do. Hong Kong Free Press, September 24. https://hongkongfp.com/2017/09/24/umbrella-­movement-­three-­years-­ much-­accomplished-­much-­still/. Lam, Jeffie, Naomi Ng, and Su Xinqi. 2019. Be Water, My Friend: Hong Kong Protesters Take Bruce Lee’s Wise Saying to Heart and Go with the Flow. South China Morning Post, June 22. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­kong/ politics/article/3015627/be-­w ater-­m y-­f riend-­p rotesters-­t ake-­b ruce­lees-­wise-­saying. Law, Kar. 2000. The American Connection in Early Hong Kong Cinema. In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Fu Poshek and David Desser, 44–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lhatoo, Yonden. 2015. Why Does Hong Kong Treat Bruce Lee like an Outcast and Refuse to Honour Its Greatest Son? South China Morning Post, July 31. https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-­o pinion/article/1845229/ why-­does-­hong-­kong-­treat-­bruce-­lee-­outcast-­and-­refuse-­honour. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2001. Double Negations: Hong Kong Cultural Identity in Hollywood’s Transnational Representations. Cultural Studies 15 (3–4): 464–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/095023800110046669. Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 2004. “Muscles and Subjectivity: A Short History of the Masculine Body in Hong Kong Popular Culture.” In Stars, The Film Reader, edited by L. Fischer and M. Landy, 115–26. Abingdon, GB: Routledge. Maeda, Daryl Joji. 2017. Nomad of the Transpacific: Bruce Lee as Method. American Quarterly 69 (3): 741–761. Mintz, Marilyn. 1978. The Martial Arts Film. New York: A. S. Barnes. Morris, Meaghan. 2001. Learning from Bruce Lee: Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Martial Arts Cinema. In Keyframes: Popular Cinema and

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Cultural Studies, ed. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo, 171–186. London: Routledge. Omegadies. 2008. Bruce Lee Kick. YouTube video, 1:21, May 26. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=diArzr74WuE. Ongiri, Amy. 2005. Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Kung Fu Theatre and African Americans Reinventing Culture at the Margins. In East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture, ed. Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren, 249–261. New York & London: New York University Press. Pang, Laikwan. 2006. Jackie Chan, Tourism, and Performing Agency. In Hong Kong Film, Hollywood, and the Global Cinema: No Film Is an Island, ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam, 206–218. London: Routledge. Reynolds, Gretchen. 2018. The Best Way to Boost Performance in Sport Is to Grunt. Independent, March 14. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/boost-­performance-­sport-­grunt-­a8253091.html. Stevens, Eric C. n.d. The Vital Role of the Kiai, Grunt, and Otherwise Noisy Exhale. Breaking Muscle. https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/the-­vital-­role-­ of-­the-­kiai-­grunt-­and-­otherwise-­noisy-­exhale. Accessed 16 Sept 2020. Tan, Bah Bah. 2019. We Are Formless, We Can Flow, We Are Like Water!”: Hong Kongers Invoke Kungfu Superstar Bruce Lee. Independent (Singapore), June 30. http://theindependent.sg/we-­are-­formless-­we-­can-­flow-­we-­are-­like-­ water-­hong-­kongers-­invoke-­kungfu-­superstar-­bruce-­lee/. Teng, Jing Xuan. 2019. China Seizes on Catalonia Unrest to Bolster Condemnation of Hong Kong Protests. Hong Kong Free Press HKFP, October 23. https:// www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/23/china-­seizes-­catalonia-­unrest-­bolster-­ condemnation-­hong-­kong-­protests/. The Local (Spain). 2019. In Pictures: Catalan Protesters March on Barcelona Airport after Jail Verdicts for Separatists. October 14. https://www.thelocal. es/20191014/in-­p ictures-­p rotests-­b reak-­o ut-­a cross-­c atalonia-­a fter-­ separatist-­leaders-­given-­jail-­terms. Topel, Fred. 2020. ESPN’s Bruce Lee Doc ‘Be Water’ Has a New Perspective on the Martial Arts Legend. Showbiz CheatSheet, February 3. https://www.cheatsheet.com/enter tainment/espns-­b ruce-­l ee-­d oc-­b e-­w ater-­h as-­a -­n ew-­ perspective-­on-­the-­martial-­arts-­legend.html/. Wilson, Benjamin. 2020. New Identity Forged in Hong Kong’s Protests Will Outlive the Current ‘Crisis.’ Hong Kong Free Press HKFP, January 25. https:// hongkongfp.com/2020/01/25/new-­identity-­forged-­hong-­kongs-­protests-­ will-­outlive-­current-­crisis/. Wu-jing.org. 2010. Donnie Yen Making New Moves for Return of Chen Zhen. May 27. https://web.archive.org/web/20100531155038/http://www.wu-­ jing.org/happenings/archives/828-­Donnie-­Yen-­Making-­New-­Moves-­for-­ Return-­of-­Chen-­Zhen.html. Wynn Wynter. 2014. Why ‘Bruce Lee’ Always Scream When Fighting. YouTube video 1:03. February 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAQ Lq1P4WQg

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: Reconsidering Chinese Film Stars—Toward a Polyphonic Networked Persona

The analysis of the previous chapters shows an attempt to expand the discursive parameters of understanding and appraising Chinese personalities by putting elements of language, accent, and voice at the forefront of contending the ethnic, yet global, image. This book has identified various phonic spaces as the oblique site of inquiry, suggesting the dynamic and dialogic configuration of stars in the network of popular fame through articulations on multiple phonic levels. Today, star construction takes place not in a rigid, bounded structure but in flexible and fluid networks characterized by multiple flows of talents, discourses, and ideologies. Also, media technology facilitates the escalating permeability of boundaries in filmmaking and star making. Stars are organic subjects that navigate in the transnational matrix of heterogeneous experiences and diverse connections significantly structured around phonic communities. The phenomenon leads to the argument that Chinese stars have evolved toward a polyphonic presence in a global media network. The notion of polyphonicity is markedly theorized and elaborated by Russian philosopher and theoretician Mikhail M. Bakhtin. Oriented in the field of literature, Bakhtin (1981) evades the homophonic structure of narration and posits polyphonicity as one of the key attributes of the novel. He suggests, if the subject making the novel specifically a novel is defined as a speaking person and his discourse, striving for social significance and a wider application as one distinctive language in a heteroglot world—then the central © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6_10

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problem for a stylistics of the novel may be formulated as the problem of artistically representing language, the problem of representing the image of a language. (1981, 336)

By recognizing the presence and viability of the heteroglossia, Bakhtin contends that the monologic worldview is the centralizing, centripetal force of idealism and the monumental past of European enlightenment, struggling to pull all the heteroglot pieces into the center (1984, 79). He ponders such a worldview as doubtful because it refuses the fact that language is “never unitary” or is “unitary only as an abstract system of normative forms” (288). It is lived and inherently dialogic, being capable of ushering ongoing struggles of meaning, consciousnesses, and perspectives that mobilize one worldview to be dialogically interwoven with all the others. Bakhtin, therefore, asserts the polyphonic nature of the dialogic interrelationships of social ideological systems. Without that polyphonic structure, the desired unity between life and art would be unattainable, and social actors could not interpret one another within this newly formed unity (Gratchev 2017, 96). The polyphonicity is also pivotal in interpreting the nature of the speaking person’s discourse and reframing of the utterances by others (Bakhtin 1981, 340). In the Bakhtinian light, the reframing is not mechanical interaction between two voices. Rather, it is an organic transaction on “the semantic and emotionally expressive level” (Bakhtin 1981, 340). Such a dialogic exchange determines “the entire nature of its transmission and all the changes in meaning and accent that take place in it during transmission” (ibid.). In this sense, Bakhtin posits an ideological becoming of a human being, which is the process of “selectively assimilating the words of others” (1981, 341), stemming from the polyphonic configuration. The speaking person shows influences in “the ordinary ideological workings of our consciousness” (ibid.) through utterances and dialogues. Bakhtin elaborates his theory by engaging in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s polyphonic worldview. As Bakhtin (1984) assesses, Dostoevsky perceives his world primarily in terms of space instead of time, and his mode of artistic visualizing is founded on “not evolution but coexistence and interaction” (Bakhtin 1984, 28). According to Dostoevsky, to hold a grip on the world of life as an organic entity is “to conceive all its contents as simultaneous, and to guess at their interrelationships in the cross-section of a single moment, as if they existed in space and not in time” (ibid.).

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Furthermore, Dostoevsky is able to notice these interrelationships among voices in a single given moment, including all the contradictions and bifurcations that characterize the material and social realities. For him, “none of these contradictions and bifurcations … were [ever] set in motion along a temporal path or in an evolving sequence” (Bakhtin 1984, 30). In other words, Dostoevsky represents in the artistic world a consciousness “not on the path of its own evolution and growth, that is, not historically, but rather alongside other consciousnesses” (Bakhtin 1984, 32). Suffice it to say, Dostoevsky’s world is a world of “artistically organized co-existence and interaction of spiritual diversity,” which is “profoundly pluralistic” (Bakhtin 1984, 31). In this book, I adopt and build on Bakhtin’s theory and his interpretative accounts of Dostoevsky by recontextualizing the idea of polyphonicity in transnational star studies. I suggest a polyphonic persona, a form of consciousness in the highly plural and interactive landscape that allows Chinese actors and actresses to reengage at new sites of differences, dialectics, and contestations in the globally networked spaces. Icons have endeavored to mediate their potentially contentious statuses through linguistic proficiency, vocal assertiveness, and eloquence. The varied and elusive utterances reveal how they wrestle with ethnic and ideological forces, recharting popular imaginations and power relations. It, moreover, offers provocations to the expedient binary of the Chinese and the West/global, unsettling the meaning of Chineseness as definitive and taken-for-granted. By laying out an array of polyphonic instances, I contend that Chinese stars interrogate differing and vying worldviews and articulations. The process is illuminative and generative of the specific cultural and discursive ramifications of ethnicity, fame, and influence. In the phonic heterogeneity and fluidity, there is neither stable authoritativeness nor inherent persuasiveness but semantic openness stemming from dialogical interactions and struggles that take place in a space inhabited by diverse stakeholders like journalists, studio marketers, users, and celebrities (Bakhtin 1981, 342). As crossover stardom shifts to dialogize with linguistic slippiness, vocal ambivalence, and discursive inexhaustibility, it is enlightened with new possible bearings and representations that grapple between multiple realities, sensibilities, and identities. As the exposition in this book has indicated, contemporary transnational Chinese stars exemplify a mode of consciousness that permits negotiation between ideologies and discourses in and beyond various phonic sites such as Anglophone media space, Sinophone cinematic space, or

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digital multimedia space. In Part I, I examined the Chinese stars who have a presence in the Hollywood star vehicles and American entertainment texts. Malaysia-born, Hong Kong–based actress Michelle Yeoh has been an exemplary instance of how one can mediate between the Anglophone and Chinese-speaking worlds, as discussed in Chap. 2. As one of the pioneers making inroads into Hollywood in the late 1990s, Yeoh demonstrates a shift from action to eloquence in her recent English-language films, most notably The Lady (2011) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Accent plays a vital role in creating the screen persona in both pictures, though in different ways, as the discussion revealed. In The Lady, Yeoh exhibits Suu Kyi’s accent in her articulation of the English dialogue, drawing parallels to the real-life heroine. In Crazy Rich Asians, Yeoh advances her vocal consciousness in speaking to the Asian experience, yet without displaying the Singaporean accent. Moreover, her lingual-driven star discourse has expanded in her goodwill, for example, her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme. The public speeches she has given reveal a reemphasis on her South Asian lineage while politicizing her image by contrasting with the heroine she impersonates in film, Suu Kyi, and underscoring the struggle she encounters as a Chinese emigré in Hollywood. Yeoh’s persona, thus, introduces a dialogic process between different voices, collating and contesting her star power against the backdrop of pan-Pacific cultural exchange. Disparate worldviews and discourses become manifest when the vocal persona of Chinese icons become entangled in the dynamics of American and Chinese filmmaking ventures. In Chap. 3, I investigated Fan Bingbing, whose crossover appeal has emerged against the backdrop of the global rise of the Chinese film industry. While her established image in her home country and international film festivals revolves around physical beauty and obsession with fashion, the image has become erratic and disputable since she gained a foothold in Hollywood that her linguistic skill becomes a point of attention. Her roles in the Marvel star vehicles Iron Man 3 (2013) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) not only testify to the importance of her English command in her transnational profile but also reveal the ideological operations of Chinese performers working in Hollywood. Her notorious tax evasion has added complexity to the crossover star phenomenon, foregrounding the denser gravity of her vocal than physical presence. After the scandal broke out, the celebrity issued a letter of apology, not only revealing the discrepancy between the authentic image and the fabricated image but also affirming the abiding star

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function of promoting the state ideology. Fan Bingbing’s post-scandal rhetorics and the corresponding controversial star publicity have put the celebrity in continual tension between media censorship, public scrutiny, and new film partnerships. The significance of articulations is validated in the star phenomenon of Jay Chou who crosses over the spaces of Mandopop, Chinese-language cinema, and Hollywood, as I inquired in Chap. 4. The chapter begins with the exposition of how Chou, as one of the most prolific Mandopop idols, and his musical persona are calibrated by an amalgam of styles of Chinese, rap, hip hop, and classical music, as much as by the distinctive use of slurred enunciations that compellingly brand a sense of coolness while de-­ essentializing Chineseness. The importance of the phonic aspects of his public appeal is explicit in his Chinese-language films, too, iterating the reticent and inarticulate image of the celebrity himself. These accounts serve as analytical underpinnings to ruminate on Chou’s subsequent Hollywood personae in The Green Hornet (2011) and Now You See Me 2 (2016), where his speaking is proven as manifest and crucial. His performance ostensibly earned him popularity in English-speaking viewership while interrogating the notion of Chineseness in his ambivalent appeal. As the analysis uncovered, his stardom has exemplified a crossover consciousness—his voice valorizes a uniquely productive discourse where foreign tongue and mother tongue and articulateness and wordlessness coexist and converse. Part II showed that crossover consciousness is evident in Sinophone stardom within the region-specific, heterogeneous network. Famed border-­ crossers have exhibited interactions and dialogue within and beyond the Sinophone cultures. Focusing on Tang Wei, I examined, in Chap. 5, the construction and reception of her lingual-crossing appeal and the ways it evokes crossover fandom in East Asia. As a mainland Chinese native who is active in performing in a range of Hong Kong films, Tang Wei engineers her mobile persona as residing in interstitial space of her native tongue and Cantonese. Her Cantonese-speaking screen persona is complicated by her offscreen status as an elite migrant in Hong Kong. Her border-crossing image is diversified by her screen persona in the English-­ language Korean film, Late Autumn, which has won her a vast fan following in South Korea. The Chinese actress demonstrates a linguistic lack in her public persona, which is, otherwise, sufficient and effective in mobilizing the China-Korean cultural imagination. Returning to Hong Kong screens, the latter part of the chapter concentrated on Tang’s recent

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Cantonese-speaking personae. The personae have reflected a sense of rootlessness, problematizing a homogenous, China-centric perspective on star identity that oscillates between different Sinophone cultural systems. The Sinophone articulations in the network of Hong Kong–China coproductions and Asian productions can readily be found in the stardom of half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese Takeshi Kaneshiro, as I discussed in Chap. 6. I probed the actor’s screen personae that shift between dialects of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Sichuanese in a range of media texts, chiefly Hong Kong movies, Hong Kong–China coproductions, and Taiwan-­ produced advertisements. Kaneshiro’s accented personae in Wong Kar-­ wai’s Cantonese-speaking features are utilized to orchestrate the distinctive, soulful vehicle of voiceovers and dialogues. The accented characters continue in Wu Xia, which features Kaneshiro speaking Sichuanese. The far-­ from-­standard and “playful” articulations of the “foreign” dialect not only buttress his exotic, “mysterious” celebrity status but also legitimize the linguistic “passing” and a capricious identity. In addition, Kaneshiro’s later appearance in Red Cliff has validated his star agency, which permits him to negotiate and mollify the cultural and industrial gaps in regional interactions. Furthermore, the celebrity endorsement of EVA Air, produced in Mandarin, English, and Japanese versions, further expands his culturally mobile persona, showcasing the actor’s multilingual performance that serves as a vehicle for imagining Asia. The voices in specific films and the dialogic relationship between the personifier and the personified can be a productive locus for investigating star-related consciousness. In Chap. 7, I examined the female personae in Center Stage and Everlasting Regret, two Sinophone films directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan. I asserted the potency of the female vocal personae and the feasible dynamics that develop around dialect and accent between the onscreen and offscreen lives of the stars. The Cantonese Maggie Cheung’s casting as Ruan Lingyu, the Shanghai-based, Cantonese native silent star, reveals a vocal match that was nonetheless obscured. In contrast, Sammi Cheng, the female lead of Everlasting Regret, does not conceal the accented persona in her Mandarin-speaking role that ushers a linguistic mismatch in the performance. Moreover, I analyzed how Cheng’s persona has uncovered the voice of expediency, formulating intriguing dynamics with the male auteur’s voice of anxiety. As I have argued, the dual avenues of opaque translatability and translucent untranslatability are culturally viable in registering and negotiating a decentered, heterogeneous phonic presence.

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Part III has focused on the extraphonic space in which the star persona grapples with the voice-body problematic, ideological renderings, and the politicizing capacity of the star image in the digitally mediated world. Concentrating on the example of Disney’s Mulan, Chap. 8 showed that the transformed representation of Mulan is intrinsically inquisitive of the boundaries of the star persona in animated versus live-action figure I discussed the dubbed performance of Wen Ming-Na, who vocally performs the heroine in the animated sensation. Also, the analysis validated how Wen’s persona offers a dialogue with Asian American cultural politics. The prominence of voice extends to the 2020 live-action adaptation of Mulan that features the controversial actress Liu Yifei as female lead. Whereas Liu’s foreign-language facility is acknowledged by fans, her reputation is dogged by her vocal support of the Hong Kong police during the social movement in the territory. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which originally broke out in Liu’s birthplace, Wuhan, China, deterred the theatrical release of the new Mulan film and entangled her publicity in the conundrum spawned by political and public health crises. Chapter 9 continues the inquiry into digitally mediated star narratives that reach from the cinema to cyber-enabled networked systems and are plausibly hybridized, unsettled, and politicized. This is also the only chapter that deals with a star who has passed away. But his image has been circulated and recoded in the online space as a perpetual presence (Lau 2016, 291). Responding to the scholarly neglect of the vocal persona of Bruce Lee, this chapter centers on the voice as an integral part of star publicity, juxtaposing the celebrated attributes of physical prowess and martial artistry. I assert that Lee’s screams in films potently calibrate the star representation even while they are appropriated and parodied in advertisements which are circulated online. The parodied persona functions as the locus of the productive exchange between users. The discursive caliber of Lee’s voice is further proven in the extensive adoption of Lee’s well-known “be water” expression as the operating principle of the social movement of Hong Kong, the city where Lee found his fame as a martial arts actor. Encapsulating Lee’s martial arts philosophy, the “be water” rhetorics are widely tweeted, followed, and share online, channeling a star’s erudite voice into a vernacular dissenting voice. The findings and analysis in this monograph have delineated a picture of Chinese star culture indicated by multiple flows of language, accent, and voice across boundaries. The cultural dynamics and ethnic politics in the global intermedial networks confirm my initial hypothesis, that verbal and

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nonverbal sounds are culturally and discursively productive parameters in the star-making process. This book has analyzed star consciousness, which is neither mechanically formulated nor fixed. Instead, it is an outcome of a dialogic construction in which the texts can never be final. The polyphonically textured personae reckon on an open set of various creative and contentious forces in the highly capricious and ever-changing media environment. The analysis of the “unfinalized” persona moves beyond the “English-as-linguafranca” principle in ethnic star studies or the counter-­China-­centric perspective that is ubiquitous in Sinophone studies, employing a multidirectional, multileveled framework for scrutinizing Chinese screen identities. To recapitulate, this book offers an effort to formulate an alternative methodological frame to investigate Chinese stars in the global crisscrosses of talents, capital, technologies, and visual conventions. Decidedly registering the critical viability of the phonic, this book has responded to the prolonged tendency toward “the visual” and oversight of the “the aural” in star studies in general and studies of Chinese stardom specifically. My research is founded on the reconceptualization of Chinese stardom as a lingual- or phonic-based phenomenon, highlighting the possibility of an alternative to the emphasis on body, performance, and spectacle. In an era marked by technological innovation and diverse subjectivities, during which the linguistic boundaries are increasingly porous and capricious, it is my belief that this analysis can shed light on how Chinese icons negotiate their star power in various phonic spaces. And finally, I hope to motivate the methodological reinvention of the study of Chinese stars in the global matrices stamped by multilingual and multiaccented cultural productions.

References Bakhtin, M.  M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist, Trans. Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Austin: University of Texas Press. ———. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gratchev, Slav N. 2017. The Polyphonic World of Cervantes and Dostoevsky. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Lau, Dorothy. 2016. Rearticulating Bruce Lee and His ‘Hip-Hop Fury’ in Fan Made Videos. In Lasting Screen Stars: Personas that Endure and Images that Fade, ed. Lucy Bolton and Julie Lobalzo Wright, 291–303. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Filmography

2000 AD (Gordon Chan, 1999) 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004) A Bullet in the Head [喋血街頭] (John Woo, 1989) A Chinese Ghost Story [倩女幽魂] (Yip Wilson Wai-Shun, 2011) A Good Rain Knows [호우시절; Ho u shijeol] (Hur Jin-ho, 2009) A Tale of Three Cities [三城記] (Mabel Cheung, 2015) Abducted (or Lost and Love) [失孤] (Peng Sanyuan, 2015) Air Strike (David Worth, 2003) Aladdin (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1992) Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019) Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015) Anna Magdalena [安娜瑪德蓮娜] (Yee Chung-man, 1998) As Tears Go By [旺角卡門] (Wong Kar-wai, 1988) Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) Babylon A.D. (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2008) Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005) Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale and Wise Kirk, 1991) Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon, 2017) Beyond Rangoon (John Boorman, 1995) Buddha Mountain [觀音山] (Li Yu, 2011) Cell Phone [手機] (Feng Xiaogang, 2003) Center Stage [阮玲玉] (Stanley Kwan, 1992) Chungking Express [重慶森林] (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6

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FILMOGRAPHY

Clean (Olivier Assayas, 2004) Comrades Almost a Love Story [甜蜜蜜] (Peter Chan, 1996) Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018) Crossing Hennessy [月滿軒尼詩] (Ivy Ho Sai-Hong, 2010) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [卧虎藏龍] (Ang Lee, 2000) Death Note (Adam Wingard, 2017) Double Xposure [二次曝光] (Li Yu, 2012) Downtown Torpedoes [神偷諜影] (Teddy Chan, 1997) Enter the Dragon [龍爭虎鬥] (Robert Clouse, 1973) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) Everlasting Regret [長恨歌] (Stanley Kwan, 2005) Exit the Dragon Enter the Tiger [天皇巨星] (Lee Tso Nam, 1976) Failan [파이란] (Song Hye-sung, 2001) Fallen Angels [墮落天使] (Wong Kar-wai, 1996) Farewell China [愛在別鄉的季節] (Clara Law, 1990) Fearless [霍元甲] (Ronny Yu, 2006) Feel 100% [百分百感覺] (Joe Ma, 1996) Feel 100% … Once More [百分百啱Feel] (Joe Ma, 1996) Fighting for Love [同居蜜友] (Joe Ma, 2001) First Night Nerves [八個女人一台戲] (Stanley Kwan, 2018) Fist of Fury [精武門] (Lo Wei, 1972) For Love or Money [露水紅顏] (Gao Xixi, 2014) Forbidden Kingdom (Minkoff Robert Ralph, 2008) Full Moon in New York [人在紐約] (Stanley Kwan, 1990) Game of Death [死亡遊戲] (Hung Sammo and Bruce Lee, 1978) Gen-X Cop [特警新人類] (Benny Chan, 2000) Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017) God of Gamblers [賭神] (Wong Jing, 1989) Good Times, Bed Times [戀上你的床] (Patrick Leung and Chan Hing Ka, 2003) Gothika (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003) Growling Tiger, Roaring Dragon [大軍師司馬懿之虎嘯龍吟] (Zhang Yongxin, 2017) Harry Potter (Chris Columbus, 2001) Hercules (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1997) Hero [英雄] (Zhang Yimou, 2002) Hold You Tight [越快樂越墮落] (Stanley Kwan, 1998) Human Nature (Michel Gondry, 2001) I Am Not Madame Bovary [我不是潘金蓮] (Feng Xiaogang, 2016)

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Infernal Affairs [無間道] (Andrew Lau and Mak Siu Fai, 2002) Initial D [頭文字D] (Andrew Lau and Mak Siu Fai, 2005) Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996) Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013) J-Style Trip [周游記] (Xu Yiqing, 2020) July Rhapsody [男人四十] (Ann Hui, 2002) Kung Fu Dunk (功夫灌籃) (Zhu Yanping, 2008) Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osborne, 2008) L.O.R.D.: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties [爵迹] (Guo Jingming, 2016) Lan Yu [藍宇] (Stanley Kwan, 2001) Laputa: Castle in the Sky [天空の城ラピュタ; Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta] (Miyazaki Hayao, 1986 ) Late Autumn [만추; Hanja] (Kim Tae-yong, 2010) Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen [精武風雲-陳真] (Andrew Lau, 2010) Let the Bullet Fly [讓子彈飛] (Jiang Wen, 2010) Little Mermaid (Rob Marshall, 2021) Longstreet (Don McDougall, 1971) Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001) Lost in Beijing [蘋果] (Li Yu, 2007) Lost in White [冰河追凶] (Xu Wei, 2016) Love for All Season [百年好合] (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2003) Love on a Diet [瘦身男女] (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2001) Love on the Cloud [微愛之漸入佳境] (Gu Changwei, 2014) Lust Caution [色戒] (Ang Lee, 2007) Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, 2012) Marry a Rich Man [嫁個有錢人] (Kuk Tak Chiu, 2002) Master Hunt [捉妖記] (Hui Raman Shing-Ngai, 2015) Memoir of a Geisha (Rob Marshall, 2005) Moana (Ron Clements and John Musker, 2016) Monster House (Kenan Gil, 2006) Mulan (Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft, 1998) Mulan (Niki Caro, 2020) My Left Eye Sees Ghosts [我左眼見到鬼] (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2002) My Neighbor Totoro [となりのトトロ Tonari no Totoro] (Miyazaki Hayao, 1988) My Wife Is a Gangster 3 [조폭 마누라 3; Jopok manura 3] (Cho Jin-gyu, 2006)

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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind [風の谷のナウシカ; Kaze no Tani no Naushika] (Miyazaki Hayao, 1984) Needing You [孤男寡女] (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2000) New Women [新女性](Cai Chusheng, 1935) Now You See Me 2 (Jon M. Chu, 2016) Office [華麗上班族] (Johnnie To, 2015) One‐Armed Swordsman [獨臂刀] (Chang Cheh, 1967) Only You [命中注定] (Zhang Hao, 2015) Outcast (Nick Powell, 2014) Perhaps Love [如果·愛] (Peter Chan, 2005) Pocahontas (Gabriel Mike and Goldberg Eric, 1995) Police Story [警察故事] (Jackie Chan, 1985) Police Story 3: Super Cop [警察故事3超級警察] (Stanley Tong, 1992) Porco Rosso [紅の豚 Hepburn: Kurenai no Buta lit] (Miyazaki Hayao, 1992) Princess Mononoke [もののけ姫; Mononoke-him] (Miyazaki Hayao, 1997) Project A [A計劃] (Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, 1982) Purple Storm [紫雨風暴] (Teddy Chan, 1999) Rambo IV (David Morrell, 2008) Red Cliff I [赤壁] (John Woo, 2008) Red Cliff II [赤壁2:決戰天下] (John Woo, 2009) Returner [リターナー; Ritaanaa] (Takashi Yamazaki, 2002) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016) Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998) S.M.A.R.T. Chase (Martin Charles, 2017) Secret (Claude Miller, 2007) Secret [不能說的秘密] (Jay Chow, 2007) Shanghai Knights (David Dobkin, 2003) Shanghai Noon (Tom Dey, 2000) Shaolin Soccer [少林足球] (Stephen Chow, 2001) Skiptrace (Renny Harlin, 2016) Skyscrapers (Rawson Thurber, 2018) Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993) Sleepless Town [不夜城] (Lee Chi-Ngai, 1998) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937) Song of the Exile [客途秋恨] (Ann Hui, 1990) Speed Angels [極速天使] (Jingle Ma, 2011) Summer Mo Mo Tea [夏日的麼麼茶] (Jingle Ma, 2000) Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)

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Suspect X [容疑者Xの献身; Yōgisha Ekkusu no Kenshin] (Nishitani Hiroshi, 2008) Tai Chi Master [太極張三豐] (Yuen Woo-ping, 1993) Tarzan (Kevin Lima and Buck Chris, 1999) Taxi (Luc Besson, 1998) The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) The Big Boss [唐山大兄] (Lo Wei, 1971) The Curse of the Golden Flower [滿城盡帶黄金甲] (Zhang Yimou, 2006) The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) The Dragon Lives Again [李三腳威震地獄門] (Luo Qi, 1976) The Empress of China [武媚娘傳奇] (Gao Yujun, 2014) The Gifted (Bryan Singer, 2017) The Goddess [神女] (Wu Yonggang, 1934) The Great Wall [長城] (Zhang Yimou, 2017) The Green Hornet (Michel Gondry, 2011) The Green Hornet (Robbie Seymour, 1966) The House of Flying Daggers [十面埋伏] (Zhang Yimou, 2004) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale and Wise Kirk, 1996) The Joy Luck Club [喜福會] (Wayne Wang, 1993) The Lady (Luc Besson, 2011) The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019) The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994) The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989) The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Rob Cohen, 2008) The New Game of Death [死亡塔] (Ng See Yuen, 1981) The Princess and the Frog (Ron Clements and John Musker, 2009) The Replacement Killer (Antoine Fuqua, 1998) The Rescuers Down Under (Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel, 1990) The Soong Sisters [宋家皇朝] (Mabel Cheung, 1997) The Taking of Tiger Mountain [智取威虎山] (Tsui Hark, 2014) The Warlords [投名狀] (Peter Chan, 2007) The Warriors [무사; Musa] (Kim Sung-su, 2001) The Way of the Dragon [猛龍過江] (Bruce Lee, 1972) They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain (Robert Lieberman, 2012) Tomorrow Never Die (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family [龍的深處:失落的拼 圖] (Mabel Cheung, 2003)

214 

Filmography

Transformer (Michael Bay, 2007) White Vengeance [鴻門宴] (Daniel Lee Yan-Kong, 2011) Who Is Undercover [王牌] (Fan Jianhui, 2014) Women Who Flirt [撒嬌女人最好命] (Pang Ho-cheung, 2015) Wu Xia [武俠] (Peter Chan, 2011) Wu Yen [鍾無艷] (Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, 2001) X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014) Yes Madam [皇家師姐] (Corey Yuen, 1985)

Glossary of Chinese Names

Angelababy  (楊穎) Awkwafina  (林家珍) Cai Chusheng  (蔡楚生) Chan Khan  (陳汗) Chan, Gordon  (陳嘉上) Chan, Jackie  (成龍) Chan, Peter  (陳可辛) Chang Chen  (張震) Chang Hui-mei  (張惠妹) Chen, Blackie  (陳建州) Chen Bolin  (陳柏霖) Chen, Edison  (陳冠希) Chen He  (陳赫) Chen Yanyan  (陳燕燕) Cheng Pei Pei  (鄭佩佩) Cheng, Sammi  (鄭秀文) Cheung, Cecilia  (張柏芝) Cheung, Leslie  (張國榮) Cheung, Mabel  (張婉婷) Cheung, Maggie  (張曼玉) Ching Siu-tung  (程小東) Choi, Charlene  (蔡卓妍) Chou, Jay  (周杰倫) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6

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GLOSSARY OF CHINESE NAMES

Chow Yun-fat  (周潤發) Chow, Stephen  (周星馳) Chu, Jon M.  (朱浩偉) Chu, Kevin  (朱延平) Cui Jian  (崔健) Fan Bingbing  (范冰冰) Fong, Khalil  (方大同) Gao Yitian  (高一天) Gao Ziqi  (高梓淇) Ge You  (葛優) Gong Li  (鞏俐) He Chengxi  (何承熹) Hu Jun  (胡軍) Hui, Ann  (許鞍華) Hui, Raman  (許承毅) Huang Haibo  (黃海波) Huang Jue  (黃覺) Huang Shengyi  (黃聖依) Huang Xiaoming  (黃曉明) Huang Zitao  (黃子韜) Ip Man  (葉問) Jiang Wen  (姜文) Jing Tian  (景甜) Jing Boran  (井柏然) Kaneshiro, Takeshi  (金城武) Ko, Alan  (柯有綸) Kun, Hannah Quinlivan Ling  (昆凌) Kuo Cheng  (郭箏) Kwan, Stanley  (關錦鵬) Lam, George  (林子祥) Lau Ching-wan  (劉青雲) Lau, Andrew  (劉偉强) Lau, Andy  (劉德華) Law, Alex  (羅啟銳) Lee, Ang  (李安) Lee, Bruce  (李小龍) Lee, Jason Scott  (李截) Lee, Shannon  (李香凝) Leung, Gigi  (梁詠琪)

  Glossary of Chinese Names 

Leung, Tony Chiu-wai  (梁朝偉) Leung, Tony Ka-fai  (梁家輝) Li Bingbing  (李冰冰) Li Lili  (李麗麗) Li, Jet  (李連杰) Liao Fan  (廖凡) Lin, Brigitte Ching-hsia  (林青霞) Lin Chi-ling  (林志玲) Lin, JJ  (林俊傑) Lin, Yoga  (林宥嘉) Liu Yifei  (劉亦菲) Liu, Rene  (劉若英) Liu, Will  (劉畊宏) Lu, Crowd  (盧廣仲) Ma, Jingle  (馬楚成) Mak, Alan  (麥兆煇) Mui, Anita  (梅艷芳) Ruan Lingyu  (阮玲玉) Sheng Heyu  (盛和煜) Su Yan  (蘇岩) Tam, Alan  (譚詠麟) Tang Wei  (湯唯) To, Johnnie  (杜琪峰) Tsang, Eric  (曾志偉) Tsui Hark  (徐克) Tu Men  (涂們) Wai Ka-fai  (韋家輝) Wang Guang Liang  (王光良) Wang, Leehom  (王力宏) Wang Luodan  (王珞丹) Wang Luoyong  (王洛勇) Wang Quan’an  (王全安) Wang, Wayne  (王穎) Wang Xueqi  (王學圻) Wang Yu  (王羽) Wen Ming-na  (溫明娜) Wong, Anna May  (黃柳霜) Wong, Anthony Chau-sang  (黃秋生) Wong Kar-wai  (王家衛)

217

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Glossary of Chinese Names

Woo, John  (吳宇森) Wu, Constance  (吳恬敏) Wu, Daniel  (吳彥祖) Xu Jinglei  (徐靜蕾) Yang Mi  (楊冪) Yen, Donnie  (甄子丹) Yeoh, Michelle  (楊紫瓊) Yu, Ronny  (于仁泰) Yu, Shawn  (余文樂) Yuen Woo-ping  (袁和平) Zhang Fengyi  (張豐毅) Zhang Hao  (張晧) Zhang Yimou  (張藝謀) Zhang Ziyi  (章子怡) Zhang, Max  (張晉) Zhao Wei  (趙薇) Zhou Xun  (周迅)

Index1

A Accent, 1, 3, 4, 7–9, 12–17, 26–35, 82, 93, 104, 112, 113, 118, 126, 134, 138–141, 147, 163–165, 201, 202, 204, 206, 207 Activism, 17, 169, 173, 181, 187, 191, 194 Ambassador, 27, 35, 36, 41n2, 55, 94, 98, 204 Anglophone, 5, 15, 16, 27, 30, 46, 50, 53–55, 66, 79, 81, 83n3, 203, 204 Animation, 11, 17, 155–161, 164, 166, 168, 173n1 B Be Water, 181, 188–192, 195, 207

C Cantonese, 17, 25, 26, 41n1, 91–93, 95, 104, 105, 112–116, 124, 133–141, 143, 147, 148, 149n2, 149n4, 149n5, 165, 189, 192, 205, 206 Cheng, Sammi, 16, 17, 133–148, 149n2, 206 Cheung, Maggie, 2, 13, 16, 17, 48, 113, 133–148, 149n1, 206 Chineseness, 3–5, 8, 12, 16, 66, 69, 70, 76, 77, 83n6, 203, 205 Chou, Jay, 3, 7, 16, 65–82, 83n1, 83n2, 83n5, 205 D Dubbing, 10, 11, 52, 71, 93, 94, 104, 118, 134, 143, 144, 149n5, 157, 159, 162

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. W. S. Lau, Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0313-6

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INDEX

F Fan Bingbing, 2, 16, 45–59, 60n2, 60n5, 90, 105n2, 204, 205 K Kaneshiro, Takeshi, 3, 13, 16, 17, 102, 111–127, 206 Kwan, Stanley, 17, 133–148 L Lee, Bruce, 13, 14, 16, 17, 70, 73–75, 79, 120, 125, 179–195 Lingual-crossing, 92, 205 Liu Yifei, 2, 3, 16, 17, 156, 165–169, 172, 173, 207 M Mulan, 17, 155–173, 173n1, 173n3, 174n6, 207 N Network, 4, 5, 8, 15–17, 27, 30, 31, 34, 74, 82, 92, 96, 100, 122, 124, 169, 189, 195, 201, 205–207 P Passing, 113, 116, 119, 193, 206 Polyphonicity/polyphonic, 5, 16, 17, 201–203

R Rap, 65–67, 69, 70, 73, 79, 205 Refugee, 31, 35–38, 41n3 S Sinophone, 3, 7, 8, 15–17, 65, 89–105, 112, 113, 120–125, 133–148, 149n4, 203, 205, 206, 208 Soft power, 55, 170 T Tang Wei, 3, 16, 89–105, 106n2, 106n4, 106n5, 205 V Voiceover, 95, 114, 115, 118, 126, 142, 206 Voice/vocal, 4, 7–17, 28, 34–40, 46, 47, 52, 53, 55–59, 66, 68, 70, 75, 78–80, 82, 93, 95, 97, 104, 112, 114, 115, 118, 126, 133–148, 149n5, 155–173, 179–195, 201–207 W Wen Ming-Na, 16, 17, 207 Y Yeoh, Michelle, 1, 2, 8, 13, 16, 25–40, 41n1, 41n2, 83n3, 137, 204