Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond [1st ed.] 9783030550769, 9783030550776

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EAST ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond Edited by Lin Feng · James Aston

East Asian Popular Culture

Series Editors Yasue Kuwahara Department of Communication Northern Kentucky University Highland Heights, KY, USA John A. Lent International Journal of Comic Art Drexel Hill, PA, USA

This series focuses on the study of popular culture in East Asia (referring to China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan) in order to meet a growing interest in the subject among students as well as scholars of various disciplines. The series examines cultural production in East Asian countries, both individually and collectively, as its popularity extends beyond the region. It continues the scholarly discourse on the recent prominence of East Asian popular culture as well as the give and take between Eastern and Western cultures.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14958

Lin Feng · James Aston Editors

Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond

Editors Lin Feng School of Arts University of Leicester Leicester, UK

James Aston School of Arts University of Hull Hull, UK

ISSN 2634-5935 ISSN 2634-5943 (electronic) East Asian Popular Culture ISBN 978-3-030-55076-9 ISBN 978-3-030-55077-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 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: Getty Images, TOSHIAKI ONO/a.collectionRF. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank all the authors who have contributed to this book. Without their thoughtful input and intellectual engagement with scholarship in East Asian cinemas and popular culture, transnational cinema and genre studies, this book would not be possible. Sadly, one of our contributors Shaoyi Sun is no longer with us. He passed away in 2019 before this book went into print. It is a great honour for us to have his chapter collected in this book. Publishing his chapter posthumously, we would like to dedicate this book as a tribute to Shaoyi and his contribution to scholarship in the field. We hope this book will serve him proud. This book is a collection of chapters developed from a selection of papers presented at a conference held at the University of Hull back in 2017. The conference brought both established and young scholars around the world together and provided a platform for scholarly debate on the topic of film genres and East Asian Cinema. We would like to thank Jianmei Liu, Marina Mozzon-McPherson, Neil Maynard, Manuel Hernández-Pérez, and many other colleagues for their support to the conference, which indeed functioned as the seed of this publication. We are grateful to the reviewers of this book’s proposal for their supportive comments and constructive suggestions. Our thanks also go to publisher Palgrave Macmillan’s editors Shaun Vigil, Camille Davies, and Liam McLean for their guidance and preparation of the book along the way.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special thank you to Shaoyi Sun’s brother Shaoyou Sun, who granted us consent to publish Shaoyi Sun’s chapter. We also wholeheartedly thank Professor Chuan Shi from Shanghai Theatre Academy, who helped us to liaise with Shaoyi’s next of kin. Last but not least, we would like to thank our families, friends, and colleagues at the University of Leicester who generously gave us their support.

Contents

Introduction James Aston and Lin Feng

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East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age Rapidly Shifting Landscapes: Two Case Studies in the UK Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the Twenty-First Century Fraser Elliott and Andy Willis

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East Asian Noir: Transnational Film Noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong Caleb Kelso-Marsh

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The Wolf Is Coming: Genre Hybridity in the Contemporary Chinese Blockbuster James Aston

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CONTENTS

Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas Fantasy, Vampirism and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s Shaoyi Sun

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Premodern History and the Contemporary South Korean Period Blockbuster Louisa Mitchell

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Chinese Censorship, Genre Mediation, and the Puzzle Films of Leste Chen Gary Bettinson

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The Politics of Genre Space Critiquing New Generational Japanese Horror: “Youthful Fatalisms, Old Aesthetics” Dave McCaig and Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough

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Genre and Censorship: The Crime Film in Late Colonial Hong Kong Kristof Van den Troost

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Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over Lin Feng

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

James Aston is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Hull. His research interests include twenty-first-century Horror and East Asian cinema. In 2018, he published a monograph with McFarland titled Hardcore Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Production, Marketing, and Consumption. Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough is an Associate Lecturer in Media and Film at the University of Lincoln and a Lecturer in Sociology at Bishop Grosseteste University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Lincoln in July 2018. Her research interests lie in the horror genre, East Asian cinema, and Deleuzian philosophy. Gary Bettinson is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Lancaster University. He is the author of The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai (Hong Kong UP, 2015), co-editor of The Poetics of Chinese Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Hong Kong Horror Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2018), and editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema (Intellect). Fraser Elliott works on the film team at HOME, an independent cinema and cross artform venue in Manchester, and teaches at the University of Salford. He is a member of the Chinese Film Forum UK, with whom he has curated and introduced numerous film screenings at regional cinemas, and holds a Ph.D. in Screen Studies from the University of Manchester on the circulation of Chinese-language films in the UK.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Lin Feng is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leicester. She is the author of Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom. She is currently working on a research project of Hollywood’s construction of Shanghai’s urban image since the 1930s. Her research interests lie in the fields of Chinese and transnational cinemas, cinematic cities, star studies, representation and reception of East Asia in Anglophone cinemas. Caleb Kelso-Marsh is a Ph.D. candidate in Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia. For his Ph.D., Caleb is researching film noir in Japan and Korea. Prior to this, he studied Law and English at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Dave McCaig is a Senior Lecturer in Media Theory in the School of Film and Media at the University of Lincoln. He lectures in and coordinates a wide range of film and media theory programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. He is the course leader for the MA Global Cinemas. His research interests include East Asian Cinemas, gentrification, and globalisation. Louisa Mitchell recently completed her Ph.D. on South Korean historical films at the University of Leeds, under the WRoCAH Doctoral research partnership. She has presented her work at conferences including Consuming Heritage (University of Leeds, 2016) and Portraying the Past: Artistic Engagement with History (University of Sheffield, 2017), and as a Visiting Scholar at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Shaoyi Sun was Professor of Film and Media Studies at Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA). His areas of research interest were film theories, Sino-US film relations, new media art, and cultural studies. He taught Chinese film and literature at the University of Southern California (USC), University of California at Irvine, National Chung Hsing University (Taiwan), Shanghai University, and New York University in Shanghai. Sun served NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) juror at multiple international film festivals including Taiwan Golden Horse (2015), Bangalore (2011), Singapore (2009), Brisbane (2007), and Hawaii (2001). He was also a jury member of the 2016 VGIK (The Russian State University of Cinematography) International Student Film and Stage Play Festival, 2008 Shanghai International Film Festival’s Student Shorts Award and of the 2000 Dhaka International Film Festival.

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Kristof Van den Troost is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is currently working on a book about the history of the Hong Kong crime film. Andy Willis is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford, Senior Visiting Curator: Film at HOME in Manchester, and a founder member of the Chinese Film Forum UK. He has curated and programmed a number of seasons connected to East Asian cinemas including Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers (with Sarah Perks, 2009) and CRIME: Hong Kong Style (2016). He is the co-author, with Peter Buse and Nuria Triana Toribio, of The Cinema of Alex de la Iglesia, the editor of Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (2004) and the co-editor, with Felicia Chan, of Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives (2016), with Wing-Fai Leung of East Asian Film Stars (2014) and with Antonio Lazaro Reboll of Spanish Popular Cinema (2004).

List of Figures

Fantasy, Vampirism and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The scriptures-seeking monk is seduced into the cave of the silken web by a bevy of spider demons disguised as beautiful maidens (Courtesy of the Shanghai Film Museum) Undressing herself in front of the trapped monk, now her bridegroom, the queen accidentally reveals her real identity: a gigantic spider demon (Courtesy of the Shanghai Film)

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Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over Fig. 1

Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Cheng Daqi (Huang Xiaoming) and his friend gazing at Grant Shanghai Nightclub when they arrive Shanghai in The Last Tycoon (Wong Jing, 2012) Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li) in Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, 1995) Lulu (Shu Qi) in Blood Brothers (Alexi Tan, 2007)

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Introduction James Aston and Lin Feng

It is probably fair to say that the majority of commercial and popular cinemas around the world rely on genre filmmaking. Mass media’s discourse on genre production, distribution, and consumption is widely circulated at both the local and global realm. However, for a long while since genre criticism was introduced to film studies in the 1960s as a theoretical approach to challenge the limits of auteurism, English-language scholarship on the topic beyond American and European cinemas had been sporadic. It was not until the recent two decades that genre discourse of East Asian cinemas has moved from the confines of an individual national cinema, such as the Japanese samurai and Chinese martial arts films. This early critical position tended to focus on individual film genres rather than pushing it further to conceptualise East Asian popular cinemas and their transnational interaction with film cultures beyond and within the region.

J. Aston School of Arts, University of Hull, Hull, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. Feng (B) School of Arts, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_1

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The historical lapse of critical attention on East Asian genre cinemas to some extent revealed that film studies of popular cinema and film history had been predominantly Euro-US centric, although we need to recognise that recent development in the field shows an increasing challenge towards such a position. Indeed, East Asian films from the very beginning not only show characteristics of innovative creativity in terms of narrative and aesthetic hybridity, but also demonstrate cross-border and cross-cultural mobility and interaction. These are imbedded into its generic fabric of East Asian cinemas’ production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption infrastructures. Yet East Asian cinemas only started to catch Western film critics’ attention after a handful of filmmakers, such as Akira Kurosawa, won prestigious awards at European film festivals in the 1950s. Despite film studies increasing realisation that a total theory on auteurism was not sufficient, the critical analysis of East Asian cinemas was still primarily restricted to individual filmmakers and their roles in various waves of ‘new’ cinemas, such as Japanese New Wave, Hong Kong New Wave, Chinese Fifth and Sixth Generation, Taiwan New Cinema, and Korean New Wave. As a result, East Asian cinemas are often associated with a niche and non-mainstream cinema whose achievement and value in film history are to be discovered and acknowledged by the Western critics, scholars, award juries, cinema programmers, and so on. Such a critical position continued at least in the next three decades and to some degree even today, as evidenced in the cases that many East Asian films were either distributed and exhibited as ‘independent’ and ‘art’ films or distributed directly in DVD/Blu-ray format or through streaming services rather than mainstream film theatre chains. Andy Willis and Fraser Elliott’s chapter collected in this book provides a thorough analysis of this phenomenon and invests new developments of exhibition models of East Asia genre films. Another evidence of such critical oversights could be found in the academic writing of film history. Despite their inter-Asian flow, crosscontinental interaction beyond Europe and North America, East Asian genre films still appeared to be not ‘global’, popular, or important enough to warrantee them a place in film history textbooks. This is particularly true in the study of early cinema. Movie History: A Survey (Gomery and Pafort-Overduin 2011), A Short History of Film (Dixon and Foster 2018), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (eds. Hill and Gibson 1998), and The Oxford History of World Cinema (ed. NowellSmith 1996) are just some of the examples. As these books illustrate, the

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discussion of popular cinema (such as classic Hollywood), film language (such as Italian Neorealism, German Expressionism, Soviet montage), and genre convention (such as American musical, western and post-war noir) predominantly focused on American cinemas and in some cases extended to selected European cinemas prior to the 1950s. In comparison, the discussion of East Asian films primarily focused on their sociopolitical role in constructing and criticising nationhood, or adopted case studies of individual filmmakers such as Yasujiro Ozu, King Hu, and Zhang Yimou. Such a critical position collectively conveyed an impression that the majority of genre conventions were rooted in Western cinematic tradition, except those ‘national’ genres (such as Chinese martial arts, Japanese samurai films) for which Western cinemas could not easily locate their matching counterparts. Whereas these ‘national’ genre films were often marketed for their ‘otherness’ and in some cases uniqueness, East Asian genre films frequently slipped from the attention of Western critics unless the films could prove that they were different enough from the Western popular genre conventions. In both cases, the critical attention on East Asian cinemas was based in their exceptional rather than their mass appeal, reproduction (such as recycling of narrative formula), or high concept production and marketing strategies that genre films heavily rely on. As a result, early film criticism frequently placed East Asian cinemas at a marginalised position and thus as an exceptional phenomenon to be gazed upon. To some degree, the critical blind spot might have concealed the more complex generic and sociopolitical changes underneath them. This is not to deny that in recent decades an increasingly critical and scholarly interest on East Asian cinemas has gradually realised that East Asian popular films and its genre filmmaking and consumption have much more to offer in our understanding of film history and film culture in the region and beyond. It is exactly within this realm that Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond foregrounds the concept of genre, through which this book intends to expand scholarly debate on film historiography and practices beyond the national boundary. Through interrogating the narrative and aesthetics of film genres developed in East Asian cinemas as well as distribution practices of East Asian genre films beyond the region, the essays included in this book not only collectively celebrate the rich heritage of East Asian popular cinemas, but also build upon current scholarly debate on East Asian genre films through expanding the discussion of the changing landscape of filmmaking and

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consumption of East Asian cinemas in the transnational context. Furthermore, in its focus on genre revisions in how established conceptual frameworks need to be recontextualised and rewritten when we discuss East Asian films, the collection can contribute to or feedback into genre studies of Hollywood and European cinema. Although such a ‘genre loop’ can engender attendant methodological concerns, it still attests to the importance of situating East Asian genre more centrally within film genre studies. Film genre in its most understandable and accessible form is a commercial enterprise made up of a set of recognisable formal and thematic strategies surrounding such vital elements as plot, location, characters, and sound. In early cinema, the easy identification of such elements meant that the organisation of the promotion, exhibition, and reception of the film facilitated “the studio system’s dual need for standardisation and product differentiation” (Gledhill 2007, 252) as it allowed the industry to widen, while carefully policing potential catchment areas that enhanced and feedback into their commercial foundation. Of course, even though ostensibly immutable building blocks may provide a cohesive narrative form which has a determining effect on its production and reception, these generic roots are much more diverse and less distinct than may seem on the surface. Indeed, seminal approaches have been predicated on their attention to how the “conventional definitions of genre are often narrow and restrictive” (Neale 1999, 1), as they invariably dealt with mainstream, commercial cinema emanating from Hollywood. Steve Neale (2007, 261) argues that components of the cinema industry such as the studio, exhibitor, or the viewer cannot necessarily be taken as “singular entities” but rather those which “comprise multiple discursive sites” and that the dimensions of genre are always “negotiable, variable, unpredictable”. For Neale one of the most integral aspects to looking at genre is to acknowledge its discursive nature in that it has “been used in different ways in different fields” (1999, 26) so that historical contingencies, cultural contexts, and industry practices can be taken into account. In doing so, it is possible to move away from treating genre as a “onedimensional [entity]” towards viewing it as a “ubiquitous multifaceted phenomena” (ibid., 26) and thus move outside the realm of Hollywood cinema and commercial and popular film. Neale (2007, 263) goes on to stress that genre always “exists in excess of a corpus of films” and that genres rely heavily on external factors such as audience expectation and knowledge of certain types of films,

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critics engagement with and responses to genre, and industry branches concentrating on the promotion, publicity, and exhibition of film. The inclusion of a holistic array of material, genre interaction, definition, and terminology constitutes for Neale (2007, 263), “key evidence of and for the history and the historicity of genres” in terms of making sense of genre usage and interaction. The changing historical contexts with regard to genre have been taken up by a number of scholars, including Neale, though there is the tendency to track these convolutions within USA and Hollywood cinema. For example, Thomas Schatz’s Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (1981); Yvonne Tasker’s Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (1993); Neale’s (ed) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (2002); Tim Kane’s The Changing Vampire of Film and Television (2006); and Jonathan Stubbs’ Historical Film: A Critical Introduction (2013) all effectively address and map out the different modal elements of genre but do keep those studies within the dominant structures of US film genre and the studio system. It should be pointed out that the lack of space given over to genre in different national contexts is not a criticism of these studies. As Neale (1999, 26) has pointedly remarked, the process of looking at genre and how it is used in “different ways in different fields” will enable a greater examination of Hollywood and genre that is necessarily essential as a starting point. Yet, although Neale has set the foundation for film genre to migrate to different national settings and examine how Hollywood genres such as the western, film noir, and the action film are received, re-envisioned, and re-cast in areas such as East Asia, few scholarly works have situated and developed film genre in such a global and transnational fashion until recent years. In a similar vein, Rick Altman builds upon the importance of discursive aspects of genre in Film/Genre (1999), which ends with a look at what genre can teach us about nations. Altman initially sought to reconcile the inherent contradictions in genre theory through his seminal article “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” (1984). In doing so, the article sets out to arbitrate between an inherently contradictory set of assumptions about and approaches towards film genre so that “the relationship between differing critical claims and their function within a broader cultural context” (Altman 1984, 6) can be established. Thus, Altman’s pivotal process enables a sufficient bringing together of semantic and syntactic categorisations to maximise comprehensive genre definitions. In Film/Genre, Altman continues his rationale to “raise numerous

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questions” (1984, 17) within the limited space of film genre by “destabilis[ing] the apparently clear and fixed relationship between genres and their practitioners” (Altman 1999, 195). The intention is to examine genre as a social device that can provide “multiple purposes for multiple groups” (ibid., 195) within constellated communities. Genre is further resituated as a permanently contested site as it navigates between different social groups, and as such operates like nation and the contested site of national unity. Paying attention to the genre/nation interface in the USA and Europe, Altman suggests that genre can teach us about nations if one widens out the discourse to reconceptualise genre in a wider, global sense. Here, Altman develops the comprehensive framework of his semantic/syntactic genre theory to provide a starting point to look at how genres are received in different national contexts and perhaps more importantly how genres move across national boundaries. As mentioned earlier, it was not until recently that film and cultural scholars started to note that East Asian cinemas were fundamentally missed out from genre study. At around the same time in the 1990s Sheldon Lu Hsiao-peng’s collected edition Transnational Chinese Cinemas (1997) provided a seminal moment in the emergence of a term and field of study in national cinema. Lu situated the anthology within the tension of transnational cinema and East Asian film in its perceived capitulation to Hollywood or independent resistance and expression of national exultation. The focus was to situate films, filmmakers, and the film industry within the nexus or interface of the national/transnational and provided the impetus for a wide-ranging academic discourse to follow with regard to the study of East Asian cinemas. Other important texts have followed including Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham’s anthology Asian Cinemas (2006), Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai’s East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (2008), Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward’s edited collection The Chinese Cinema Book (2011) as well as journals such as Asian Cinema (1995–). However, the study of genres within the context of East Asian cinemas has proved to be a difficult task as the richness of Asian industrial creativity, diversity of East Asian cultures, and disparity of its film governing bodies and markets not only challenged the notion as a theoretical concept, but also questioned the formation of genre under specific historical and cultural contexts. Indeed, often these aforementioned texts eschewed close analysis of genre in favour of gender, colonialist, technological, and economic approaches under the umbrella of nation. The result is keeping

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in line with Altman’s logic of the continuity between genre formation and expression of national identity. Yet, what is underdeveloped along the way is how genre specifically addresses the complex interaction between filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural and cross-media translation and dissemination. Traditionally, East Asian film genre overviews tended to provide chronological narration of genre developments situated primarily within a singular nation state. Stephen Teo’s pivotal Chinese Martial Arts Cinema (2009) meticulously traces the history of the genre starting with its literary origins, key historical periods, and key filmmakers such as King Hu. It does touch on the transnational in its final chapter though focuses on the singular movement of Chinese martial arts in how films, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), synthesise an East/West sensibility that determines and impacts upon the dissemination of the film as it moves across national borders. Similarly, Colette Balmain’s Introduction to Japanese Horror (2008) combines the origins of Japanese horror with genre manifestations as a way to trace a national history covering key aesthetic and thematic developments, along with important historical periods such as J-horror in the late 1990s. Both these examples are important precursors to Renegotiating Genres in terms of bestowing a rigour and precision to the study of genre in an East Asian context that can be taken forward and expanded upon via perceptual, aesthetic, social, and transnational effects between and across different national contexts. There have been a number of recent texts which have sought to draw from a larger field of genre study including Felicia Chan, Angelina Karpovich, and Xin Zhang’s edited collection Genre in Asian Film and Television: New Approaches (2011) and Ken Provencher and Mike Dillon’s Exploiting East Asian Cinemas: Genre, Circulation, Reception (2018). The collection of Chan et al. seeks to provide new approaches to genre in an Asian cinema context such as focusing on women documentary filmmakers and countries with less exposure such as Bali. The result is a broad study of Asian genre but one which attempts to examine “Asia’s polyglot cultures” (Chan et al. 2011, 3) in terms of how they impact on the cultural production of domestic television and film. Conversely, Provencher and Dillon’s work emphasises a narrower framework in its focus on how “exploitation cinema [is] caught up in the currents of transnational cultural flow” (2018, 2). In particular, to account for an inclusive schema of exploitation cinema that connects to specific films, filmmakers, and genre trends within an East Asian context.

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Both the examples above provide important discussions about genre and East Asian cinemas and as such act as vital components in the discourse of genre away from and outside of Hollywood and the West. They are texts that have informed and shaped the direction and content of Renegotiating Genres in terms of highlighting salient areas to pick up on and develop, but more importantly, areas yet to be fully examined and situated within genre studies. To address some of the key areas, this book identified three pathways in analysing East Asian genre cinemas, which underline the rationale behind the organisation of this book’s structure. This book is roughly divided into three sections, each containing three chapters that will be introduced later in front of each part. The first part “East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age” examines film genres in East Asian cinemas under the contemporary transnational contexts. The three chapters collected in this section question genre’s constructive role beyond the conventional film industry and market sector from either production or consumption point of view. The key focus of this part rests on genre’s articulation with international and intra-Asia cultural communication and dialogue. The three chapters in the second part “Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas” respectively explore how genre could be used as a tool to re-examine East Asian film history. The section sets out an investigation of the development of East Asian genre films that were previously overshadowed by scholarly attention on various cinematic waves, auteurship, and national cinemas. Focusing on the historiographic aspect, this section not only illustrates how genre elements play a crucial role in cinematic creative voices but also demonstrates that the development of genre films in East Asian cinemas often has multiple cultural inspirations, some of which could trace back well before film was born. The final part “Politics of Genre Space” places attention on genre’s role in mapping out sociopolitical space of East Asian cinemas, questioning genre films’ encounters of cultural and political power negotiation in film production and consumption. Moreover, the three chapters in this section, respectively focusing on Japan, Hong Kong, and Mainland Chinese cinemas, provide a case that genre films function as a useful tool for us to probe and understand social contexts beyond the cinema. Here it is important to note that these three sections are not entirely separate. Rather contrary, they, despite their focuses on different genre aspects, are interrelated and complementary to each other. Deliberately

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not organising the chapters based on any individual genre or any particular national cinema, this book thus invites a critical dialogue on genre agency in the transnational imagination of East Asian popular culture. Together, all chapters collected in this book aim to provide a case for conceptualising genre as an ever-changing and heterogeneous concept. Another key focus of this book is to re-evaluate genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, through which it tackles several areas in East Asian and transnational cinema and some of which are under-explored in film studies, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, East Asian film industry, and cross-media and crossmarket film dissemination. Indeed, East Asia should not be treated as a self-contained, internally coherent, and geopolitically insulant entity. Rather, as each chapter in this collection demonstrates, East Asian cinemas (and related critical analysis) have always been engaged in a negotiation, redefining film history and addressing a historically global circulation of film styles, politics, and economics. In this regard, this book treats genre as a theoretical framework and historiographical methodology, which provides a useful tool to analyse film production infrastructure, distribution and exhibition factors, and consumption and taste as well as film culture in a wider context. Engaging with East Asian and transnational cinema, this book maps out three thematic pathways that genre studies could engage with. Yet it is by no means to suggest that they are the only valid approaches. For instance, film scholars, especially those working on East Asian cinemas and popular cultures, already established some fascinating studies on some popular genres in East Asian cinemas. However, along with the discovery of historical evidence (such as lost film footage or records of film distribution and exhibition programmes),1 the established discourse of East Asian cinemas and its role in global popular culture needs to

1 For instance, a copy of the Japanese silent film What Made Her Do It (Shigeyoshi Suzuki, 1930), which was believed to be lost after the World War II, was discovered in Russia in 1994. Similarly, a copy of the Chinese silent film The Cave of the Silken Web (Dan Duyu, 1927) was also thought to be lost, but it was discovered in Norway in 2013. Other scholarly efforts of re-engaging popular cinema include but not limited to the project Taiwan’s Lost Commercial Cinema that aims to recover and restore those Taiwanese-language feature films (taiyu pian) that were popular but short-lived in the 1970s, Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema Study Association that aims to re-evaluate Hong Kong film history through discovering and protecting popular Cantonese films (many of which are genre films).

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be re-evaluated constantly. Moreover, while a few chapters in this book address the relationship between East Asian popular cinemas and their Euro-American counterparts, international flow, and intra-Asian communication, this book has not the space to tackle the international mobility and development of genre films beyond the triangular radar of East AsiaWest Europe-America interaction. Yet, along with the growing influence of East Asian films in Africa, South America, Oceania, South Asia, as well as East, South, and North Europe, the critical discussion about how East Asian film genres are developed, distributed, and received in these regions is another key area to be researched upon. These are just two areas that the editors would like to explore further and encourage future studies on East Asian film genres and their articulation with cross-cultural conversation and transnational mobility.

References Altman, Rick. 1984. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal 23 (3) (Spring): 6–18. ———. 1999. Film/genre. London: British Film Institute. Balmain, Colette. 2008. Introduction to Japanese Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chan, Felicia, Angelina Karpovich, and Xin Zhang, eds. 2011. Genre in Asian Film and Television: New Approaches. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dixon, Wheeler Winston, and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. 2018. A Short History of Film. 3rd ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers. Eleftheriotis, Dimitris, and Gary Needham, eds. 2006. Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gledhill, Christine. 2007. “History of Genre Criticism.” In The Cinema Book, 3rd ed., edited by Pamela Cook, 252-9. London: British Film Institute. Gomery, Douglas, and Clara Pafort-Overduin. 2011. Movie History: A Survey. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Hill, John, and Pamela Church Gibson, eds. 1998. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunt, Leon, and Wing-fai Leung, eds. 2008. East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film. London: I.B. Tauris. Kane, Tim. 2006. The Changing Vampire of Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Growth of a Genre. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Lim, Song Hwee, and Julian Ward, eds. 2011. The Chinese Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute. Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. 1997. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Neale, Steve. 1999. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge. ———. 2007. “Genre Theory Since the 1980s.” In The Cinema Book, 3rd ed., edited by Pamela Cook, 260–4. London: British Film Institute. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. 1996. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Provencher, Ken, and Mike Dillon, eds. 2018. Exploiting East Asian Cinemas: Genre, Circulation, Reception. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Schatz, Thomas. 1981. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Stubbs, Jonathan. 2013. Historical Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Tasker, Yvonne. 1993. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London: Routledge. Teo, Stephen. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age

Part I of Renegotiating Genres is titled “East Asian Film Genre in a Transnational Age” and the three chapters included here, by Fraser Elliott and Andy Willis, Caleb Kelso-Marsh, and James Aston, introduce to the reader how East Asian film operates within a transnational perspective that has often been determined through Euro-American scholars, film critics, and festival programmers—a perspective that has provided the tendency to conceal the often complex generic and sociopolitical factors that underline the relationship, with not only East Asian cinema and their Euro-American counterparts but also the inter/intra-Asia dimension, which is an equally fascinating and substantial relationship to incorporate. Thus, all three chapters presented in Part I examine concrete case studies in how they operate within the transnational to highlight it as a wide-ranging concept that encompasses elements of technological development, movement of filmmaking personnel, distribution, exhibition, and marketing along with a “cross fertilisation of concepts of genre, cinematic style, and even subject matter” (Burgoyne 2016) as films move between national cinemas and across different nations. Elliott and Willis open their chapter with an examination of how Chinese genre films (such as Hong Kongcrime and action films along with the Chinese blockbuster Wolf Warrior II ) are distributed and exhibited in the UK. The authors base their analysis on two models, the cultural and the commercial, to determine the nuanced ways Chinese films are shown within the independent arthouse circuit and the more commercial multiplex theatre. The chapter tracks the far-reaching changes

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reflecting contemporary movements to the UK film industry, prevalent ideas surrounding Chinese language films, and the transformations in domestic Chinese cinema. These factors provide a direct correlation to how they are received by audiences in the UK as well as how changing demographics, cultural values, and industry health similarly impacts the type of foreign/Chinese film picked up and released. The future is uncertain, especially concerning collaboration and hybridity between the cultural and commercial exhibition spheres and the chapter offers an insightful testimony into the complex make-up of transnational cinema. In doing so, the authors examine the UK film industry to better understand the changing ways cinema is being reformulated across different nations as part of the complex, dynamic, and multidirectional circulation of genre, commerce, cultural values, and modes of production, exhibition, and marketing. Similar to how Elliott and Willis highlighted the Chinese-UK circulation of film styles, politics, and economics across cultural borders concerning film exhibition and festival programming, Kelso-Marsh’s chapter also addresses the transnational movement of East Asian genre films. The approach looks at noir cinema as a “pan-Asian phenomenon” as it crosses across the national boundaries of Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. Thus, Kelso-Marsh provides an inter- and intra-Asia perspective of East Asian genre filmmaking as he tracks the aesthetic and thematic strategies employed in these different, but interconnected national noir cinemas. As they interact with Hollywood noir styles and repack and revision for East Asian audiences, they provide an intra-regional lens with which to examine transnational cinema. For example, the Korean noir of the 1960s was heavily influenced by Japanese noir such as that originating from the Nikkatsu studio. Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s was also heavily informed by Japanese genre developments, especially those connected to the yakuza, which then fed back into Korean noir of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The complex intra-regional flow of noir during these periods attests that although important, Hollywood noir was the sole influence and style for East Asian noir. These confluences and convergences show that regional film industries were more important in the development of an East Asian film noir cinema. In addressing transnational cinema in this way, Kelso-Marsh resituates the focus away from East Asian vs their Euro-American counterparts towards an intra-regional form of film noir.

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In the final chapter, Aston picks up Kelso-Marsh’s examination on local and intra-regional influences by looking at the emergence of the East Asian blockbuster. Aston focuses primarily on the rise of commercial cinema in mainland China exemplified by the recent domestic successes of films such as Wolf Warrior II (Wu Jing, 2017) and Operation Red Sea (Dante Lam, 2018). Yet, in doing so accounts for how these films have utilised aesthetic and thematic conventions from US cinema ranging from the 21st century superhero film, 1980s hyper-masculine action cinema, the World War II combat film, and Michael Bay’s “cinema of excess”. These multiple historical, stylistic, and genre influences on China’s recent action/war movies again offer a crucial narrative on how transnational cinema works across nations such as China and the US and the “imitations, adaptations, and transformations of visual style and narrative (genre)” (Bergfelder 2016) that occur. In China, the war genre has been recouped to provide a framework that presents China as a powerful nation, both militarily and diplomatically, and is achieved via the central agency of a powerful masculine hero. Furthermore, the success of the blockbuster war film in China and its connections to a strong national identity and direction have been picked up and replicated in other East Asian countries. For example, in Korea, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (Kim Han-min, 2014), a period war film that similarly stresses the twin themes of a strong nation and male agency has become the most successful film of all time at the domestic box-office. Not only does the chapter show, similar to Kelso-Marsh’s contention that the noir should be seen as transnational rather than solely the domain of Hollywood, that the blockbuster has now been “de-Westernised” but also, like the previous two chapters, the multiplicity of transnational dimensions, which are essential to include in any definitions of the genre in a transnational and global world.

References Bergfelder, Tim. 2012. “What is your definition of ‘transnational cinema’?”, interview by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith. “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable.” Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajou rnal.com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/#tbergfelder, no pagination. Accessed 22 January 2020.

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Burgoyne, Robert. 2012. “What is your definition of ‘transnational cinema’?”, interview by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith. “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable.” Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajou rnal.com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/#rburgoyne, no pagination. Accessed 22 January 2020.

Rapidly Shifting Landscapes: Two Case Studies in the UK Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the Twenty-First Century Fraser Elliott and Andy Willis

This chapter considers the ways in which the patterns of distribution and exhibition of Chinese language films in the UK have changed in the twenty-first century. Within this analysis, we also articulate the important position genre films have played in the attempts to find space for Chinese language films in the congested world of foreign language films within the UK’s distribution and exhibition networks. Our analysis is based on two models, which we have labelled the cultural and the commercial drawing on the work of Mark Cosgrove, Head Curator for Film at the Watershed in Bristol, UK. The former is driven by cultural concerns and exists predominantly within what is, in the UK, termed the independent cultural cinema exhibition sector, a label developed relatively recently within that sector to move away from the

F. Elliott (B) · A. Willis University of Salford, Salford, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. Willis e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_2

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perceived elitism of the term “art-house” cinemas. As Cosgrove puts it, “the cultural (commonly called specialised) model… is more concerned with engaging audiences in the capacity of film to make and share cultural meaning. Films are viewed as generators of ideas and debates” (2011, n.p.). The latter model, on the other hand, operates closer to the commercial sections of the distribution and exhibition sector within the UK and for the most part involves screenings at multiplex cinemas purely for commercial gain. Through two case studies based around these, we argue that the distribution and exhibition of Chinese language films has recently gone through some significant and rapid changes that reflect some of the wider trends that can be identified within the UK film industry. Whilst we acknowledge that there is some crossover between these areas, we contend that these divisions do assist in an understanding of distribution and exhibition patterns and indeed reflect some of the key ideas that circulate around Chinese language films in the UK. These findings are based both on our traditional academic research, working with the available historical distribution and exhibition records, as well as our experiences as programmers and curators with cinemas around the UK. Patterns of circulation remain a drastically understudied area within film studies, and we hope to show in this chapter the utility and necessity of a scholarly approach that combines curatorial experience with more traditional forms of research. Before turning to our central case studies, it is important to make some wider observations regarding the general cycles within the distribution and exhibition of Chinese language films in the UK as this offers some important contexts for the developments that have taken place in the twenty-first century. Whilst the contemporary moment does represent a notable departure from earlier trends, the historical distinction between commercial and what are colloquially known as art-house or art films is still relevant to contemporary developments. What is notable are the ways in which genre films have been released in a manner that creates a clear overlap between the commercial intention of the films, particularly in their country of origin, and the (re)positioning of them within cultural debates as they are released into some UK markets. In addition, whilst these categories of film generally have distinct and separate structures supporting their circulation, such crossovers offer some insight into the ways in which the wider articulations of what constitutes commercial and cultural cinema intersect and overlap in the arena of genre film.

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In this chapter, we use the generalised term “Chinese language films” to refer to productions from various Chinese-speaking regions in order to acknowledge the heterogeneity of these diverse productions and offer a general survey of their histories in the UK. Various gatekeepers within Britain’s exhibition and distribution networks have sought to curate “Chinese cinemas” as specific discursive formations referring to productions exclusively from Mainland China, Hong Kong, or elsewhere, but they are not the focus of this chapter. This chapter is, instead, interested in the mechanisms of contemporary distribution and exhibition for Chinese language films, and our chosen case studies refer specifically to films from Hong Kong and Mainland China, as they are most representative of current trends. Whilst acknowledging the cultural specificities of these films, it is equally important to consider their genre characteristics which can have an arguably larger impact on their accommodation in the UK than their geographical origins. Indeed, whilst we are aware of the political debates around definitions of Chinese language cinemas, it is important to acknowledge from the outset that a number of the key distributors in the UK handle films from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

A Brief History of Distribution and Exhibition of Chinese Language Films in the UK Chinese language cinema has a scattered and varied history of distribution and exhibition in the UK. Before the 1960s, only a handful of films produced across Chinese-speaking regions reached audiences in Britain thanks to insular domestic policies within China and a political climate within Britain that was distrusting of the region. Indeed, anxieties around showing Mainland Chinese films in the UK ran well into the 1980s where questions were raised in the British parliament regarding the ethics of showing Mainland China’s films at the National Film Theatre (NFT) when the country was not officially “recognised by the West” (Whitaker 1986, 19). Those Chinese language films that were screened were generally short documentaries shown in schools for education purposes like A Feast of Fun (1959) or a handful of productions available to regional film societies like The White Haired Girl (1950) and animations Why the Crow is Black (1956) and The Magic Paintbrush (1954/1955). Genre films appeared more readily in restaurants and pop-up cinemas in Chinatowns where Britain’s Chinese population, which in the 1970s

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was made up mostly of those who had emigrated from Hong Kong’s New Territories region, could enjoy recently released Hong Kong films alongside Cantonese pop songs and other entertainment products (Benton and Gomez 2008, 197, 347; Parker 1995). Important as these screenings were, none of these initiatives represented a significant presence for Chinese language films in the UK, particularly in terms of general theatrical releases. One of the earliest notable appearances of a Chinese language film for audiences outside the Chinese diaspora was likely the 1955 Edinburgh International Film Festival screening of Letter with the Feathers (1954). Directed by Shi Hui, this Mainland Chinese war film won the festival’s Best Film award, benefiting from the organisers’ policy to screen films that had not been shown previously on the European festival circuit. Across the 1960s, other European festivals followed suit and began to integrate Chinese language films into their international programmes. The Cannes Film Festival, for example, screened three films by director Li Han-hsiang during the decade—The Enchanting Shadow (1960), The Magnificent Concubine (1962) and Empress Wu Tse-Tien (1963). Formally similar, all three are period-set costume dramas with lush colour palettes, produced in Hong Kong. Generic characteristics may have been important to the films’ success in Europe, though it appears to be the technical quality of these films that brought the most attention from the festivals: The Magnificent Concubine won Cannes’ Grand Prix for Best Interior Photography and Colour, for example. Equally, the ability to unify all three films as the vision of a singular auteur director in Li Han-hsiang would have aided the films’ ability to sit alongside popular European productions of the day. As the Cannes festival enjoyed wide coverage in film magazines and journals, it is likely that particularly interested British audiences would become more aware of developments and achievements within Chinese language cinemas through this reporting. These audiences, however, would have struggled to see these films themselves as no available records suggest they received distribution in the UK outside of these brief festival appearances. It was not until the 1980s, discussed below, that Chinese language films received widespread circulation in the cultural cinema exhibition sector. In this regard, film critics and magazines (the key publications being the likes of Sight and Sound, Films and Filming and Monthly Film Bulletin) were important in encouraging the distribution and exhibition of Chinese language cinema, particularly the kind of film that would have entered an “art” cinema reception space in the UK during this time.

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Before the 1970s, the most widely publicised and accessible screenings of Chinese cinema came from initiatives by the British Film Institute (BFI) to curate seasons and programmes for a predominantly London-based audience. The first of these was a season titled “Chinese Discovery” that screened at the National Film Theatre in London in 1960. This was said to be “the first considerable display of the Chinese cinema, of any regime, to be seen in Western Europe” (Leyda 1960, 11). Curated seasons like this one supported the presence of Chinese language films in the UK at a time when such work lacked the same international prestige as other “national” cinemas such as those from Japan or India, which had found more comprehensive film festival success and subsequent circulation and critical interest. This initial consolidated effort to distribute and exhibit these films through festivals and the BFI represents an early form of the cultural model we will detail later in this section. It is an approach the BFI have continued to employ since with, for example, their 1980 season “Electric Shadows: Chinese Cinema”, curated by critics Tony Rayns and Scott Meek, and their 2014 “A Century of Chinese Cinema”, a season of films initially compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival. Distribution and exhibition support for this kind of Chinese language film increased in the 1980s and 1990s as film-making in Mainland China and Taiwan garnered attention on the European film festival circuit. At a time when the films of China’s Fifth Generation directors were banned in China and those of the New Taiwan Cinema movement saw negligible domestic interest, European festivals and audiences became the target for a number of Chinese-speaking directors and studios. Indeed, such films saw strong support in the UK particularly, with the London Film Festival whose 1983 edition has been credited as “the first moment that Taiwan’s new cinema got a chance to be exposed to the world” (Campbell 2001). Following such festival appearances, these films were occasionally screened at Britain’s newly renovated regional independent cinema venues including the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle, Cornerhouse in Manchester and Watershed in Bristol. During this period, the most impactful were the films of Fifth Generation directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. Seen first by international audiences at the newly founded Hong Kong Film Festival, their UK exhibition began with Chen’s Yellow Earth (1984) which played for six weeks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in 1985 before beginning a nearly two-year-long nationwide tour. Following Yellow Earth, the films of Chen, Zhang and the Taiwanese-American

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productions of Ang Lee saw comprehensive exhibition across both newly renovated independent, or as they were then still widely referred to arthouse, cinemas and multiplex venues around the UK. For those without access to these venues, film critics, including the increasingly significant Tony Rayns, presented the films on BBC2 and the newly launched Channel 4 which had begun broadcasting on 2nd November 1982. This model identifies the interrelated roles of festivals, curators and critics, an intertwined operation which creates a number of tastemakers whose influence had, and continues to have, great influence on a film’s transition from international festival success to UK distribution. This period in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the last time that the art-house cinema circuit saw as significant and unified a boom in Chinese language film. Since then, there has continued to be a scattering of films often focused on a perceived auteur status—from Sixth Generation directors like Jia Zhangke or Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, for example—but none that have had as prolific and sustained an impact within this cultural space alone. This history of Chinese language art cinema is however only one side of the story of the presence of Chinese language film in the UK. Whilst this may be the kind of “Chinese cinema” favoured in critical and academic writing on the subject, commercial genre filmmaking—particularly action and martial arts productions—has arguably had a more plentiful and recognised impact. For many in the UK (and beyond of course), martial arts films have been synonymous with the idea of “Chinese cinema” since the 1970s and the distribution and resulting box-office receipts for Chinese language action films have been significant at numerous points since that decade. The first significant moment for more genre-orientated Chinese language films in terms of their recognition beyond the niche, specialist circles of the film festivals, the BFI, the film press and regional repertory theatres came in the early 1970s with what Leon Hunt (2003, 1) terms the “kung fu craze”. Beginning in 1973 with the UK release of King Boxer (1972) but spurred on by the global popularity of Bruce Lee and his film Fist of Fury (1972), this “kung fu craze” saw hundreds of Hong Kong martial arts films distributed across the UK during the 1970s, many making vast financial returns when compared to other international films. On its release at the Warner Cinema in London’s Leicester Square, Fist of Fury broke “all box office records at that cinema, for normal performances, for first day, for first week and for two weeks run” (Stuart 1973, 27). Once the box-office potential for these first releases had been

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confirmed in London, by the middle of the decade, distributors began releasing kung fu films straight to cities outside London with some titles skipping the capital and heading directly to cities including Birmingham, Plymouth, Bristol, Nottingham and others (Kung Fu Monthly, Issue 23). Unlike those art films buoyed by critical and institutional support, these martial arts films were commercial successes that played primarily at mainstream chain cinemas. From ODEONs to ABCs, and second-run local theatres, such popular films had their own economy of midnight screenings, fan clubs, magazines and martial arts academies. Sidestepping the need for secondary curators, the Chinese language martial arts film occupied a space shared with productions from exploitation films, Spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation productions and war narratives: films with “aggressively commercial” characteristics whose distribution and exhibition during the 1970s was spurred on by financial gain and scorned by established critics (Gordon 1974, 71). The marketability of these films was often based on their genre characteristics which could be reduced to a series of sensational images that summed up what was being sold to audiences. In the early 1980s, distribution and exhibition trends changed dramatically with the development of UK’s home media market. The kind of action cinema from Hong Kong and other Chinese regions that had enjoyed box-office success in the 1970s now moved from the theatrical space to home media finding a new home on VHS. Fan interest in Chinese language genre productions remained significant enough to support various entrepreneurial endeavours related to Chinese martial arts and action-orientated cinema well into the early 2000s. During this period, a number of new specialised distributors appeared in the UK. These included brands like Made in Hong Kong, Eastern Heroes and Hong Kong Legends, who combined fanzines and merchandise with film distribution in their operations. Whilst all of these labels have now folded, in the case of Hong Kong Legends some of their acquisitions appear in the catalogue of Cine Asia, a contemporary brand now owned by the UK-based Trinity Film. Reflecting the various patterns of distribution and exhibition that have emerged in the twenty-first century, they continue to reissue many of these films across Blu-ray, DVD and streaming services and have recently re-entered the theatrical space picking up new titles for release. Whilst these niche distribution labels focused on the home media space during the 1990s, a number of high-profile distributors saw financial

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success and commercial appeal with theatrically released genre films in the early 2000s. Once again, this trend was led by martial arts films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) which became the highestgrossing foreign language film of all time at the UK box office upon its release, bringing in over £9 million for its distributor, Columbia Pictures (UK Film Council 2010, 43). Opening across independent cultural cinemas and multiplex circuits around the UK, Crouching Tiger had the “largest opening weekend for a subtitled feature in UK cinema history” (The Guardian 2001) and was a key crossover success for the genre and the reappearance of Chinese language film on UK screens. The many large-scale productions that followed in China to capitalise on the popularity of Ang Lee’s new blockbuster format included Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and The Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). All three of these films were released theatrically in the UK market with an eye on the crossover potential that Lee’s film had generated. Alongside another popular, although very different, martial arts films, such as Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004), these remain some of the most profitable (non-Bollywood) foreign language films ever to be released in the UK (BFI Research and Statistics 2017). What this brief history of distribution and exhibition of Chinese language films in the UK shows is that, even allowing for moments of crossover, such as that of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there has long been key differences between the thinking that drives the distribution and exhibition initiatives for films likely to find their audience within the sphere of cultural cinemas and that behind the more overtly “commercial” circulation of Chinese language cinema in the UK. Within the cultural cinema circuit, curation and taste making has long played an important role in providing platforms for films to find audiences. This has often occurred through programmed seasons and the public attention brought on by successful film festival appearances. In the commercial space, on the other hand, trends have been dictated first and foremost by financial imperatives and these have bypassed the need for any sense of cultural contextualisation offered by individual curators and critical voices. Whilst historically there was a regional division in these trends—with Hong Kong productions supporting the commercial model and those from Mainland China and Taiwan the cultural model—these have been quite fluid, as shown by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and genre divisions have generally proved more influential to their cultural positioning. In the first of our case studies that follow, we suggest that some of the approaches

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we identified as driving distribution and exhibition in the cultural cinemas sector remain prominent in the construction of contemporary curated seasons and events. In addition, the second case study reveals that significant demographic changes within the UK have ushered in a new moment of commercial distribution and exhibition for Chinese language cinema, the box-office success of which came as something of a surprise to many industry observers.

Case Study 1: CRIME: Hong Kong Style CRIME: Hong Kong Style was a season of Hong Kong crime films and accompanying events curated for HOME in Manchester and which subsequently toured around the UK to other independent arts venues and cinemas in 2016.1 This season concretely reflects the continued significance of genre within the thinking about foreign language cinema in the UK’s independent cultural exhibition sector but also suggests how important its intersection with other critical approaches to film, particularly those circulating around questions related to the continuing currency of authorship, remains within the cultural model we have outlined. In a number of ways, the season reflects the approaches that we have already identified as driving the distribution and exhibition of films likely to find an audience within the cultural sector in previous decades. The title of the season itself acknowledging the distinct specificity of the development of the crime film within the context of Hong Kong cinema and inviting audiences to do the same. This cultural model, in terms of the exhibition and consumption of Chinese language films in the UK, is firmly focused around a number of what might previously have been understood as art-house cinemas. Today, broadly speaking, the sector covers long-standing independent venues across the UK such as HOME in Manchester (previously known as Cornerhouse before its relocation to a new venue in 2015), Watershed in Bristol, and Filmhouse in Edinburgh, alongside small chains of traditionally art-house venues such as the Curzon and Picturehouse which reside firmly within the cultural sector. These venues have long specialised in foreign language cinema and independent work from the United States and other English language industries alongside the screening of archive

1 For more details, see https://homemcr.org/event/crime-hong-kong-style/.

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prints of cinema classics. Within the cultural model, perhaps best exemplified in the practices of such independent cinemas and small-scale chains, one can find examples of screenings of a number of genre films. Significantly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, these are often marketed in such a way as to emphasise the films’ originality or the credentials of their directors as auteurs. Given these emphases, these venues often assimilate genre films into their wider cultural cinema offer. Through their programming activities, such venues may be argued to assert cultural significance on films through their inclusion in their programme alongside more obvious examples of art-house or specialised cinema. For example, Christopher Nolan’s war film, Dunkirk (2017) could be found screening in such venues with programme notes emphasising the director’s auteur status. More specifically at HOME in Manchester, the Chinese Film Forum UK has shown a number of popular films from Taiwan and Hong Kong, such as the street dance focused The Way We Dance (2013) and provided contextualising introductions before screenings. Beyond the sporadic conventional distribution noted above, the other significant way in which Chinese language films have found their way onto UK cinema screens has been through what may best be termed as the curated season. As we have shown, these are often hosted by prestigious cultural venues, such as the NFT on London’s South Bank. Outside London, cinemas such as the Filmhouse in Edinburgh have also curated their own seasons and events that have attempted to engage with the history of, and new developments within, Chinese language cinemas. These events clearly draw on the traditions of the cultural model and often focus on the types of directors who are considered auteurs, or movements or cycles deemed to be of particular significance in a particular national cinema, again as discussed above. However, given the large and varied number of films produced within Chinese language industries, and the significance in production contexts such as the Hong Kong studio system, films have also been gathered together to create such seasons by centring on the idea of genre. Again, as already noted, internationally martial arts films have long been closely associated with Chinese language cinema, particularly since the late 1960s. For this reason, this style of cinema has provided a fertile starting point for a number of seasons devoted to Chinese language cinema across the globe. However, it is again worth acknowledging that often, drawing on more traditional approaches to film within critical and academic thinking, such seasons link to notions of authorship in order to

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add a perceived prestige to the genre in focus. A good example of this was held at the Harvard University Film Archive in 2013 when they hosted a season of wuxia films directed by the celebrated director King Hu. Across March 2013, the archive hosted a seven-title retrospective which included, in the order screened, Dragon Inn (1967), All the King’s Men (1983), A Touch of Zen (1971), Come Drink With Me (1966), The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), The Valiant Ones (1975) and Raining in the Mountain (1979). In their introduction to the season, the archive was clearly aiming to justify the inclusion of genre films such as Hu’s wuxia by not only linking to more accepted notions of authorship but by also evoking one of the traditional art-house circuits most loved East Asian filmmakers Kurosawa Akira. David Pendleton, writing on the Harvard University Film Archive website, articulated it in the following manner, which if one was being critical might almost seem apologetic about King Hu’s association with genre film-making: Universally recognized as one of the most influential and important Chinese directors in the history of cinema, King Hu (1932-97) came to fame making wuxia movies – the swordplay subgenre of martial arts cinema. In the process of perfecting the genre, Hu was also able to make it a vehicle for his authorial personality, much as Kurosawa would do with the samurai film and Minnelli with the Hollywood musical. (n.d.)

The authors of this chapter, who were both involved in the delivery of CRIME: Hong Kong Style at HOME, were aware of these trends, and the pitfalls they reveal, within the curation of seasons of Chinese language genre cinema, as they attempted to create a season that offered a contemporary version of the cultural model in relation to the exhibition of Chinese language cinema. At its core was a desire to make audiences aware of the richness of the crime film’s history within Hong Kong film production, and indeed its legacy. Initially, the crime film was considered a suitable focus for the season as the genre had a long history of production within the Hong Kong film industry that over time had gone through various cycles and trends. In addition, the genre was attractive as it was often associated with an ability to reflect changes within society and in doing so may carry some social comment. This in turn meant that a season of such films would have potential to attract audiences within the independent cinema and

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arts venue circuit. In addition, the crime film was also closely associated with several recognised thematic and production cycles and directors whose work had received UK distribution and who were often associated with ideas of authorship within film, something that still carried a certain level of currency within the primary audience for such venues. As Daniel Martin (2009, 31) observed when discussing the release of Johnnie To’s films into the UK market: In the United Kingdom and America, Hong Kong cinema has long been associated with a certain kind of genre filmmaking [and] have long associated the gunplay/heroic bloodshed subgenre of Hong Kong action cinema with a few key figures: directors John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark; and actor Chow Yun-fat.

In curating the season, it was decided that it should attempt to reflect, as much as possible, the cycles within the production of crime films in Hong Kong as well as offer examples of what might be considered classics, providing a historical perspective on the genre as well as including newer titles to suggest contemporary trends. Conscious of the HOME venue’s core audience, the pitch to them about the season, like the Harvard Film Archive, drew on existing notions of authorship, but clearly also centred on the various pleasures offered by the crime genre. The CRIME: Hong Kong Style listing on the HOME website (n.d.) stated: From noir-tinged thrillers, to tales of hardnosed gangsters, to entertainingly comic capers, CRIME: Hong Kong Style offers stone cold classics (Infernal Affairs , Election), cult movies (Police Story, As Tears Go By), forgotten gems (Too Many Ways to be No. 1, Portland Street Blues ) and, with premieres of Dante Lam’s That Demon Within and the legendary Ringo Lam’s Wild City, the latest releases from some of the world’s most revered and stylish directors. Join us to celebrate some of the greatest crime films ever made.

The season then was constructed with a strong sense of historical development of the crime film genres with Hong Kong cinema. However, as is always the case, the final season was constrained by limitations of availability of English subtitled prints. In the case of the Hong Kong crime film, certain titles made by critically admired directors were available in usable prints, whilst other significant films made by lesser-known filmmakers or from less well-known eras of production were much trickier

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to source. For these reasons, the season took form as follows, each stage constructed with a sense of how it fits into the cultural model of exhibition discussed above. CRIME: Hong Kong style opened on February 2016 with a UK premiere screening of Ringo Lam’s Wild City. Lam’s film was considered a suitable starting point for a number of reasons. Firstly, he was a known director with a strong cult reputation within fan communities. The film was being widely marketed as his return to the genre and as such offered HOME an angle to promote that particular screening and alongside that the season as a whole. Another added advantage relevant to the cultural model was the fact that the screening also took place close to Chinese New Year, a time when HOME annually held a screening of a Chinese language film. Given the wider interest in the history of the genre within Hong Kong film production, HOME looked to screen Tradition (1955), a work widely regarded as a prototype for many of the organised crime family-orientated dramas that would follow in later years, as the earliest film in the season. However, this title was one of the first that proved difficult to source in a version with English subtitles, something vital for UK venues. However, by working with the Hong Kong Film Archive another title emblematic of this era was secured for the season, The Swallow Thief (1961). Informal feedback as audiences left introduced screenings and contextual talks suggests that they have found the process of sourcing films for such retrospectives, communicated through events such as introductions to screenings, interesting, again reflecting the ways in which some attendees are interested in the wider cultural aspects of such programmes. As the 1960s progressed Hong Kong crime films began to adopt a more consciously contemporary style, which could also be seen in the decade’s musical productions, which reflected the fashions and style of the era. In the selection of films to reflect this era, the curation team looked for work that reflected a consolidation of themes and concerns that would go on to reappear again and again within the genre. These included ideas of honour, loyalty and brotherhood and often had narratives that focused on characters who existed on opposite sides of the law. In addition, these films began to explore the wider impact of crime on Hong Kong society. A typical work of this ilk would be The Dreadnaught (1966) starring Patrick Tse Yin. However, the unavailability of various works from this era proved a challenge. Few films had been restored and

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the prints that existed in archives were often without English subtitles. We would have the same difficulty in sourcing a print of Peter Yung’s 1979 film The System. Ultimately, we were unable to fill this part of the programme with a suitable print and the gap this created made it all the more vital that CRIME: Hong Kong Style utilised the opportunity the cultural model allowed. A public talk was offered that explored through clips, including films from this era, the development of the genre in Hong Kong. Through this contextualising event, the curatorial team was able to ensure that whilst there was no screening of work from the late 1960s the importance of the moment in terms of the development of the genre was not ignored. Here, the cultural model was able to deliver something that audiences at independent cinemas such as HOME found informative and allowed the curation team to at least highlight the significance of the moment of the late 1960s and offer transparency over the final programme selection. The 1970s was a key era for the crime film in Hong Kong and the curation team sought to reflect this with the screening of key titles that were linked to the moment when gangsters on screen became big business for the film industry. In this decade, what might be termed crime content spread across genres as other popular cycles such as the kung fu and the wuxia film began to include crime stories. Here, due to the ongoing restoration work on Shaw Brothers back catalogue, CRIME: Hong Kong Style was able to offer work, The Teahouse (1974) and Killer Constable (1980), which exemplified this trend and was rarely screened in the UK. Coinciding with Daniel Martin’s earlier point about international audiences’ awareness of Hong Kong cinema, the 1980s and 1990s was an important moment for the crime film. The era was one when Hong Kong crime films became associated with hero gangsters, who for many fans were seen as the epitome of “cool”, in works constructed by a new wave of action-orientated directors who themselves would become international names in the way few Hong Kong genre directors had before. John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark all made films that offered the opportunity for established local stars such as Chow Yun-fat to reinvent themselves through a series of roles that emphasised the moral ambiguity of both criminals and the police officers hunting them. In creating the season, the curators here were keen to also reflect some of the other stars and trends that emerged in one of the most important periods of Hong Kong film history. CRIME: Hong Kong Style therefore screened work that exemplified the variety of films produced that could be categorised

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as crime films from Police Story (1985) to As Tears Go By (1988) and Too Many Ways to be No 1 (1997). By adopting the cultural model in the programming of the season, the desire to provide both the familiar on the big screen in 35 mm prints and work that was perhaps less known in the UK was achieved, with each having a distinct role in the overall balance of the season. The final part of the HOME season focused on the 2000s and beyond. Again, in an attempt to provide an understanding of the shifting contexts of production in relation to the crime film within the contemporary film industry, here the crime genre was used to explore the decline of production within the Hong Kong film industry and the growing if uneasy relationship with production within Mainland China. CRIME: Hong Kong Style also highlighted the arrival of new directorial voices, Johnnie To, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Dante Lam and Felix Chong, and rising stars within the film industry, Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu, through films such as Infernal Affairs (2002), Election (2005), Overheard (2009) and Beaststalker (2008) and That Demon Within (2014). Across the HOME season and the UK tour, CRIME: Hong Kong Style offered a curated engagement with the Hong Kong crime film. It attempted to offer audiences more than simply a series of films, putting some effort into the contextual events that accompanied screenings. Primary amongst these was the visit of leading Hong Kong screenwriter and director Felix Chong to Manchester, Edinburgh, Sheffield and London for accompanying Q&A sessions with audiences. Being able to hear from someone so experienced in working in genre production in Hong Kong and Mainland China provided important insights to recent developments the film industry and generated understanding of the continued importance of genre to contemporary Chinese language cinema. Chong was also able to articulate, from a practitioner’s perspective, the differences he experienced regarding the working conditions within the industrial contexts of the Hong Kong and Mainland China film industries. Such contextual events are often one of the key distinguishing factors between the approaches we label cultural and that which constitutes a more commercial approach to film exhibition. In such instances, as detailed above, providing audiences with contexts with which they may understand what in their place of origin would be considered mainstream genre films. This identifies the ways in which the two models we are

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outlining are based on contexts of exhibition and consumption rather than anything inherent in the films themselves.

Case Study 2: Back to the Multiplex In contrast to the cultural model is, what we term, the commercial model which, for contemporary Chinese language cinema in the UK, dates back to 2015. It is worth highlighting from the outset some significant differences between this manifestation of Chinese language films on mainstream UK cinema screens and that of the kung fu craze era. In this model, distributors are releasing Chinese language films day-anddate (or as close to day-and-date as possible) with their opening in the domestic Chinese market into multiplex cinemas across the UK. The chosen films are invariably popular releases, mostly genre films, which are generally romantic comedies, Chinese New Year films, or increasingly war films and action productions. Release trends through this model closely reflect patterns in the Mainland Chinese box office. A new characteristic of this model—and a key differentiator from any previous moments detailed above—is that the target audience of this distribution approach is members of the growing Chinese diaspora in Britain, particularly students from Mainland China attending UK universities. These students now represent over 20% of the international student body in the UK with over 107,000 (including those from Hong Kong) during the 2015–2016 academic year (Universities UK 2017, 18). Whilst there were occasions, noted above, before 2015 when Chinese language blockbusters were released into multiplex venues, those moments did not have the same characteristics as the commercial model we discuss here: those earlier examples were marketed at a variety of UK audiences in mainstream spaces, their screenings were often dubbed in English to appeal to audiences who might not normally see foreign language films, and they screened at both art-house and multiplex venues. We can trace the origins of the new commercial model to the release of Mainland Chinese comedy Lost in Hong Kong (2015) on 25th September 2015. Distributed in the UK by the Los Angeles-based, Asia Releasing, Lost in Hong Kong is a spiritual successor to Lost in Thailand (2011), a film which broke domestic box-office records upon its release in Mainland China. With the sequel expecting similar financial returns, Asia Releasing showed the film at selected ODEON and Vue venues in a handful of cities across the UK. These included Manchester, Glasgow, Nottingham

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and London, which are all cities with Russell Group universities at which a high number of Chinese students are enrolled. This first attempt to bring a model they had successfully employed in North America to the UK was a box-office success, earning $129,556 USD in its opening weekend (Box Office Mojo, n.d.). Asia Releasing were generally alone in this lucrative approach during 2015, releasing other films including Our Times (2015) and Ex Files 2 (2015) in the same way. The company continues this model at the time of writing and has since been joined by a small number of competitors in the UK marketplace including the longer established China Lion Film Distribution and Trinity Film. Two of the key new aspects of this model for Chinese language films are its day-and-date releasing and targeting of diasporic audiences; however, these characteristics are not completely new in the UK. The approach closely follows a model of distributing Bollywood cinema for British South-Asian audiences that has existed in the UK in a similar form since the early 1990s. This history has been detailed extensively by researchers including Rajinder Dudrah (2002) who has observed how these trends have affected and shaped exhibition characteristics across the country. In a similar pattern to the consumption of Hong Kong’s martial arts genre films in the UK, Dudrah (2002, 25) notes that Bollywood films were consumed mostly through VHS and home media outlets during the late 1970s and 1980s. This changed in 1993 due to the proliferation of multiplexes around regional locations but also changes in the Bollywood film industry regarding the increase of big-budget spectaculars better suited to the cinema screen than home media formats. Distributors took advantage of these trends, bringing audiences back into cinemas and giving films week-long runs as opposed to individual screenings they were more likely to receive previously. This approach has proven itself financially lucrative for distributors like Eros International who have been responsible for numerous releases in this model. Since 2002, the BFI have published an annual Statistical Yearbook containing information on the British film industry and its distribution/exhibition cultures. Each edition compiles box-office receipts for foreign language films released in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Early versions of this yearbook separated box-office earnings by language spoken but Hindi language releases were given their own table as their profits were so high compared to other foreign language productions that their inclusion would obscure these other films. The latest Yearbook published at the time of writing does not repeat this format but does

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observe that “Hindi was also the top earning non-English language in 2016 with a 1% share of overall box office revenues” (BFI Research and Statistics 2017, 6). It appears that distributors such as Asia Releasing, Trinity Film, and China Lion Film are seeking similar profits in their emulation of this Bollywood model for Chinese language film. Reasons for this are many and, as with the Bollywood case, are related to changes both in the UK and in the films’ domestic markets. First and foremost, whilst regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong are not producing as many films as they once did, Mainland China’s film industry has undergone a significant boom since the turn of the millennium. In early 2018 during the busy season of Chinese New Year film releases, the Mainland Chinese box office overtook that of North America to briefly “become the biggest in the world” (Frater 2018). There is now a robust industrial operation within China producing big-budget blockbusters and a new audience with the disposable income to enjoy them. The Mainland Chinese students who have chosen to study in the UK are part of this new audience who have grown up alongside the booming domestic box office and the emerging practice of New Year film-going. Characteristics of this new distribution model make it clear that it is members of this Mainland Chinese diaspora that are the primary target demographic. By the beginning of 2019, the majority of films released this way have been Mainland Chinese productions or regional films from Hong Kong that have been co-produced or part-funded by studios on the Mainland and often offer established or emerging stars in their lead roles. Examples of such films include Cold War 2 (2016), the Hong Kong– Chinese co-production part-funded by EDKO Distribution and China Film Co., and From Vegas to Macau III (2016), part-funded by Polybona films, a Beijing-based company involved in co-productions between Hong Kong and Mainland China. The importance of the Mainland Chinese market is not just seen through financial trends. Those regional films from Taiwan or Hong Kong that have no financial support from Mainland China, but which have seen a theatrical release in the UK through this commercial model tend to be films that have found success at the Mainland box office. Our Times (2015), a Taiwanese romance film, is the clearest example here. Although the film has no production ties to Mainland China, it proved highly successful there on its August release, making over $54 million USD at the box office there as “highest grossing Taiwanese film of all time in Mainland China” (Brzeski 2015). Not

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originally slated for a UK release, missing the day-and-date mark, Asia Releasing acquired Our Times and released it into the UK market on 20th November of the same year in a clear attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the film with audiences on the Mainland. It is worth noting also that a number of Hong Kong films that have been released in the UK through this model have screened with Mandarin language audio dubs rather than their Cantonese original. As the official language of Mainland China, this choice is a further indication of their targeting of the Mainland Chinese diaspora. Capturing the zeitgeist around popular blockbuster and genre releases in Mainland China with Britain’s Chinese diaspora is, therefore, a priority for those like Asia Releasing and Trinity Film who engage with the commercial model. Crucial to this model is the trend to release films as close to day-and-date with their domestic release as possible. This defining characteristic makes the commercial strategy markedly different to the cultural model discussed above. As discussed, the cultural model generally has a retrospective impetus or a focus on films (including contemporary productions) that have not been picked up by distributors and exhibitors in Britain previously. This element of curation implies a different mode of engagement from audiences as it is more likely that they will not be familiar with the films in advance of the programme or season. In the cultural model, concerns of piracy or of competition from home media platforms are small. It is expected that either audiences will trust the taste of the curator whose work will bring them into the cinema to see films they had not heard of previously, or the retrospective focus and theatrical experience will add value for those people who may have already seen the film on home media formats. For the commercial model, on the other hand, day-and-date releasing helps a distributor avoid losing money due to piracy. Distributing a film a number of months after it has already screened in its domestic market or at international film festivals gives interested audiences a long window to see the film through various illegal (and legal) venues and streaming services outside of the cinema. This is of vital importance to the commercial model and its primarily financial incentives. The benefits of this approach are seen clearly in the case of action genre film Wolf Warrior II (2017) and its UK release in August of 2017. Released on July 27th in Mainland China, Wolf Warrior II is the sequel to the domestically successful Wolf Warrior, directed by and starring martial arts actor Wu Jing. Recognised internationally for its explicitly patriotic plot, Wolf Warrior II follows the story of a Chinese soldier stationed

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in an African country, helping to defend local medical practitioners and aid workers from aggressive rebels and smugglers. The film captured the attention of the international press after it broke numerous records on its initial release, quickly becoming the highest-grossing film in the Chinese market, and being only the second film globally to reach $800 million USD in a single territory (Cain 2017). Wolf Warrior II was distributed in the UK through Trinity Film and their Cine Asia brand, paired with CMC Pictures, an organisation focused on circulating Chinese films internationally. The Cine Asia brand was originally a home media distribution operation, founded in 2007 to bring Asian action films into the UK market. Alongside its various new acquisitions, Cine Asia was notable for re-releasing several films previously distributed in Britain through fan labels including Made in Hong Kong and Hong Kong Legends. Trinity Film acquired the Cine Asia brand in 2014 and has since used the Cine Asia name to support their new theatrical releases and engagement with the commercial model of Chinese language film distribution (Heskins 2014). Released in Britain two weeks after its opening in Mainland China, Wolf Warrior II was not quite a day-and-date release but it proved close enough to reap the same kind of rewards. For its UK opening, Cine Asia screened the film at five cinemas around the UK, mostly in London. These five sites alone garnered a box office of $30,000 USD and interest in the film was such that its run was expanded to 16 ODEON and Vue cinema sites across Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Oxford, Leeds, Southampton, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and London (again, all sites of Russell Group universities). The film went on to play for between five and six weeks at these sites due to the “very high demand” seen on its initial launch (McNeice 2017). The article detailing this extended run for Wolf Warrior II includes a short interview with a cinema-goer at the Vue cinema on Regent Street in London. This audience member, Sam Edwards, notes that he “didn’t see much publicity” for the film but had “read an article and heard that it was incredible [sic] successful” and “was just curious to see what it was like” (McNeice 2017). Edwards’ observation here alludes to the importance of the proximity to day-and-date releasing for this commercial model to capitalise on the zeitgeist surrounding a film’s release. It also reveals, however, the targeted marketing employed by distributors who, up to the time of writing, rarely if ever seek to attract audiences outside of the Mainland Chinese diaspora in Britain.

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Of the many films released thus far through this commercial model, few are promoted in the traditional mainstream avenues such as posters, television adverts or trailers before other productions. Instead, marketing energy is directed towards the existing diasporic audience. Magnum Films, for example, have distributed films through the commercial model at the time of writing. In 2016 they were responsible for the back-toback releases of fantasy epic League of Gods (2016) and My Best Friend’s Wedding (2016), a remake of the American film of the same name. Magnum focused their advertising on Chinese social media platforms including WeChat and Weibo. In Manchester, flyers and leaflets were given out in Chinatowns and placed in East Asian supermarkets but were not readily available elsewhere. Evidence that these distributors are targeting audiences beyond the Chinese diaspora is slight. Trailers do play at ODEON and Vue venues for upcoming Chinese language releases but anecdotal evidence from our own cinema-going suggests that these play on the trailer reels attached to Chinese language features rather than other English language releases. It is only very recently that distributors like Trinity Film and Cine Asia have sought the attention of a general audience. With a recent release, Animal World (2018), Cine Asia has tested a run of poster advertising on the side of buses in London (Cine Asia 2018). Trinity Film are in the minority with this latest outreach, as it appears the financial returns are significant enough from their target demographic that other distributors are not yet reaching beyond the diasporic audience. As with the early days of the “kung fu craze”, the financial imperatives behind releasing a film like Wolf Warrior II are clear. When they do well, these Chinese language releases are not just making more money than the average foreign language film in the UK, they are on occasion bringing in returns on par with widely released Hollywood and English language productions. During the busy Chinese New Year period, the UK is beginning to see numerous Chinese language films released through this commercial model. In 2016, for example, Chinese New Year films including From Vegas to Macau III and The Mermaid (2016), both distributed by Asia Releasing, and The Monkey King 2 (2016), distributed by China Lion Film, were all released across the UK in quick succession. In its first week of release, The Mermaid, delivered “the second highest site average of any film on release”, beaten only by Marvel’s Deadpool (2016) (Gant 2016). It is uncommon in the UK for a foreign language

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film to bring in the same box-office figures as English language, Hollywood blockbusters so this was a notable event. Whilst The Mermaid has potentially a small amount of crossover appeal due to its director Stephen Chow—whose Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer (2001) had been released previously in the UK—its release followed the same pattern as others discussed in this chapter as targeting specifically the diasporic audience. It remains to be seen how long this current moment will last and how viable this commercial model will continue to be in the face of new demographic shifts and changes. In addition, the continued success of the Chinese domestic market will also have a direct impact on the appeal of such films for UK-based audiences. A marked downturn in domestic cinema attendances, for example, may lead to a similar downturn for UK cinema attendances. As is always the case, trends and cycles of popularity may shift in a manner that means audiences may look elsewhere—often Hollywood—for their cinema fix. The cultural model offers a much smaller, but perhaps more sustainable audience for Chinese language films in the UK. Focused on the independent cinema circuit, the main danger to initiatives around Chinese films here is the withdrawal of funding for such ventures or the employment of curators whose interests do not lie in the arena of Chinese language cinema. As ever, within the field of cinema distribution and exhibition there is the possibility of a hybrid approach that will attract audiences for Chinese language films in a manner that overlaps the commercial and cultural approaches. However, experience shows that such initiatives rarely manage to deliver the core needs of both audiences and as our case studies show the commercial and cultural initiatives behind both models remain very different. Finally, it is worth noting once more that our study and its conclusions are drawn from research into the very particular context of distribution and exhibition in the UK. These industrial sectors of the film industry operate with significant differences in other international contexts. In terms of the circulation of Chinese language films, these often depend upon the presence and history of diaspora communities. Therefore, drawing any wider, more international, conclusions based on our research would, we suggest, be academically simplistic. However, what we do hope to offer is an approach that highlights the importance of acknowledging the specificity of the distribution and exhibition of films in different contexts. Therefore, with the same process of historical research into local operations of the film distribution and exhibition sectors one could

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certainly seek to analyse the circulation of Chinese language films in places such as Peru or Brazil, for example.

References BFI Research and Statistics. 2017. Specialised Films. London: BFI. Benton, Gregor, and Edmund Terence Gomez. 2008. The Chinese in Britain 1800–Present: Economy, Transnationalism, Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Box Office Mojo. n.d. “Lost in Hong Kong.” Accessed 15 July 2018. http:// www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&country=UK&id=lostinhon gkong.htm. Brzeski, Patrick. 2015. “China Box Office: ‘The Martian’ Rockets to $50 Million, ‘Mockingjay 2’ Disappoints.” The Hollywood Reporter. Accessed 15 July 2018. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-box-office-mar tian-rockets-844746. Cain, Rob. 2017. “China’s ‘Wolf Warrior 2’ Becomes 2nd Film in History to Reach $800 M in a Single Territory.” Forbes. Accessed 15 July 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robcain/2017/08/27/chinas-wolf-warrior2-becomes-2nd-film-in-history-to-reach-800m-in-a-single-territory/#3da0ae f63460. Campbell, Duncan. 2001. “Take Two” for The Guardian. Accessed 14 September 2017. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/ apr/03/artsfeatures. CineAsiaUK. 2018. “Animal World (动物世界) in Cinemas NOW Across the UK, China and the Rest of the World….and on Buses in London!” Twitter, June 30. https://twitter.com/CineAsiaUK/status/1012974891539320833. Cosgrove, Mark. 2011. “Cultural Cinema Exhibition in the 21st Century”. Accessed 20 March 2019. https://www.watershed.co.uk/articles/cultural-cin ema-exhibition-in-the-21st-century. ‘CRIME: Hong Kong Style’ HOME website. Accessed 20 March 2019. https:// homemcr.org/event/crime-hong-kong-style/. Dudrah, Rajinder. 2002. “Vilayati Bollywood: Popular Hindi Cinema-Going and Diasporic South Asian Identity in Birmingham.” Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 9 (1): 19–36. Frater, Patrick. 2018. “China Box Office Overtakes North America in First Quarter of 2018.” Variety. Accessed 16 July 2018. https://variety.com/ 2018/film/asia/china-box-office-global-biggest-first-quarter-2018-120274 2159/. Gant, Charles. 2016. “Deadpool Defeats Chipmunks at UK Box Office as Mermaid’s Haul Impresses.” The Guardian. Accessed 16 July 2018. https://

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www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/feb/23/deadpool-alvin-andthe-chipmunks-uk-box-office#img-1. Gordon, David. 1974. “Ten Points about the Crisis in the British Film Industry.” Sight and Sound 43 (2): 66–72. Heskins, Andrew. 2014. “Cine-Asia Titles to Available Again Through Trinity Film.” Eastern Kicks. Accessed 15 August 2018. https://www.easternkicks. com/news/cine-asia-titles-to-available-again-through-trinity-film. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London: Wallflower Press. Kung Fu Monthly (1974–1984), Issue 23. London: H. Bunch Associates Ltd. Leyda, Jay. 1960. “A Chinese Adventure.” Films and Filming, September 11. Martin, Daniel. 2009. “Another Week, Another Johnnie to Film: The Marketing and Distribution of Postcolonial Hong Kong Action Cinema.” Film International 7 (4): 30–40. McNeice, Angus. 2017. “Chinese Blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 Gets Expanded UK Run.” China Daily. Accessed 15 August 2018. http://www.chinadaily. com.cn/world/2017-08/21/content_30902661.htm. Parker, David. 1995. Through Different Eyes: The Cultural Identities of Young Chinese People in Britain. Vermont: Ashgate. Pendleton, David. n.d. “King Hu and the Art of Wuxia.” https://library.har vard.edu/film/films/2013janmar/hu.html. Stuart, Alexander. 1973. “Chinese Chequers.” Films and Filming, January 26– 31. UK Film Council. 2010. Statistical Yearbook. London: BFI. Universities UK. 2017. Patterns and Trends in UK Higher Education 2017. Accessed 20 March 2019. https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/facts-and-stats/ data-and-analysis/Pages/patterns-and-trends-2017.aspx. Whitaker, Sheila. 1986. London Film Festival Official Programme. London: BFI.

East Asian Noir: Transnational Film Noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong Caleb Kelso-Marsh

In recent decades, numerous urban crime films from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong have been produced using characteristics associated with film noir. The aesthetic similarities between these films have been considered indicative of a region-wide brand of East Asian film noir, with some even describing it as a “pan-Asian phenomenon” (Cho 2016, 35). Traditionally, the film noir label has often functioned as a form of branding used to market Asian films in terms familiar to Western audiences. Film distributors in Europe, the USA and Australia have employed the term to denote a certain cinematographic style, essentially as a means of marketing Asian filmic products to audiences presumed unfamiliar with Asian cinema, while international film festivals have even featured dedicated programmes focusing on film noir from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. However, because this branding has primarily occurred in a Western context, this body of noir films from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong is inevitably compared to their original Western counterparts, often framing such East Asian films as imitations. While many filmic texts from East Asia draw on

C. Kelso-Marsh (B) University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_3

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the visual aesthetics associated with film noir, in this chapter I will problematise a tendency to frame these stylistic choices as a form of simplistic mimicry of a Hollywood filmic style. While East Asian filmmakers have indeed looked to Hollywood generic models when producing film noir, this experience has also been mediated through reference to other cinematic forms from within East Asia, a process informed by both industrial and social factors in East Asia, particularly the rapid socio-economic change brought about by postwar conditions of capitalist modernity. As such, this chapter argues that although Hollywood film noir has provided a source of inspiration for East Asian noir filmmakers, it is simplistic to frame it as the only source, especially given how influential other cinematic modes from within the East Asia region have been. Such a variety of influences on film noir production in East Asia is significant as it evidences the genre’s transnational status. In arguing so, this chapter will consider three specific examples of film production in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong to illustrate how film noir in East Asia has instead developed through a series of complex transnational cinematic flows involving both Western and East Asian cinemas. Through a case study on Korean cinema, this chapter will outline how Korean directors have looked to not only Hollywood, but also regional modes of cinema as sources of inspiration. It will consider how early Korean filmmakers looked to Japanese noir films for inspiration during the early 1960s and in turn produced numerous adaptations of such Japanese films. Secondly, it will demonstrate how the Hong Kong heroic bloodshed films of the late 1980s, themselves indebted to Japanese and Chinese films, came to be labelled as Hong Kong noir by the Korean media, and in turn informed film production in Korea from the mid-1990s onwards (An 2001, 105; Lee 2006a, 75). Such examples of intra-regional cinematic flows are significant in that, through their use of localised settings and their grounding in the socio-economic context under which they were produced, these films evidence the emergence of cinematic aesthetics specific to the East Asia region. Rather than evidencing simple Americanisation, these intra-regional flows show how regional film industries from within East Asia have provided the most important influence in the development of the film noir genre in East Asia. In turn, such intra-regional flows provide a lens by which to consider the shared experience of modernity across East Asia. Through such a complex series of cinematic flows, film noir in East Asia provides an example of a truly transnational cinematic form.

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What Is Film Noir? The term film noir, meaning dark film, was initially used by French film critics in the discussion of a series of 1930s French poetic realist films that were “shadowy melodramas, set in an urban criminal milieu and featuring doomed protagonists” (Naremore 2008, 15). The term then came to be popularised among French critics in reference to a series of wartime and post-war American crime films released from the early 1940s up until the late 1950s. They observed that, compared to the pre-war American crime films that focused on police procedure, these film noir texts instead focused on “criminal psychology”, depicting “criminal adventures” and “violent death” from the perspective of the criminal (Borde and Chaumeton 2000, 17). Collectively, these traits were considered to express the “dislocated social and cultural relations of modernity” made clear in the wake of the Great Depression, World War II, and post-war capitalist economic reforms (Fay and Nieland 2010, xii). Nonetheless, the use of the term film noir, and what exactly it constitutes, has since generated widespread debate among film critics, particularly in relation to whether it is specifically an American film genre, or indeed a genre at all. Some scholars have argued that film noir can be categorised as a genre based on now-established themes, narrative structure and visual conventions (Damico 2000, 101–104; Hirsch 2001, 71–72; Tuska 1984, xxiii). Alternatively, critics have deemed film noir not to be a genre, arguing that it is instead defined by its use of motif, tone and mood (Durgnat 2000, 37–52; Schrader 2000, 53–64) or because of the uncertainty surrounding what constitutes its key characteristics (Neale 2000, 3; Naremore 2008, 5; Vernet 1995, 2). While these critics deny the existence of a film noir genre, and perhaps with good reason, they have nonetheless devoted copious scholarship to what this non-genre entails. For this reason, James Naremore (2008, 11) argues that film noir is not a genre but rather a discourse; one that has been constructed through filmic criticism is associated with a specific aesthetic and has come to inform film marketing strategies. However, I argue that it is precisely through such discourse, particularly that which discusses film noir in aesthetic or stylistic terms, that film noir has come to exist as a genre. Since film noir is so often associated with a specific set of characteristics such as the use of a non-linear narrative structure, flashbacks, shadowy lighting, extreme camera angles, morally ambivalent characterisation, a rain-drenched urban setting and the presence of crime (Place and Peterson 2000), it should

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be seen as a genre in its own right. Richard Dyer (2006, 132) takes this point even further and argues that, because film noir has conventions distinguishable enough to be imitated, it clearly exists as a genre. As such, for the purposes of this chapter, film noir will be discussed as a genre in its own right, one that is characterised by such imitable aesthetic conventions. Furthermore, for the purposes of this chapter, the concept of film noir will be used broadly and applied to films which have conspicuously engaged with such conventions. Although the status of some of the films addressed in this chapter as works of film noir may indeed be a source of debate, it is important to note that developing a generic framework by which to assess whether certain films are truly film noir is beyond the scope of this chapter. Furthermore, as is discussed below, such a framework can ultimately become a means by which to deride Asian films based on a perceived inauthenticity when compared to those of the West, ultimately constructing an East-West binary.

Film Noir in Asia Given the debates surrounding the meaning of film noir, the question begs, what relevance does the term have in the context of Japan, Korea and Hong Kong? On the one hand, film noir is often simply a marketing term applied to cinematic products from these East Asian nations. In recent years, numerous urban crime films from Japan, Korea and Hong Kong have been labelled as film noir. Western media outlets have used the term in reference to East Asian cinema, evident in recent articles such as “The world of Korean noir: Extreme violence, dwelt on with relish, seems to be de rigueur” (Kemp 2017) and “Why Korea’s ‘film noir’ movies are wowing Cannes” (AFP 2017). Western film distributors have also employed the term as a means of marketing Asian filmic products, apparent in DVD releases such as Criterion Collection’s Nikkatsu Noir boxset and Madman Entertainment’s Seijun Suzuki boxset Japanese Crime Noir Classics. Recent film festivals have even featured dedicated programmes focusing on film noir from these nations, such as the Japan Society’s 2002 festival Dark Visions: Japanese Film Noir and Neo-Noir, the 2008 San Sebastian Film Festival’s Japan in Black: Japanese Film Noir, the 2011 Le French May programme Noir: A Film Noir Retrospective Bridging France and Hong Kong, and the 2017 London Korean Film Festival’s Korean Noir: Illuminating the Dark Side of Society. Perhaps triggered by such widespread interest, academic publications have also

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taken interest in the topic of film noir in East Asia, most notably in books such as East Asian Film Noir: Transnational Encounters and Intercultural Dialogue (Shin and Gallagher 2015), Hong Kong Neo-Noir (Yau and Williams 2017) and Neo-Noir (Bould et al. 2009), a book that featured Korean film Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2002) on its cover. In many of such cases, the application of the term film noir to Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films functions as a commercially motivated attempt to frame these foreign films in terms relevant to Western viewers in order to garner an audience (Lee and Stringer 2013, 479). Such a means of marketing is problematic in that these Asian variations of film noir ultimately come to be considered in comparison with their Western counterparts, resulting in clashes between what Daniel Martin (2015, 133) refers to as “the competing frameworks of understanding [which focus solely on either] the film’s generic elements [or] its regional origin”. As a result, the production choices involved in the decisions to include noir conventions in films are often ignored because of the postcolonial assumption that such artistic choices can only be understood in terms of cultural flows from the dominant West into Asian national cinemas. Daniel Martin (2015, 125–41) indicates the problematic nature of such branding in his study of Western reviews of Korean film Nowhere to Hide (Lee Myung-se, 1999). He (2015, 128–31) notes that the film displays characteristics typically associated with film noir, such as its black and white opening, the constant presence of rain, and use of a dirty city as setting. Martin (ibid.) also notes that Nowhere to Hide contains characteristics not typically associated with noir, such as its narrative unfolding from the perspective of the police, its shifts in tone, the presence of comedy and irony, its melodramatic aspects and its lack of fatalism, particularly evident in the cheerfulness of the protagonist policeman Woo. Citing numerous film reviews as evidence, Martin (2015, 130) explains that Western critics labelled Nowhere to Hide a film noir simply so that it could be understood in terms familiar to Western audiences, with many critics either comparing it to other Hollywood films or to the Hong Kong noir films of John Woo. As a result, the film then came to be criticised by critics based on the extent to which it did and did not conform to the film noir genre (Martin 2015, 131). As such, Nowhere to Hide was not viewed as a Korean film in its own right, but rather as a poor copy of a Hollywood genre. Despite these shortcomings, the term film noir is still routinely used by the Western film industry to frame foreign films in terms familiar to a Western audience. Similarly, Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009)

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was described by Western media outlets as having “a lot in common with the film noir classic Mildred Pierce” (Patterson 2010; Verniere 2010) and “Douglas Sirk on crystal meth” (Verniere 2010). Again, in these cases Mother is described in comparative and dichotomous terms that position it as an imitation of these original Western cinematic forms. Even academic discourse on Asian noir routinely describes these films through such comparisons to Western cinema. In response to Naremore’s seminal chapter on Asian noir, David Desser (2003, 519) makes the simplistic nature of such comparisons clear: This tension between recognizing a kind of noir in Asia while disavowing any “Asian” particularity in noir - Kurosawa makes “art” noir; Suzuki is like Sam Fuller; Wong’s film is variation on French New Wave; Woo derives his structures from Hollywood - is one which denies us the ability to see noir’s reach beyond merely a few isolated examples.

By comparing East Asian film noir to that of the West, as Naremore does, the East Asian variations of film noir come to be positioned as inferior imitations. As such, Asian films displaying noir conventions are solely interpreted on the basis of their relationship to Hollywood, with film noir becoming “a way to decode the film and ignore its national origin” (Martin 2015, 132–33). Ultimately, this reinforces the prevailing assumption that, while artefacts from East Asia’s antiquity may be authentic, the contemporary culture of the region is generally constructed by poorly imitating that of the West. Such an innate assumption of cultural authenticity does not consider the experience of local audiences with film noir, nor filmmakers’ motivations to create noir films, and instead assumes local audiences to simply, and uncritically, absorb all that is presented to them (Iwabuchi 2002, 39). Recent studies have attempted to avoid this pitfall by expanding the oeuvre of film noir, considering it a transnational cinematic form. Many scholars have argued that, rather than an American form, film noir was in fact a global cinematic response to the traumatic social conditions that stemmed from wars and rapid economic development, with each country independently arriving at their own culturally specific variation of film noir (Fay and Nieland 2010, ix–xii; Broe 2014, xiv–xv and 1– 24; Spicer 2007, 16–17). As such, rather than being borne out of a desire to copy a Western cinematic form, film noir has developed globally because its aesthetics have resonated with directors at specific cultural

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and historical junctures. While these studies are significant in that they recognise film noir as a transnational form, many of those on East Asia have tended to consider the region as a whole due to a supposed set of shared Confucian values. Such an approach is too general as it infers filmic production in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong to be a homogenous pan-Asian cultural sphere devoid of specificity. In their discussion of film noir in Asia, Nikki J. Y. Lee and Julian Stringer (2013, 480) note that previous studies on film noir in East Asia have tended to ignore the conditions underlying the production, distribution and reception of such films in each individual country, instead focusing on their narratives and themes as evidence of a series of shared, regional Confucian values. They argue that such a reading is reductionist as it identifies a “commonality among such titles by ascribing to them a shared ‘Asian-ness’ supposedly grounded in the aforementioned ‘Confucian traditions’” (Lee and Stringer 2013, 480). While certain East Asian film noirs contain references to traditional Confucian values, it is fallacious to consider this theme as integral to all, especially given the diminishing importance of Confucian values as a social norm in an increasingly neoliberal Asia. If anything, East Asian film noir can be seen to depict the irrelevance or demise of traditional values in the face of modernity. As K¯oichi Iwabuchi (2015, 2) notes, East Asian popular culture has long been informed by the “various modes of modernities in the Asian context” more so than by traditional or Confucian values. As such, a comparative study of any mode of popular culture from across the East Asia region is more likely to highlight the impact of conditions of modernity, namely “the similarities and differences in the representation of common experiences of modernization, urbanization, Westernization, and globalization in other Asian contexts” (Iwabuchi 2015, 3). In recent years, various economic crises across the region, such as the bursting of the economic bubble in Japan in the early 1990s and the 1997 Asian financial crisis, have clearly demonstrated that capitalist and consumer values, rather than Confucianism, continue to inform filmic narratives in East Asia (Iwabuchi et al. 2004, 1; Cho 2016, 35). Given film noir’s apprehension of the conditions of capitalist modernity, the genre provides a particularly useful lens through which to consider such shared experiences of modernity across East Asia. Integral to this experience of modernity was the consumption and subsequent appropriation of American popular culture in local contexts. For instance, in the aftermath of World War II, Hollywood film noir was

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circulated by US forces to local audiences in Japan and Korea. Consequently, as regional cinemas developed in East Asia, local producers of cultural content came to emulate and appropriate such Hollywood films. As such, noir films from East Asia are referential of Hollywood film noir to a certain degree. Yet, as Iwabuchi (2015, 3) indicates, rather than simply imitating Western cultural products, “Asian media cultures have long ingeniously hybridized in local elements while absorbing American cultural influences” in the form of production techniques, consumption and genre. With regard to film noir, Younghan Cho (2016, 60) notes that film noir in East Asia is more aptly understood as having developed through blending Western and regional cinematic forms together: Hong Kong noir films, which became a pan-Asian phenomenon starting from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, “do not solely derive from the West” – their atheistic imaginings also flow “toward and through Western cinemas as well as around the region itself”… Many noir films in East Asia often reiterate the styles, plots, and mise en scene of Hong Kong films of the 1980s, and fans recognize the direct and indirect influences on local pop products.

Interestingly, as will be explained in the following section, Hong Kong noir films were themselves derivative of earlier Japanese film and subsequently were an important source of ideas for Korean directors. Focusing primarily on Korean noir, this chapter will illustrate how by incorporating references to other cinematic products from within the East Asia region, Korean film noirs prove to be far more complex than simple rehashes of a Hollywood generic model, instead providing an example of a truly transnational cinematic form.

Cinematic Flows Between Japan and Korea In comparison with other national cinemas, the production of film noir in Korea occurred relatively late. Following decades of colonial Japanese rule, Korea was liberated from Japan in 1945. However, this period of seeming stability was only short-lived, and the onset of the Korean War in 1950 saw the Korean peninsula plunged into disarray once again. The Korean War had a devastating impact on domestic Korean film production, ultimately halting the development of the Korean film industry. As such, post-liberation film production did not truly begin until the late

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1950s. Comparatively, the Japanese film industry resumed production almost immediately after the nation’s surrender in World War II. Thus, it is no surprise that some of the earliest examples of film noir in the East Asia region were from Japan. Most important Japanese post-war noir films included Akira Kurosawa’s crime films Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949), Yoshitaro Nomura’s filmic adaptations of Seicho Matsumoto’s hardboiled detective works, Teruo Ishii’s Line series, and Kihachi Okamoto’s Underworld films. Arguably though, the most obvious renditions characteristic of what is considered film noir, and certainly the most influential for Korean filmmakers, were in the form of Nikkatsu Studio’s mukokuseki akushon or no-nationality action films. This body of films has since been popularised by American film distribution company The Criterion Collection as “Nikkatsu Noir”. Nikkatsu’s initial post-war success came with its taiyozoku, or Sun Tribe, series of youth films that depicted the lives of Japanese teens running amok on Japanese coastlines and cityscapes. Released in the late 1950s, the Sun Tribe films were both derivative of American popular culture and part of a wider global cinematic trend depicting rebellious youth (Desser 1988, 68; Standish 2005, 223). While not all Sun Tribe films are directly evocative of film noir, their depictions of nihilistic and criminal youth provided the foundation for Nikkatsu noir. The first films in the Sun Tribe cycle were Nikkatsu’s Season of the Sun (Takumi Furukawa, 1956) and Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahira, 1956), both of which were based on novels by Shintaro Ishihara and also featured his younger brother Yujiro Ishihara in acting roles. Although controversial, these Sun Tribe films proved immensely popular with Japanese youth and inspired a wave of similar films released by both Nikkatsu and other Japanese studios. However, the production of Nikkatsu’s Sun Tribe films proved to be short-lived. Although realistic, the films’ representation of Japanese youth caused public outrage, being perceived as decadent and immoral by censors, thus pressure was placed on studios to cease producing them (Schilling 2008, 14–15). Nonetheless, Yujiro Ishihara’s success in these films had transformed him into a star and Nikkatsu began trialling him in a variety of other film genres, finding him to be most suited to action films, the first of which was released in 1957 (Schilling 2008, 6 and 14). In turn, the individualism and iconoclasm embodied by the Sun Tribe films were channelled into Nikkatsu’s action films. Most popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nikkatsu went on to release over 1000 of these action

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films in an eighteen-year period (Khoo 2013, 65). Primarily aimed at teenage audiences, and inspired by American popular culture, these urban crime films constituted “a rebellion against tradition dressed in the trappings of American film noir” (Vick 2015, 23). Set in bars, nightclubs, Tokyo alleyways and the Yokohama docks, the Nikkatsu Action films paid homage to American popular culture in their references to film noir, jazz music, cowboy Western films, bourbon, nightclubs and US-style cars; an indication as to the influence American popular culture had on cultural production in post-war Japan (Schilling 2008, 5–7). Although highly derivative of Hollywood film noir and reverent of American popular culture, these Japanese noir films were nonetheless localised to Japan. In their use of Japanese urban settings, Japanese characters, and Japanese dialogue, such films did not simply mimic American iterations of film noir, but rather combined local cultural influences with aspects of American popular culture (Iwabuchi 2015, 3), ultimately translocating film noir to the context of post-war Japan. This blend of local and American culture in Japanese film noir is made evident by Daisuke Miyao in his reading of Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967), the film for which Nikkatsu Studios famously sacked director Seijun Suzuki. Branded to Kill , which depicts hitman Hanada Goro on a job gone wrong, is reminiscent of film noir in its use of a non-linear narrative structure, bizarre camera angles, urban setting and, although colour had become the cinematic norm at the time, the film was nonetheless shot in black and white (Miyao 2007, 196–97). While Branded to Kill bears resemblance to American film noir, it is equally grounded in the local context in which it was produced, namely Tokyo of the late 1960s. As Daisuke Miyao (2007, 197) explains, “Suzuki insists that his films do not represent the actual social conditions existing at the time when they were made, yet Branded surely depicts the zeitgeist of Tokyo in 1967”. After World War II, Japan underwent a series of economic reforms that resulted in not only urbanisation, industrialisation and economic growth, but also immense economic inequality. These socio-economic changes came to be conveyed in the bleak, urban Tokyo setting of Branded to Kill . As though “indicating the film’s status as a social critique of rapid urbanization and commercialization, Hanada delivers all his deadly shots in Branded from symbolical objects found in the modernized city”, such as the billboard advertisement at a train station, a water

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pipe in an office building and a skyscraper from which Hanada comically jumps from, only to land safely on top of an advertising balloon (Miyao 2007, 197). Furthermore, the film’s critique is consolidated in its jarring narrative, one that is constructed through the Branded to Kill ’s use of noir conventions, particularly its unconventional camerawork, dark lighting, expressionist cinematography and non-linear plot, characteristics that combine to depict 1960s Tokyo in nightmarish terms (Miyao 2007, 197). Irrespective of whether it was Suzuki’s intention to critically reflect upon Japan’s post-war economic reforms, something that is highly improbable given Branded to Kill was simply made as a “B-grade entertainment film” (Miyao 2007, 195), its blend of noir conventions, an urban Tokyo setting and depictions of the Japanese underworld combine to make it critical regardless. Ultimately, this blend of noir conventions and local setting provides a nightmarish vision of post-war Japan and its precarious economic reforms. Subsequently, these Nikkatsu Action and Sun Tribe films came to inspire Korean directors for a number of reasons. In terms of the Korean film industry, foreign crime and thriller genre films were popular in Korea during the 1960s, drawing larger audiences, and hence generating greater profits, than domestic productions. Such foreign films were also subject to import restrictions, meaning production companies were required to produce a minimum number of domestic productions before they could obtain a license to import a foreign film (Chung 2016, 14). Consequently, Korean directors began to remake similar genre films locally, with such domestic appropriation an easy means to make an internationalstyle genre film without breaching the government film quota, while also helping studios meet the conditions required to import more profitable foreign films (Chung 2016, 14; Yecies and Shim 2016, 90). As there was a shortage of Korean screenplays at the time, it proved more economically viable to translate existing foreign screenplays into Korean than it was to fund the writing of entirely new ones (Chung 2016, 14). As such, Korean directors looked to Japanese films as a source of inspiration for their domestic productions, a process complicated by the history of earlier colonial ties between the two nations.1

1 A similar process of cinematic exchange also occurred with Hong Kong. As there was no ban on popular culture from Hong Kong, such exchange also facilitated a series of collaborations between Korean and Hong Kong film studios. However, rather than film

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Given the colonial ties between the two nations, Japanese film as a source of inspiration for Korean filmmakers may seem odd. However, during the colonial period, cinema was one of the few industries in which Japan and Korea collaborated, and many early Korean films only came to fruition because of Japanese support. The Japanese produced, provided the technology for and funded many Korean productions made during the colonial period, while many Korean filmmakers were educated and trained in Japan (Chung 2012, 136–69). Thus, given the pre-existing ties between members of the Korean and Japanese film industry, it is unsurprising that even after liberation Korean filmmakers continued to look to Japanese film as a source of inspiration. Nonetheless, following Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, a series of laws were enacted that functioned to limit the circulation of Japanese popular culture, including film and literature, in Korea. While legally Koreans were unable to access Japanese popular culture, Japanese films still circulated unofficially and had a significant impact on Korea’s film industry. For example, despite the Korean government’s official stance on Japanese popular culture, many members of the Korean film industry who had previously worked collaboratively with the Japanese film industry were both comfortable with and receptive to Japanese filmic products. The popularity of imitating Japanese films was also partly because, although technically illegal, Japanese screenplays proved particularly easy to obtain. Korean students and businessmen travelling to Japan regularly brought back Japanese film magazines and scripts, such as Kinema Junpo, and as many Koreans still understood Japanese, these Japanese screenplays were easily translatable into domestic Korean films, leading Korean filmmakers to adapt Japanese films (Yecies and Shim 2016, 91). In terms of source material, Japanese Sun Tribe and noir films proved popular fare for Korean directors. In the early 1960s, Korean directors made a number of youth films that depicted nihilistic Korean youth rebelling against the traditional social order. Although visibly set in the urban spaces of Seoul, these films were essentially “localised” versions of Japan’s Sun Tribe films (Yecies and Shim 2016, 93). Korean imitations of Sun Tribe films included The Classroom of Youth (Kim Soo-yong, 1963), based on Japanese film Aitsu to Watashi (Ko Nakahira, 1961); Private Tutor (Kim Ki-duk, 1963), based on Japanese film Private Tutor noir, these collaborations were primarily in the form historical dramas, martial arts films, swordplay films and wuxia films (Yecies and Shim 2016, 81–90).

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(Tasaka Tomotaka, 1958); and Barefoot Youth (Kim Ki-duk, 1964), based on Japanese film Mud Spattered Purity (Ko Nakahira, 1963) (Chung 2016, 11–16; Yecies and Shim 2016, 94). Other films that proved influential for Korean filmmakers were Toshio Masuda’s crime film I Look up When I Walk (1962), a part of the Nikkatsu Action body of films that, as mentioned earlier, have strong ties to the film noir genre; and Daiei Studio’s A Wife Confesses (Yasuzo Masumura, 1961), a “psychological mystery noir” that “creatively employs sequences of jarring shots and disjointed edits, intricate flashbacks, and claustrophobic staging”, was also influential, eventually being officially remade in Korea as My Wife is Confessing (Yu Hyun-mok, 1964) (Yecies and Shim 2016, 92, 98). While Japanese film was indeed a source of inspiration for Korean filmmakers, it must be noted that Hollywood film noir was also influential in the early development of Korean film noir. Upon the liberation of Korea in 1945, the USA began screening Hollywood films as a means by which to re-educate Korean audiences from Japanese nationalism towards American values such as democracy, capitalism and gender equality (Yecies and Shim 2011, 158). To do so, Hollywood films were utilised and film noirs were screened to Korean audiences (Yecies and Shim 2011, 141–61). Like Japanese film, these Hollywood films had a profound influence on Korean cinema, particularly in terms of style and aesthetic, and many early Korean films came to incorporate references to American film noir. Films such as The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960), Aimless Bullet (Yu Hyun-mok, 1961), Dial 112 (Lee Man-hee, 1962), Black Hair (Lee Man-hee, 1964) and The Devil’s Stairway (Lee Man-hee, 1964) have all been noted for their indebtedness to American film noir (Cho 2005, 99–116; Lee and Stringer 2013, 477–95; Park 2015, 91–107). In her discussion of Aimless Bullet , Eunsun Cho notes how the film was heavily influenced by the influx of Hollywood films into Korea, perhaps most evident in the way the film “mimics the stylistic and narrative elements of the Hollywood genres of film noir and the gangster film. This subplot provides one example of South Korean national cinema imitating Hollywood’s film language” (Cho 2005, 100). According to Cho (2005, 108), film noir characteristics are evident in Aimless Bullet in how the “dark, dramatic background music, typical of film noir, signals an impending catastrophe”, while YongHo’s “relationship with women furthers the noir elements”, particularly his relationship with Sor-hui, a nurse at a military base who “takes up the props of the femme fatale from film noir, carrying a pistol and smoking a cigarette”.

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While Aimless Bullet contains conspicuous visual references to Hollywood film noir, its narrative is nonetheless localised to the Korean context. Based on a Korean novel of the same name, the film highlights the impact of the Korean War on protagonist Cheolho and his family. Impoverished and struggling to survive, Cheolho’s family members include a mother suffering from PTSD as a result of the Korean War, a wounded war veteran brother who, unemployed and feeling forgotten by his country, turns to crime, and a sister who resorts to working as a prostitute for American troops. The devastation stemming from the Korean War is further highlighted through the film’s visual depiction of Seoul as a fragmented cityscape in literal ruin, as well as the family’s home in a makeshift shanty town surrounded by US military bases. Although the film’s aesthetic is clearly reminiscent of American film noir, its depiction of a cityscape destroyed by war, a family in financial destitution, the presence of US military forces, rapid social change brought about by Westernisation and the impact of all of these factors on the traditional family unit was an experience more specific to the Korean and Japanese populace. For this reason, while Korean filmmakers were indeed sympathetic to the pessimistic aesthetic of American film noir, as evident in films such as Aimless Bullet , the underlying context and values depicted in such Hollywood films were of less relevance to Korean audiences at the time. As Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim (2011, 145–46) note, when watching Hollywood films Korean audiences were exposed to a “series of visual and thematic representations that were totally foreign to their own cultural traditions”, and so the capitalist, democratic and gendered values embedded in Hollywood film noir were largely foreign to Korean audiences at the time. Thus, while industrial factors led to the adaptation of both Japanese and Hollywood films in Korea, it was the social context of 1960s Korea that made Japanese film a particularly poignant source of inspiration for Korean filmmakers. The pessimistic depiction of post-war conditions of capitalist modernity in Japanese noir films was relevant to a Korean populace who had experienced years of colonialism, war, political instability, and, most significantly, rapid socio-economic change, but whose cultural context and traditions were vastly different to those depicted in Hollywood film noir. In 1961, Park Chung-hee overthrew the existing Korean government by way of military coup d’état, paving the way for years of military dictatorship. Under Park’s leadership, the Korean government

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implemented a series of capitalist economic policies intended to stimulate the South Korean economy, the outcomes of which were rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and the transition to a capitalist economy, a process of economic reform not dissimilar to that taken by Japan less than a decade earlier. However, Park’s policy measures also had numerous negative ramifications. Not only was political corruption rife, but mass-urbanisation resulted in an increase in crime rates, violence and economic inequality within Korean cities (Park 2015, 98). Subsequently, Korean noir films, themselves derivative of Japanese noir, came to provide an “allegorizing critique of the compressed, totalitarian process of modernity” (Park 2015, 92). As Japan had undergone similar social and economic reforms only years earlier, circumstances uniquely addressed in Japanese noir films, these films provided Korean filmmakers with an exemplary generic model by which to depict their similar experiences of compressed modernity, accounting for the widespread adaptation of Japanese films in 1960s Korea. Thus, rather than evidencing simple Americanisation of the Korean film industry, Korean noir films from the 1960s demonstrate how the Japanese film industry provided one of the most important influences in the early development of the genre in Korea. Japanese noir films provided Korean filmmakers with a generic framework relevant to the social context of 1960s Korea, demonstrating both the emergence of cinematic aesthetics specific to the East Asia region and the significance of intra-regional cinematic flows in shaping domestic Korean production. By engaging with both Hollywood and Japanese film noir, and localising these influences to the Korean context, early Korean film noirs ultimately evidence the genre’s transnational status. Sadly though, this period of compressed modernity was also one during which freedom of expression in Korea became increasingly limited. As such, film noirs became more and more difficult to create. In 1961, the Park regime established the National Film Production Centre and passed the Motion Picture Law, effectively granting the government complete control of the film industry (Shim and Yecies 2016, 67). As a result, the film industry “was reduced to the status of a propaganda factory” (Shim and Yecies 2016, 68), with any film seen to critique social matters being subject to rigorous censorship, meaning that pessimistic films, such as film noir, became increasingly difficult to make in Korea. Due to such rigorous censorship measures, by the 1970s Korean film noir had virtually ceased to exist. Nevertheless, Japanese film also came to provide inspiration for early Hong Kong noir, which in turn

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then came to influence a later generation of directors of Korean crime films.

Cinematic Flows Between Hong Kong and Korea Following the assassination of Park Chung-hee in 1979, Korea entered a period of immense civil unrest. Lasting the best part of a decade, this period began with the 1980 Gwangju uprising and massacre, and was characterised by widespread democratic protests. Although tumultuous, this period also saw eventual democratic reform and the gradual relaxation of film censorship in Korea. Consequently, this allowed Korean filmmakers to produce critical modes of cinema once again, one outcome of which was a newfound engagement with film noir. However, rather than drawing solely upon American film noir, Korean filmmakers also looked to a noir sensibility that they observed in the Hong Kong cinema of John Woo and his contemporaries. In 1987, John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986) was released in Korea. Depicting an ex-con divided in loyalty to his policeman brother and triad partner, the film provided a blueprint for contemporary Hong Kong crime films, inspiring a wave of similar imitations known as heroic bloodshed films (Morton 2001, 62). Distinctive in their use of a contemporary Hong Kong urban setting, violent portrayals of conflict between police and gangsters, and their depictions of what has been seen as a Confucianinfluenced code of honour shared by gangsters, this mode of films came to dominate domestic film production in Hong Kong from the late 1980s into the mid-1990s (Ryan 1995, 65; Enns 2000, 137). Multiple critics have interpreted the rise of such crime films in Hong Kong as an aesthetic articulation of the anxiety surrounding the imminent Handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China due to occur in 1997 (Collier 2007, 154; Desser 2003, 526). While such readings neglect to explain how exactly the narrative or aesthetic of such films functioned to provide a direct allegory of Hong Kong’s political climate or national unconscious, and thus are perhaps overly reflectionist (Rodriguez 2001, 61; Van Den Troost 2010, 143), it nonetheless stands that, at the very least, the films of Woo and his contemporaries were grounded in the socio-economic context of Hong Kong at the time. Leading up to the announcement of the Handover, Hong Kong experienced short periods of economic uncertainty and a subsequent a rise in organised crime, conditions of capitalist modernity that came to be depicted in these films (Lee 2006a, 75). In an interview

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published in Film Comment (McDonagh 1993, 52), Woo indicated the influence of this social context on his brand of Hong Kong noir, noting that A Better Tomorrow reflected: … a certain aspect of Hong Kong, specifically the underworld. At the time that film was made, there was a lot of gangster infiltration into all kinds of businesses - even the film industry - and a widespread feeling that there were no morals left, that many people would do anything to get ahead.

Thus, while perhaps not a political allegory of the Handover, or an articulation of some deep-seated anxiety held by the citizens of Hong Kong, A Better Tomorrow, as well as subsequent heroic bloodshed films, depict conditions of capitalist modernity specific to Hong Kong at the time of their production, namely economic uncertainty and the rise of organised crime. While the influence of American and European film noir on A Better Tomorrow has been well-documented, the film also significantly incorporates conspicuous references to Chinese wuxia films, Japanese period films and Japanese yakuza films (Hall 2009, 2–3, 14, 23–33; Lee 2009, 127). Woo himself has noted that in A Better Tomorrow he “wanted to make a film that would emphasize traditional values… Things [he] felt were being lost”, and these East Asian filmic modes provided an exemplary generic model through which to do so (Williams 1997, 67). On the surface, the prevalence of such traditional values may appear to support the notion that East Asian cinema is characterised by its affinity for Confucianism. Upon closer analysis though, A Better Tomorrow, as well as subsequent heroic bloodshed films, can be seen to depict the very antithesis of such values, namely their insignificance in capitalist, urban Hong Kong, the inhabitants of which are depicted as criminal and solely driven by economic gain. While beyond the scope of this chapter, it is significant that rather than simply imitating Western models of film noir, the films of Woo and his contemporaries also contain such cinematic references specific to East Asia. In doing so, these films move beyond simple products of Westernisation, instead demonstrating how other filmic modes from within East Asia were influential in the development of the heroic bloodshed body of films. Of utmost significance to this chapter though is how these films came to have a significant impact on film noir in Korea. Initially, A Better Tomorrow was unsuccessful in Korea in both a critical and commercial sense, and as such was only screened by small B-cinemas

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that struggled to acquire the rights to imported genre films under the distribution system at the time (An 2001, 104; Choi 2010, 145). Despite its limited distribution, A Better Tomorrow gained cult status among Korean audiences and, as more heroic bloodshed films from Hong Kong came to be released in Korea, the genre’s popularity increased (An 2001, 104). In 1988, Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II (1987) was released in Korea, finishing the year at ninth-place in the Korean box office, marking the entrance of Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films into the mainstream of Korean cinema (An 2001, 104). This transition can be attributed to a combination of industrial and social factors. While an increase in the number of Hong Kong films imported to Korea resulted in the widespread circulation of Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films, making them accessible for Korean audiences, the precarious social conditions of Korea at the time meant that Korean audiences related to the pessimism of the heroic bloodshed films. In 1966, a Screen Quota System was introduced in Korea that required all Korean cinemas to screen domestic productions for a set number of days per annum (Paquet 2010, 51). By guaranteeing local productions screen time, the Screen Quota System was intended to safeguard the domestic film industry from imported filmic products, particularly those of Hollywood (Paquet 2010, 68–70). However, in response to pressure from US government agencies, the System was relaxed in 1987 so as to allow foreign studios to produce and distribute their own films on the ground in Korea (An 2001, 106). Fearing this would lead to an influx of Hollywood products into local cinemas, and consequently the demise of domestic production, members of the Korean film industry launched a series of protests in response, boycotting both screenings of Hollywood films as well as the cinemas that screened them (Paquet 2010, 44–45). Because of such widespread animosity towards Hollywood products, not to mention the already high cost of importing American films, Korean film importers turned to Hong Kong cinema as a source of alternative content (An 2001, 106). In addition, the rise of VHS in Korea led to a further increase in the number of Hong Kong films imported. The lead up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics saw the proliferation of colour televisions and VCR players in Korean households, along with the advent of video rental stores (Lee 2006b, 101). This created an increased demand for fresh cinematic content in Korea, a gap that Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films came to fill (An 2001, 105). Unlike their Hollywood counterparts, Hong Kong films were released on video immediately after

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their cinema run ended, while those films that did not have a theatrical release were often released directly onto VHS in video rental stores, making heroic bloodshed films easily accessible for Korean audiences (Lee 2006b, 102). Collectively, the animosity held by the Korean film industry towards Hollywood, as well as the rise of VCR and VHS rental, led to a stark increase in the number of Hong Kong films imported to Korea. As Jinsoo An (2001, 106) notes, “the number of Hong Kong film imports increased strikingly during this period, from four films in 1986 to ninetyeight in 1990, close to the number of Hollywood pictures”. Due to such a rapid increase in importation, Hong Kong film circulated widely in Korea, in turn providing Korean audiences with widespread access to heroic bloodshed films. While these industrial factors resulted in the circulation of Hong Kong cinema in general, including heroic bloodshed films, the specific popularity of the heroic bloodshed genre stemmed from Korea’s social context at the time. Compared to earlier Hong Kong films, Korean audiences noted a distinct difference in the crime films of John Woo and his contemporaries. The Korean media noted that these films were far more pessimistic and fatalistic in tone, a tone reminiscent of the film noir genre, and as such Korean journalists used the term “Hong Kong noir” to describe them (An 2001, 105; Lee 2006a, 75). The term has since gained critical traction and is now routinely used in reference to Hong Kong’s heroic bloodshed films (see, e.g., An 2001; Cho 2016; Lee 2006a, b; Pettey 2014; Teo 2011, 2014; Van Den Troost 2010). Such a nihilistic tone resonated with a Korean populace that had been subjected to decades of trauma (Lee 2006b, 105–106); namely years of Japanese colonialism, the Korean War and subsequent military threat posed by North Korea, authoritarian dictatorship and rapid socio-economic change brought about by a compressed process of modernity. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the 1980s were a particularly traumatic decade for Korea, one that began with the Gwangju democratic uprising and massacre, and subsequently came to be characterised by immense social unrest and widespread democratic protests. While Korean filmmakers had a myriad of reasons by which to be inspired to create nihilistic films akin to Hong Kong noir, film censorship in Korea had long prevented such productions from coming to fruition. It was only in 1988, after Korea’s transition to democracy, that such censorship began to be relaxed (Park 2002, 132). Thus, not only did the nihilism of Hong Kong noir, as well as its depictions of socio-economic change in the face of modernity, resonate with

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a Korean populace who had been subjected to numerous traumas, but it also signalled a new means of expression that, because of filmic censorship, did not yet exist in Korea (Lee 2006b, 105–106). Initially entering the Korean market due to industrial factors, namely distribution restrictions and the rise of VCR, these Hong Kong noir films, themselves influenced by Japanese crime cinema, subsequently influenced contemporary Korean film production. Following the release of Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986) renowned Korean director Im Kwon-taek made gangster film The General’s Son (1990), noting how the influx of Hong Kong noir films inspired him to “revive the Korean masculine image onscreen” (An 2001, 108). Thenceforth, the Hong Kong noir genre has provided an important source of ideas for Korean filmmakers. In recent years, Korea’s output of domestic noir films has been prolific to the point that these films have been considered as part of a genre of their own, the “blossoming ‘Korean noir’ style” (Dalton 2017), a style upon which the influence of Hong Kong noir is most evident. For instance, in 2010, A Better Tomorrow (Song Hae-sung, 2010), an official Korean remake of Woo’s original film, was released in Korea, with Woo serving as executive producer to the film. Similarly, Korean film Cold Eyes (Cho Ui-seok and Kim Byeong-seo, 2013) was a remake of Hong Kong film Eye in the Sky (Yau Nai-hoi, 2007); Korean film New World (Park Hoon-jung, 2013) contains obvious references to Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002) (Cho 2016, 36); and Korean film Believer (Lee Hae-young, 2018) is a direct remake of Johnnie To’s Drug War (2012). The continual influence of Hong Kong noir on Korean film was made particularly evident when, in a recent interview regarding the Cannes screening of his film The Merciless (2017), Korean director Byun Sunghyun noted that his film “features film noir elements and I added a refined, classical style and the melodramatic sensitivity of Hong Kong film noir from the 1980s. That is the style I tried to create” (Song 2017, 22). Set in the port city of Busan, The Merciless depicts the friendship between policeman Jo Hyun-su and gangster Han Jae-ho. Initially meeting in jail, it is revealed through a series of flashbacks that Jo is an undercover policeman tasked with befriending Han in order to infiltrate his drugsmuggling operation. However, as the film develops, Jo comes to be torn between his duty to the police force, an institution by which he has seemingly been both used and abandoned, and his blossoming friendship with the gangster Han. While the film contains obvious visual cues to film noir, its narrative more specifically evokes that of A Better Tomorrow and

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other Hong Kong noir films. Just as the pessimism of Hong Kong noir first resonated with a Korean populace emerging from the turmoil of the 1980s, and subsequently came to be taken up by Korean directors at the time, Hong Kong noir can be seen to continue to inform Korean filmic production because of its relevance to contemporary Korean society. In recent years, Korea has come to be characterised by flagrant corruption in both the public and private spheres, exemplified by the political scandal involving former-president Park Geun-hye, Park Chung-hee’s daughter, which led to her eventual impeachment and imprisonment, as well as that of several chaebol figures. While it is perhaps overly reflectionist to suggest that contemporary Korean noir films such as The Merciless are intentionally critical of this, such films are at the very least indicative of how deeply ingrained corruption has become in contemporary Korean society, as well as the perceived failure of both public and private institutions in neoliberal Korea. Although the pessimism of both film noir and Hong Kong noir function to depict this, it is perhaps the narrative of Hong Kong noir that most poignantly articulates the economics of corruption, greed, and ultimately the failure of late-capitalist institutions. Thus, not only do recent Korean directors such as Byun actively reference the film noir genre in their works, but this is mediated through reference to Hong Kong iterations of film noir, themselves a by-product of other modes of cinema from East Asia; indicative of the complex range of influences underlying Korean noir. Because of this variety of intra-regional cinematic references, such Korean noir films move beyond simply rehashing a Hollywood generic model. Instead, they provide evidence of the emergence of a form of film noir specific to the East Asia region, an indication as to how film noir in East Asia is a truly transnational cinematic form.

Conclusion The instances of intra-regional cinematic referencing discussed in this chapter provide an indication as to the diverse range of influences underlying the production of film noir in Asia. While film noir in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong has certainly been influenced by Western film noir, cinematic forms from across the East Asia region have also shaped the production of film noir in East Asia. In turn, such intra-regional references problematise a tendency to frame these stylistic choices as a form

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of simplistic mimicry of a Hollywood filmic style. As evident in the development of Korean noir, by incorporating references to other regional cinematic forms East Asian film noirs prove to be far more complex than simple rehashes of a Hollywood generic model. Rather they evidence the emergence of a form of film noir specific to the East Asia region, one that is expressive of the various experiences of capitalist modernity across East Asia. As such, film noir in East Asia provides an example of a truly transnational cinematic mode. Nonetheless, the foundation established in this chapter prompts several directions for future research. Given this chapter only covered a few instances of intra-regional referencing in film noir in East Asia, further research is needed in order to comprehensively theorise the circulation, adaptation and uptake of film noir in East Asia. For instance, while studies have noted Hong Kong noir’s indebtedness to Western film noir, little consideration has been given to the influence East Asian cinema has had on this body of films. More research is needed in order to understand the impact Japanese and Chinese cinema has had on Hong Kong noir. Similarly, recent studies have also indicated Korean noirs to be popular among Japanese audiences, arguably because they fill a thematic void currently lacking in Japanese film (Cho 2017). Further research must be undertaken in order to comprehend the impact Korean noir has had on Japanese film production and consumption. The past couple of years have also seen an increase in mainland Chinese co-productions, many of which have been informed by earlier Japanese and Hong Kong film noir, particularly that of John Woo. In 2017, Woo remade Japanese film Manhunt (Junya Sato, 1976), a film that for Woo signalled a return to his earlier heroic bloodshed style (Coonan 2015). This remake of Manhunt (2017) was a Chinese-Hong Kong co-production shot on location Japan. Similarly, a mainland Chinese remake of Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, titled A Better Tomorrow 2018 (Ding Sheng, 2018), was recently released. Additionally, in 2012 Woo announced his intentions to remake Seijun Suzuki’s Nikkatsu Noir Youth of the Beast (1963) in celebration of Nikkatsu Studio’s 100th anniversary (McClintock 2012), a project yet to come to fruition. Research is needed to consider how these co-produced adaptations have engaged with other regional iterations of film noir and contributed to the emergence of a regional form of film noir. Moreover, existing studies have still not addressed the significant influence of East Asian film noir on Japanese anime, and therefore, more work is needed. For instance, Cowboy Bebop (Shinichiro Watanabe,

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1998) contains references to the Hong Kong noir of John Woo, while the Golgo 13 (Shunji Oga, 2008–2009) anime series displays an affinity towards Nikkatsu Action films. As such, further studies demonstrating how animated film noir evidences the emergence of a regional form of film noir are necessary. Ultimately, it is only with continual research such as this that film noir in East Asia can move beyond the confines of its association with a Hollywood generic model, and instead be understood as the transnational cinematic form into which it has evolved.

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The Wolf Is Coming: Genre Hybridity in the Contemporary Chinese Blockbuster James Aston

In this chapter, I will examine the negotiated transnational space of genre between Hollywood and China by looking at the recent military movies Wolf Warrior II (Wu Jing, 2017) and Operation Red Sea (Dante Lam, 2018), which now represent two of the highest-grossing Chinese films at the domestic box office. I will argue what we have here are a set of films, including other titles such as Wolf Warrior (Wu Jing, 2015) and Operation Mekong (Dante Lam, 2016), which straddle the discursive landscape of contemporary and historical genre forms while connecting to the appropriation and adaption of existing cinematic systems. The outcome is the production of a hybrid genre existing within, outside and across national boundaries. I will show that these films import action aesthetics exemplified by Michael Bay’s ‘cinema of excess’ and war genre conventions running through the historical lineage of the U.S. World War II combat film, while also developing the use of wuxia codes in the figure of the knight errant, the outsider figure and the use of violence to restore harmony.

J. Aston (B) School of Arts, University of Hull, Hull, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_4

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Furthermore, the crucial transnational connections inherent within a film exemplified by Wolf Warrior II will be mapped on to their blockbuster status which reinforces the concept of a “global circulation of film” (Higbee 2016) in that contemporary Chinese action cinema appropriates Hollywood aesthetics and thematic strategies into local production practices and sociocultural discourses so that it is possible to see the “blockbuster as no longer American owned” (Berry 2003, 218). I will conclude by addressing briefly how the ‘global blockbuster’ has similarly emerged in Korea and how a film such as The Admiral: Roaring Currents (Kim Han-min, 2014) foreshadows a number of stylistic, ideological and financial outcomes found in the Chinese blockbuster film. In ending the chapter with a discussion of the emergence of an East Asian blockbuster cinema, it can be established how the Korean and Chinese national forms offer a high degree of congruence in their respective encounters with spectacular cinematic experiences thus “de-Westernising” the blockbuster film towards the “space of the other” (Berry 2003, 222).

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Chinese Genre Filmmaking Often, the starting point and focus on East Asian genre filmmaking in terms of its circulation in the global flow of cinematic production, exhibition and reception is to focus on one particular film as it moves in a singular direction from East to West. The unidirectional flow is framed reductively in terms of the ‘original’ and the ‘copy’ where American studios “absorb world culture and sell it back to the rest of the world in a more expensive version” (Stringer 2003, 211) and incorporate multi-varied examples from Japanese horror, Korean romantic comedy, and Hong Kong action cinema.1 However, the China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and U.S. co-production Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) provides a more insightful treatment of the ebb and flow of genre filmmaking than the reductive remake approach suggests. The film achieved an unprecedented box-office success in the West taking $128 million at the U.S. box office as well as being nominated for ten Academy Awards while attracting lukewarm reviews and financial returns

1 Respectively see, Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998), My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001), Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002).

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in China. Similar to the remake discourse, the film faced strong criticism over U.S. practices which many saw as undermining the authenticity and national providence of the original film and that ranged from concern over Fox Network’s decision to release a dubbed TV version to accusations towards Hollywood of cultural appropriation (Chan 2008, 77–78; Rong 2005, 441–44). One particular concern was how U.S. production companies quickly, and with little acknowledgement, adapted the martial arts element of the film to fit a number of broad successors. Action sequences appeared in a number of high-profile Hollywood productions in the early twenty-first century and became a prevalent action aesthetic highlighting how Hollywood turned to a highly stylised and meticulously choreographed visual design reminiscent of action films from Hong Kong. Films began to explicitly and prominently feature key industry personnel such as Woo-ping Yuen who provided the fight choreography for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films (2003, 2004) and Jackie Chan who starred alongside the American actor Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour films (Brett Ratner, 1998–2007). However, rather than viewing Hollywood in this instance as a cannibalistic entity homogenising world culture it instead acts as a “marker of the influence of international acting and production talent on American generic formulae” (Thompson 2003, 231). Furthermore, as Crouching Tiger facilitated an East Asian action aesthetic in U.S. cinema so too did it open up avenues into commercial cinematic practices in Mainland China. In fact, the film ‘returned’ to China redolent of its success in the West and as such was imbued with a “cultural pride” (Chan 2008, 75) that engendered a re-evaluation and re-appraisal among the Chinese populace. The constituent of martial arts in Crouching Tiger now propagated a series of localised reactions suggesting a heterogeneous transnational flow as Chinese studios sought to replicate the success of Ang Lee’s film through elaborately staged and visual stunning films such as Zhang Yimou Hero (2002) and House of the Flying Daggers (2004). Crouching Tiger may highlight some of the reductive issues surrounding the reception of successful East Asian/Chinese film and the thorny terrain traversed by transnational cinema but also begins to hint at a more complex and active process at play in terms of decentring the singular American media model towards one of multivalence. In this respect, globalisation is not a singular, unidirectional process but undercut by localised cultures, historical contexts and cross-cultural and cross-media global formations (Berry 2003, 218; Stringer 2003, 208).

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Crouching Tiger moves away from the model of an all-consuming Hollywood appropriation of East Asian genre films and a dilution of their cultural specificity in the face of U.S./global commerce to a gradual coming to terms and understanding of East-West cinema as not simply unidirectional but operating under various “mutable activities and movements between national cinemas and also between nations” (Bergfelder 2016) that necessarily provides the underlying notion of transnational cinema. Therefore, it is important to look at how Hollywood genres also move to other countries as well as how other national cinema, in this case, China, move across to impact on and connect with other neighbouring national cinemas. It is an aim of the chapter then to trace the Chinese blockbuster along these multifaceted directional contours. Not as a simple corrective but to understand how genre is ‘absorbed’ into regional structures—cultural, industrial, political—so that the supranational direction of genre is combined with the “specific cultural, historical or ideological context in which these exchanges take place” (Higbee and Lim 2010, 12). The complexity of Chinese genre post-Crouching Tiger attests to a “global-local dialectic” (Su 2016, 2) that has sought to explore, exploit and combine the relationship between Hollywood cinematic currencies and the rise of spectacular, big-budget blockbuster production with local contingencies surrounding the Chinese State, its relationship with cultural output, particularly film, and the issue of reconciling market dictates with Party ideology. In fact, the economic reforms in the 1980s first enabled U.S. releases and the involvement of Hollywood productions and despite the cessation of foreign imports in the immediate years after Tiananmen Square Incident, the significant presence of Hollywood continued throughout the 1990s with high-profile movies such as The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1997), and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) achieving significant box office returns. These ‘megaproductions’ came to dominate the Chinese film industry to the extent that high-ranking individuals such as Liu Jianzhong, the director of the Film Bureau, criticised film policy and demanded protectionism for Chinese film in the face of what he considered to be an Americanisation of the domestic film landscape and a particularly unwanted outcome of globalisation (Su 2016, 20). Throughout the 1990s, U.S. production secured the majority of domestic film activity from 1994 where Hollywood films accounted for 60% of all film revenue to 2000 where only 10 Hollywood films accounted for 70%

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of the box office (ibid., 19). Chinese films offered such a forlorn prospect that film-critic Dai Jinhua elegised the domestic situation by evocatively calling out Hollywood’s conquering of the film market as a prediction that “the wolf is coming” (ibid., 27) to devour China’s national film industry. In 2001 when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the quota of Hollywood films was raised to 20 per year and imparted further anxiety onto the state and health of the Chinese film industry. Although the revenue gained from successful Hollywood imports had been channelled into improvements of the industry and had facilitated an increase of film audiences, this was not necessarily for Chinese films which languished far behind their Hollywood counterparts in terms of quality and appeal. The failure to alleviate the quality of Chinese film had proved ineffective due to strict allegiances to government plans surrounding “party-sanctioned ideology” (Su 2016, 27) rather than the demands of audiences. As the 2000s progressed approaches to film were driven more by the mandate of the market than the precepts of state propaganda. While this has seen an unprecedented expansion of the infrastructure and production of the film industry from a modest production of 91 films and a box-office revenue of 960 million yuan in 2000 to a staggering 798 films and 55.9 billion yuan box office in 2017 (ibid., 2–3; Brzeski 2018), it has also allowed a lessoning of censorship to the advantage of artistic creativity. The early twenty-first-century martial arts films of Zhang Yimou’s Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) along with The Banquet (Feng Xiaogang, 2006), Ip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008) and Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008) have negotiated the changing cultural policy towards commercial output due to their hybrid nature which vacillated between Hollywood spectacle and Chinese history and culture. These films clearly display the transnational quality of genre in the twenty-first century and aptly show the absorption, remaking and adapting of genre as it moves between the local and the global. While the martial arts film reached saturation point in 2008 and declined in popularity, both domestically and internationally, the template of a hybrid Chinese genre film inured to the precise conditions of the market and the state was realised. Chinese martial arts cinema addressed the conflicts inherent within the relationship between China and Hollywood in terms of the tensions between the Chinese State and Hollywood production companies, censorship and artistic freedom, and commerce versus art (Su 2016, 3). In turn, the films promoted a new engagement with Chinese

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self and national identity, enabled through the transformed domestic film landscape. Through the platform of global cinema, China sought to promote positive opinions of the country and thus enhance their ability to communicate ‘soft power’. The Chinese martial arts film emerged in the twenty-first century as a hybrid genre moving effectively between regions and nations. Films like Hero represented a shift in attitudes by the Chinese film industry from protectionism to a managed ‘compromise’ towards foreign production so as to benefit the domestic film landscape. Therefore, the films negotiated the language and spectacle of Hollywood filmmaking while endorsing “Chinese culture, Confucian ethics, and nationalism” (Su 2016, 160) so that “[t]he blurred cultural boundary is the key to the commercial success” (Wang and Rawnsley 2010, 101) of the film and other successful films like it. Hero, along with other successful domestic films such as the Ip Man franchise (2008–), sought to develop soft power which can be defined as an attempt to promote China’s cultural influence through the potential economic power of a transnational cinema. Martial arts film was thus levelled at a global market but was careful not to alienate Chinese audiences. It engendered a transitional cinema and hybrid cultural mix which tackled the spectacle of Hollywood while also enhancing the Chinese film industry’s grip on the domestic market. The films also adhered to and supported the Chinese president Hu Jintao’s ideal of soft power in that they exhibited socialist characteristics such as patriotism, collective action and a moral certitude grounded in honesty and integrity. Ip Man, for example, is delineated by a number of exciting and well-shot action sequences often focusing on Donnie Yen’s star power and martial arts prowess as he fights off numerous Japanese enemies. Yet the film is also careful to promote clear Confucian values and a strong sense of Chinese nationalism. In the climactic scene, Chinese martial art master Ip Man (Yen) tells the Japanese invaders (the film is set in 1935) that it is pointless for them to learn Chinese martial arts as they will only use this power to oppress others. For Ip Man, the essence of Chinese martial arts acts foremost as a benevolent framework with which to enable people to act with a moral integrity to better serve a community of people. As Ip Man defeats the Japanese general in a heroic finale underlined by rousing music and slow-motion cinematography, the film captures the stylistic touches of Hollywood cinema while also portraying a patriotic and nationalistic perspective underlining the transnational consciousness of twenty-first-century Chinese genre cinema.

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The war or military film has been another strand of Chinese filmmaking which has adopted Hollywood genre conventions with an exploration of Chinese history, national identity and cultural values. A key precursor to the twenty-first-century cycle of war films is The Birth of a New China (Li Qiankuan and Xiao Guiyun, 1989) an epic and patriotic retelling of the successful military strategies of 1948 undertaken by Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) against the Kuomintang (KMT) forces of Chiang Kai-shek. The important aspect of this film was its close connection with state organisation and assistance where screenings were arranged for communal places such as schools and work units. The popularity of films such as The Birth of New China depended strongly on their free admission and/or because attendance was connected to Party activities. More recent war films with a patriotic theme differ from earlier examples due to the influence and incorporation of Hollywood aesthetics and blockbuster concepts. Feng Xiaogang’s Assembly (2007) was clearly influenced by the resurgence of the World War II film in the U.S. during the late 1990s and features many action sequences heavily indebted to the set pieces populating films like Saving Private Ryan. Furthermore, the historical epic The Founding of the Republic (Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin, 2009), which with its wide release across 1400 cinema screens, star-studded cast including Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Zhang Ziyi, and dedication to the 60th anniversary of the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) resonates with The Birth of New China in its combination of nationalist sentiment and war genre aesthetics. Yet, in becoming the most successful Chinese film at the domestic box office at the time it diverges from the earlier film in using market developments and Hollywood concepts to position an entertaining spectacle now predicated on audience interest rather than an audience requirement. Thus, both Assembly and The Founding of the Republic anticipated the most recent development of the war film, both in incorporating local and global confluences towards securing vast financial returns at the box office. The apex of China’s attempt in the twenty-first century to “combine spectacular Hollywood-style special effects and traditional Chinese cultural elements” (Su 2016, 148) has been Wolf Warrior II . The film has become the most successful Chinese film of all time generating a staggering 5.68 billion yuan (Zhou 2018) in its treatment of a renegade special ops soldier and how he repels terrorist threats while protecting Chinese business interests and personnel in a nameless war-torn African country. Operation Red Sea has in many ways surpassed Wolf Warrior

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II in its assault on the viewer in terms of an excessive action aesthetic and nationalistic fervour though fell just short of the former film at the box office in its generation of a still impressive 3.65 billion yuan (Zhang 2018). Earlier incarnations of Wolf Warrior and Operation Mekong also supplied healthy box-office receipts and similarly provided high levels of spectacle with a positive narrative of China’s strength and unity in the face of violent external forces. Thus, the war film has superseded the martial arts film to now become the most successful and influential domestic genre as well as its leading market attraction.

Genre Hybridity and the Chinese Blockbuster Wolf Warrior opens with disciplinary hearing of PLA soldier Leng Feng (Wu Jing) for contravening official orders during a raid on a criminal drug factory situated on the Southern border of China. The film immediately identifies a narrative focus on the heroic individual who although part of a close-knit team sent to destroy the factory and terminate the production of illegal narcotics undertakes unauthorised action to kill the leader of the criminal gang. Leng is confined to solitary and then redeployed to the “special force of the special forces” called the Wolf Warrior unit. The opening sequence establishes a number of recurrent generic elements found in the cycle of recent Chinese war/military films. Firstly, the tension between the individual and the group is asserted and is continued throughout the film as Leng becomes the de facto leader of the Wolf Warriors after their commander is badly injured. The focus on Leng as a dominant narrative agent is maintained through a number of story processes such as being singled out for revenge by crooked businessman Min Deng (Ni Dahong) due to the killing of his brother, becoming the main adversarial threat to the leader of the foreign mercenaries (and Deng’s own personal army) Tom Cat (Scott Atkins) and acting as the love interest of Commander Long Xiaoyun (Yu Nan). The film also features numerous rousing scenes in which Leng single-handedly saves his unit, fearlessly runs through a forest packed with incendiary explosives and successfully challenges official protocol. Yet, the film seems uneasy with singling out Leng as an individual male hero evident in much of Western/U.S. action cinema. The contradictory unease which starts the film and results in a military disciplinary for Leng due to his individualistic transgressions in assassinating the gang leader against the orders of his superiors is picked up and addressed in

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future narrative developments where is he brought back within the Wolf Warrior group. Ultimately, the film seems uncertain of which narrative direction to take and provides a conflicting pattern of individual heroism against the value and importance of collective action and brotherhood. While the group dynamic does enable a clear articulation of Party values around collectivism, it also provides a connection to the contemporary and transnational formation of the combat unit found primarily in Hollywood productions during World War II but also as a resurgent genre form in the late 1990s. For example, there is a gruff, no-nonsense commander, a soldier who is killed almost immediately after showing Leng pictures of his family and thus allows himself (unwarranted) space for nostalgic remembrance, a hero who does become part of the group but must remain outside due to the responsibilities of leadership, and instances of heroic sacrifice alongside more general conventions such as a largely faceless enemy, a clear objective, the lack of female characters and a persistent pattern of war iconography underlining China’s military strength and resolve. The representational strategy inherent in the portrayal of China’s military is overwhelmingly hi-tech in terms of both field weapons and command room computer systems. The resources available to the Wolf Warriors display an almost omnipotent mastery of the environment from detailing what materials were used in the masonry of buildings to mapping the geographical arrangements of forests and scrublands. The military prowess of the Chinese army in the film is underlined by the various statements made by the PLA Commander Shi Qingsong (Shi Zhaoqi) who often repeats the patriotic mantra, “Those who challenge China’s resolve will have no safe haven to hide”. Here, the nationalist fervour elevated in the film not only underlines the determination and successful outcome of the PLA’s military endeavours, but also probes the recent governmental discourse on protecting Chinese citizens wherever they may be in the world. Despite the explicit national thematic strands in Wolf Warrior (and which are progressed even more forcefully in future war films) being denounced by Western critics as a “bluntly flag-waving film” (Lee 2015) and as “a crudely assembled propaganda piece” (Berra 2015) as the soldiers ‘fight for China’ against white invaders, the film uses these jingoistic devices to effectively manipulate (Chinese) viewers into a dominant emotional, cultural and intellectual reading. Just as U.S. combat/war film narratives sought similar methods to promote propaganda and sociocultural values so too has Wolf Warrior positioned the

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war film as a potentially effective genre carrier of patriotic sentiment and instrument of soft power. Wolf Warrior’s status is thus of a film which resists the national as a “self-contained entity” (Higson 2016) acting as it does in a similar vein to the American group combat films from Bataan (Tay Garnett, 1943) and A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone, 1945) through The Big Red One (Sam Fuller, 1980) to Saving Private Ryan, while also developing motifs and ideological formations predisposed to Chinese soft power and the promotion of a highly competent and hi-tech military. The sense of film as a conduit for Chinese national pride is continued and developed in Wu Jing’s 2017 sequel. The patriotic tone of the narrative, which now focuses on an exiled Leng who comes to the aid of Chinese citizens as a civil war breaks out in an unnamed African country, emerges as an essential contributory factor to Wolf Warrior II ’s unprecedented success at the domestic box office. The heroic actions of Leng tapped into a contemporaneous prevalence in state-sanctioned displays of patriotism as the release of the film coincided with a large-scale military parade to celebrate China’s Army Day on August 1st. Furthermore, growing sentiments in Chinese society regarding the Chinese government as a peacekeeper and protector both at home and abroad found a means of expression in Wolf Warrior II as the film frequently puts forward the maxim of “anybody who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated” and concludes with an image of a Chinese passport which underneath is written “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China, wherever you are in danger overseas don’t give up! Please remember: Behind you stands the powerful Motherland!” Thus, Wolf Warrior II taps into the renegotiation China is undergoing with regard to its foreign policy as it begins to compete with Western countries for global ascendency, particularly in Africa. Likewise, in Operation Mekong , an elite Chinese task force is sent to the Golden Triangle region which overlaps the countries of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand in order to clear the name of 13 Chinese fishermen who local authorities have said were killed due to their involvement in the regions rampant drug trade. The Chinese soldiers, backed by governmental forces, restore the honour of the dead fishermen and bring down the local Thai drug dealer responsible for their deaths. Operation Red Sea is similarly set outside of China as once again a PLA elite Special Forces unit comes to the aid of Chinese nationals in a fictional province on the Arabian Peninsula and successfully evacuate them from an increasingly

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hostile environment riven with sectarian violence and terrorism. However, it is Wolf Warrior II and how the film engages with China’s relationship with Africa that provides the most explicit formation of current ideology and nationalistic restoration. It also provides a clear example of how genre confluences from both China and the U.S. underline the themes of patriotism and collectivism that are significant in the formation of a new, global China. Leng is introduced after a long aerial tracking shot aboard a cargo ship of the coast of Madagascar as it is attacked by pirates wielding RPG’s and machine guns. As the pirates attempt to board and the African crew run for safety or are indiscriminately shot, Leng single-handedly takes on the pirates in an extended action sequence presented as if in one single take as he fights underwater and uses a sniper rifle to take out a long-range target as they bear down on the ship with a grenade launcher. Although only four minutes long the sequence is pivotal in how the formal properties and thematic strategies have been developed, but also amplified, from the first Wolf Warrior instalment. For example, the camera is constantly in motion and the illusion that this is one single take gives the scene an exhilarating and kinetic charge. Michael Bay’s action cinema, according to Bruce Bennet is one of an “aesthetic of excess” (2015) and is equally applicable to Wu’s own directorial flourishes such as the use of a carousellike technique as the camera circles around the actors underwater or the preceding helicopter shots and elegant crane tracks as Leng dives into the sea. These techniques produce, as Bennet levels of Bay’s work, the “production of sensorially intense [and a] pleasurable stream” (2015) of shots, sounds and images associated with contemporary Hollywood action cinema. While the aesthetics of the opening action piece suggest a closer fealty to Hollywood style, the way we are introduced to Leng takes us in a different direction towards Chinese martial arts cinema and wuxia. Leng is pointedly the only Chinese character in this scene and his solitary position, which is picked up and developed further in the narrative, connects to his individualistic countenance in the first film. Being away from official Chinese society and thus in a position to uphold his own code of heroism, he suggests a figure of the knight errant existing within the ‘alternate society’ of the jianghu found in the wuxia film. In the following scene, which takes place before the attack on the cargo ship and offers a clear symmetry to the opening of Wolf Warrior, the outsider status of Leng is once again explicitly shown as he is incarcerated for the unauthorised and unlawful attack (and possibly murder) of a local

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criminal land developer who is in the process of destroying the family home of one of their fallen colleagues from the first film. As he is stripped of his uniform, again repeating events from the first film, Commander Shi Qingsong provides a portentous voice-over that Leng has contravened the sense of duty of a PLA soldier. Leng’s solitary walk to his jail cell marks a significant moment in his removal from official society, but it is the reported death of Long Xiaoyun which provides the final break and his move towards an individualistic knight errant figure able to operate within his own code of conduct. We have seen Leng expertly display the wu (military and martial skills) and the xia (gallantry and heroism) in repelling the threat of the pirates which commenced the film and this is connected to the concept of jianghu as the film picks up three years later with Leng living in an unnamed African country (furthering his outsider status in geographical terms). Here, the jianghu is not necessarily a ‘secret society’ existing within the official society but more “a semi-Utopia where xia are free to defy authority and act on their conscience to punish evil and exalt goodness” (Teo 2009, 18). Leng has clearly shown how he can “punish evil” and later when we re-join the present-day narrative he is immediately positioned as a superior figure in that he is hailed a hero by the European captain of the ship which has now safely returned to port and is thanked for all his help over the past few months. Furthermore, as we see him interact with the locals, he is an accepted member of the community who has mastery over his surroundings. He is hailed by numerous people as he leaves the port, good-naturedly exposes underpayment from one of the town vendors and is godfather to a local boy who he offers moral guidance as he chides him for selling pirated pornography. In fact, the montage highlighting the nature of relationships Leng exercises in the town might be friendly but also provides a paternalistic and protective quality as the African characters continually defer to Leng’s moral certitude and elevated community presence. It ends with Leng engaging in an elaborate drinking game with an African man who he defeats easily in a final display of his authority and expertise: namely, a virile, superior masculinity. The wuxia characteristics of Leng can be equated to that of the Western superhero and has been reinforced with interviews with Wu in which he saw his character as a new hero for “China’s silver screen” (Wu quoted in Addy, 2017) in terms of recouping a national pride but also to reform China’s waning masculinity. For Wu, the purpose of Leng’s formation as a cross between a superhero and wuxia knight errant figure

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was to symbolically support China as a powerful, rising country that is rejuvenated in its emergence as a modern, global nation. Leng emerges as a universally liked but also revered figure who has a mastery over his surroundings and the people he interacts with. As the film develops, this benign countenance is swapped for deadly military and martial skills as he, and a select group of Chinese ex-pats, defeat the African rebel soldiers and bring to task their Western mercenary leaders. Leng’s formidable masculinity, both militaristic and civically minded, culminates with a showdown with Big Daddy (Frank Grillo), the de facto rebellion leader and the man responsible for the death of Long Xiaoyun. In this sequence, Leng recycles and repackages the martial figure found extensively in Chinese cinema. Studios such as Shaw Brothers, filmmakers like Cheh Chang and actors such as Jimmy Wang Yu, Bruce Lee and Jet Li have often used the wuxia/kung fu genre to promote nationalist agendas and strong masculine values which Leng/Wu now updates with a new blockbuster sensibility. For example, Big Daddy vehemently spits outs the words “[p]eople like you will always be inferior to people like me. Get fucking used to it” to a badly injured Leng as he moves in for the kill. These incendiary words galvanise Leng into a murderous rage as he kills Big Daddy with the same type of bullet that was used to kill his fiancé. As Big Daddy’s bloody and broken body lies before him, Leng violently retorts, “[T]hat’s fucking history!” The climactic showdown positions Leng’s embodiment of the Chinese male body and masculinity delineated in many previous strands of Chinese martial arts films as powerful and just but now rendered more explicit due to the aesthetic of the blockbuster. Here, Leng vanquishes the external threat of the Western mercenaries through superior martial ability but also as protector in keeping the Chinese citizens and ordinary Africans safe. In this way, the figure of Leng stands in for the nation of China as it moves to a larger, more forceful role in contemporary geopolitics. Chinese nationalism has often revolved around the status of victimhood propagated through the historical realities of invasion and imperialism to such an extent that philosopher Liang Qichao called China “the sick man of Asia” (Liang cited in Wang 2012, 151). The external perception of China as weak is continually challenged in both Wolf Warrior films and is dramatically underlined by Leng as he fights and kills the white Western invader. Indeed, the dismissal of China as weak and as a “sick man” is a recurrent strand linking the recent military films with earlier Chinese Martial arts cinema and particular the Ip Man series which often

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pitted the titular hero against Japanese or Western adversaries. Repackaged and updated, Wolf Warrior II “captures a new, muscular iteration of China’s self-narrative” (Osnos 2018) as it rises globally at the very same time of President Trump’s America First protocols and his reduction of U.S. commitments abroad. The film uses the character of Leng as an effective synecdoche for China but perhaps is most effective in how the relationship between China and Africa is presented. Throughout Wolf Warrior II , the African people, who belong to a homogenous continent rather than discrete countries, are always presented as passive and lacking agency. During the extended sequence showing the rebels attacking and capturing a city, both victims and perpetrators are shown as one-dimensional figures. Citizens die in vast numbers as they are shot, burned, stabbed and blown up in extraordinary displays of carnage and bloodshed. The excessive nature of these action sequences is reinforced by the formal aesthetics which further engender a lack of depth and connection to the characters on screen. Similar to Hollywood realisations of large-scale action sequences in which the cacophonous audio-visual design renders victims as superficial entities so too does Wolf Warrior II ’s “aesthetic of excess” render its casualties as merely collateral damage or unavoidable cannon fodder. In effect, the formal properties bring into question the unity of the narrative design due to the excessive nature and repetitious quality of the action. The action is repeated at various junctures in the film, most notably the chase sequence in a shanty town between Leng and the mercenaries and at the end where there are multiple shoot-outs combined with a tank battle and obligatory showdown between the hero and his nemesis. These scenes may use repetition and difference to capitalise on the dramatic visual arrangements in play but also position the African characters in a passive or impotent frame. Further examples include the government of the unnamed African country where the story takes place who are unable to repel the threat of the rebels and require Chinese navel assistance at the end to finally restore balance and authority back into the country. The rebels do possess a certain amount of agency early on, but their leader is easily dispatched by Big Daddy after he refuses to track down and kill Leng. Lastly, the African workers in the hospital and factory which are put under threat by the rebels/mercenaries always defer to the leadership of the Chinese characters and are often killed off if they transgress this hierarchal order. Africa and African people are portrayed as “in a state of permanent emergency” and where their own government

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and institutions are unable to help in steps the “Chinese hero” Leng (Liu, 2018). The visual style of Wolf Warrior II ’s continual spectacle of destruction is further underlined by the thematic strategies of the film in which China is presented as a superior force along a comprehensive “militarily, diplomatically, technologically, economically, and scientifically” framed axis (Liu 2018). As such, it mirrors China’s involvement with Africa from rescuing Chinese citizens from Yemen in 2015, opening its first operational military base in Djibouti during 2017, to the evolving trade links for countries in regions such as East Africa. The Manichean conception of the relationship between China and Africa in the film links to common genre elements of the war film in its demarcation of a ‘primitive’ enemy or indigenous population against a ‘superior’ home nation. The U.S. World War II film, both during the conflict and immediately after, plus later reincarnations in the late 1990s, seemed to speak directly to the “American soul” (Basinger 1986, 75) and has been a vital and flexible genre in terms of producing righteous and convincing ideological scenarios of American exceptionalism and the pursuit of the “democratic way of life” (ibid., 34). However, the use of the U.S. war genre traced in contemporary blockbuster Chinese cinema is more a variation that a direct lift as it sidelines the propagandistic justification of ‘why we fight’ as most of the narratives deal with rogue elements such as drug gangs, mercenaries and terrorists rather than other nations. In Wolf Warrior II , the military and the militaristic male individual is seen more of a protector and peacekeeper than soldier and fighter. It downplays or circumvents the controversial nature of armed conflict China may be involved in, both within their borders and without, while redirecting ideological messages towards the concept of nation building. Particularly, in terms of increased involvement with foreign aid, developing new technologies, overseas security and peacekeeping forces, and expensive and expansive foreign investment in infrastructure such as the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa.2 These genre shifts may suggest a repackaging within a Chinese context but ostensibly remain the same when concerning the action sequences, which deploy a lot of the same formal and thematic techniques displayed in Hollywood spectacle cinema, 2 Project to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via a series of land and maritime networks. For more information, see https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massivebelt-and-road-initiative.

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as the final scene explicitly attests to. Leng, with the help primarily of an ex-PLA soldier, has rescued the workers from the besieged factory and is now on route to the border and safety. As their convoy traverses the barren landscape, they come across the impasse of a battlefield. The road winds through the middle of the two warring factions and symbolically acts as a median point, a neutral zone for which Leng can claim and use to his advantage. He throws down his weapon and straps a Chinese flag to his arm and takes to the front of the truck to lead the convoy through this perilous scenario. Both combatants ceasefire and the heroic actions of China, as represented by Leng and his triumphant display of the Chinese flag, serve to explicitly end the film with China as peacekeeper (the two armies stop fighting when they see the neutral Chinese flag) and protector (Leng is able to get the people to the UN enclave) rather than aggressor or fighting force. The camera pulls back to a high angle crane shot and then fades to an image of the Chinese passport with the exclamation that China will always protect its citizens no matter where they are in the world. The ending of Wolf Warrior II echoes similar sentiments and actions from the first film on the importance of communicating to a Chinese audience that the nation will always offer protection to its citizens abroad alongside defence of its values and, increasingly, business interests across the globe.

Further Genre Adventures of the Chinese War Film The theme of protectionism is further evident in Dante Lam’s Operation Mekong , which also acts as a conduit between the Wolf Warrior films and Lam’s follow up Operation Red Sea in terms of how it defines the genre hybridity and transnational cinematic confluences apparent in the contemporary Chinese war/military film. In Operation Mekong , the external threat to Chinese citizenry is taken up initially by the pervasiveness of the drug trade although it quickly simplifies the complexity of the global drug industry by focusing on one particularly ruthless drug gang and its megalomaniacal leader Naw Kham (Pawarith Monkolpisit). An elite task force is dispatched to clear the name of Chinese fishermen and women who have falsely been accused of drug smuggling by the Thai authorities and to apprehend their murderers. Captain Gao Gang (Zhang Hanyu) leads the expedition as a Leng Feng type maverick which allows him to operate outside of official protocol and under his own codes of

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honour, justice and nobility. The military prowess of the task force is underlined through multiple extended action set pieces that conflate the excessive Hollywood aesthetics of Michael Bay and the technical virtuosity of Hong Kong filmmakers Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam. Coterminous with the propulsive spectacle of ever more intricately designed and choreographed spectacle, the film also details how the Chinese government acts as a superior and dominant negotiating, diplomatic and political force with the neighbouring countries of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in brokering joint task forces and political initiatives to stem the flow and growth of the illicit drug trade operating in the area and the danger it poses to Chinese people. Operation Mekong foreshadows Wolf Warrior II in that the Chinese are always portrayed as professional, adept, brave, unified and guardians of peace and protection. As a contrast, many of the nonChinese characters, both government officials and criminal drug lords, are presented as a Manichean ‘other’ and are seen as cowardly, incompetent, corrupt, barbaric, and unhinged. Similar to how Africans and Africa are portrayed in Wolf Warrior II , Operation Mekong uses clear transnational genre conventions incorporating the knight errant wuxia hero with modes of excess found typically in Hollywood action productions to facilitate an effective cultural text in promoting the ideology of Chinese exceptionalism in how China is seen as a dominant agent in the geopolitical sphere of its neighbouring countries. Explicitly, the soft power inherent in Operation Mekong ’s genre make-up conveys a strong China, protecting its citizenry and upholding many shared Confucian values such as harmony, benevolence and righteousness. Operation Red Sea operates as a spiritual sequel if not a direct one despite the same production company, director and genre. The formal and thematic strategies also hew closely to previous war/military films but with a growing fetishisation of the violence and the spectacle of action. The film commences with a clear display of Chinese military prowess as a perfectly organised and executed attack on a pirate ship is carried out. The formal techniques and particularly the heavy use of slow motion as various pirates meet a gruesome end develops on the aestheticisation of violence evident in the action set pieces of all previously mentioned films but heightened here to an almost obscene level in terms of it celebrating and revelling in the act of violence. One key sequence is where members of the Special Forces unit carry out a carefully synchronised attack on the pirates holding the sailors hostage. The scene is carried out in daylight with a bright, clean and pristine mise-en-scène that extenuates the level

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of detail and control exhibited by the soldiers. The action is accompanied by the sound of a ticking clock and slow-motion footage as focus is given to the trajectory of a sniper’s bullet as it hurtles through windows, passes inches from the head of a hostage before expertly entering through the forehead of a Kalashnikov wielding pirate. Other soldiers simultaneously shoot through the adjoining doors of the room with emphasis shown to the spent bullet cases cascading through the air accompanied by the steely faces of the highly trained and organised Chinese soldiers as they efficiently, and violently, bring down the pirates in a hail of bullets and CGI blood. The scene abruptly ends by returning to normal speed suggesting that the efficiency of the team cannot be properly documented through normal means. The film certainly infuses Michael Bay’s “aesthetic of excess” in terms of how, like Bay’s films “every moment [is] designed to produce intense, disconnected, ecstatic affect” (Bennett 2015) but also references The Matrix’s (Lana and Lily Wachowski, 1999) ‘bullet time’ in how the action is slowed down so that we can see how the attack happens from different perspectives.3 The opening sequence serves no narrative function and serves to produce an excessive spectacle through the aestheticisation of violence, disjunctive formal arrangements such as spatial disconnection, rapid editing and continual camera movement to demonstrate the high-tech, well-organised and unified Chinese military once again protecting national interests and effectively policing international regions. As the film develops, we get a re-run of Wolf Warrior II as a PLA unit intervenes within a civil war, this time taking place in the Middle-East, to rescue 130 Chinese citizens caught up in the fighting. The film draws heavily from the U.S. combat film to stress values such as brotherhood and loyalty and the importance of unity in overcoming the challenges they encounter. One key example is during the aftermath of a particularly brutal battle sequence where the group comes under mortar attack and a bus full of civilians takes a direct hit. As the soldiers walk down the bus, they are confronted with the dismembered and mangled remains of the passengers. The scene is so traumatic for one soldier that he admits to

3 It should also be noted that the action choreographer on The Matrix was Woo-ping Yuen, and in fact, we can see this sort of ‘slowing down’ of the action in order to capture a realism and authenticity of martial art sequences in many Hong Kong films ranging from Yuen’s own Iron Monkey (1993) to the majority of Jackie Chan’s films. A further example of genre recycling and repackaging under a global context.

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his deputy team leader that despite all his training he was unable to cope and that he let the group down. Here, the pace is deliberately slowed down as the film unequivocally reiterates the importance of teamwork as not only a coping mechanism but also as a symbol of strength and aptitude with the team leader finishing with a show of togetherness by having them both repeat the teams motto of “Conquer fear, conquer all”. But more than mark positive attributes and qualities at the micro-level the film uses the military theme and spectacle of warfare to comment on macroissues once again related to military strength, the ability to successfully intervene and neutralise foreign conflicts, and to protect Chinese citizens regardless of the threat they may face. Operation Red Sea, similar to Operation Mekong , is based on real events though its many diversions into spectacular action and bloody sequences of intense displays of rousing combat heroics become more a propaganda film for soft power and to present a dramatic and cinematic version of the directions China is taking (or would like to see itself taking) in the contemporary period. Genre elements are expertly crafted into a bombastic, entertaining and hugely effective example of cultural soft power that resonated well with domestic audiences to elevate the film to fifth place on the all-time Chinese box office. The soft power narratives in the recent war film blockbuster converge on China’s contemporary geopolitical position as an emerging superpower and their past status as the “sick man of Asia”. The fraught political climate at the end of the Qing dynasty was underlined by several humiliating concessions agreed to by the nations of Japan, Britain and Russia and culminating during the 1920s in a series of “unequal treaties” (Wang 2005). The outcome was that China ceded important trade territories and issued large financial reparations. The events became interlinked with a growing unease about sovereignty and national direction. How this intersects with China in the twenty-first century and films like the Wolf Warrior and Operation series is the emergence of a succession of cultural, political and economic events which have sought to demonstrate China as a strong country and vanquish the status of ‘victim’ or inferiority complex that Chinese people have inured through much of the twentieth century. Developments such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the pivotal role China plays in Latin America and Africa in terms of a trade partner and investor and the growing military strength and political influence have all attempted to demonstrate, both to its population and the outside world that China is now a strong and prosperous

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country. The commercial, blockbuster cinema of the last few years is the latest iteration (arguably starting with the Olympics) that has attempted to reinforce both internally and externally China’s recouped status as a world leader. Wolf Warrior II ’s setting is not arbitrary as China’s “interventionist stance in its dealings with Africa to protect its commercial interests” (The Economist Intelligence Unit 2016, 3) is replicated in the film as first Leng then a cadre of ex-PLA soldiers fight and protect Chinese and African citizens against corrupt officials and violent Western mercenaries. The inclusion of Chinese medical facilities and factories also seems purposeful as it replicates China’s recent “strengthening of trade and production bases on the continent to exploit Africa’s free trade deals” (ibid., 2016, 2). Thus, the films provide an effective vehicle to communicate soft power which speaks directly to contemporaneous political and economic developments. The Chinese blockbuster shows China as confident, authoritative and moral in not only how it engages in aggression and violence against those threaten their self-interests but in how they interact with and lead other nations in these spectacular war narratives.

End Coda: South Korean Cinema and the Rise of a Global Blockbuster The contemporary Chinese action/war film establishes a hybrid genre that offers confluences of different forms including Hollywood action, the U.S. combat war film, superhero cinema and the tradition of wuxia storytelling within the concept of the blockbuster film. The films effectively combine these elements to present a strong and heroic male figure to deliver a clear nationalist message of unity, military strength and geopolitical influence. Films such as Wolf Warrior II therefore situate the transnational “as a global system rather than as a collection of more or less autonomous nations” (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 1). Indeed, the statement takes on further significance and complexity when we also account for how the blockbuster, as a way to convey soft power through a decidedly Hollywood action aesthetic, has materialised in other East Asian countries. Most notably, in South Korea through the war genre and specifically through the spectacular The Admiral: Roaring Currents which is the most successful film ever released in the country with 17.6 million admissions. In the film, Choi Min-sik plays Admiral Yi Sun-sin who heroically marshalled the defeat of the Japanese navy against overwhelming odds in the 1597 Battle of Myeongnyang. Yi has become a much revered and

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almost folkloric figure in Korea as a symbol of national strength, unity, resourcefulness and triumph in the face of adversity. The film situates a powerful, authoritative male figure through the aesthetic of blockbuster action to “re-masculinize” (see, Kim 2004, 1–26) the Korean nation by linking it to a militaristic and androcentric view of the past and thus the contemporary period. In this way, the film connects to the nationalist discourse of recent Chinese action/war films where the centrality of a strong and intelligent male hero and the aesthetics of action have sought to provide a conservative delineation of nation as one populated by strong Chinese men and a powerful yet protective military. The success of both national blockbuster forms underlines Berry’s contention that the global locus has shifted with regard to big-budget, commercial cinema and that the ‘wolf’ is no longer Hollywood dominance on the Chinese market. Instead, the prominence of Wolf Warrior II and Operation Red Sea has engendered a hybrid genre mix of (spectacular) transnational cinematic forms that have cohered with local industry and marketing practices. Their success and keen reception seem likely to point at a continuation in similar films and thus establishing the genre, nationalist and action-dominated film as the predominant form of early twenty-first-century Chinese cinema.

References Addy. 2017. “Wu Jing Is China’s Next Big Action Star.” Jayne Stars, August 5. https://www.jaynestars.com/news/wu-jing-is-chinas-next-big-act ion-star/, no pagination. Accessed 30 July 2019. Basinger, Jeanine. 1986. The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. New York: Columbia University Press. Bennet, Bruce. 2015. “The Cinema of Michael Bay: An Aesthetic of Excess.” Senses of Cinema (75). http://sensesofcinema.com/2015/michael-bay-dos sier/cinema-of-michael-bay/, no pagination. Accessed 29 July 2019. Bergfelder, Tim. 2016. “What Is Your Definition of ‘Transnational Cinema’?”, interview by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith. “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable.” Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajou rnal.com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/#tbergfelder, no pagination. Accessed 13 September 2019. Berra, John. 2015. “Wolf Warrior (China, 2015).” VCINEMA: Podcast & Web Blog. http://www.vcinemashow.com/wolf-warriors-china-2015/, no pagination. Accessed 29 July 2019.

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Berry, Chris. 2003. “What’s Big About the Big Film?: “De-Westernising” the Blockbuster in China and Korea.” In Movie Blockbusters, edited by Julian Stringer, 217–229. London: Routledge. Brzeski, Patrick. 2018. “China Box Office Returns to Robust Growth in 2017, Hitting $8.6B’.” Hollywood Reporter, January 1. https://www.hollywoodrep orter.com/news/china-box-office-returns-robust-growth-2017-hitting-86b1070895, no pagination. Accessed 30 July 2019. Chan, Felicity. 2008. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Cultural Migrancy and Translatability.” In Chinese Films in Focus II , 2 ed., edited by Chris Berry, 73–81. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ezra, Elizabeth and Terry Rowden. 2006. “General Introduction: What is Transnational Cinema?” In Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by Elizabeth Ezra & Terry Rowden, 1–12. London: Routledge. The Economist Intelligence Unit. 2016. “The Evolving Role of China in Africa and Latin American.” The Economist, 1–16. https://lampadia.com/assets/ uploads_documentos/7ffa7-the-evolving-role-of-china-in-africa-and-latin-ame rica.pdf. Accessed 15 January 2020. Higbee, Will. 2016. “‘What Is Your Definition of ‘Transnational Cinema’?” interview by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith. “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable.” Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajournal. com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/#whighbee, no pagination. Accessed 13 September 2019. Higbee, Will, and Song Hwee Lim. 2010. Concepts of Transnational Cinema: Towards a Critical Transnationalism in Film Studies. Transnational Cinemas 1 (1): 7–21. Higson, Andrew. 2016. “‘What Is Your Definition of ‘Transnational Cinema’?” interview by Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith. “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical Roundtable.” Frames Cinema Journal. http://framescinemajournal. com/article/transnational-cinemas-a-critical-roundtable/#ahigson, no pagination. Accessed 13 September 2019. Kim, Kyung Hyun. 2004. The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lee, Maggie. 2015. “Film Review: ‘Wolf Warriors’.” Variety, April 28. https:// variety.com/2015/film/asia/wolf-warriors-review-1201480183/, no pagination. Accessed 29 July 2019. Lee, Nikki J.Y. 2008. “Salute to Mr. Vengeance!: The Making of a Transnational Auteur Park Chan-wook.” In East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film, edited by Leon Hunt and Wing-Fai Leung, 203–36. London: I.B. Tauris. Liu, Petrus. 2018. “Women and Children First—Jingoism, Ambivalence, and Crisis of Masculinity in Wolf Warrior II .” In Wolf Warrior II: The Rise of China and Gender/Sexual Politics. The Ohio State University:

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Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC) Research Center, edited by Petrus Liu & Lisa Rofel. https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/liu-rofel/#A. Accessed 17 August 2020. Osnos, Evan. 2018. “Making China Great Again.” The New Yorker, January 8. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/makingchina-great-again, no pagination. Accessed 29 July 2019. Rong, Cai. 2005. “Gender Imaginations in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Wuxia World.” Positions, May 1; 13 (2): 441–71. Stringer, Julian. 2003. “Neither One Thing Nor the Other: Blockbusters at Film Festivals.” In Movie Blockbusters, edited by Julian Stringer, 202–214. London: Routledge. Su, Wendy. 2016. China’s Encounter with Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and the Film Industry, 1994–2013. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Teo, Stephen. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Thompson, Kristen Moana. 2003. “Once Were Warriors: New Zealand’s First Indigenous Blockbuster.” In Movie Blockbusters, edited by Julian Stringer, 230–241. London: Routledge. Wang, Dong. 2005. China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History. New York: Lexington Books. Wang, Haizhou, and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley. 2010. “Hero: Rewriting the Chinese Martial Arts Film Genre.” In Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of ‘ Hero’, edited by Gary Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley, 90–105. London: Routledge. Wang, Zheng. 2012. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhang, Xingjian. 2018. “Chinese Blockbuster ‘Operation Red Sea’ to Battle for Oscar’.” China Daily, September 25. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/ 201809/25/WS5ba9aa22a310c4cc775e7efc.html, no pagination. Accessed 5 September 2019. Zhou, Viola. 2018. “Patriotic Action Movie Wolf Warrior 2 Tops China’s Box Office for 2017 But Foreign Films Gain Ground.” South China Morning Post (SCMP), January 1. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/ 2126366/chinas-box-office-hits-us86-billion-2017-boosted-service-fees, no pagination. Accessed 7 January 2020.

Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas

The second part of the book, titled “Development of Genre film and Film Genre in East Asia Cinemas” and the three chapters included here, by Shaoyi Sun, Louisa Mitchell, and Gary Bettinson, develop the lens of East Asian genre study put forward in Part I into similarly new or less traversed areas of academic scholarship. The focus on, respectively, the 1920s Shanghai fantasy film, the Korean sageuk film, and the Leste Chen “puzzle film” avoids the more popular genre modes of narration associated with the national cinemas of East Asia. For example, the contemporary horror film, the martial arts film, and the Chinese and Korean melodrama have been reframed by less well-discussed generic forms and practices. As mentioned in the introduction, it was not until recently that genre film has increasingly formed a significant part of discourse surrounding scholarly studies on East Asian cinemas. From the seminal early texts of the British Film Institute’s release of Perspectives on Chinese Cinema in 1991 and Sheldon Lu Hsiao-peng’s Transnational Chinese Cinemas in 1997, genre film has formed a more substantial part of the discourse surrounding scholarly studies on East Asian Cinema. Examples such as Susan Napier’s (2000) Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, Jay McRoy’s (2005) Japanese Horror Cinema, and Stephen Teo’s (2009) Chinese Martial Arts Cinema have contributed to a landscape which has produced its own auteurs, stars, cycles, historical significant periods, and popular genres. Like any approach to genre and national cinema, it has ossified a certain sense of genre codes, conventions, and motifs, ranging from the transnational popularity of J-horror to the cross-cultural

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wenyi pian (literal and art film, melodrama) of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.1 Certainly, any serious study of genre in East Asian cinema must account for existing genre histories, but must also be mindful of pursuing furrows less travelled, so that a continued discussion on genre within areas that have not been part of dominant accounts of East Asian film is possible. Therefore, Part II attempts to recoup genre on the margins, so that the filmic and cultural practices of less well-known genre forms can be reintegrated into the canonical and outstanding histories of a genre beyond the dominant genre discourse in the Western cinema. In Chapter 4, Shaoyi Sun focuses on the Chinese film industry in the 1920s as it emerged in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai—a time when the potential of genre forms was actively brought to the fore across a wide-ranging spectrum of Chinese filmmaking, including fanpaiya (vampire) film. Although the vampire film has not received much attention in studies of East Asian cinema, by repositioning the (sub)genre in a period underdeveloped by these studies, the chapter can re-examine the historical, cultural, and geographic forms of East Asian fantasy films. Furthermore, the lesser-known cultural production and genre experimentation found in Shanghai during the 1920s, which has largely been overshadowed by a nation-building narrative, can be retrieved. Sun examines how although many Chinese films of the 1920s were greatly inspired or influenced by US and European cinema the emergent fantasy film, such as the vampire cycle exemplified by The Cave of the Silken Web (Dan Duyu 1927), engaged in a byzantine relationship with external and local cultural forms. The outcome is that a careful re-examination of genre production during the decade can re-appraise early Chinese film production. Thus, the chapter attempts to position itself away from the dominant accounts of cinema as a “revolutionary movement” towards how it developed as a genre and narrative form, which began to engender a mass appeal in the stories that it told. The chapter’s thorough investigation into fantasy production in 1920s Shanghai produces a fuller picture of cultural, political, and social determinates that utilises genre as a means to offer a primary record on the Chinese film industry at this time. Mitchell’s chapter on the Korean historical or period/sageuk film similarly focuses on a popular genre with domestic audiences, which has received little attention from scholars working in film genre and Korean 1 For further detail on wenyi pian, see Stephen Teo (2006, 203–213) and Emilie Yuehyu Yeh (2019, 438–52).

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film history. The chapter takes a chronological pathway from the colonial era and a film like The Tale of Chunhyang (Lee Myeong Woo, 1935), to the Golden Age of the 1950s and 1960s and the films The Tragic Prince (Ahn Jong Hwa, 1956) and Eunuch (Shin Sang Ok 1968) to the 21st century iterations Untold Scandal (E J-Yong 2003), and Jeon Woo Chi (Choi Dong Hoon, 2009). Thus, the chapter positions the historical film as a long-standing, popular, and culturally important genre within South Korean cinema. Similar to Sun’s chapter, Mitchell also traced the migration between the literary popular texts (e.g. folklore and classic literature) and their cinematic counterparts, and addressed how these adaptation and translation both take place within the “internal” history of a specific regional literary lineage and across different inter/intraregional discourses. Moreover, in applying contemporary examples as case studies, Mitchell looks at how genre filmmaking can present a distinctive Korean-ness and a quality transnational filmmaking style by utilising local issues and socio-historical contingencies with cutting-edge technological developments. The historical film and hybrid genre form that emerges effectively combines Hollywood blockbuster aesthetics and characterisation with a cinematic imaginary of the Korean past. The use of the past in these productions is re-interpretive as it speaks more to the present than it does with capturing the past “as it happened”. In doing so, it offers an important barometer of South Korean social, political, and cultural direction framed by their traumatic past and modern post-colonial sensibility. The historical film also highlights how contemporary Korean cinema fuses established genre frameworks with the global blockbuster form. As such, the historical film emerges as a transcultural genre that can point to many indices of Korean film history. Bettinson continues the focus of Part II on marginal and less wellcovered film genres to reassess the Chinese puzzle film as something other than a cycle of films severely hindered by the censorious film industry of the People’s Republic of China. The chapter attempts to redress the established notion that the horror and supernatural films of mainland China offer little or no stylistic or narrative innovation in their safe, sanitised formats nor do they offer any potential for subversion or transgression of political orthodoxy. The focus of the chapter is on two Leste Chen Cheng-tao films, The Great Hypnotist (2014) and Battle of Memories (2017), to carefully examine how they, as examples of the puzzle film, in fact provide dynamic, intricate, and innovative genre development. The films can be seen to expertly navigate the draconian censorship systems in

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play via intertextual engagement with Hollywood puzzle film exemplars Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) and popular historical genre developments found within the turn of the millennium J-horror. The multitude of references and genre cues found in these two films alert the viewer to horror stories, aesthetics, and a whole host of other sinister devices that trigger the viewer’s awareness and existing knowledge of horror while aligning them to the genre’s proclivities. Chen proceeds to mediate these genre codes through three interlocking mechanisms: equivocation, allusion, and stealth to avoid direct censorship by misdirecting the viewer through an elaborately conceived horror mise-en-scène. Bettinson concludes that far from a hamstrung horror genre where creativity is restrained and innovative genre development impossible, the films under study point to an experimentation with genre, audience involvement, and creative working relationships with film industry bodies such as the China Film Bureau and the State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television. For Bettinson, Chen’s films work with the repressive nature of mainland censorship to enable artistic involvement and not the other way around. Thus, the PRC puzzle film can reassess industry working relationships and shed light on the often overlooked ways filmmakers engage in genre production within the production practices of the Chinese filmindustry.

References Berry, Chris, ed. 1991. Perspectives on Chinese Cinema. London: British Film Institute. Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. 1997. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. McRoy, Jay. 2005. Japanese Horror Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Napier, Susan. 2000. Anime from Akirato Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin’s Griffin. Teo, Stephen. 2006. “Chinese Melodrama: The Wenyi Genre.” In Traditions in World Cinema, edited by Linda Badley, 203––213. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 2009. Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu. “Pitfalls of Cross-Cultural Analysis: Chinese Wenyi Film and Melodrama” Asian Journal of Communication, December 2019, 438–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292980903293379. Accessed 27 January 2020.

Fantasy, Vampirism and Genre/Gender Wars on the Chinese Screen of the Roaring 1920s Shaoyi Sun

On 5 March 1922, German filmmaker F. W. Murnau’s silent feature Nosferatu (Romanian for “Undead”) premiered in Berlin. Loosely adapted from English writer Bram Stoker’s Gothic horror novel Dracula (1897), Nosferatu tells the story of a Transylvanian nobleman named Count Orlok, after terrifying the incoming real estate clerk Thomas Hutter as a disguised vampire, arriving in the town of Wisborg, Germany to search for new victims. Tempted by Hutter’s wife Ellen, who learns from the Book of Vampires that only “a woman pure in heart” is able to “break the terrible spell” through her willing sacrifice, Count Orlok “bends his head over her” and lingers in Ellen’s bed chamber until the dawn (Murnau cited in Eisner 1973, 269). As a result, as the first rays of the morning sun rise, Count Orlok, the vampire, evaporates. Five years after Nosferatu’s premiere, on the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Day of 2 February 1927, Dan Duyu’s controversial silent feature The Cave of the Silken Web (Pansidong; hereafter referred to as The Cave) opened to the public at Shanghai’s Palace Theatre (Zhongyang daxiyuan). Made

S. Sun (B) Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_5

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in 1926 and self-promoted as the first film adaptation of the sixteenthcentury Chinese fantasy classic Journey to the West (Xiyouji) (The Shun Pao 1927, 1),1 The Cave, based on the two chapters of the novel titled “The Seven Emotions Confuse the Basic in Gossamer Cave; At FilthCleansing Spring Pigsy Forgets Himself” and “The Emotions Bear a Grudge and Inflict Disaster; The Heart’s Master Smashes the Light When He Meets the Demons”, tells the story of Xuanzang, the legendary scriptures-seeking Buddhist monk, being entrapped by a bevy of spider demons disguised as beautiful maidens. As the spider queen, played by Dan’s glamourous wife Yin Mingzhu, and her fellow predators celebrate the capture of the monk and ready themselves for his flesh and blood, Xuanzang’s three guardians, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy, under the help of the disguised Guanyin Bodhisattva, manage to charge into the cave and help the monk escape from the trap. In the last fight, the beautiful queen transforms herself into a gigantic and monstrous spider in the burning fire. The above juxtaposition requires some explanation. After all, based on available primary sources, despite the fact that many early Chinese films were more or less inspired or directly influenced by American or European cinemas, there is little evidence to demonstrate Murnau’s Nosferatu had ever been shown in China. Considering the fierce legal battles after the premiere of Nosferatu and the film’s subsequent obliteration in its home country, it is hard to imagine such a work would be able to travel to the Far East2 in the first place.3 Despite this, Murnau was definitely 1 There were a few Journey to the West -based films being made in the years 1926 and 1927. According to Cheng Jihua et al.’s (1998, 86–89) A History of the Development of Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying fazhanshi), these included Tianyi’s (The Unique Film Co.) Monkey King Conquers the Leopard (Sunxingzhe dazhan jinqianbao; dir. Shao Zuiwen and Gu Kenfu; starring Hu Die or Butterfly Wu) and Dazhongguo’s (The Great China Film Co.) Pigsy To Be a Bridegroom (Zhubajie zhaoqin; dir. Chen Qiufeng) and many others. Considering the production of The Cave began in 1926 and its production was widely covered in leading local newspapers as early as in September 1926, its self proclamation that “there are more than ten screen adaptations of Journey to the West , but The Cave is without question the first pioneering work in this regard” (The Shun Pao 1927, 1) is at least not baseless. 2 Despite of its derogatory connotation nowadays, the terms “Far East” is adopted here by the author with its historical context in mind. This note is added by editors. 3 Nosferatu was only loosely based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and Murnau acknowledged Stoker’s novel, which was thought to be in the public domain, in the credits, but this did not prevent Stoker’s widow from taking legal action against the

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not a stranger to the Chinese audience in the 1920s. Prior to the release of The Cave, Murnau’s UFA film The Last Laugh (1924) premiered at Shanghai’s Carlton Theatre (Kaerdeng) on 21 July 1926 and was immediately hailed as an “unprecedented” masterpiece with “only two intertitles” (The Shun Pao 1926, 25). Transliterated as Maolu or Monan or Muniu, Murnau’s name once again appeared in Shanghai’s major newspapers with the release of his Hollywood production Sunrise at Carlton on 12 September 1928, this time after the release of The Cave. Celebrated as a “masterpiece” that exemplified “Neo-Romanticism” and “pure cinema”, Sunrise was called “a wordless long poem” and “a painting without the use of colour”: One act after another, the film is punctuated with the beauty of musical rhythm and poetic scenery: from seduction, temptation, and crime to sadness and tears; from sadness and tears to joyfulness and happiness; and then from joyfulness and happiness to tragic moments and darkness; and lastly from tragic moments and darkness to celebration and brightness. When the morning sun rises, we see the vampire-like city woman [italic mine; the word appears in English in the original] finally leaves in frustration. The film is deep in meaning and description. It strongly resonates with the soul of the audience. (The Shun Pao 1928, 6)

The lengthy quote here is not only to show F. W. Murnau used to enjoy great if short-lived popularity amongst the Chinese audience and critics alike, but also to demonstrate that both the English word and the notion of vampire had been adopted and somewhat appropriated in the Chinese context of the 1920s, prior to and after the release of The Cave. The very fact that the English word vampire needed no translation and explanation indicated a possible cultural familiarity beforehand, and its connection with the city woman or women in more general terms suggested a possible gender reversal the word connotes. This chapter intends to take the reader back to the 1920s, a time when Chinese cinema was just taking off in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai and genre potentials were actively explored across the full spectrum of Chinese filmmaking. Relying mainly on a textual and cultural analysis of the newly discovered silent classic The Cave, this chapter aims to establish the vampire film as an important production studio. As a result, the studio agreed in 1924 to destroy all copies of Nosferatu. But the film resurfaced semi-officially in England and the United States shortly. See Hensley (2002, 59–64).

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genre (or subgenre) in early Chinese cinema.4 The chapter, in the end, calls for a re-evaluation and re-examination of Shanghai cultural production in the 1920s, which has been largely dismissed, deemed unworthy and overshadowed by a nation-building narrative that has long dominated modern Chinese cultural and film historiography.

The Culture of Vampirism in the Roaring 1920s of China Chinese cinema of the 1920s occupies a peculiar place in Chinese film historiography. On the one hand, it has been commonly acknowledged that it was a crucial period during which the cinema had grown to be an important narrative and art form in China, and movie-going became an indispensable part of leisure life for a large number of people in major cities. Besides early achievements like Yan Ruisheng (Ren Pengnian, 1921) and An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (Guer jiuzuji) (Zhang Shichuan, 1923) and many other titles, there was also a phenomenal development in theatre-building and the building of production entities. According to one source, up to the year of 1927, China saw the birth of 179 production companies (142 of them in Shanghai; some of them only existed in name, though), and Shanghai alone boasted close to forty professional movie theatres (Shuren et al. 1927, 1–33; Li and Hu 1997, 86–89). But on the other hand, for many Chinese critics and film historians, these phenomenal accomplishments are paled by the fact that Chinese cinema of the 1920s largely “deviated from China’s revolutionary movements” and thus its “healthy and normal development and progress were greatly constrained” (Cheng et al. 1998, 167). Many pioneering works, particularly those adapted from or inspired by traditional legends and classical novels, were deemed “feudal” and “distasteful” and even “pornographic” (Cheng et al. 1998, 89). Sometimes collectively labelled

4 In Chinese cinema, generic categories have been loosely applied to filmic works since the early days. A film like The Cave could be categorised as a costume film (Guzhuangpian), or it could be also viewed as an exemplary work of the martial arts and fantasy film genre (Wuxia shenguaipian). Due to this looseness, the author uses the terms genre and subgenre interchangeably in this chapter. Strictly speaking, however, the author views the fantasy film as a relatively stabilised genre and the vampire film as a subgenre under the fantasy film.

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as “martial arts and fantasy films” (Wuxia shenguai pian), they were “targets of charged political criticism from both the left and the right” after the implementation of the nationwide film censorship law (the right) and the left-turn of Chinese cinema and critical discourse (the left) in the early 1930s (Harris 1999, 53). The habitual dismissal of 1920s cinematic experiments and elevation of 1930s leftist cinema have been only recently questioned from both revisionist historians and rediscovered 1920s prints long thought to be lost.5 As a matter of fact, despite the circumstance that many 1920s films didn’t survive the tumultuous history of modern China and print materials (newspapers, magazines, and movie booklets) are probably the only sources from which we learn about them, it is still not hard to draw a richer and much more colourful picture of 1920s Chinese cinema than what some standard film history books have depicted. Re-evaluating the role the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School (Yuanyang hudie pai) writers played in the development of Chinese cinema is one way to enrich our understanding of early Chinese films. Another way of looking at it, as more titles are being rediscovered and restored, is to exercise critical caution in the process of re-evaluation and not to be blinded by previous labels and judgments. It is also of vital importance that one needs to go beyond the cinema itself and take a broader cross-cultural view of the general environment within which early Chinese films were made. It is in this spirit that this chapter argues the vampire genre underwent its initial development in the 1920s, although never really taking off owing to the overwhelming dominance of narrowly conceived realism and nation-building narratives in Chinese cinema. As previously mentioned, the word vampire enjoyed certain cultural familiarity in 1920s China. Amongst many returned students from Europe, the United States and Japan, who were staunch advocates of a new cultural movement, the Japan-educated Tian Han (1898–1968) was 5 In addition to Kristine Harris’ take on The Romance of the Western Chamber, Chen Jianhua’s re-evaluation of D. W. Griffith’s contribution to the rise of Chinese narrative cinema is worth mentioning. For details, see Jianhua Chen (2013, 23–28). Book-length studies include Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh’s (2018) edited volume Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China: Kaleidoscopic Histories and Xuelei Huang’s (2014) Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938. Rediscovered 1920s prints include Dan Duyu’s The Cave and Zhu Shouju’s (a well-known Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School writer and filmmaker) On a Stormy Night (Fengyu Zhi Ye) (1925).

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probably the one who was most responsible for this cultural familiarity. In an essay titled “The Vampire Century” (Fanpaiya de shiji), Tian (2000, 43), through the mediation of the Japanese writer Tsubouchi Shoyo, argued that five types of actresses would be enthusiastically embraced by the audience in the new century, and the vampire woman was one of them.6 As “modern women” became more and more “vampirish” in the near future, he claimed, a “vampire century” would probably arrive (Tian 2000, 43). Here, as Liang Luo (2014, 89) in her book-length study of Tian Han rightly observes, “through the Chinese transliteration of the English word vampire as fanpaiya”, Tian not only succeeded in mitigating the dark connotation of the original or “trying to counterbalance the darkness associated with the word”, but also was able to turn the word into a gender-specific term, namely a term that in most cases only applied to women in the cultural context of 1920s China. The “fanpaiya woman” or woman vampire, therefore, became someone who was glamourous, desirable, attractive and modern despite all the dangers she seemed to carry. Gone was Nosferatu’s “tall, gaunt” and “totally bald with an evil witch-like hook nose and protruding eyes” look (Hensley 2002, 62). In a way, through the creative transliteration, Tian Han turned the male Dracula into a modern Chinese femme fatale. To be certain, Tian was not the first one to make the link between the vampire/fanpaiya and the femme fatale. As an archetype of many cultures, a femme fatale or a fatal woman in its original sense carries the meaning of “man-eater” or vampire. As early as in the 1910s, American films The Vampire (Robert G. Vignola, 1913) and A Fool There Was (Frank Powell, 1915) had already made this link explicit, the former being considered as the first film depicting a female vamp character, and the latter featuring a female vamp character who turns every man she seduces into a fool. But Tian was probably the first one to bravely proclaim that “fanpaiya [vampires] are those women who are extremely self assertive, who respect their own sensual satisfaction, and who know how to enjoy all kinds of 6 Tian quoted Tsubouchi Shoyo as saying that, to develop new drama, five types of female actors are needed: a “pleasant” and “somewhat funny” female comedian, such as Constance Talmadge (1898–1973); a “sexy and amorous” woman, embodied by Norma Talmadge (1894–1957); a “lonely and melancholy” girl like Lillian Gish (1893–1993); a “seemingly naïve” and “delicate” girl like Mary Pickford (1892–1979) and, lastly, a female actor who “is capable of playing roles of a strong and cruel or passionate shrew” (or a “vampire” woman) as exemplified by Madame Alla Nazimova (1879–1945) or Pola Negri (1897–1987).

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stimulation in life” (Tian 2000, 44), an assertion apparently inspired by the call for women’s liberation during the May Fourth period.7 In addition to advocating the “fanpaiya” woman in the essay, Tian Han also created an archetypal “fanpaiya” or vampire in his scripted feature The Lakeshore Spring Dream (Hubian chunmeng, 1927). Produced by the Mingxing Film Company (Star) and directed by Tian’s friend Bu Wancang (1903–1974), the film tells the story of a melancholic playwright’s sadomasochist encounter with a mysterious and sensual woman by the scenic West Lake in Hangzhou. Mesmerised by her domineering glamour, the playwright willingly submits to her demand and lets her tie and whip him for her sexual pleasure. The submission/domination role-playing game ends with the playwright’s realisation that the whole scenario is merely a “spring dream”. Although the print is considered lost, one can still feel this sadistic woman’s vampire-like lust through the surviving stills and script, in which she is described to be obsessed with the playwright’s bruised body and “madly kiss[es] his whipped wounds” (Tian Han cited in Zheng and Liu 1996, 1039).8 The female-centred “vampire culture” or Chinese-style vampirism of the 1920s is further evidenced in the popularity of Salome, a minor Bible character but later developed into a symbol of fatal passion through the works of Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Gustave Flaubert (1821– 1880), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). The shocking image of Salome, as described in Oscar Wilde’s one-act play (Wilde 1894, 20), seizing the head of Jokanaan or Saint John the Baptist and proclaiming “Ah, I have kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood?” had a long-lasting impact on the psychology of the May Fourth generation. When the Spring Willow Society (Chunliu she), one of the earliest modern drama troupes of China, was established in Japan, Wilde’s Salome was amongst the firsts to be staged. According to one research, between

7 The author would like to express his deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewer for his/her insightful comments, which brought these two films to the author’s attention, although whether the two films were shown in Shanghai/China and whether Tian Han was somewhat influenced by the two films at the time remain unanswered after initial research. 8 For further discussion of the film, see Luo (2014, 90). The script of The Lakeshore Spring Dream can be found in Peiwei Zheng and Guiqing Liu (1996).

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1920 and 1949, there were at least seven different Chinese translations of Salome, and Tian Han’s 1921 version was the second and the most wellknown largely due to its 1929 on-stage gala performance in Nanjing, the one much grander than that staged by the Spring Willow Society.9 As late as in 1930, this “Salome Craze”, so to speak, could be still felt in The General’s Head (Jiangjun de tou), a novella by the Shanghai NeoSensationalist writer Shi Zhecun (1905–2003). In the story, a half-Han, half-Tibetan general secretly desires for a beautiful Han maiden on his way to quell the Tibetan rebellion during the Tang dynasty. In a battle that results in the loss of both his head and a Tibetan rebel’s head, the headless general walks back to the creek where he conversed with the girl before, hoping to win her praise and favour. However, instead of kiss and embrace, he was spat on for senselessly washing his hands with no head on his shoulders. Hearing the cruel and sarcastic curse from the beautiful girl’s mouth, the general collapses. Far away, tears fall from his blood-stained head (Shi 1933, 49–104). The enduring appeal of Salome kissing the blood-red lips of Jokanaan was greatly enhanced by Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) artistic rendering of Wilde’s play. Like Wilde, Beardsley also had his short-lived yet cult-like following in 1920s China. Two years after Tian Han’s Salome translation initially appeared in the Young China magazine, a Shanghai press in 1923 published Tian’s translation in book form, which was accompanied by 16 bold and beautiful black-and-white line drawings by Beardsley (Wilde, 1923). Dubbed as the “Beardsley of the East”, Ye Lingfeng (1904– 1975) (cited in Li 2003, 87), a modern essayist and illustrator, repeatedly mentioned in his essays that he was a hopeless fan of Beardsley: I bought a[n]…album of Beardsley’s drawings, studied and studied, so fond of it that I couldn’t even put it down. Without hesitation, I started to imitate his styles. …Therefore, I later became the Beardsley of the East. I drew day and night. At that time, many magazine covers and title pages featured my drawings. This passion for Beardsley didn’t wane for quite some years. As a result, many people started to follow and imitate my style, to the extent that some of them even signed the fake name of L.F. [Lingfeng] on their paintings. It became quite fashionable then.

9 Tian Han’s translation was first published in Young China (Shaonian zhongguo), 2:9 (1921, 24–51). For a list of these seven versions, see Xiaoyi Zhou (2001).

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Ye’s “self-styled Chinese Beardsley” was bitterly ridiculed by Lu Xun (1981a, 293), who in one article labelled Ye a “new hooligan artist” belonging to the decadent school. Despite this sarcasm, Lu himself seemed to be a Beardsley admirer, at least before the 1930s. He was not only responsible for the publication of the Selected Paintings by Aubrey Beardsley in 1929, but also wrote a short preface to the album, in which he claimed that, although short-lived, no artists of black-and-white drawings “were as popular and famous as Beardsley; and no artists had an impact on modern art as broad as Beardsley” (Lu 1981b, 338).

Reading the Cave as a Chinese Vampire Film In his often quoted study of Hollywood genres, Thomas Schatz (1981, 16) sees a film genre as a “contract” signed between the system (studios and the creative team, including the director) and the audience. On the one hand, in the realm of commercial filmmaking, a genre film is expected to follow the formulas and conventions previously understood and formulated, just like the rules of a game or rituals of a given community. On the other hand, along with changes in culture, society and taste or the economics of the industry, these privileged formulas and conventions may also evolve or change, becoming more refined or responsive to the times. Despite the dynamic dimension of film genres, certain important elements, rules and structures remain static, and the principles of the signed “contract” is kept intact (Schatz 1981, 16–17). Schatz falls short in pointing out who constitutes the often vaguely defined “audience” in studies of genre films, however. Is this “audience” culturally and ethnically situated? Does the “audience” of genre films, due to their cultural, political and economic differences, play a crucial role in determining the diverse reifications of a given genre? In redefining the Western “from a very broad critical scope covering the spectrum of West and East or even North and South”, film scholar Stephen Teo (2017, 1) seems to suggest that the answers to the questions posed above are positive. Despite the fact that the Western as a genre has been deeply rooted in the westward expansion of America, the American frontier myth, and even the issue of gun and property ownership in the United States, by naming a group of Asian films “Eastern Westerns”, Teo (2017, 2–7) implies that genre is largely a culturally “open” term that is ultimately defined by the collective contributions from a variety of cultures, including that of Asia. In the similar spirit, Colette Balmain (2017, 2) argues that the

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Gothic literature and cinema are also an East Asian “indigenous” tradition/genre, not something belonging “specifically to the modern age of Europe and the Americas since the end of the eighteenth century”. East Asian Gothic, according to Balmain (2017, 1–2), is “an umbrella term which encompasses the cinemas of PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea”, which is most powerfully exemplified and embodied in the fox-spirit mythology across East Asia, “known as the huli jin [sic] in China, gumiho in Korea and kitsune in Japan”. Rediscovered by the Film Archive of the Norwegian National Library in 2011, The Cave has been long considered a “costume drama” (guzhuang ju), or another exemplary film that contributed to the rise of the martial arts and fantasy genre (wuxia shenguai pian) in the late 1920s, belonging to the same category as the notorious Burning of the Red Lotus Temple (Huo shao honglian si) series. While this is certainly understandable and by no means invalid, one is also tempted to go a step further to frame the film in the general context of the “fanpaiya” (vampire) culture discussed in the previous section, and to read The Cave as an underdeveloped vampire film that could have played a pioneering role in making the vampire subgenre a strong tradition of Chinese cinema. After all, if the Chinese fox mythology constructed by the tales of the strange (zhiguai) and stories of the marvellous (chuanqi) led to the rise of “East Asian Gothic”, which is not necessarily a variation and generic descendant of the Western Gothic (Balmain 2017, 2), there are ample reasons to read The Cave as a Chinese vampire film, or a film that comes very close to the vampire genre, at least according to Tian Han’s transliterated understanding of the term (Fig. 1). Although silent and primitive in almost all aspects of filmmaking, Dan Duyu’s The Cave established several important tropes later Xiyouji screen adaptations find impossible to escape from, and chief amongst them are temptation and transformation.10 These two tropes, not coincidentally, are also the ones frequently evoked by the vampire film. In his re-reading of Nosferatu, Wayne E. Hensley (2002, 63) argues that the very reason leading to Dracula’s demise is that he “cannot resist” Ellen’s temptation “even if he has been able to avoid all the previous attempts by women seeking to kill him”. It is quite likely that because Dracula is fatally attracted to Ellen, “a woman pure in heart”, he hesitates and eventually 10 Here the word “primitive” refers to techniques rather than Chinese culture or people. This note is added by editors.

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Fig. 1 The scriptures-seeking monk is seduced into the cave of the silken web by a bevy of spider demons disguised as beautiful maidens (Courtesy of the Shanghai Film Museum)

fails to carry out his bloody mission but lets her “put her arms around him…and bends his head over her” until the first rays of the morning sun destroy him (Murnau cited in Eisner 1973, 269).11 As far as “transformation” is concerned, despite the fact that Dracula is in the beginning featured as a rat-like creature and Murnau’s vampire character never undergoes transformations (only evaporates), later Dracula films, such as Tod Browning’s pre-Code remake (1931) and Terence Fisher’s British version (1958), frequently depict a vampire capable of transforming into a bat. Even Shadow of the Vampire (E. Elias Merhige, 2000), a turn-ofthe-century fictional account about how Murnau’s Nosferatu was made, makes a passing reference to bats. Several layers of temptation can be discerned in Dan Duyu’s Xiyouji adaptation. First, as usual, Pigsy is depicted as a womaniser who easily falls prey to sensual seduction. Second, Xuanzang the monk is not as innocent and immune to temptation as he seems to be. Both the novel and the film indicate he goes alone for alms, but the way he acts in the film suggests 11 Murnau’s own description and clarification of Scene 172 of Nosferatu’s shooting script.

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otherwise. Flanked by the spider women, he seems to walk in a happy mood and easily goes along with the “come inside and rest awhile” invitation. It is very likely that he also cannot resist the temptation and is willingly escorted by the fair maidens into the cave. Third, perhaps most importantly, the maidens, particularly the spider queen, are tempted by the fair-skinned virgin monk. It is not only because of the belief that a bite of the monk’s flesh (or a sip of his blood) would make one immortal, but also because of the fact that the film at one point seems to suggest the spider queen is genuinely interested in getting married with the monk and preparing to start a family with him. Unlike the novel, which only states that the monk’s flesh is what the maidens desire for, the film adaptation adds an elaborated marriage ceremony, during which the spider queen, now a bride, exchanges bows with the monk. Is it because the spider queen is sexually attracted to the monk, or is it because the spider queen simply wants to keep the monk away from her fellow demons so that she could consume the monk herself? No matter what the answer might be, one thing is clear: the extravagant marriage ceremony, which involves banquet, dance, gift exchange and mass celebration, seems so real that every participant, including the bride, makes no mention of eating the monk’s flesh and drinking his blood. In a way, the spider queen or the bride faces a precarious situation similar to what Nosferatu encounters: Nosferatu is tempted by “a woman pure in heart” and eventually fails to carry out his usual mission, whereas the spider queen is likely tempted by the look of the virgin monk and temporarily forgets what she originally aims for (Fig. 2). Transformations are nothing new for a novel like Journey to the West . It goes without saying that as a creature born with heavenly supernatural powers, the monkey king is capable of transforming himself into numerous manifestations. With the exception of the monk, the rest of the scriptures-seeking team can also undergo transformations if necessary. The two chapters, on which the film was based, for instance, describe in colourful language how Pigsy changes into a fish and plays with the bathing maidens (the scene was reportedly captured by the first-ever underwater cinematography in Chinese cinema; unfortunately, the part is missing in the Norwegian version). In addition, on their way to India, the scriptures-seeking team encounters a great variety of demons and evil spirits who are also masters of transformation and deception. Despite all these, the maidens’ transformation in The Cave is unique. In the scene where the head maiden gets mad at the monk when they are alone in the

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Fig. 2 Undressing herself in front of the trapped monk, now her bridegroom, the queen accidentally reveals her real identity: a gigantic spider demon (Courtesy of the Shanghai Film)

inner cave, she suddenly changes into a gigantic spider and then quickly changes back again. Although scientifically unfounded, in the realm of myth and popular culture (both East and West), spiders, like bats, are believed to be miniature vampires (or gigantic vampires in this context) and only suck the blood of their prey. It is here we find the closest connection between Nosferatu and The Cave and between Western and Chinese vampire cultures. As a matter of fact, the ability to make a group of fair maidens, sometimes in revealing costumes, change into ugly spiders was exactly what the film’s advertising campaign highlighted: It is said that in filmmaking, the most difficult job is to capture the ideal action of an animal, because authenticity is what is absolutely required for. It cannot be carelessly dealt with. When shooting the scene where the Tang monk was forced to get married, Shanghai Photoplay Company tailor-made a gigantic spider for the film. Its shape and look are as vivid as that of a real spider: the gigantic eyes look like bells, and the eight legs look like hooks. Based on careful examination, the spider was also made to act like a real one. Its movement, although manipulated by manpower,

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is not forced, simply as natural as that of a real one, which is especially praiseworthy. (The Shun Pao 1926, 20)

Although a little exaggerated, the effort and money spent on making this transformation as believable and authentic as possible, especially in a time when special effects were heavily dependent on such camera tricks as stop-motion, frame-by-frame shots and multiple exposures, highlight the utmost importance of the role the spiders played in the film. Regrettably, before these gigantic spiders even showcase their vampirish abilities, they are burned alive in the cave of the silken web. The very fact that the allpowerful monkey king is only capable of conquering the spider demons through fire provides another possible link between The Cave (spiders vs. fire) and Nosferatu (Dracula vs. sunlight).

Genre/Gender Wars in the Roaring 1920s Much like the vampire film as a contested and underdeveloped genre, the fanpaiya (vampirish) woman, manifested as either fox spirits or aggrieved ghosts or other supernatural beings, has always been a controversial or even cursed figure in Chinese culture and literature. For example, Pleasurable History of the Zhaoyang Palace (Zhaoyang qushi), a late Ming novel written in vernacular language, features a vampirish female fox, disguised as a fair maiden, coming down from the Pine and Fruit Mountain in search of the male essence. Considered pornographic and vulgar by Confucian moralists since its circulation, the novel was repeatedly listed as a banned book in the Qing dynasty. It was probably due to the May Fourth New Culture Movement, with women’s liberation as an integral part of it, that such a fanpaiya woman began to surface from cultural relegation. Commenting on Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai zhiyi), which features many kinds of fox spirits and supernatural beings, most of them female, Lu Xun (1981c, 333) noted in the early 1920s that these creatures “have ordinary human feelings, understand the mundane world and are so amicable that people are seldom afraid of them”. Around the same time, in the famous essay “The Collapse of Leifeng Pagoda”, Lu Xun (1985a, 101) unequivocally expressed his sympathy for the Lady White Snake and her Green Snake maid, who were supposedly trapped underneath the pagoda by a meddling monk named Fa Hai:

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Fa Hai trapped Lady White Snake in the end, and put her in a small almsbowl. He buried this bowl in the ground, and built a pagoda over it to prevent her getting out – that was Leifeng Pagoda…. My one wish at that time was for Leifeng Pagoda to collapse. When later, grown-up, I went to Hangzhou and saw this tottering pagoda, I felt uncomfortable… and hope it would collapse…. Now that it has collapsed at last, of course everyone in the country should be happy…. A monk should stick to chanting his sutras. If the white snake chose to bewitch Xu Xian [the man], and Xu chose to marry a monster, what business was that of anybody else? Yet he had to set down his sutra and stir up trouble. I expect he was jealous – in fact, I am sure of it.

Lu Xun’s anti-phallic and anti-authoritarian take on the White Snake legend and the Leifeng Pagoda incident sheds light on a possible genderbased reading of The Cave. As mentioned earlier, the literary source on which the film was based does not have the lengthy showcase of the marriage ceremony between the spider queen and the monk. Instead of a “royal” wedding, according to the novel, the monk is first badly treated before being devoured in chapter seventy-two,12 and then is rendered unconscious from poison in chapter seventy-three (Wu 2012, 317–32). Another significant difference between the novel and the film concerns the role the spider women play. In the novel, with the exception of bathing in the pool full of “pure and translucent” water and subsequently succeeding in trapping Pigsy, the seven women are not as talented in martial arts or magical tricks as in the film. They can produce “silken rope about as thick as a duck egg” from their navels, but a Taoist master, who is also eager to have Xuanzang’s flesh, is much more powerful, omniscient and sinister, and he is the one to whom the spider women appeal for help after they are easily subdued by the Monkey. By highlighting the importance of the wedding and elevating the position the spider women hold, therefore, Dan Duyu’s film adaptation seems to intentionally give 12 The novel’s description is as follows: the spider women “dragged him [the monk] like a sheep and threw him to the ground. Then they all held him down, tied him up, and suspended him from the rafters. There is a special name for the way they hung him up there: The Immortal Shows the Way. One hand was strung up by a rope so that it pointed forward. The other hand was fastened to his waist by another rope that was also holding him aloft, and his legs were both held up by a third rope behind him. The three ropes had him suspended from a beam with back on top and his belly pointing down”. See Cheng’en Wu (2012, 317–32).

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the audience the impression, in Lu Xun’s words (1981a, 209), that these female demons “have ordinary human feelings” and are “amicable” and just as engaging in the mundane worldly life as ordinary human beings. In other words, the film version successfully “normalised” the spider women, particularly the spider queen, making them amicable, somewhat lovely, and even a little mischievous. When the spider women are somewhat playfully throwing Pigsy’s head back and forth like an embroidered ball (a Salome allusion?), and when they are talking back and forth about what kind of dress the spider queen should wear for her wedding, one can’t help but wonder, to paraphrase Lu Xun’s take on the White Snake legend, if the spider queen chooses to bewitch Xuanzang and get him into the marriage, what business is that of anybody else? Dan Duyu’s normalisation and humanisation of the spider women suggest The Cave is probably far more in tune with the May Fourth spirit, particularly the call for women’s liberation, than one might think. Over centuries, Western literature and cinema have been fascinated with vampires, monsters and fantastic creatures, and most of these otherworldly beings tend to be male, be it Dracula, the Opera Ghost, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, the Fly, the Gill Man or King Kong. Even nose-twitching witches, who have been usually associated with women and persisted in popular imagination and culture for as long as human history itself, are not necessarily gender specific. In contrast to its Western counterparts, however, Chinese “vampires”, ghosts and strange beings in most cases tend to be female, and fox spirits and serpents are just the two most frequently mobilised examples. Here, once again Lu Xun’s observation may help to shed light on the cause as to why there are so many female spirits in Chinese culture. In an essay titled “The Hanging Woman”, Lu Xun (1985b, 433–40) keenly noted that it is because “as early as the Zhou or Han Dynasty” there were more women who were wronged and died by hanging, and who therefore wanted to come back to life to take revenge: The truth is, when we talk of ghosts who died by hanging we naturally assume they are females, for there have always been more women than men who met their death in this way. There is a spider which suspends itself in mid air from one thread which is called the Hanging Woman in [The Book of ] Er Ya…. Only when she shook back her disheveled hair could people see her face clearly: a round, chalk-white face, thick, pitch-black eyebrows, dark eyelids,

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crimson lips. I have heard that in the opera of some prefectures in eastern Zhejiang the Hanging Goddess also has a false tongue several inches long lolling out; …She shrugged her shoulders slightly, looked around and listened as if startled, happy or angry. At last in mournful tones she began singing slowly: I was a daughter of the Yang family, Ah me, unhappy me!…

The woman was unhappy because she was wronged, oppressed and forced to hang herself. It was also because of this that Lu Xun (1985b, 436) was never afraid of her and would even “run over to look at her” taking revenge on the oppressor. To a certain extent, the normalisation and humanisation of the spider women in The Cave, particularly the foregrounding of their lovely nature as fair maidens, has the similar amicable effect upon the reader (audience). Isn’t it reasonable to infer that, based on the way it was visually presented, the spider queen’s only hope is to live a normal and happy marriage life with the monk, because as a spider demon she has never experienced such a life? In Nosferatu’s hesitation, we see the human flaw of the vampire, and in fanpaiya women’s desire for normal human life, on the other hand, we may hear the echoes of the May Fourth New Culture Movement.

Conclusion For world cinema, the 1920s was a decade of sea change. Aesthetically, many film cultures explored the full potential of this new medium of cinema, resulting in what we know today as the French impressionist movement, the German expressionist movement, the Soviet montage movement and the formation of the classical style of Hollywood. Institutionally, as an apparatus, Hollywood began to absorb all major talents and production resources around the world, and a coming-of-age studio system was on the horizon. Technologically, as silent cinema reached its perfection, particularly in terms of visual storytelling, sound cinema, fortunately or unfortunately, had overcome its initial awkwardness to become the new normal of storytelling favoured by both the industry and the audience. Despite all these changes and transformations, to film scholar Dudley Andrew (2010, 59–87), the 1920s distinguished itself with its cosmopolitanism and internationality, a feature that cinema had

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carried with itself since its birth. In his mapping of “time zones” of world cinema, Andrew divides its development into five “successive historical phases”, namely the cosmopolitan, the national, the federated, the world, the global, and the 1920s represented a decade during which cinema was “the twentieth century’s genuinely international medium” (Andrew 2010, 62). The importance of the 1920s in the development of world cinema reminds one of the necessity to take another critical look at the Chinese cinema of the 1920s, which has been routinely rendered as “licentious, criminal and morally questionable” by many generations of film historians in China and beyond (Pang 2002, 22). If we view cinema truly as an international medium and Chinese cinema as an integral part of an interlinked world film community, then we may be able to go beyond our limited scope of vision and take films like The Cave as the missing pieces that could possibly lead to a better and fuller understanding of the cosmopolitan phase of cinema and of the phases beyond it. To a large extent, this is also what the current chapter aims at: in a time when German Expressionism, French Impressionism and Soviet Montage pushed the envelope of creative landscape of cinema, in a time when Hollywood had accumulated enough human and financial resources to build its studio-based empire, and in a time when Murnau’s Nosferatu was on its way to become a horror/vampire classic, somewhere in Shanghai, the most cosmopolitan city of China, a painter-turned-filmmaker named Dan Duyu was experimenting something new and inventive, something unprecedented in both genre and special effects in his home-based studio. This individual act alone says a lot about the Chinese cinema of the 1920s: a decade of experiments, explorations and pure creativity, a decade not marred by a nation-building rhetoric but marked by its “roaring” diversity in filmmaking. The accidental rediscovery of the incomplete print of The Cave in a small film nation like Norway testifies the transnational flows of world cinema in its initial phase as well as what Dudley Andrew (2010, 59) describes “films from the outset were watched by peoples in the most far-flung areas”, but on the other hand, it also shows how important China is in the mapping of the “time zones” of an interlinked world cinema. Acknowledgements The author would like to give his most heartfelt thanks to the anonymous reviewer for his/her pointed comments on this chapter. Gratefulness and professional respect also go to the two editors of this book, Drs. Lin

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Feng and James Aston, who also organised the excellently executed “Rethinking Film Genres: East Asian Cinema and Beyond” conference held at the University of Hull, UK between 14 and 15 September 2017.

References Andrew, Dudley. 2010. “Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema.” In World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, edited by Nat Durovicova and Kathl Newman, 59–87. New York and London: Routledge. Balmain, Colette. 2017. “East Asian Gothic: A Definition.” Palgrave Communications 3 (31): 1–10. Chen, Jianhua. 2013. “D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai.” In The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, edited by Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chow, 23–38. New York: Oxford University Press. Cheng, Jihua, et al. 1998. A History of the Development of Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying fazhanshi). Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe. Eisner, Lotte H. 1973. Murnau. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harris, Kristine. 1999. “The Romance of the Western Chamber and the Classical Subject Film in 1920s Shanghai.” In Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943, edited by Yingjin Zhang, 51–73. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hensley, Wayne E. 2002. “The Contribution of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu to the Evolution of Dracula.” Literature/Film Quarterly 30: 59–64. Huang, Xuelei. 2014. Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938. Leiden, UK: Brill. Li, Guangyu. 2003. A Biography of Ye Lingfeng (Ye Lingfeng zhuang ). Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe. Li, Suyuan, and Jubin Hu. 1997. Chinese Silent Film History. Beijing: China Film Press. Lu, Xun. 1981a. Complete Works of Lu Xun (Lu Xun Quanji), vol. 4. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. ———. 1981b. Complete Works of Lu Xun (Lu Xun Quanji), vol. 7. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. ———. 1981c. Complete Works of Lu Xun (Lu Xun Quanji), vol. 9. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. ———. 1985a. Lu Xun: Selected Works, vol. 2. Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Foreign Language Press. ———. 1985b. Lu Xun: Selected Works, vol. 1. Translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

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Luo, Liang. 2014. The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China: Tian Han and the Intersection of Performance and Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pang, Laikwan. 2002. Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932–1937 . Lanham and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Schatz, Thomas. 1981. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. New York and London: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Shi, Zhecun. 1933. The General’s Head (Jiangjun de tou). Shanghai: Xinzhongguo shuju. Shuren, Cheng, et al. 1927. China Cinema Year Book, 1927 (1927 nian Zhonghua yingye nianjian). Shanghai: Dadong shuju. Teo, Stephen. 2017. Eastern Westerns: Film and Genre outside and inside Hollywood. London and New York: Routledge. The Shun Pao, 1926–1928. Tian, Han. 2000. Complete Works of Tian Han, vol. 18. Hebei: Huashan wenyi chubanshe. Wilde, Oscar. 1894. Salome: A Tragedy in One Act. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane. Wu, Cheng’en. 2012. The Journey to the West. Translated by and Edited by Anthony C. Yu. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Yeh, Emilie Yueh-yu, ed. 2018. Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China: Kaleidoscopic Histories. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Zheng, Peiwei, and Guiqing Liu, eds. 1996. Silent Film Scripts of China (Zhongguo wusheng dianying juben). Vol. 2, 1038–44. Beijing: China Film Press. Zhou, Xiaoyi. 2001. “The Kiss of Salome: Aestheticism, Consumerism, and Modernity of Chinese Enlightenment” (Shalemei zhi wen: weimei zhuyi, xiaofei zhuyi yu zhongguo qimeng xiandaixing ), Note 8. Comparative Literature in China, 43:86, Vol. 2.

Premodern History and the Contemporary South Korean Period Blockbuster Louisa Mitchell

Prior to the 2000s, the period film had a strong legacy in the growth of Korea’s national cinema but had fallen out of favour to the point of appearing to be a dying genre by the 1990s. As the 2000s emerged there were signs of an unexpected shift. In 2003, several productions were released that were not only remarkably different from previous period films, but also unprecedentedly popular. Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (Lee Joon Ik), a comedy based on the seventh-century Battle of Hwangsanbeol, and Untold Scandal (E J Yong), an erotic drama that adapts the French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Choderlos de Laclos, 1782) to the setting of eighteenth-century Korea, are two notable 2003 releases that can be singled out as examples marking a new era of historical representation in period films. By highlighting genre hybridity and presenting traditional culture through lavish mise-en-scène, these productions mark a shift in how Korean cinema manipulates cultural heritage. As the decade progressed, period films continued to find mainstream success, with 2005’s King and the Clown (Lee Joon Ik), still to this day, one of the highest grossing domestic films of all time. I suggest that period films released in the twenty-first century are representative of a yearning

L. Mitchell (B) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_6

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from both domestic audiences and filmmakers alike for the simultaneous representation of distinctive Korean cultural specificity and the international prestige of globalisation. This is pursued in period films through the hybridisation of Korean tradition with Western forms, in particular via the appropriation of Hollywood blockbuster conventions, such as narrative structures, characterisations and aesthetic spectacles. This chapter explores the development of the Korean blockbuster as an indigenised global form and how the interpretation of Hollywood stylisations has impacted on the representation of the past in the nation’s period film. Though the categories of ‘nation’ and ‘national cinema’ are debated and problematised terms, I use them in this chapter to draw attention to the twenty-firstcentury revival of South Korea’s domestic film industry and to discuss the context of the previous century’s experiences of colonialism, independence, war and post-war nation building. As Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient (2015, 6) states, “in the context of East Asian cinema studies, the advent of globalisation and transnationalism introduced an imperative to renew outdated concepts of national cinema”. While a discussion of contemporary Korean film as a national or transnational cinema is beyond the scope of this chapter, I use the terms here more broadly to help explore the phenomenon of the Korean blockbuster in recent cinema history. The Korean blockbuster is regarded as the domestic film industry’s attempt to revitalise the market by pushing the production of large-scale films, using the logic that a big investment meant a big return, which Ki Ju Shin (2009, 15) describes as an “anxiety for scale”. Academics such as Chris Berry (2003), Jinhee Choi (2010), Hyunseon Lee (2016) and HyeRyoung Ok (2009) have written on the specificities of the Korean blockbuster, asking what criteria should be used to compare them to Hollywood productions, and examining their role in Korea’s national cinema. Ok (2009, 44) writes that the hybrid tendency of Korean blockbusters “puts into play the two contradictory terms of locality and universality”. She notes that the Korean blockbuster is simultaneously rooted in Hollywood conventions and diverting from them. Starting with the 1999 film Shiri (Kang Je Gyu), the Korean film industry pushed the production of big budget high action spectacles. As Ok (2009, 44) continues, “Hollywood, which was once the antithesis against which Korean New Wave defined its aesthetics and political stance, turned into the ‘source’ of styles and a market competitor”. While the political liberalisation of the Korean film industry in the early 1990s led to Korean

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New Wave creating a cinema of realism to deal with the recent past, the emergence of the Korean blockbuster was instead based on an economic shift. Korean films began to outsell Hollywood imports on the domestic film market but did so in a state of mimicry. Chris Berry claims that the appropriation of blockbuster conventions in Korean cinema acts to de-westernise the form and localise the global. He (2003, 218) states that: The blockbuster is no longer American owned. The idea may be borrowed and translated, but this should not be understood in terms of the original and the copy, where divergence from the original marks the failure of authenticity. Instead, in the postcolonial politics and globalised economics of blockbusters, borrowing and translation are only the first step on the road towards agency and creativity.

I want to further this argument by also including the twenty-first-century development of the period film genre. The rise in historical reconstruction and representation in recent Korean cinema has merged with the simultaneously rising blockbuster form. Jinhee Choi (2010, 35) draws attention to the explicit use of Korean social issues and history in the blockbuster, stating that “one of the peculiarities of Korean blockbusters can be found in their appeal to a shared sense of Korean history as one possible means of differentiation from Hollywood and other national cinemas”. While many attempts at sciencefiction-themed blockbusters, such as Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (Jang Sun Woo, 2002) and Natural City (Min Byeong Cheon, 2003), and the more recent Lucid Dream (Kim Joon Sung, 2017) and Illang: The Wolf Brigade (Kim Jee Woon, 2018), have failed at the box office, those dealing with twentieth-century or premodern history are often released to large commercial and critical success. The Korean blockbuster has emerged as a phenomenon that is persistently reliant on the depiction of historical events and the reinterpretation of the lives of historic figures. Hyunseon Lee (2016, 262) makes similar observations regarding the historical subject matter of the Korean blockbuster, discussing the form’s reconstruction of the past through the generic appropriation of Hollywood aesthetic devices and spectacle-driven narrative structures. While Lee and Choi each stress the Korean blockbuster’s engagement with the nation’s twentieth-century experiences of colonisation and war, I want to expand this to include the use of premodern history. In doing so, I

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specifically draw attention to the period genre, which has been largely neglected in the study of Korean cinema in comparison with films that depict recent history. In this chapter, I use the term ‘premodern’ in the context of Korean history to refer to the period before the modernisation process began in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a process that contributed to the rapid decline of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897) and the establishment of a modern nation state. More specifically, premodern here also refers to the history, culture and ideology of the Joseon period.

The Period Film in Korean Cinema History Before highlighting several key releases that demonstrate the contemporary changes to the period film, I first want to provide an overview of the genre in Korean cinema. As within other national cinemas, the Korean period film genre refers generally to works of fiction wherein the narrative and characters are based in the nation’s past. Issues arise when defining this ‘past’. In Yun Mi Hwang’s study of the Korean period film, she outlines the differing limitations that scholars have used to demarcate the genre. Critics’ main concern is when Korean history ‘ends’, with observers disagreeing on how to limit the scope of genre. As Hwang (2011, 4) summarises: While Yi Gil Seong notes that the [period genre] usually does not apply to films depicting the Japanese occupation period (1910-1945), Yi Byeong Hun […] sets the time from ancient history to the end of the colonial era (circa 1945). What can be easily overlooked in such clear-cut definitions is the fact that ‘historical drama’, by nature, is always in transition as the notion of the past changes over time.

She draws attention to representation of an unspecified past, in which the historical setting and iconography are utilised as backdrops. The use of folklore and classical literature, for instance, has been present throughout the history of Korean cinema. Prior to the 1945 division, the period film played a key part in the emergence of Korean production in the silent cinema of the colonial era. Amongst the first films made was The Story of Chunhyang (Goshu Hayakawa, 1923), an adaptation of a classic folk story from the Joseon era, the success of which inspired the production of similar films such as The Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon (Kim Hyeong Hwang, 1924) and The Story of Shim Cheong (Lee Gyeong Son, 1925), also based

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on folktales. The Chunhyang folktale tells the story of two young lovers who are separated by social class. Mong Ryong, an educated upper-class man destined for government service, and Chun Hyang, a beautiful but low-ranking daughter of a concubine, fall in love at first sight and marry the same day. When Mong Ryong must leave to take his state service exams, the two promise to remain faithful to each other until they can be together again. The narrative celebrates Chun Hyang’s virtuous and chaste nature as she is tortured and imprisoned for refusing to submit to a corrupt local official’s desires, before she and Mong Ryong are eventually and happily reunited. The folktale has been examined as a reflection of the oppressive social structure of Joseon society and of the legacy of patriarchal values and morality. With its origins in seventeenth-century Korean culture, the story remains significant in contemporary culture. The continued adaptations of Chunhyangjeon and other folktales demonstrate not just the way in which traditional values are reinterpreted in contemporary society, but also the methods used to introduce the new medium of film to the Korean audience. Similar to the way in which Western silent cinema started by using works of classical literature and theatre as a source for cinematic productions, Korea began by looking to its premodern heritage for inspiration. These early films were crucial in shaping the Korean audience’s perception of the new art form and using indigenous source materials such as Joseon folktales helped audiences understand the medium. The Chunhyangjeon folktale has been retold and reinterpreted throughout Korean cinema and consistently appears at several landmark moments. The nation’s first sound film, The Tale of Chunhyang (Lee Myeong Woo, 1935), was another adaptation of the story and a great success. The film provided an outlet for the colonised Koreans who related to the oppression of the lead characters and the villainy of those in power during the era of Japanese occupation. As Hyangjin Lee (2000, 72) comments, “the past world unfolded in The Tale of Chunhyang reminded them of their lost images and their longing for a peaceful life free from foreign interference and exploitation”. As the first sound film, the filmmakers of the time were self-conscious about the involvement of the Japanese in domestic productions. The first adaptation had been made by a Japanese director and Korean filmmakers were insistent that domestic films be made by Koreans and for Koreans. The inclusion of the Korean language in the first sound film had a significant impact in the industry. While the audience was happy to hear their own language on screen, the Japanese powers saw this as an

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act of colonial resistance and in 1938 banned the use of Korean language across the nation; by 1942, films were no longer being made in Korean. As part of Japan’s cultural imperialism, films were used by the Japanese powers to demonstrate Western prosperity and innovation, in order to impose a process of modernity onto Korea, conceptualised as a form of Westernisation. As Lee (2000, 22) writes, “the film policy of the Japanese colonial government focused primarily on obliterating Korean culture and manipulating the colonial subjects ideologically”. By the end of Japanese colonial rule and the liberation of the Korean peninsula, the cinema audience had grown accustomed to the Hollywood style imported through American films. After the peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel in 1945, South Korea was to be held under the administration of the United States until the peninsula could regain independence. Ultimately, the peninsula became permanently divided in 1948 between the North and South, with North Korea following the Communism of the Soviet Union and South Korea following the democratic model of the United States. Despite its newly regained independence, South Korea would remain under America’s economic and cultural influence. Following liberation and continuing during the Korean War (1950–1953) that came in its wake, in which North Korea invaded the South, the nation’s cinema industry persevered. This time saw the simultaneous Americanisation/Westernisation of audience tastes as dictated by the continued inflow of Hollywood films, and local filmmakers’ use of domestic cinema as a means of political, nationalistic and patriotic expression. Use of the Joseon folktales once again proved impactful following the post-Korean war era. Chunhyang Story (Lee Gyu Hwan, 1955) was a record-breaking success, making back over 28 times its budget (Oh 2007a, 139). Despite the nation being in a state of poverty and reconstruction, the commercial reaction to the film was staggering. The film’s success triggered a stampede of similarly historically themed productions. While in the colonial and liberation eras the period film was an intermittently used genre, with focus instead being on films depicting the contemporary state of the nation, by the late 1950s period productions were booming, accounting for as much as fifty per cent of films released (Oh 2007b, 141). The financial success of these productions enabled the quick recovery of the post-war film industry and ushered in a Golden Age of Korean cinema. The Golden Age, lasting for nearly two decades, saw a boom in cinematic creativity and popularity. Both audience figures and the number of

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films produced reached record highs. Only fourteen films were produced during the Korean War and the majority of filmmaking equipment was destroyed so, in an effort to restart the film industry, Syngman Rhee’s government introduced policies that exempted the war-stricken industry from taxation. The incentive and restructuring of the industry boosted production substantially. Only five films were made in 1950. Production rose to nearly twenty films per year after the policies were introduced in 1953 and by the end of the decade had soared to 108 films in 1959 (Oh 2007c, 134). This rate continued into the 1960s, with over 100 films being made each year. Korean cinema’s post-war renaissance was reliant on genre filmmaking, during which the period film quickly became established as the most prominent. Oh Young Sook (2007b, 142) notes that there were three main period film subtypes during this era. Firstly, there were films like Chunhyang Story, which were based on works of classical Korean literature and folk stories. These presented familiar stories from Korea’s heritage that audiences were comforted by in a tense era of instability. Secondly, films such as The Tragic Prince (Ahn Jong Hwa, 1956) focused on true historical events, especially those based on dynastic power struggles and vengeful tragedies. Oh (2007b, 142) writes that themes of revenge in this type of period film represent “the mass unconscious of 1950s society”, stating that “the message of 1950s films that personal causes lay behind historic events and individual desires were the driving force behind public order reflected the dominant thinking of the 1950s, when society began to focus on individualism and the growing pursuit of individual maturity”. Thirdly, films like Hwang Jin I (Jo Keung Ha, 1957) depicted the lives of lauded historical figures and national heroes. The focus was not just on the figures and their associated history, but the ideologies that they represented, such as self-motivation and determination, and a forward-thinking outlook, hinting at Korean society’s move towards modernity that was, at that time, well underway. These period film subgenres demonstrate the ways in which Koreans of the modernising age were beginning to reevaluate their relationship with the past and retell stories in a way that reflected contemporary sensibilities. Into the 1960s, period film flourished, proving to be the dominant genre of the decade. However, the trend in quick and similar productions meant that the form was always also maligned. Critics complained that the history being presented on screen was inaccurate and insignificant, arguing, for instance, that the Joseon setting was merely used as a lavish

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backdrop to tell repetitive stories (Oh 2007b, 142). As quoted earlier, Oh comments on the ideology of the characters in these films being influenced by the reconfiguration of traditional and Western values in society. In spite of the criticisms, period film had its heyday in the 1960s, especially those made by the director Shin Sang Ok, including, Seong Chun Hyang (1961), Prince Yeonsan (1961) and Eunuch (1968). Films like these took advantage of recent cinematic developments in widescreen and colour technology to reproduce period details on an epic scale, with lavish costumes and sets. They commanded high budgets and were often box-office hits, being considered a type of early event cinema. Seong Chun Hyang , for instance, marks an important turning point in Korean cinema, being the first to be made using colour CinemaScope technology. Though CinemaScope had been present in Korea since the premiere of The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) in 1955, the first film to be produced with the technology in Korea was not for several more years. The first attempt at a black-and-white CinemaScope film, Life (Lee Kang Chun, 1958), failed to impress due to its poor quality. Nonetheless, the enthusiasm for film going in the era meant public demand for cinematic innovation remained high, in hope to keep up with the wider social changes during Korea’s race towards modernity. The popularity of other colour and widescreen formats in Korea such as Panavision and Vistavision proved the audience’s acceptance of the new generation of cinema technology. Much like the release of Chunhyang Story in 1955, Shin’s full-colour adaptation of the folk story became a ground-breaking event in Korean cinema history and acted as a catalyst that encouraged further industrialisation of the local film industry. The highest budgets of the decade were reserved for period productions, intent to show off both Korean history and the nation’s technical achievements. Prince Yeonsan is one such film that made full use of the new format. The film depicts the life of the titular Yeonsangun, Korea’s famed tyrannical fifteenthcentury king who is remembered for his bloody purges, kidnappings and the suppression of speech. He has gone on to become one of Joseon’s most portrayed monarchs on screen. Prince Yeonsan is emblematic of the type of hit period films that dominated the era. Making use of the colour widescreen format, Prince Yeonsan is filmed largely in medium shots that are often filled with lines of characters in elaborate royal court dress. Similarly, with Eunuch, one of the last successful period films of the 1960s, the film displays how historical reconstruction on screen had adapted to the widespread use of the new production formats. Throughout Eunuch

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there is the vibrant use of colour and exaggerated camera angles, especially when establishing settings. Aside from the visual developments of the decade, the film also reflects the change in tone and topic that had become the trend for period film as the 1960s progressed. While audiences had previously found comfort and familiarity of the relatively joyful adaptations of folk stories, escapism was increasingly sought in the depiction of decadence and violence. Though films such as Seong Chun Hyang and Prince Yeonsan are not free from stories of violence, on the contrary, they do depict torture, executions and imprisonment, their characters are regarded with more sympathy. As period film progressed throughout the decade, the subject matter of the genre’s biggest hits became increasingly eroticised and vicious. A new sensibility emerged that veered towards cruelty. As Lee Gil Sung (2007, 187) explains: The royal court period films of the 1960s showed sympathy for the sufferings of the man of power, needed to rebuild the nation but simultaneously tormented by human desires. However, in the late 1960s, only degrading cruelty was portrayed, because the genre films emphasised the inhuman side of power […] As well as just being a rebellion by the victim or approval of resistance, compared to the early 1960s [the] unconventional and unprecedented endings can be interpreted as political signs of the times.

Whereas Seong Chun Hyang ends with the happy reunion of the two lovers, Eunuch ends with multiple murders, including regicide. As Lee (2007, 187) summarises, the conclusions to these types of narrative demonstrate how the period films of this era, like the 1950s that preceded, used a premodern setting to depict the politics and sensibility of the contemporary era. The 1970s saw a dramatic decline in the genre. Along with the rest of the cinema industry, period films were losing out to the rise in television ownership. The genre found a new home in television drama, and the period films that were released were so infused with governmentsponsored propaganda that audiences were left unimpressed. The decade saw the continued dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, who, since coming into power following his military coup of 1961, had been utilising nationalistic, anti-communist ideology and policies to legitimise his government. By 1972, Park’s increasingly militarised regime was being reinforced

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through government policies that encouraged the production of nationalistic films. Jae Seok An (2007, 246) remarks that “they had to be films that ‘inspire patriotism’ and ‘build national identity’, which was understood as loyalty and filial piety, defence of one’s country, and sacrificing one’s personal interest for the public good”. Period films that reinforced this ideology focused on portraying the lives of figures who contributed to the future of the nation. For example, A War Diary (Jang Il Ho, 1977) depicts Yi Sun-sin, the famed naval commander, as a self-sacrificing war hero, and King Sejong the Great (Jang Il Ho, 1978) tells the story of Joseon’s fourth king who made major advancements in the nation’s science and literature. While period films had been toying with provocative themes since the late 1960s, it was not until the 1980s when the genre collided with the erotica boom that the form changed dramatically. Korean cinema’s erotica boom of the 1980s has been attributed to the authoritarian presidency of Chun Doo-hwan and his appeasement policies that sought to draw the public’s attention away from his oppressive politics and towards popular culture. His government relaxed rules concerning curfews and school uniforms, launched the nation’s first professional sports teams and hosted the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympic Games. In regard to cinema, the liberalisation of the industry that filmmakers had been demanding throughout the 1970s was finally granted with a decrease in censorship, especially concerning sexual content. Making use of this creative freedom and the removal of the curfew laws, late-nights film theatres developed that quickly flooded with cheaply produced eroticthemed productions. In order to generate new interest in the period film, filmmakers took on the trend of cinematic erotica, offering what television historical productions could not. Eo Wu Dong (Lee Chang Ho, 1985), Byeon Gang Soe (Um Jong Son, 1986) and Sa Bang Ji (Song Kyeong Shik, 1988), for instance, mix soft-porn spectacles with lavish period details. Simultaneously, another branch of period film was emerging in Korea’s arthouse cinema. Productions aimed at the international festival circuit were commonly narratives that critiqued Korea’s Confucian heritage. Despite being set in the Joseon dynasty, they could be easily read as commentaries on the state of modern Korea. Lee Doo-yong’s Spinning the Tales of Cruelty towards Women (1984) and Im Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Woman (1986) gained international acclaim and contributed to Korean film’s recognition as a significant national cinema. Spinning the

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Tales depicts the harsh and abusive life of a fifteenth-century widow, while The Surrogate Women tells the story of a love affair between a wealthy nobleman and a servant he keeps imprisoned as his secret mistress. The bodies of women in these films become representative of hardship and endurance of both women’s suppression under patriarchal structures and the state of Korean’s rapidly changing late-twentieth-century society. The decline of audience interest in the period film meant the genre had almost disappeared from cinema by the 1990s, with audiences turning en masse to television historical productions. Following the decades of policy interference and gratuitous erotica, the period film had lost the appeal it once had in the post-war Golden Age. The emergence of Korean blockbusters towards the end of the 1990s was taken by filmmakers as an opportunity to give the genre a new lease of life. Eternal Empire (Park Jong Won, 1994) stands out as being a pre-Korean blockbusterera attempt at making a Western-style historical epic, portraying the royal court power struggles of the late eighteenth century. However, despite being a critical success and winning several prominent awards, the film was not popular with domestic audiences and has been largely neglected in discussions of Korean film. Shortly after the global success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) and Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000), Korea similarly embraced the historical grand-scale epic, the likes of which had never been seen before in domestic productions. Three films were released in quick succession that took their historical settings from ancient and medieval Korea: The Legend of Gingko (Park Jae Hyun, 2000), Bichunmoo (Kim Young Jun, 2000) and Musa (Kim Sung Soo, 2001). The latter is remembered for being, at the time, the most expensive Korean film ever made, with a high level of accuracy in its depiction of the fourteenth-century Goryeo dynasty (918–1392).

Representing Premodern History in Postmodern Korea While the success of the domestic film industry over the past twenty years had been considered a second renaissance for Korean cinema, this change has more specifically seen the recovery of the Korea’s period genre. Throughout the past decade, especially, the period film in Korean cinema has taken on the blockbuster mentality of spectacle, scale and excess. Stephen Teo (2013, 53) notes that “historical blockbusters are national monuments of a kind, and the ‘monumental style’ is a style of

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historicist filmmaking that sets out to produce a narrative of the nation. This style is more devoted to capturing the spiritual essence intrinsic to a people and its history and this is perhaps more important than the mere details of accuracy”. Contemporary Korean period blockbusters reflect similar attitudes in the way that they prioritise feeling over facts through the manipulation of heritage, history and tradition. The films I highlight in this chapter each rely on a particular aspect of Korea’s premodern Joseon heritage, whether through the re-adaptation of folklore, the playful manipulation of fact and fiction or the continued glorification of an idolised figure. In these films, the past is seen as a spectacle, and they show how blockbuster cinematography has been adopted and used as presentational prowess to show the capabilities of Korea’s contemporary national cinema. First, Jeon Woo Chi (Choi Dong Hoon, 2009) is a comedic action fantasy film about the titular folkloric figure, whose origins go back to the fifteenth century. The Taoist wizard begins the film in the Joseon era before being transported 500 years into present-day Korea, where he must both defeat evil and navigate the urbanised Seoul metropolis. The film can be seen as a turning point in Korean cinema and the nation’s period genre. Produced with analogue film, Jeon Woo Chi is one of the last Korean blockbusters of the 2000s to be filmed using celluloid before the majority of filmmaking turned to digital technology. James Austin, in his essay on the digitisation of French cinema, especially in the context of historical reconstruction, questions how the industry took on the Hollywood aesthetic of digital effects and localised them. He (2004, 296) considers how the global economic and cinematic trends around the turn of the millennium “may have encouraged a moment of introspection about what would become of France, its identity, its place in the world in relation to the American superpower, and about what would become of its cinema. The future looked relatively bright, in fact, if not entirely clear, and so it was perhaps a propitious time to work out what to do with American technologies in the cinema”. The same situation occurred in Korean cinema around the same time. In Korea’s specific context, the last years of the twentieth century resulted in the economic disaster of the IMF crisis. The nation’s economy had developed substantially since the 1950s but suffered greatly during the wider Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. As part of the International Monetary Fund bailout package, the Korean economy was required to undergo extensive reforms and restructuring, leading to wide unemployment and the collapse of thousands of

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businesses. Aside from economic issues, the crisis also ignited a number of social problems, including a rise in suicide, divorce and violent crime. The economic recovery in the next century also caused the nation to look both globally and internally about what to do with its cinema. With the emergence of digital effects and the simultaneous renaissance of the film industry, it could be argued that the localisation of cinema’s digitalisation spurred on the hybridisation of Korean aesthetics. When relating this idea to period film’s resurgence, the form appears to have gradually taken on the digitalisation of the past that is consuming many national cinemas. Jeon Woo Chi marks the start of a transition into this digitisation and how the period genre had begun appropriating blockbuster conventions. Though made with analogue, the film demonstrates the key qualities of the Korean blockbuster’s embrace of digital cinematography and Hollywood-style spectacle. The blend of traditional culture with elaborate action sequences, pyrotechniques and CGI monsters shows how Korean cinema is capable of producing blockbuster-style films and willing to playfully display the nation’s local premodern heritage. The film Masquerade (Choo Chang Min, 2012) demonstrates the postmodern quality of Korean period blockbuster. In the film, the seventeenth-century king, Gwanghae, orders a body double to take his place in the palace following rumours of an assassination plot. While the double is initially only supposed to be for appearances sake, he soon begins making major political decisions of his own and it becomes clear that he is a better ruler than the actual king. Masquerade is an example of a how the Korean period blockbuster uses the past more as an exploitable resource to create a non-factual, original story, rather than viewing history as something that needs recreating through cinema as an archival document. The dual role of the lead actor Lee Byung-hun, the emphasis on performativity and the knowingly revisionist depiction of the past draw attention to the continued use of postmodern aesthetics disrupting a premodern heritage. While a complex and debated term, I use ‘postmodern’ in the context of this discussion to refer to a period of time, namely from the 1980s and 1990s, rather than a theoretical movement. Korea’s modernity process that lasted throughout the twentieth century is seen to have come to an end when the nation transitioned in an economic and cultural powerhouse. Postmodern, in this sense, also refers to a reaction to modernity and its effect on Korean culture and society.

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These films that knowingly blur the lines between fact and fiction have drawn criticism from Korean film scholars for using history as a superficial backdrop. In An Si Hwan’s essay on recent film trends, he notices the rise in a lack of visual depth and the increased focus paid to the surface, which he sees as postmodern traits. An (2015, 196) writes that “no other genre in Korean cinema than period films from the 2000s obsesses over the surface as much. [They] attempt to translate historical spaces (including costumes and props) from a modern viewpoint, and as a result, ‘hybridisation’ of the present and the past occurs”. In his view, the hybridisation of modern issues with traditional iconography reduces the past to an aesthetic, nothing more than a visual tool to be viewed under a postmodern gaze, one that reads the past from the privileged viewpoint of the present. As such, he (2015, 195–97) considers contemporary period films to create a voyeuristic and aesthetic space. Similarly, Kyung Hyun Kim debates the impact of globalised and hybridised Korean culture on its cinema’s visual representation of the past. He (2011, 211) claims “the virtuality rendered in these new films is a Korea that insists on blurring the boundary between the way things really were and the way things are remembered, or the way things now appear in our consciousness”. He (2011, 211) writes that through the acceptance of digital effects and blockbuster cinematography in period productions, Korean historical representation has entered an era of superficiality and a demise of authenticity. Kim (2011, 211) believes that this disruption signifies a larger ‘anxiety about forgetting’ in Korean culture, which can be seen through the recycling and reconceptualising of Korea’s past. As seen in films like Masquerade and others such as King and the Clown, The Face Reader (Han Jae Rim, 2013) and The Royal Tailor (Lee Won Suk, 2014), the appropriation of local Korean heritage and globalised digital cinematography demonstrates the domestic film industry’s shift towards a hybridised blockbuster form. The war film, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (Kim Han Min), was released to much hype in the summer of 2014. The Admiral depicts the sixteenth-century Battle of Myeongnyang, in which famed naval commander Yi Sun-sin led his thirteen ships to victory against the Japanese fleet with hundreds of vessels. This film currently stands as the most commercially successful film ever at the Korean box office but has drawn criticism over its weak narrative and characterisation in contrast to the emphasis on the spectacular depiction of warfare. The film’s portrayal of its protagonist as a mixture of tragic hero and warrior ideal can be

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interpreted as a return to overtly conservative values but I propose that this may be due to the inherent masculine nature of the blockbuster, as violent heroism is not only found in Korean cinema but also Hollywood. In regard to the first Korean blockbuster, Shiri, Kyung Hyun Kim (2004, 10) writes that “the masculinity of Shiri’s protagonist veered away from the Korean male icons of the 1980s, but did so by simulating Hollywood action heroes. Alert, expeditious, and physical, the protagonist represented a popular cookie-cutter version of blockbustertype masculinity”. He explains that the remasculinisation at work in Korea’s post-traumatic cinema was utilised not just in the realism of Korean New Wave, but also the sensationalised manner of the emerging blockbuster form. As Korea appropriated the blockbuster and specific subgenre conventions, they were localised to deal with Korean issues, such as the nation’s twentieth-century experiences of colonialism, independence, war and post-war nation building. Korean blockbusters took the trope of the hypermasculine and violent protagonist to fulfil the desired remasculinisation of Korean culture. I argue that this is the same mentality that developed the Hollywood blockbuster form originally. The hypermasculine heroism and narratives of patriotic vigour developed as a traumatic reaction from white heteronormative masculinity towards a post-civil rights era. Hollywood’s ideal of masculinity in this era reinforced its protagonists with traditional values regarding nationalism and gender. Because of the dominance of Hollywood productions, these depictions became the global standard of a heroic male protagonist. As such, the development of the Korean blockbuster and its appropriation of Hollywood conventions is rooted in this ideal of a violent hypermasculinity. Due to the social and cultural change in Korean society by the end of the twentieth century, such as the patriarchal backlash to the IMF crisis, the Korean blockbuster emerged as a similar reaction to the increasing vulnerability of postmodern Korean masculinity. As Kim (2004, 33) proclaims: The fermentation of masculine identity is historically precipitated by the dramatically changing urban landscape where territorial control is being violently contested. Violence necessarily engenders trauma when the ownership of land changes hands overnight […] The “dominant fiction” […] seeks to neutralise the shock of trauma by channelling the individual experience of disruption and disorientation into a collectivised sense of fraternal identity.

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The emergence of the violent male protagonist in contemporary Korean cinema and especially in the nation’s blockbusters is in part a traumatic reaction to the rapid social changes of modernisation. The depiction of violent acts is a way of remasculinising Korean cinema and culture by enforcing hypermasculine ideals of strength and leadership. In The Admiral , and other Korean period blockbusters like it, the violence of the warfare could be seen as a way of remasculinising the period film genre. Since the genre has, since the early 2000s, increasingly utilised alternative perspectives to explore heritage, for instance by including narratives of the lower class experiences, female oppression and homosexual desire, the hypermasculinity presented in war epics reinforces the idolisation of a heroic warrior past. The immense commercial success of The Admiral has sparked a new trend in historical filmmaking that relies on the epic and stylised reconstruction of Korea’s premodern wars and its warrior heroes. Releases such as Warriors of the Dawn (Jeong Yoon Cheol, 2017), The Fortress (Hwang Dong Hyuk, 2017) and The Great Battle (Kim Gwang Sik, 2018) are recent examples of the continuing presence of ambitiously scaled historical productions that demonstrate a higher level of conservatism than other Korean period films due to the blockbuster mentality towards masculinity and nationalism.

Conclusion To summarise, Korean period blockbusters present the premodern past through a postmodern gaze, influenced by a global standardised form and hybridised to include local issues and representation. With films like Jeon Woo Chi and Masquerade, the postmodern gaze appears apolitical. In contrast, the recent trend in large-scale war epics uses a distinctly politicised gaze, glorifying the nation’s militaristic heritage and a heroic warrior masculinity. The use of historic figures in all these productions is reinterpretive, making use of a historical imagination born from the social and cultural conditions of the present. With the use of epically depicted battles, male heroes, and the performance of masculinity as spectacle, these period blockbusters have assumed a visual language that appears transcultural. In idolising the historical presentation of the male body, they also exploit Korean history and function as part of a nationalistic agenda. On the whole, the contemporary Korean blockbuster emulates Hollywood, but utilises the form to speak for local issues and subjectivities. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the recent changes to

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the period genre and how the representation of the nation’s premodern history is used to address modern anxieties and sensibilities. With the appropriation of blockbuster conventions, over the past decade Korean period films have gone from being ostracised productions to being top-grossing and crowd-pleasing spectacles.

References An, Jae Seok. 2007. “National Policy Films Under the Shadow of Control.” In Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance, edited by Kim Mee Hyun, 245–47. Seoul: Communication Books. An, Sihwan. 2015. “Period Films in the Postmodern or the ‘Enjoy!’ Era.” International Journal of Korean History 20 (2) (August): 189–97. Austin, James F. 2004. “Digitizing Frenchness in 2001: On a “Historic” Moment in the French Cinema.” French Cultural Studies 15 (3): 281–99. Berry, Chris. 2003. “‘What’s Big About the Big Film?’ “De-westernizing” the Blockbuster in Korea and China.” In Movie Blockbusters, edited by Julian Stringer, 217–29. London: Routledge. Choi, Jinhee. 2010. The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Chung, Hye Seung, and David Scott Diffrient. 2015. Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema. London: Rutgers University Press. Hwang, Yun Mi. 2011. “South Korean Historical Drama: History, Heritage and Cultural Industry.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews. Kim, Hyung Hyun. 2004. The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. London: Duke University Press. ———. 2011. Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era. London: Duke University Press. Lee, Gil Sung. 2007. “Exuberant Sets and Costumes in Period Films.” In Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance, edited by Kim Mee Hyun, 185–87. Seoul: Communication Books. Lee, Hyangjin. 2000. Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lee, Hyunseon. 2016. “The South Korean Blockbuster and a Divided Nation.” International Journal of Korean History 21 (1) (February): 259–64. Oh, Young Sook. 2007a. “Chung-hyang Story Pioneers the Korean Cinema Revival.” In Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance, edited by Kim Mee Hyun, 138–41. Seoul: Communication Books.

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———. 2007b. “The Period Films Boom.” In Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance, edited by Kim Mee Hyun, 141–43. Seoul: Communication Books. ———. 2007c. “The Revival of the Film Industry 1954–1962.” In Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance, edited by Kim Mee Hyun, 131–36. Seoul: Communication Books. Ok, HyeRyoung. 2009. “The Politics of the Korean Blockbuster: Narrating the Nation and the Spectacle of “Globalisation” in 2009 Lost Memories.” Spectator 29 (2) (Fall): 37–47. Shin, Ki Ju. 2009. “Film Industry at the Crossroads.” Korean Cinema Today 1 (May/June): 14–17. Teo, Stephen. 2013. The Asian Cinema Experience: Styles, Spaces, Theory. London: Routledge.

Chinese Censorship, Genre Mediation, and the Puzzle Films of Leste Chen Gary Bettinson

The censorious film industry of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), though mercurial and mutating apace, has elicited a fixed set of critical axioms. According to standard accounts,1 mainland cinema is inimical to creative free expression. State regulations on screen content, curbing depictions of crooked cops, demonic ghosts, and homosexuals (among sundry other phenomena), severely curtail the filmmaker’s choice of subject matter. A second claim holds that Beijing censorship stymies narrative innovation. Since deviation from accepted practice is risky, filmmakers cling to “safe formulas” and cookie-cutter plotting (Anonymous 2019); moreover, because China has no film rating system, scenarists rely on simplistic narratives easily grasped by viewers of all ages. Then there is the thesis that China’s film culture nullifies genre experimentation. 1 Bono Lee, for instance, contends that China’s film industry denies Hong Kong filmmakers “the fertile ground of creative freedom that they experienced in 1990s Hong Kong” (Lee 2012, 191), while Zhou Yuxing asserts that mainland censorship “creates an unfavourable environment for cultural creativity” (Zhou 2015, 239). Cognate claims abound within the literature. I provide an overview and critique of the standard perspective in Bettinson (2020).

G. Bettinson (B) Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_7

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As censorship squeezes out certain “vexing” categories (horror, science fiction, violent policiers, ghost tales), filmmakers find themselves confined to a knot of officially sanctioned genres (bombastic main-melody epics, inoffensive youthpics, chaste romances). This chapter aims to redress these entrenched fallacies. Taking as an exemplar Leste Chen Cheng-tao’s The Great Hypnotist (PRC, 2014) and Battle of Memories (PRC, 2017), I try to show that film censorship—until recently under the aegis of the China Film Bureau and the State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT)2 —neither precludes nor vitiates dynamic storytelling and inventive genre engagement. Far from embracing narrative simplicity, the two Chen films exemplify puzzle film plotting. As per the puzzle film category,3 both movies generate a radical play with filmic narration and viewer cognition, throwing into disarray the spectator’s sense-making procedures. Apt to be violated are the primacy effect (the viewer’s durable first impressions about the story world, as cued by the text), the person schema (the viewer’s default ascription of humanoid traits to fictive agents), and paradigm scenarios (prototypical situations that orient the viewer to the action). No less typically, puzzle films muster their complex effects by deforming genre norms in unpredictable ways. In all, these fictions seek to engage the viewer in strenuous cognitive effort, arousing the “knowledge emotions” (confusion, curiosity, interest) and provoking the viewer’s desire to subdue cognitive dissonance (Berliner 2017, 27; Kiss and Willemsen 2018, 106). The pay-off is an “exhilarated pleasure” at encountering both cognitive challenge and aesthetic novelty (Berliner 2017, 17). The Great Hypnotist and Battle of Memories launch bold forays into proscribed genre territory as well. The former openly plumbs supernatural horror, yet China’s film culture notoriously spurns ghost tales. Why do Beijing censors balk at such stories? One impetus for suppression stems from the ghost’s political potentiality. As Laikwan Pang (2011, 461) observes, “A ghost can be highly allegorical, and its representations might be encoded and decoded in ways over which the state has no control”. Ghost tales harbour the potential for political subversion, 2 SAPPRFT was abolished in 2018, whereupon the Communist Party’s publicity department acquired regulatory control of the mainland’s film releases. 3 Seminal studies of this mode of narration include Buckland (2009, 2014) and Kiss and Willemsen (2018).

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and even innocuous genre plots carry the risk of political appropriation by radical factions. To impel the policing of ghost films, then, is a continual mission for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Similarly, futuristic science fiction—the genre to which Battle of Memories ostensibly conforms—typically falls prey to authoritarian censorship. Particularly thorny are those dystopian sci-fi plots whose Chinese settings suggest a world off-kilter, as if, by some innate deficiency, Communist governance could eventuate in social catastrophe. It is common for critics to argue that film censorship hobbles a genre’s evolution. “Sometimes external factors stunt a genre’s development”, as one writer asserts (Berliner 2017, 194).4 Yet this amounts to a teleological perspective, whereby a genre progresses “naturally” and inexorably towards an ideal state of fruition, except when external forces retard its growth. We find here an echo of the fallacies sketched above. China’s censorship system, critics claim, has led genres to stagnate and storytelling to ossify (Baptista 2019; Sala 2016). Yet one need not be an apologist for censorship to recognise that Beijing’s cultural controls, hobgoblinised by critics for good reason, have nonetheless provoked filmmakers like Chen to probe genres both vetoed and approved, testing the limits of permissibility. Chinese genre cinema is developing, but not along a simple, linear, deterministic path. Nor is it stymied or stunted by censorship. To the contrary, Chen and his peers—chafing at SAPPRFT constraints—circumvent state proscriptions by deploying genres in striking ways. Chen also averts censorship by riffing on Hollywood models. He cites as influences the American puzzle films Inception (2010) and Source Code (2011) (Jung 2014, 68). Detractors dismiss The Great Hypnotist and Battle of Memories as “derivative” of these prototypes, but Chen exploits intertextuality to navigate the minefield of mainland censorship. In what follows, I try to show that the “derivative” tag is unjustified. Larger questions guide my inquiry too. How does Chen negotiate mainland censorship? How does he generate narrational complexity? Why is

4 Echoing Berliner, Stephen Teo (2012, 293) observes: “The banning of the wuxia genre in the Chinese cinema [in the 1930s] stunted the genre’s development in the Chinese film industry in Shanghai”. Of the 1930s Hollywood gangster film, Thomas Shatz (1981, 40) suggests that “external pressures”—notably government censorship— “disrupted the genre’s internal evolution”.

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genre integral to these twin endeavours? Why does Chen foreground allusionism? I aim to demonstrate that, far from acquiescing to SAPPRFT dictates, Chen finds adroit ways to mobilise genres, stories, and ideologies officially anathema in mainland cinema.

The Great Hypnotist Dr. Xu Ruining (Zheng Xu) is a hypnotherapist specialising in supernatural delusions. His mentor, Professor Fang (Zhong Lu), assigns him a new patient, Ren Xiaoyan (Karen Mok), an enigmatic woman who claims to be plagued by ghosts. Do the ghouls exist? Xu contends not. Seeking the source of Ren’s apparent phantasms, he sets out to hypnotise Ren and unlock her repressed memories. Under hypnosis, Ren recollects several past encounters with dead spirits, but Xu remains unconvinced. Over the course of a long night, Xu’s mastery of the situation dissipates. As power shifts from therapist to patient, doubts emerge as to who is mesmerising whom. The final plot phase delivers two pulverising revelations. In the first, Xu undergoes a startling anagnorisis: it transpires, to his surprise and ours, that he has spent most of the film under Ren’s hypnotic control. Ren, in actuality a psychiatrist (and the de facto “great hypnotist” of the title), has conspired with Professor Fang and a coterie of medical colleagues to surreptitiously hypnotise Xu and thereby cure him of “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD). This malady stems from a tragic event suppressed in Xu’s memory: Xu’s wife and dearest friend have recently died in an auto accident, a calamity for which Xu was culpable. Bereft, Xu attempted suicide before succumbing to PTSD. The elaborate hoax staged by Ren and Professor Fang is a last-ditch effort to bring Xu back from the brink. A final thunderbolt soon follows. The culminating twist identifies Xu’s best friend, who perished in the auto-wreck, as Ren’s beloved fiancé. At the film’s end, Ren marshals the fortitude to forgive Xu. The Great Hypnotist begins in medias res. On a pitch-dark night, a willowy woman prowls outside a vast, desolate building, peering in through the windows. Inside are a middle-aged woman and a young girl, huddled in abject terror. With surprising vigour, the ethereal stalker forces open a barricaded door, and pursues the petrified females through the building’s corridors. The middle-aged woman and child dive into an adjacent room. There they encounter Xu, sitting at a desk, bright daylight inexplicably pouring in from a rear window. Hysterical, the woman pleads

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for help: a stalker intends to kidnap her daughter. Xu demurs: “How do I know this girl is your daughter?” The woman fumbles for her wallet, produces a family snapshot, and then recoils in shock—the photograph shows the stalker and the child together, beaming happily. Xu calmly demystifies the situation: the stalker is the middle-aged woman’s younger self; the child is her daughter but was killed twenty years ago, a result of maternal negligence. Now the bamboozled woman must reconcile her past and present identities, and jettison the long-lived guilt that consumes her. (“Time to let go”, Xu tells her). This self-revelation prompts the stalker and child, vestiges of a suppressed past, to vanish. Suddenly the diegetic world judders and dissembles, ushering in a new realm of reality. The narration shifts gears into objective reality, as Xu awakens the middleaged woman from a trance. A new situation now shimmers into focus: Xu is a hypnotherapist, the woman his patient, and the foregoing action a subjective trance-state. But now the ontological and temporal specificity of the action morphs a third time. The present situation, it emerges, is objectively real but it isn’t a present situation—the hypnotherapy session turns out to be a pre-taped video recording, projected onto a lecture screen to an audience of psychology students. From the outset, The Great Hypnotist radically scrambles the viewer’s comprehension of story events. Such complexification typifies puzzle film narration, to be sure, but it also draws impetus from a cunning play with genre cues. The wispy stalker—lank-haired, eerily silent, prowling the corridors with predatory zeal—recalls innumerable J-horror wraiths, so it is small wonder that the viewer misidentifies this figure as a baleful, even preternatural, agent. The viewer’s initial grasp of the dramatic situation, too, crystallises around genre elements. While a host of sinister devices (musical stings, ambient whispers, lurching camera movement) conveys the funk of terror, the woman-in-peril drama conjures a paradigm scenario familiar from horror fiction—a terrified woman guarding her child from a skulking, devouring predator. Subsequently, the scene performs a sudden volte-face, exposing the viewer’s confusion of predator and victim. Aside from genre cues, the scene’s narration preys upon the viewer’s basic cognitive proclivities. Without cues to the contrary, the viewer naturally but erroneously ascribes objectivity to the opening phase of action. And, thanks to suppressive exposition, the viewer does not know better than to apply the person schema to the “two” grown women, individuating two discrete agents rather than a single entity. In toto, The Great Hypnotist mounts a startling opening gambit, so thoroughly does it disarray

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textual cues (the reality-status of events; the primacy effect) and the viewer’s activity (the mapping of paradigm scenarios; the individuation of characters). This opening scene hints at the film’s wider strategies too. For one thing, it inducts viewers into the correct viewing strategy for the film as a whole; to this end, the scene provides a microcosm of the narration’s global tendencies. The scene primes its viewer to expect an untrustworthy and strategically gapped narration; an unreliable focalising agent; an ontologically ambiguous diegesis; a mise-en-abyme structure; subjective access to characters’ dreams and trance-states; temporal deformations; misleading paradigm scenarios; surprising twists and reversals; and a vacillating, not to say shape-shifting, genre identity. In The Great Hypnotist ’s opening scene, as in the film at large, genre services both comprehension and complexity. Though the tropes of supernatural horror provide the viewer an initial orientation, their subsequent equivocation sows doubt and bewilderment. (The viewer is led to wonder: What type of film is this, if not a ghost film?) Lastly, the opening scene betrays another goal besides clarity and complexity: namely, to avert PRC censorship. Skewering its ghost-genre setup, the scene’s progression—like that of the larger plot—builds to a definitive repudiation of supernaturalism. In this regard, The Great Hypnotist errs, at least ostensibly, towards political correctness. Yet the film will canvass various strategies by which to probe its supernatural premise, no matter Beijing’s prohibition on ghosts and horror. Chief among these strategies is a judicious engagement with popular genres. Across the whole film, supernatural horror will be mediated by three interlocking tactics: equivocation; allusion; and “stealth”. All three tactics fulfil a dual purpose, one artistic, the other economic: to prolong the central plot enigma and to forestall censorship. Consider equivocation first. From the start, Ren and Xu convey opposing beliefs about the paranormal. Ren insists that the phantoms she beholds are palpably real, but Xu—the textual avatar of CCP ideology—disdains ghosts as sheer hokum, a figment of psychic disturbance. Much of The Great Hypnotist ’s plot will hold in tension this clash of hypotheses. Not incidentally, the film mobilises Tzvetan Todorov’s “fantastic hesitation” (Todorov 1975), suspending the viewer between mutually exclusive possibilities: either the supernatural exists (the marvellous) or it can be explained as

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an imaginative or illusory real-world phenomenon (the uncanny).5 Not until the denouement does The Great Hypnotist invalidate the marvellous hypothesis and thereby resolve the fantastic hesitation. Under Xu’s hypnotic control, Ren mentally revisits the spooky encounters from her past, and the narration plunges us into her trance-state. These mesmeric flashbacks, recounted by Ren, embody action that promotes the marvellous hypothesis: in one flashback, Ren is requisitioned by a forlorn schoolgirl who seeks posthumous justice against the jittery bus driver responsible for her death. This flashback, however, is punctuated by shots from the present-day situation in which Xu holds Ren in a trance, the hypnotherapist slighting Ren’s account as fundamentally delusional. In effect, Xu editorialises Ren’s marvellous flashback as it unfolds, interpolating sceptical commentary, and recasting putatively paranormal events as uncanny imaginings. Another filmmaker might have preserved the structural integrity of Ren’s flashback, but Leste Chen chops it up, the better to intensify the fantastic hesitation, certainly, but also to frame the supernatural in ways that will pacify the Film Bureau. In Chen’s hands, the fantastic furnishes strategic ambiguity not only in the aesthetic sense theorised by Todorov, but also as an economic measure to negotiate the industrial and ideological constraints of PRC filmmaking. How else to equivocate on the supernatural? Chen discovers narrational ploys that promote, but refuse to certify, the marvellous possibility. Thanks to shrewd ellipses, Ren possesses—or seems to possess—an unnerving ability to navigate space in ethereal fashion. Early in the plot, Xu briefly departs his office, leaving Ren sitting in a chair. Upon returning, Xu (and the viewer) is surprised to find the chair empty. A whip pan, denoting Xu’s optical point of view (POV), now locates Ren standing in a remote region of the office. Director Chen underscores this swivelling camera gesture with a horror-genre motif—a screeching violin sting—that at once conveys Xu’s disquiet, triggers the viewer’s startle reflex, and endows Ren with an ominous aspect. This flurry of cues bolsters the marvellous hypothesis. By eliding Ren’s physical trajectory, the narration not only disrupts the viewer’s sense of Ren’s spatial location; it also confers upon Ren the kind of amorphous mobility unique to many cinematic revenants. Consequently, the scene prompts a tentative (and marvellous) hypothesis: perhaps Ren herself is a spectre. One 5 See Todorov (1975). The locus classicus of fantastic literature is Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898).

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should note, too, that although the scene conjures a compelling sense of the supernatural, it does so almost wholly through stylistic devices (whip pan; POV; musical stinger; visual ellipsis). Supernatural horror, though forcefully implied, remains oblique. Chen eschews any explicit imagery of ghosts or physical horror that might clinch the viewer’s marvellous hypothesis and antagonise Beijing’s film censors. These latter two concerns shape the film’s other equivocating tactics as well. Take the following scene. Alone in Xu’s office, Ren casually surveys the surroundings. Her eyes suddenly light on something or someone excluded from the camera’s field of vision, and the intensity of her look compels the viewer’s desire for the “deictic” gaze—that is, an irresistible urge to follow Ren’s transfixed gaze to its target.6 What or whom has so riveted her attention? Naturally, given the plot’s premise that Ren possesses a sixth sense, the viewer surmises that a supernatural spirit lurks off screen. But the narration vexingly refuses to supply a reverseangle shot yielding Ren’s POV, instead shifting away to a separate locale. The viewer’s desire for the deictic gaze is aroused only to be thwarted. Here again a restricted narration both sustains the fantastic hesitation (do ghosts haunt Xu’s workplace?) and skirts the Film Bureau censors (suggesting but not showing the supernatural).7 While the narration refuses to validate the supernatural, Xu advances psychological explanations for Ren’s ghoulish visions. “Your ghost stories have to do with your own life”, he tells his distressed patient. Ren, he posits, actively resists being cured of her belief in ghosts, so acutely does she lament—and yearn to reconnect with—her dead fiancé. Xu’s uncanny postulations honeycomb the central ghost plot, eroding the marvellous possibility in Jamesian fashion. Not only does the fantastic ambiguity mitigate The Great Hypnotist ’s supernatural tale in ways acceptable to Beijing censors; it also contributes to the narrative’s complexity. Subjected to prolonged ambiguity is the reality-status of the diegesis, the credibility of the central protagonists, and the trustworthiness of a slippery, even 6 For deictic gaze theory and cinema, see Chapter 2 in Persson (2003). 7 The Great Hypnotist spins a variation on this POV schema later in the plot. Insisting

that she can see ghosts lingering just yards away, Ren exhorts Xu to look in their direction. The narration furnishes a two-shot showing Ren and Xu looking at the camera; in other words, the scene ostensibly furnishes a ghost’s POV. Leste Chen tantalises the viewer with the imminent prospect of a reverse-angle shot from Ren or Xu’s optical perspective, which could thereby corroborate or discredit Ren’s claim…but again the narration teasingly denies the viewer a disambiguating vantage point.

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flagrantly deceitful, narration. The fantastic topos, therefore, lends The Great Hypnotist all the structural equivocation of a puzzle film plot, not only sustaining but augmenting the drama’s fundamental indeterminacy. As the film wends towards its climax, the equivocal plot lurches almost conclusively towards a marvellous explanation of events. Now Ren’s spectral visions attain greater credence: the ghosts of Xu’s lover and friend, killed in an auto accident, manifest themselves to Ren (though they are visible to neither Xu nor the spectator), and Ren is able to relay their posthumous testimony to Xu. To Xu’s astonishment, Ren recounts intimate details apparently beyond her ken, details only Xu and his departed loved ones could know. Consequently, Xu—until now a mouthpiece for rational scientism, as espoused by the CCP—becomes briefly convinced of the afterlife. It is here that the narration springs its deus ex machina, a cascade of fragmentary flashbacks coalescing into a lucid revelation. Xu, it is now revealed, has been hoodwinked by a conspiracy forged by his colleagues; the entire ghost premise was apocryphal, an elaborate canard cooked up by well-intentioned workmates. Just when it seems to verify the marvellous hypothesis, the narration performs a volte-face validating the uncanny. The fantastic doubt is henceforth dissolved. In this moment, The Great Hypnotist discards its vacillating approach to the supernatural, decisively exploding superstition. This climax, needless to say, wholly aligns with Communist Party doctrine. The film judiciously asserts its political correctness. Or so it seems. Ostensibly The Great Hypnotist cleaves to Communist tenets (and so evades censorship), but the film harbours a veiled critique of the Chinese state. From the standpoint of censorship, Leste Chen deploys Xu tactically: throughout the plot, as noted above, Xu stridently denounces superstitious belief. If Xu thus personifies CCP ideology, it is significant that Chen presents him as the most delusional and deranged of all the film’s characters. By the plot’s final act, Xu has been utterly discredited: stripped of his cocky armature, he is exposed as wrongheaded and incoherent, even psychotic. He suppresses, indeed displaces, traumatic guilt and memory. Even his personal convictions ring hollow, as when he briefly abandons his non-belief in the paranormal. In effect, the film’s deus ex machina does double duty, outwardly affirming but covertly critiquing the status quo. Critics insist that mainland movies quash social criticism, but The Great Hypnotist gives the lie to such claims. If only as structuring absence, subversive rhetoric can dwell within even the most innocuous of Chinese genre films.

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We have seen that Chen mediates and mitigates supernatural horror by means of equivocation. Two other modifying strategies—allusion and stealth—deserve attention. From the outset, The Great Hypnotist makes allusionism highly salient. Indeed, so flagrantly does the film invoke The Sixth Sense (1999)—another work of supernatural horror, and a puzzle film to boot—that detractors castigated The Great Hypnotist as derivative.8 But simply to dismiss this allusion as parasitic is to ignore how it contributes to narrative complexity, how it frames and misdirects the viewer’s hypotheses, and how it deters state censors. Apropos censorship, The Great Hypnotist embraces what we might call horror-by-association. By making overt references to The Sixth Sense, The Great Hypnotist can piggyback on the earlier film’s host of genre associations, and eliminate the need to depict supernatural horror explicitly. Perforce, The Great Hypnotist ’s exact borrowings from The Sixth Sense exclude contentious material (e.g. macabre and lurid content).9 There is literal quotation of innocuous dialogue (“I see dead people”) and of motifs unlikely to needle the censors (e.g. a bridal ring). Even the “ghosts” perceived by Ren are benign. Though startling at first sight, they seek neither to terrorise nor to possess; as in The Sixth Sense, these sympathetic spirits simply crave help. In sum, the critics’ charge of plagiarism misses its target. The Great Hypnotist rides the coattails of The Sixth Sense not opportunistically, scavenging from a former success, but strategically, as a kind of shorthand for the horror genre, enabling Chen to mount a supernatural tale without coming athwart of mainland censorship. Allusion functions as a misdirection device as well. Quoting The Sixth Sense in its opening plot phase, The Great Hypnotist primes the viewer’s hypotheses about the action to come. Most schematically, the viewer forms predictions germane to the supernatural genre: the plot will likely be peopled by otherworldly beings, along with a smattering of clairvoyants, sceptics, and nonbelievers. Viewers familiar with The Sixth Sense will 8 For critic Yvonne Teh (2014, 33), The Great Hypnotist “is derivative of other films, notably The Sixth Sense”. In Variety, Maggie Lee (2014b) asserts that the film “blatantly steals from The Sixth Sense”, while Edmund Lee (2014a) notes that “The Great Hypnotist bears more than a passing resemblance” to M. Night Shyamalan’s film. Another critic contends that The Great Hypnotist “suffers heavily from Shyamalan Syndrome” (Anonymous 2019). Indeed, Xu’s profound fear of water gestures towards another Shyamalan intertext, Unbreakable (2000), whose idiosyncratic hero develops aquaphobia. 9 Chen opts against quoting, for instance, Shyamalan’s gruesome image of a teenage boy whose skull has been ravaged by a shotgun blast.

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frame more fine-grained predictions. These “competent” viewers might expect (a) the psychiatrist hero to be conversant with the dead, or to be dead himself; (b) the narration to furnish a highly surprising twist; and (c) the plot, following a long stretch of retardation, to validate the marvellous (a supposition held in tension with Beijing’s proscriptions on ghost fiction). Significantly, many of these cued predictions will be scotched: Ren is no clairvoyant, Xu no ghost, and the plot does not substantiate the marvellous possibility. The Great Hypnotist taps The Sixth Sense not only to evoke the horror genre in oblique ways (and so parry the censors), but also to foster puzzle film diversions, luring the viewer down inferential cul-de-sacs. Here again the “derivative” epithet is misplaced. The Great Hypnotist purposively invites comparison to The Sixth Sense, but it winds up veering quite sharply from its imputed prototype. In fact, The Great Hypnotist furtively hews to another intertext besides The Sixth Sense, and to another genre besides supernatural horror. This brings us to Chen’s third major tactic of genre mediation: stealth. The Great Hypnotist ’s prologue foregrounds the horror genre, but the film will soon hint at another generic structure underpinning the story action. Though early scenes establish a milieu populated by psychiatrists and patients, the setup recalls that of classic noir fiction. Xu, like many a detective hero, is assigned a “case”. This labyrinthine assignment, the kind that other psychiatrists do not care to tackle, involves an attractive, neurotic, morally opaque woman whose real motives remain inscrutable. If Ren fits the mould of femme fatale, Xu calls to mind the fallible sleuth. Sagacious yet myopic, circumspect yet cocksure, Xu resembles the flawed gumshoe of Hollywood noir. The film’s tweak on generic formula posits an investigator not of crimes but of disturbed minds. Orbiting the protagonists, meanwhile, is an ensemble of eccentrics—Xu’s skittish secretary, a tremulous bus driver, the cryptic Professor Fang— all vividly etched in the traditional noir manner. The film’s mise-en-scène encompasses noir iconography: low-key lighting, venetian blinds, ringing telephones, scattered timepieces, cigarette cases, items of décor thrust into the camera’s foreground. As in classic noir, time becomes a salient motif.10 Just as it does in Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944), an antique clock serves as “a locus of duplicity” (Telotte 1990, 3), while Xu’s pocket

10 Among the many examples enumerated by J. P. Telotte (1990) are The Stranger (1946), The Big Clock (1948), and Kiss Me Deadly (1955).

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watch provides an apparatus for hypnotic induction. The Great Hypnotist ’s tropes of mesmerism and amnesia, two long-standing fixtures of noir fiction, further indicate a debt to the genre.11 And, of course, a highly restricted, purposively gapped narration is a mainstay of detective plotting, as well as of puzzle film storytelling. One film noir schema, however, is not ported over to The Great Hypnotist . Classic noirs often posit a sexual attraction between detective and femme fatale, but The Great Hypnotist ducks this facet of the central relationship. As ever, Chen’s wrinkle on generic formula springs from two overarching concerns: to maintain the central plot imbroglio and to circumvent censorship. The chasteness that exists between Xu and Ren is integral to the plot’s surprise twist: as will be retroactively disclosed, Xu and Ren each mourn the recent death of a romantic partner. Across the plot’s duration, they must learn to (in the film’s motivic phrase) “let go” of the partner to whom they are still emotionally pledged. Suggesting a sexual frisson between the protagonists, therefore, would undermine the film’s thematic raison d’être. As for censorship, SAPPRFT routinely bowdlerised films that portrayed mainland “authority figures”—including medical workers—as anything less than beacons of moral rectitude. Here is one precedent: Beijing censors purged New Blood (Soi Cheang, 2002) of an entire subplot in which a romantic bond between doctor and patient was merely implied.12 Rather than trigger a taboo, Chen prudently forgoes a romance plotline and nullifies the prospect of SAPPRFT intervention.13 My argument runs as follows. Beneath The Great Hypnotist ’s surface genre (supernatural horror) lies a subordinate genre (detective noir) that operates by stealth, tacitly shaping the film’s explicit story and style. When the film’s horror elements recede, as they periodically must, the noir mode supplies the text’s structuring logic. At times, as well, the film’s overt and discreet genres intermingle. Narrational complexity springs partly from a

11 For a lively discussion of these pervasive motifs in 1940s noir, see Bordwell (2017).

Contemporary puzzle films also employ hypnotism as an alibi to dive into the murk of characters’ unconscious minds; see, for instance, Trance (2013) and Stir of Echoes (1999). 12 Interview with Soi Cheang, 31 March 2008; and Bey Logan, 26 March 2016. 13 Ostensibly, then, Chen is obliged to attenuate the seductiveness of the femme fatale

archetype. Yet, as the plot twist reveals, Ren is seductive, not sexually but psychologically: wielding hypnosis as a form of seduction, she masterfully brings Xu under her thrall.

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clash of genres: in unobtrusive fashion, Chen mitigates horror conventions by meshing or juxtaposing them with the norms of noir, generating the unpredictable genre deviations characteristic of puzzle film narration. The Great Hypnotist ’s oblique treatment of the detective genre extends to its strategies of allusion too. A furtive intertext hovers behind the primary action, hinting at The Great Hypnotist ’s detective genre complexion. This intertext, I contend, yields still greater influence upon The Great Hypnotist ’s aesthetic than does The Sixth Sense, though critics failed to notice it. Not that Chen didn’t furnish breadcrumbs: “I revere Hitchcock”, he told Time Out magazine. “There are many shots in [The Great Hypnotist ] that were inspired by the way Hitchcock framed his suspense films” (Jung 2014, 68). Chen doesn’t specify particular Hitchcock models, but one logical candidate is Spellbound (1945) given its story material (psychotherapy, amnesia) and noir affinities. Yet, I submit that Chen draws most extensively from Vertigo (1958), and we can itemise the ways.14 Like Vertigo’s male hero Scottie (James Stewart), Xu plummets into a psychological abyss. Feelings of guilt and failure seize both men, triggered by the death of a female object of desire; in both cases, the protagonist’s dysphoria results in mental fugue. A neurotic disorder is assigned to Xu (aquaphobia) as to Scottie (acrophobia). The professional roles of both men, moreover, are fungible: Scottie is a detective who becomes a de facto therapist, obsessively trying to “cure” Madeleine (Kim Novak); Xu is a therapist who acts like a detective, his therapeutic methods akin to forensic investigation. Parallels unite Madeleine (aka Judy) and Ren too. Both women affect a spectral aura, a kind of perpetual distractedness, and both tend to periodically elude the camera’s gaze (and that of the focalising male hero). Stylistically, the debt to Vertigo is inscribed in The Great Hypnotist ’s production design and cinematography. At times, the walls in Xu’s office seem bent into steep curves, as if the whole building has been twisted into a giant spiral, vacuuming the protagonists into a vortex that is as much physical and spatial as it is psychological. Compounding this conceit, a rotating camera sweeps across the edifice’s swirling contours, and visually taps one of Vertigo’s primary motifs (think of Saul Bass’ poster design, in which a vast, annihilating maelstrom engulfs Scottie). A host of other allusions to Vertigo penetrates The Great Hypnotist ’s surface. 14 Over recent decades, Vertigo seems to have cast its own mesmeric effect on Chinese filmmakers. For discussion of further cases, see Marchetti (2018) and Silbergeld (2004).

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Parallels manifest through the film’s visual motifs (exfoliating flowers; a brooch necklace bearing otherworldly significance), tonal mood (a vaguely subjective, oneiric atmosphere), mise-en-scène (a framed artwork depicting a vortex; a mirror motif hinting at fractured or duplicitous psyches), and staging (as when the heroine is first glimpsed by the male hero—and the viewer—from the back, a sure marker of mystique). Not least, Hitchcock’s influence manifests at the level of narrative construction. Initiating the investigative line of action, Professor Fang shares a plot function with Vertigo’s Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Both figures assign the incredulous male hero to a paranormal investigation, and both conspire with the femme fatale to gull the protagonist, albeit for divergent ends. Indeed, the scheme hatched by Elster and Judy carries malicious purpose, whereas Professor Fang’s ruse is wholly benevolent. Here again we can detect a corollary of SAPPRFT strictures: as a fictional specimen of mainland China’s medical establishment, Professor Fang must be in all respects unwaveringly virtuous. One final plot affinity should be noted. Like Vertigo, The Great Hypnotist launches a major plot twist that jams a congeries of subjective flashbacks into a revelatory, exposition-packed montage; divulges the heroine’s scheme (masquerading in an adopted identity; professing to be hounded by dead spirits); exposes the male protagonist as the dupe of a conspiracy masterminded by a trusted ally; and marks a narrational shift away from the discredited male hero, focalising action squarely (if temporarily) around the female protagonist.15 Why does Chen crib so liberally from Vertigo? Being tacit, the Vertigo allusions do not actively steer the viewer’s hypotheses. Nor do they openly misdirect the viewer’s expectations, as do the conspicuous nods to The Sixth Sense. What purpose, then, do these allusions serve? For one thing, the Vertigo template bolsters the detective framework that I have argued subtly undergirds The Great Hypnotist . This detective structure, in turn, both subdues and sublimates the film’s horror elements, packaging a ghost plot in ways tolerable to mainland censors. Then there is Chen’s urge to satisfy a cinephile impulse, paying tribute to a revered master. Above all, Vertigo is a pertinent intertext: as a precursor to the modern-day puzzle film, it dovetails with Chen’s fascination with

15 As critics have noted, Vertigo is a forerunner of the contemporary puzzle film. See, for instance, Panek (2006) and Perlmutter (2005).

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complex plotting, and in foregrounding guilt-ridden protagonists, Vertigo anticipates themes that will surface pungently in The Great Hypnotist . These themes crystallise at The Great Hypnotist ’s finale. Following the coup de théâtre, Xu and Ren tentatively reach a rapprochement. Xu admits that he “didn’t want to be cured”—this betrays an earlier bit of psychological projection, when he accused Ren of resisting therapy— adding, “I didn’t feel that I deserved forgiveness”. Now Xu is able to “let go” of guilt and embrace self-forgiveness; Ren, meanwhile, haltingly learns to forgive him. Both characters, albeit reluctantly, will come to emotionally let go of their dead partners (“I’m frightened you’ll slip away”, sings Ren at a karaoke bar) and of the feelings of grief and guilt associated with their loss.16 The Great Hypnotist will discredit its ghost premise, but the supernatural genre is neither gratuitous nor incidental. Rather, it is thematically apposite: Ren and Xu are protagonists haunted, indeed possessed, by past trauma. Likewise, the film’s primary intertexts, The Sixth Sense and Vertigo, are wholly germane at a thematic level, organised as they are around topoi of bereavement, guilt, and potential rebirth. We have seen that The Great Hypnotist sets in tension two genres, alternately intermingling and oscillating between supernatural horror and detective noir. Horror tropes are pronounced from the start, but noir conventions drive the action in mostly subliminal ways. Similarly, two intertexts inform The Great Hypnotist ’s narrative and style, one flaunted by the narration (The Sixth Sense), the other largely camouflaged (Vertigo).17 Hovering over these structures is a twin goal: to carpenter a complex artwork, and to respect censorship regulations. Detractors might perceive Chen as self-censoring, but this would be too simplistic a conception of his craft practice (and that of many directors working in mainland China). The PRC filmmaker’s lot is hardly one of artistic capitulation. In not a few cases, directors operating in the mainland refuse to abandon 16 The lyric comes from “You Must Love Me”, written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. 17 A more proximate intertext is Hong Kong ghost thriller Inner Senses (2002). Leslie Cheung’s psychiatrist, a nonbeliever in the supernatural, tries to cure a female patient who “sees dead people”. Unlike Xu, however, this psychiatrist scoffs at hypnosis as a therapeutic method. Plainly inspired by The Sixth Sense, Inner Senses springs a late-arriving twist that discloses its male hero’s deep-rooted amnesia and overwhelming self-denial. Given their shared reference point, Inner Senses and The Great Hypnotist naturally display some cosmetic affinities, chiefly at the plot level.

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taboo subjects, genres, and ideological viewpoints. Instead, they activate sidelong strategies (equivocation, allusion, stealth) as a means of broaching forbidden content and imparting covert critique. This tacit mode of resistance is indissolubly linked to an inventive play with popular genres and the pliable norms that govern them. This is to say that Chen is not a lone case. A Taiwanese national, Chen shares with Hong Kong filmmakers working with/in China both an outsider’s irreverence for Beijing’s ideological policies and a home-grown commitment to authorial agency. Like The Great Hypnotist , Gordon Chan’s Painted Skin (2008) successfully flouted the Film Bureau’s proscription on supernaturalism; Wilson Yip’s Paradox (2017) and Soi Cheang’s SPL 2 (2015) broke the taboo on organ harvesting; Peter Chan’s Dearest (2014) dramatised the forbidden subject of child trafficking; and Johnnie To’s Drug War (2012) frankly portrayed gun violence, the drug trade, and police corruption, the latter of which also figures in Chen’s Battle of Memories .18 In each case, the Hong Kong filmmaker found canny ways to circumvent objectionable genres and subject matter. Not that resistance is solely the province of the cultural interloper. The mounting instances of banned or suppressed films directed by Mainland-born filmmakers—think of Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin (2013) and Zhang Yimou’s One Second (2019)—indicate an industry-wide effort to challenge Beijing’s draconian content controls. Chen himself would further contribute to this groundswell of ideological resistance with Battle of Memories , both advancing the puzzle film category and encroaching on forbidden generic and thematic terrain.

Battle of Memories In the near future, Jiang Feng (Huang Bo), a mild-mannered novelist, visits the “Master of Memory Centre”, a high-end purveyor of memory extraction. Jiang wants to expunge memories of a marriage now on the rocks. Following the procedure, Jiang—as per all the organisation’s clients—is given a digital chip on which are stored the deleted memories. When a skirmish breaks out at the facility, Jiang’s memory chip gets switched with one belonging to a serial killer. Inadvertently, the killer’s memories are implanted into Jiang’s brain. Henceforth, Jiang sees dead 18 I explore the plight of Hong Kong filmmakers navigating the PRC co-production system in Bettinson (2020).

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people: his memories are flooded with murders he did not commit. He begins to scrutinise these memories for clues to the criminal’s identity. Believing he can help hunt down the killer, he resolves to assist the police investigation. But his intimate knowledge of the crimes renders him a prime suspect, and the cops arrest him. The supervising officers—Detective Shen (Duan Yihong) and his brash protégé, Deputy Lei (Patricio Antonio Liang)—believe that Jiang may be innocent, so they probe other suspects, including Chen Shanshan (Yang Zishan), a nurse who befriends Jiang’s wife, Zhang Daichen (Xu Jinglei). Under the tyranny of the clock, Jiang grows desperate; he must find the killer within 72 hours, lest the memories he has inherited become permanent. He effects a prison break, but the gravity of his dilemma, along with the memories of murder that plague him, curdles his mind. A surprise twist identifies Detective Shen as the killer. When Shen tries to kill Jiang, Daichen, and Shanshan, he is shot dead by his young partner. Battle of Memories springs from the same creative team as The Great Hypnotist , so it should not surprise us that the films share certain structural affinities.19 Both movies pivot on puzzle film dramaturgy, rolling out climactic twists and reversals, fragmentary flashbacks and cunning ellipses, unreliable heroes and baffling conundrums. Battle of Memories , like its predecessor, ventures onto risky genre terrain; even in broad outline, its plot flaunts genre elements likely to nettle the Film Bureau. The PRC lacks a strong heritage of science fiction filmmaking, largely because Beijing censors bristle at depictions of future societies.20 A futuristic Chinese dystopia implies the failure of Communism, a fin de régime. Sci-fi dramas peddle pseudoscience, an affront to CCP empiricism. And 19 The two screenplays are credited to Leste Chen and Peng Ren (aka Ryan Ren). 20 Following China’s vaunted moon landing in January 2019—a lunar mission bound

up with national self-esteem—the mainland film industry launched a string of domestic science fiction blockbusters including The Wandering Earth (2019) and Shanghai Fortress (2019). As in Battle of Memories , these films enlist a host of tactics to pacify the Beijing censors. In The Wandering Earth—widely heralded as China’s first science fiction blockbuster—the threat to humanity is cosmic rather than institutional, emerging from without rather than from within (the band of heroes must divert the Earth from a collision course with Jupiter). In no sense, then, is national cataclysm due to a malfunction of Chinese Communism. Dystopia afflicts the globe in toto, hence is not attributable to China alone. Time travel is nowhere invoked, while the genre’s customary embrace of pseudoscience is largely subdued (the filmmakers recruited scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to consult on plot details). In all, the film is politically innocuous, and valorises a Confucian ethic of teamwork above go-getting individualism. By such strategies, China’s film

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sci-fi plots, like ghost stories, might harbour seditious material. Leste Chen embraces the genre, but he knows to sanitise its more contentious features. Equivocation, allusion, and stealth will again prove effective tactics in mediating genre. Is the future society of Battle of Memories dystopian? Several reviewers infer that it is,21 but Chen equivocates on the matter. Nowhere in the film is it suggested that totalitarian forces govern the masses. The milieu is plagued by neither environmental calamity nor abject poverty. And though its aesthetic is synthetic and sleek, the city is not obviously dehumanising, nor its ambience particularly miasmic. The Film Bureau was alert to narratives that could be allegorised to contemporary China, so Chen establishes an imaginary metropolis (“Nation T”) as the film’s locale. And if censors were uneasy about futuristic settings, Chen would throw emphasis on the narrative past. Hence the film’s mise-en-scène teems with anachronisms (and allusions): the police station is a throwback to cop precincts of 1940s Hollywood noir, while the detectives’ antiquated cars, far from the majestic flying machines conventional in possible-world fiction, here sport manual windows and portable roof beacons. A frequent supply of flashbacks, meanwhile, deflects the locus of narrative interest onto past events. Onto the sci-fi plot, as well, are grafted detective genre norms, the better to temper the plot’s “pseudoscientific” reverie (e.g. its memory-wiping conceit) with respectable appeals to forensic science. In all such ways, Chen packages science fiction into a form palatable to mainland censors. Battle of Memories risks another controversial schema. The film’s final twist violates a purportedly inviolable taboo: it fingers a mainland police detective as the rampaging serial killer. In PRC cinema, moral valour defines mainland cops, as it does other representatives of the status quo. (As producer Nansun Shi acerbically puts it, “There are only good cops in China”.)22 How, then, does Chen break the immoral cop taboo? It helps, for one thing, that the psychopathic Detective Shen is snared by another cop. Indeed, the film nowhere suggests that immorality is systemic within the police ranks; this detective-killer is simply one bad industry seeks to cultivate a tradition of mainland sci-fi extravaganzas to challenge Hollywood counterparts such as Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014), and The Martian (2015), all of which proved hugely popular at the mainland box office. 21 See, for instance, Adlakha (2017). 22 Interview with Nansun Shi, 23 March 2016.

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apple, an anomalous case. More significant, I suspect, is the film’s futuristic and imaginary locale, safely “displacing” the action from present-day China. The film’s sci-fi premise, then, shields the corrupt-cop twist from expurgation, much as the detective genre’s appeal to empirical science pacifies censors disturbed by sci-fi pseudoscience. So it is that each of the film’s two explicit genres—science fiction and detective noir—attenuates the censorable aspects of the other. Whereas The Great Hypnotist activates noir obliquely, Battle of Memories promotes it to the textual foreground. As I’ve suggested, this overt fusing of forms is partly tactical: meshing science fiction and detective noir enables Chen to assuage Beijing’s censors. But it also allows him to engage in a ludic play with genre, defamiliarising established norms. For one instance, consider the amnesiac hero of classic noir. A clunk on the head triggers memory loss; now the protagonist strives to recover his memories while surrounded by putative “strangers” whose recollection of him is intact. Battle of Memories refreshes this noir motif by means of its science fiction premise. In a future epoch where memory erasure is big business, amnesia is both voluntarily induced and endemic among the populace. (Again, Chen desists from casting this scenario as unequivocally dystopian.) In Chen’s hands, one genre thus deforms—and renews—the time-worn tropes of another. In Battle of Memories , as in The Great Hypnotist , Chen’s genre strategies serve two needs: to elude censorship and to amplify complexity. I’ve described how Battle of Memories achieves the former aim. How, then, does it deploy genre to complex effect? Like The Great Hypnotist , the film summons genre-based schemas to skew the viewer’s hypotheses off track. One instance is the policier’s “odd couple” prototype, whereby a lead detective—world-weary but empathetic, cynical but morally admirable— partners with a junior cop, a hubristic, hot-headed greenhorn tagged as a liability. Battle of Memories invokes, sustains, and at the climax inverts this schema. Furthermore, this tart reversal packs genuinely surprising force, partly because the primacy effect has been so radically undercut, and partly because, thanks to SAPPRFT strictures, heinous cops are seldom to be found in mainland movies. Other genre tactics abet the film’s duplicitous narration. Scattered across the plot are “lying flashbacks”, motivated by the film’s noir construction (Bordwell 2017, 398). One flashback shows Jiang to be the killer; a subsequent iteration of the crime pegs Shanshan as the villain. Only at the climax does a third replay identify the murderer as Detective Shen. In the interim, a farrago of flashbacks

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thwarts the viewer’s default cognitive routines. The person schema, for instance, is disrupted when mental imagery renders Jiang in duplicate, a flourish motivated by the film’s science fiction premise. Among the genres that Battle of Memories exploits for misdirection is the puzzle film genre itself. Not incidentally, several such films (including 2046 [Wong Kar-wai, 2004], Secret Window [David Koepp, 2004], Stranger Than Fiction [Marc Forster, 2006], and Nocturnal Animals [Tom Ford, 2016]) assign their chief protagonist a noteworthy profession—that of novelist. The hero’s proclivity for fiction-making subtly casts doubt on his reliability as a focaliser of the action: perhaps he possesses too keen an imagination to grasp events accurately. Films such as Secret Window ultimately disclose the novelist’s psychic descent into fantasy, but in Jiang’s case the viewer’s scepticism is cued only to be assuaged at the climax. Much like other genre norms, puzzle film tropes send the viewer’s hypotheses awry. Further undermining Jiang’s reliability are the subjective flashbacks that depict the killer’s crimes. Some of these flashbacks, harnessed to Jiang’s subjective (and inherited) memory, are infiltrated by Jiang himself, snaking through the crime scene as an invisible observer. This narrational idiosyncrasy finds a precedent in Chinese puzzle films: Wu Xia (Peter Chan, 2011) and Blind Detective (Johnnie To, 2013) brandish precisely this offbeat device, as does The Great Hypnotist .23 But since an early flashback visualises Jiang as the killer, this gambit only compounds the viewer’s uncertainty—is Jiang sleuth, criminal, or both? Thus, just as The Great Hypnotist suspends the viewer between rival (marvellous/uncanny) possibilities, so Battle of Memories nourishes binary hypotheses: either Jiang is a murderer, as his memories indicate, and hence suffers from self-denial; or, as will be confirmed, he has acquired the grim recollections of the actual killer. Like The Great Hypnotist , Battle of Memories holds its twin hypotheses in abeyance until the elucidating climax. Chen also manipulates the convention of the late-arriving flashback montage, a disambiguating sequence found in virtually all puzzle films. Such scenes have become codified as truth-telling manoeuvres: they expose the narration’s foregoing deceptions, and concisely crystallise the story’s true complexion. Yet Battle of Memories unfurls a premature montage that implicates Shanshan in the crimes, before discrediting this 23 In one hypnotically induced flashback, Ren materialises as an unseen witness and observes her younger self.

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“revelation” as specious. From this angle, Chen innovates on popular genre not only by means of inventive hybridisation, but also by subjecting generic norms to disarming, even radical, revision. In all, Battle of Memories matches The Great Hypnotist for intricate plotting. Critics allege that China’s film industry enforces formulaic storytelling,24 but Chen’s puzzle films make this axiom look utterly feeble. Indeed, Chen’s adventurous plotting is far from anomalous. Contemporary PRC cinema has keenly embraced complex storytelling, sometimes boosted by Hong Kong or Korean input.25 Examples include Suzhou River (Lou Ye, 2000), Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002), 2046, Perhaps Love (Peter Chan, 2005), Wu Xia, Mystery (Lou Ye, 2012), Blind Detective, Control (Kenneth Bi, 2013), The Precipice Game (Wang Zao, 2016), Tik Tok (Jun Lee, 2016), Project Gutenberg (Felix Chong, 2018), and Integrity (Alan Mak, 2019).26 Drawing impetus from Hollywood models such as The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995), The Game (David Fincher, 1997), Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), and Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), these elaborately plotted films marshal the unreliable narration, densely woven flashbacks, and jolting denouements ingredient to the contemporary puzzle film genre. In Battle of Memories , as in The Great Hypnotist , cinematic allusions hint at a furtive genre identity. To be sure, there are pertinent references to other puzzle plots (e.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Michel Gondry, 2004]; Vanilla Sky [Cameron Crowe, 2001]) and to noir-sci-fi hybrids (Minority Report [Steven Spielberg, 2002]; 12 Monkeys [Terry Gilliam, 1995]; Paycheck [John Woo, 2003]). The shadow of Hitchcock again looms large: Jiang, falsely suspected of serial murder, personifies the “wrong man” archetype mined in North by Northwest (1959), The 39 Steps (1935), The Wrong Man (1956), et al. But Battle of Memories also alludes to a host of Hollywood horror films—The Silence 24 For a representative view, see Anonymous (2019). 25 The mainland film industry’s uptake of Hollywood-style puzzle film narration is

symptomatic of a wider industrial shift towards commercialisation, a shift initiated in the mid-1990s and intensified following China’s admission to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. The commercial success of Hollywood imports, China’s own rapidly expanding film market, and the concomitant spread of multiplex theatres throughout the mainland, has prompted the domestic industry to emulate (and to some extent compete with) Hollywood’s high-concept mode of production. Nevertheless, domestic filmmakers must still operate under the purview, and within the parameters, of the PRC’s censoring authority. 26 For further discussion, see Bettinson (2016).

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of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), Se7en (David Fincher, 1995), Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990), Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)— that signals the film’s stealth genre. Chen lets these allusions perforate the film’s surface, as when Jiang is locked into a plexiglass cage reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter’s dungeon cell. Horror allusions cue puzzle film misdirection too: Is Jiang actually a monster in the Lecter mould, or is he an innocent man falsely accused? The film will confirm the second hypothesis, but not until it has led the viewer to strongly favour the first. More diffusely, the horror genre pervades Battle of Memories through thematisation. As a fusillade of misfortunes befalls Jiang, his moral fibre crumbles, and he gradually transmogrifies into a monster (figuratively speaking). His face contorts with rage; his voice grows guttural; he subjects his wife to physical aggression. Has injustice kindled an innate monstrousness? Or have circumstances—not least the unwelcome memories of a murderer—made Jiang a monster? Detective Shen grows concerned for Jiang’s sanity: “For the sake of catching a monster”, he warns his protégé, “we can’t risk creating another one [in Jiang]”. But Shen here indulges in a bit of craftiness, for the viewer (and the dramatis personae) ought to be alert for signs of monstrosity in him. Once the final twist is sprung, the nature-or-nurture theme will cluster around Shen, a murderer from childhood. The film tilts heavily towards the nurture thesis: reared in an abusive family, Shen becomes an abuser himself. Evoking horror by stealth, Battle of Memories implies that domestic abuse, prevalent throughout the action, constitutes nothing less than an act of moral horror, of depraved monstrosity. Domestic abuse also begets monsters, as personified by Shen. By mounting a lucid denunciation of domestic violence, Battle of Memories flies in the face of the axiom that mainland cinema abdicates social critique. A stealth genre, signposted by allusions, enables Chen to excoriate a social ill. Not that this is the film’s only act of ideological critique. As we have noted, Battle of Memories —whatever its strategies of disavowal—directly spotlights a crooked cop; even more daringly, it coaxes the viewer into allegiance with him. Situating the action in the near future, moreover, ushers social allegory close to the present. Indeed, as mentioned above, the plot throws stress on the narrative past, thrusting the story events still closer to the time of the film’s production. In such ways, Chen implies that his social critique is pertinent not only to the film’s imagined Chinese future, but also to its contemporaneous real-world counterpart. Just as The Great Hypnotist mounts a trenchant

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social critique—personifying CCP ideology in the figure of a dissembling, demented figure of authority—so Battle of Memories smuggles subversive commentary into its ostensibly apolitical genre story. Both Battle of Memories and The Great Hypnotist received a tepid critical response, largely, as noted above, owing to misplaced assumptions of derivativeness; consequently, critics neglected Chen’s embedded social commentary. But both films achieved a modest commercial success in mainland China, indicating a level of effectiveness at least as genre exercises.27 I would surmise that the popularity of both films derived if not from their subversive social criticism then at least from their overt efforts towards novelty and complexity, their remixing of rarefied genres, and their more or less explicit uptake of state-proscribed subject matter.

Conclusion: Certainties Disappear China’s film industry stifles free expression, vanquishes innovative storytelling, and limits filmmakers to a handful of available genres. Prevalent though these axioms are, none of them withstands scrutiny. Nor is the charge of derivativeness viz-à-viz Chen justified. The Great Hypnotist and Battle of Memories , I have tried to show, effect an intricate interplay of discrete genres and intertexts. They generate not only tension but novelty by imbricating genres, both tacit and overt, in ways that elicit cognitive effort and exhilarated pleasure. Both films exemplify what Todd Berliner calls genre bending (as opposed to genre breaking); that is, they deform and defamiliarise popular genres, reshaping them “without breaking them apart” (Berliner 2017, 170). Together the films form a symmetrical diptych. The Great Hypnotist enlists detective noir to scaffold an overt ghost-horror tale, while Battle of Memories submerges horror beneath an explicit tech-noir policier. Both films mediate “problematic” genre elements, at once dodging Beijing censors and crafting complex plots by means of equivocation, allusion, and stealth. And both films signal auteurist concerns. A fascination with complex narrative form; an experimental approach to genre; a palpable cinephilia; abiding themes of grief, regret, and redemption—all these signature traits lend Chen’s oeuvre a robust coherence. 27 The Great Hypnotist ranked 38th in the PRC’s box office chart of 2014, grossing US$44 million, while Battle of Memories reached 51st in the 2017 chart, with domestic revenues of US$43 million.

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All the same, and without downplaying his distinctiveness, Chen can be seen to epitomise other contemporary directors working in mainland China. Inasmuch as he treats censorship strictures not as impediments to creativity but as artistically enabling parameters, he typifies the methods of China’s most innovative and daring filmmakers. But why stop there? I would argue that the genre cinema of Chen and kindred directors amounts to a political act of resistance. These directors not only probe the parameters of Beijing’s content controls; they transgress these parameters, flouting official taboos while continuing to operate within the system. In sum, China’s genre cinema is neither politically nor artistically moribund. To the contrary, it survives, indeed thrives, on the resourceful ingenuity of its filmmakers.

References Adlakha, Siddhant. 2017. “Battle of Memories Review: Abuse and Cinematic Perspective.” Birth. Movies. Death, May 1. https://birthmoviesdeath.com/ 2017/05/01/battle-of-memories-review-abuse-and-cinematic-perspective. Accessed 7 June 2019. Anonymous. 2019. “Chinese Censorship Is Stifling Country’s Film Industry.” South China Morning Post, July 11. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/ society/article/3018159/chinese-censorship-stifling-countrys-film-industry. Accessed 27 July 2019. Baptista, Eduardo. 2019. “China Wants Soft Power: But Censorship Is Stifling Its Film Industry.” CNN , March 21. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/ 21/asia/china-cultural-soft-power-intl/index.html. Accessed 31 July 2019. Berliner, Todd. 2017. Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bettinson, Gary. 2016. “Hong Kong Puzzle Films: The Persistence of Tradition.” In The Poetics of Chinese Cinema, edited by Gary Bettinson and James Udden, 119–45. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2020. “Yesterday Once More: Hong Kong-China Coproductions and the Myth of Mainlandization.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 14 (1): 16–31. Bordwell, David. 2017. Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Buckland, Warren, ed. 2009. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York and London: Routledge. Jung, Darren. 2014. “In a Trance.” Time Out Hong Kong, no. 160 (9–22 July): 68.

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Kiss, Miklós, and Steven Willemsen. 2018. Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lee, Bono. 2012. “The Possibility of China for Hong Kong Directors: The Transformation of Peter Chan’s Identity.” In Peter Ho-Sun Chan: My Way, edited by Li Cheuk-to, 187–95. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing. Lee, Edmund. 2014a. “Karen Mok Man-wai’s Mind-Bending New Film Hitting Hong Kong Cinemas.” South China Morning Post, July 2. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1544722/karen-mokman-wais-mind-bending-new-film-hitting-hong-kong-cinemas. Accessed 31 July 2019. Lee, Maggie. 2014b. “Film Review: ‘The Great Hypnotist’.” Variety, May 4. https://variety.com/2014/film/asia/film-review-the-great-hypnotist-120 1169648/. Accessed 31 July 2019. Marchetti, Gina. 2018. Citing China: Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Panek, Elliot. 2006. “The Poet and the Detective: Defining the Psychological Puzzle Film.” Film Criticism 31 (1–2): 62–88. Pang, Laikwan. 2011. “The State Against Ghosts: A Genealogy of China’s Film Censorship Policy.” Screen 52 (4): 461–76. Perlmutter, Ruth. 2005. “Memories, Dreams, Screens.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22 (2): 125–34. Persson, Per. 2003. Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sala, Ilaria Maria. 2016. “‘No Ghosts. No Gay Love Stories. No Nudity’: Tales of Film-Making in China.” The Guardian, September 22. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/22/tales-of-film-makingin-china-hollywood-hong-kong. Accessed 31 July 2019. Schatz, Thomas. 1981. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System. New York: McGraw-Hill. Silbergeld, Jerome. 2004. Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China’s Moral Voice. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Teh, Yvonne. 2014. “The Great Hypnotist Is Too Similar to The Sixth Sense.” South China Morning Post, July 16. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/ 48hrs/article/1555269/film-review-great-hypnotist-too-similar-sixth-sense. Accessed 1 August 2019. Telotte, J. P. 1990. “The Big Clock of Film Noir.” Film Criticism 14 (2) (Winter): 1–11. Teo, Stephen. 2012. “Film Genre and Chinese Cinema: A Discourse of Film and Nation.” In A Companion to Chinese Cinema, edited by Yingjin Zhang, 284–98. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Todorov, Tzvetan. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Zhou, Yuxing. 2015. “Pursuing Soft Power Through Cinema: Censorship and Double Standards in Mainland China.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9 (3): 239–52.

The Politics of Genre Space

The final part of the book draws readers’ attention to the debate of film genre’s relationship with space discourse. As detailed in the previous two parts, the development and evolvement of film genres are socially and culturally constructed. Expanding the historical approach of genre development in the last section, Part III inquiries how genre cinema could be understood as a tool to examine power relationships within and beyond a particular cultural and social space. Emerging as a backlash to auteur theory in the 1960s, genre analysis was populated in film studies to engage film text with the wider social and cultural context in which a film is produced and consumed. Christine Gledhill (2000, 239) argues that genres are central to the “process of cultural identity or social imaginary formation” because “they provide public imagery as the building material for the construction of alternative, fictional worlds, while their overlapping boundaries and pool of shared images and conventions mean that they are ripe for reconstruction and retrospective imagination”. In this process, genre production and consumption not only inevitably respond to popular taste in a particular film market, but are also constantly shaped and reshaped by power negotiations that are presented in various social relations in a society where the film industry and market locate. Such interaction is valuable to enable audiences to probe the ideological, political, and cultural dynamics of a particular social space. Here space is not just a geographic location, but an imaginary axis where given time and given place meet. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the relational, Cheryl Hardy (2008, 229) argues that social space is where “the

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set of all possible positions” (such as shared interests, activities, and dispositions of the participants) is available for occupation. Generated by the forms and amounts of various capitals, economically, politically, culturally as well as symbolically, these possible positions are not only constantly defining each other within a given social space but also influence those possible positions available in a future social space (Hardy 2008, 230). Building upon this understanding of social space, Part III is not just about specific locations where genre films are produced or consumed. Neither do the three chapters adopt a sheer textual analysis on mise-enscène, setting or filming location. Instead, they are about how the spatial politics is constructed in genre filmmaking and how various dominant agents of power (such as taboo, censorship, state-sanctioned discourse, and ideologically influenced cognitions) influence the film production and consumption activities. Michel Foucault argues that there is often a misconception that sees power as always “negatively” operated around interdiction and restriction to decide what can or cannot say or do (Lynch 2011, 17-8). As this part demonstrates, the power interaction in a social space could also be a productive way to encourage creativity through resisting, deviating, transforming, or reconciling existing genre conventions. Focusing on one of the most popular genres in Japanese cinema— horror—Dave McCaig and Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough’s chapter investigated how contemporary Japanese horror films have begun to interrogate recent histrionic socio-economic shifts by foregrounding the ongoing displacement of millennials within Japanese society. Tracing Eroguro-nansensu aesthetics and thematics back to the well-established tradition in Japanese Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) arts from the 8th century, McCaig and Barraclough noted that contemporary Japanese horror films demonstrate a consciousness to break away from the supernatural-bound horror convention in the previous cycle. Instead, contemporary Japanese horrors re-appropriate those from the much earlier ero-guro-nansensu tradition to build “youth-scapes”, which enable them to continue to embrace government-led ideals of rebuilding the nation through economic and generational-based nationalism. Whereas McCaig and Barraclough’s chapter explores cinematic responses to Japan’s social changes, Kristof Van den Troost’s chapter provides an analysis on how media governance of censorship impacted on genre formation in late Colonial Hong Kong. Unlike Gary Bettinson’s chapter in the previous section that questions how an individual director

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Leste Chen creatively steered around Chinese censorship through mixing and adapting genre conventions, Van den Troost’s chapter provides an insight into the colonial government’s film censorship which is often overlooked in scholarly studies on Hong Kong popular cinema. Through a thorough archival research on the colonial government’s sanction on film contents of violence, crime, and sex, Van den Troost also maps the evolutionary path of Hong Kong’s notorious so-called Category III films during the transition period prior to the city’s return to China’s sovereignty. In this regard, Van den Troost’s chapter not only questions the impact of the Hong Kong colonial government’s cultural policy but also investigates the political space of Cold War Hong Kong. Moving to Mainland China, the last chapter examines the cinematic portrayal of China’s largest metropolis Shanghai as a noir city. Despite the ongoing debate whether film noir is a distinct film genre and questioning of genre determinants of noir films, it is now widely acknowledged among scholars that film noir and noir films should be understood beyond its original context of Hollywood. It is within this realm this chapter examines the interaction between noir film’s local expression in Chinese cinema and the country’s urban development in what Lin Feng calls Shanghai heibang films. The chapter questions why Shanghai, especially the old Shanghai back to the Republican era, is chosen by contemporary Chinese filmmakers as an imaginative space of China’s modernity. Through a contextualised analysis of selected films produced from the 1990s onwards, the chapter not only argues that Shanghai heibang films could be read as a sub-genre of noir films but also explains how the cinematic portrayal of noir Shanghai is informed by the social concerns over the country’s fast urbanisation since the 1990s. Though overlapping with Part II on genre development to a certain degree, Part III, in comparison, places more attention on the understanding of the social context and power relationships that impact on genre filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. The three chapters respectively reveal that the development of genre films often underpin complex power negotiations within a cultural and social space associated with a particular time and place in East Asia. However, in spite of their respective focus on Japanese, Hong Kong, and Chinese cinema and society, all of the three chapters also reveal that the politics of genre space is often spilt beyond geographic and cultural boundaries. Thus, it is equally important to note

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that these three chapters collectively highlight the fluidity of social space as well as the hybrid nature of genre cinema in East Asia.

References Gledhill, Christine. 2000. “Rethinking Genre.” In Reinventing Film Studies, edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, 221–43. London: Arnold. Hardy, Cheryl. 2008. “Social Space.” In Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, 2nd ed. edited by Michael Grenfell, 229–49. London: Routledge. Lynch, Richard A. 2011. “Foucault’s Theory of Power.” In Michel Foucault: Key Concepts, edited by Dianna Taylor. 13–26. London: Routledge.

Critiquing New Generational Japanese Horror: “Youthful Fatalisms, Old Aesthetics” Dave McCaig and Rachel Elizabeth Barraclough

Over the past two decades, Japanese horror has been the focus of extensive research with analyses producing insightful commentary and contributing new knowledge to the fields of Japanese cinema and horror genre studies.1 The surge in research into this area was sparked by the unprecedented global popularity that a number of Japanese horror films garnered during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Films, beginning with Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1998) and then others such as Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2002), found enthusiastic audiences both domestically and internationally, encouraging many scholars to investigate both texts and contexts in which they were produced. These films prompted some critics to interpret the stylistic and thematic novelties of this cycle as importantly remapping the parameters of, not just Japanese, but also

1 Specifically, Colette Balmain’s Introduction to Japanese Horror Film (2008) is a notable text.

D. McCaig · R. E. Barraclough (B) University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK e-mail: [email protected] D. McCaig e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_8

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international horror. As Mark Kermode (2003) enthused of the influence of the cycle, along came a slew of Eastern frighteners to reanimate the putrefying genre. In the same way that the Italian giallo maestros like Mario Bava and Dario Argento had inspired John Carpenter and Brian De Palma in the Sixties and Seventies, now Japanese film-makers such as Hideo Nakata and Takashi Miike emerged to lead international horror cinema out of the wilderness.

In recent years, however, there has been a considerable decline in the number of studies being produced about Japanese horror cinema. Western remakes of popular Japanese horror cinema inevitably diluted local narrative voices and broadly reinterpreted what can confidently be termed as a post-1997 Japanese film renaissance. As a result of this, the then radical approaches seemed exhausted through overuse and fell out of both critical and commercial favour. As such, much contemporary Japanese horror cinema (from around 2010 onwards) has been neglected and underexplored within Western film studies. This chapter argues for the importance of considering recent iterations of the genre which, whilst retaining some national and cultural elements established in the populist cycle of the late 1990s and early 2000s, significantly depart from the cyclic themes and aesthetics of the horror films that helped revive the Japanese film industry at home and abroad. As such, the films discussed here accompany recent Western horror works, including A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) in, arguably, a contemporary regeneration of the global horror genre through a complexity of themes and possible interpretations. Typically, scholars, such as Adam Lowenstein (2005) and Linnie Blake (2008), have understood horror as a populist genre that allegorises national and international concerns whilst functioning as a device to shock and scare audiences. Horror also has a history of undergoing renewal and refreshing itself into new cycles where, at one time, there are certain dominant themes and aesthetics that accompany these commentaries on political and social contexts. For instance, the popularity of the “Slasher” genre in the 1970s, through to various incarnations in the 1990s, relied heavily on youths in peril, themes of family and depictions of bloody violence to attract teenage audiences to Hollywood genre films such as Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984). More recently, the now petering novelty of the found

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footage horror film aesthetic gained international success through reinterpretation of the zombie movie in Rec (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, 2007) and the possessed house narrative in Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007). Commonly, cycles have novel elements to them and have also drawn inspiration and recycled from previous national cinemas and popular culture trends, both local and transnational. This chapter’s selection of what we term as New Generational Japanese Horror foregrounds the national culture and local social concerns perhaps more profoundly than the previous horror cycle, as recent filmic outputs indicate a cinema much less beholden to the commercial pressures of international expectations of entertainment and global spectatorship. New Generational Japanese Horror demonstrates a conscious breaking away from the increasingly fatigued, formulaic nature of the previous cycle by local film-makers with a desire to dramatically politicise populist forms of the past and present. The overuse of foregrounding supernatural entities, concerns about the dystopian nature of technology and the re-assuring solace of family structures presented in the previous cycle are now reappropriated with themes that radicalise predominately national artistic and political approaches. Contemporary genre examples that are discussed here, for instance Kawaki (The World of Kanako) (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2014), Greatful Dead (Eiji Uchida, 2013), Helter Skelter (Mika Ninagawa, 2012) and Destruction Babies (Tetsuya Mariko, 2016), are explicit in the depictions of their protagonists’ depraved mental states, presenting fantastical, gore-filled scenes of bodily mutilation and destruction. However, they are much more grounded in documenting and examining reality. Diverging from the supernatural qualities that dominated the previous Ringu cycle, these films foreground more realist, body-horror aesthetics and thematics to comment upon events, experiences and phenomena within contemporary Japanese society. This chapter focuses upon how these films (again diverging from the previous J-horror cycle which was renowned for featuring representations of the wronged, vengeful woman) interrogate the experiences of contemporary Japanese youths, or the overlapping Yutori no Sedai and the Satori no Sedai (as they are termed in Japan). The first term describes those born around 1980 who have experienced a much less pressurised form of education than their predecessors and the latter (born in the late 1980s to early 1990s) has come to mean both the enlightened and the resignation generation. Both of these generations are regarded as being less ambitious or less inclined to succeed in

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school and in a career than previous generations. The former, however, is explicitly associated with the prevalence and fetishisation of consumer culture (linked to profound economic growth in the 1980s) and materialism and the latter is perceived to have less appetite for luxury, material goods and a culture of status (Nae 2017, 57). These films represent those who have both been born and/or grew up around the time the Japanese economy began to decline in 1990, and their navigation and assimilation of the volatile, capitalist-centred culture of Japan especially. Furthermore, how these films represent gendered experiences of contemporary Japanese society and culture, articulating the differences between male and female assimilation and navigation, is also explored. Nevertheless, these films demonstrate an even more dramatic revisionist approach to the horror genre, whereby ero-guro-nansensu, or erotic grotesque nonsense, a popular, cultural and artistic movement from Japan’s past which foregrounds horrific, obscene and bizarre aesthetics and thematics, functions as a device to articulate the shock of the modern. This re-appropriation, more than a mere creative trend, speaks of similarities between turbulent social landscapes at different points in Japan’s history. New Generational Japanese Horror therefore provides an extraordinary insight into how the popular and national [re]emerge and are repurposed within genre cinema. The genre is currently exploring contemporary local society via old aesthetics and taking bold generic pathways through a process of repurposing the national.

The History and Development of Ero-guro-nansensu Ero-guro-nansensu aesthetics and thematics rose to prominence within Japanese literature, theatre, art and even film during the interwar years (1920s–1930s). However, erotic, grotesque, nonsense can be traced back to earlier Japanese pictorial and theatrical representations. In particular, there is a well-established tradition of Shunga within Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) art, dating back to the year 794, which depict erotic, pornographic scenes between men, women and even animals (see renowned artist, Katsushika Hokusai’s print, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife [1814], for instance). There were also many artists who created violent and gory Ukiyo-e. To give one prominent example, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi produced a series of prints, entitled Twenty Eight Famous Murders with Verse in the 1860s, which depicted such violent acts as a swordsman

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ripping the face off a man. These violent and sexually explicit Ukiyo-e were not marginalised, underground products but very much part of conventional consumption, enjoyed by both sexes and by people of all classes. Due to the popularity of and demand for Shunga in particular, most Ukiyo-e artists, up until the nineteenth century, began producing such prints, with only a few shunning the genre. Some Kabuki plays, dating back to the seventeenth century, were also characterised by what Richard J. Hand (2005, 21) terms zankoku no bi, or the aesthetics of cruelty, depicting scenes of torture, seppuku (ritual suicide) and mutilation. The enduring and historical influence of these plays upon the horror genre represents how ero-guro-nansensu sensibilities have consistently permeated Japanese popular culture, even if they have not always been explicitly linked to this cultural, artistic movement from the past in such a conscious and heightened fashion as they are now. During the interwar period, ero-guro-nansensu captured the essence of a decadent, consumerist, yet, at the same time, liberatory society. As the name itself suggests, ero-guro-nansensu cultural products were thematically and aesthetically bizarre, shocking and lewd, but their creation and consumption, as today, granted a space for debate and freedom. The interwar years constituted a period of tumultuous change, upheaval and conflict, with such events as the Great Kant¯o Earthquake of 1923 creating a break and discontinuity with past traditions. This period was thus preoccupied with modernism, creating a “post-traditional world not bound by national boundaries or timeless customs but informed by the openendedness and dynamism of capitalism” (Silverberg 2009, 13). Whilst there was an industrial, rationalising facet to this modernism, it is the introduction of a culture of play (Silverberg 2009, 14) that is particularly interesting in relation to the development of material culture at the time. A liberation of cultural mores occurred, influenced by, in particular, the proliferation of Western cultural products such as American films. The feeling that the present and the future were open ended, “were there for the making” (Silverberg 2009, 20), led to increasing aesthetic and thematic experimentation within the production and consumption of culture. For instance, one of the most celebrated Japanese authors of the interwar period, Edogawa Ranpo, who embraced the rebellious, decadent sensibilities of the time, kept readers entertained and shocked with sordid tales of physical and psychological perversion and forbidden sexual liaisons within serialised stories such as The Demon of The Lonely Isle (1929–1930) and The Caterpillar (1929). Beyond the erotic, his novel, Moju: The Blind

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Beast (1931), graphically tells the tale of a deranged, sightless artist who kidnaps young women across Tokyo, dismembering them and using their body parts to build a sculpture. Beyond literature, the Mavo artist group (established between 1912 and 1925), made up of young intellectuals from Tokyo, also embraced ero-guro-nansensu sensibilities within their various creative works, seeking to dismantle the archaic nature of traditional art establishments and institutions within Japan. In particular, the group responded to transformations in gender politics and greater freedoms for women (aligning with the emerging consumer culture discussed below), rebelling against stateendorsed ideologies about morality and public displays of sexuality by performing, for example, “erotically charged dances” (Weisenfeld 1994, 69). Despite a Westernisation of culture creeping into public life and mass culture through the novelty of Western-based technology, hybrid fashion and film language, the early Sh¯ owa era (1926–1941) then, also witnessed a radical revival and invigoration of local forms. Later prompted by government-led ultra-nationalism, alongside the turbulent political and economic conditions of the later interwar years (where Japan moved towards a more militaristic government and armaments-based manufacturing), national forms such as ero-guro-nansensu increasingly characterised the cultural zeitgeist. Within cinema too, ero-guro-nansensu became influential. Yasujiro Ozu’s earliest surviving work, Gakusei Romansu: Wakaki Hi (Days of Youth) (1929) is an outlandishly risqué story of a love triangle between three students that utilises the morbid and nonsensical humour typical of ero-guro-nansensu whilst illustrating local society at a peculiar crossroads. The culture of play that characterised the interwar period, allowing cultural producers to be more radically creative in their works and experiment with Western forms and subvert local traditions, is apparent in this film. Ozu focused on the weird and novel Western-based modernities and customs now available, such as the automobile and the fusion of traditional Kimonos with Western-style hats and American college pennants. Also, capturing the tone of this culture of play, as the students compete for each other’s attention during a skiing trip, the male leads are frequently seen to indulge in nonsensical behaviour such as sudden incoherent dancing and erratic movements. Isolated from national, cultural and political context, these scenes appear to be an outlandish indulgence

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from Ozu. But, as with other examples discussed, interpreting localisms signifies meaning. As already alluded to, the shocking and hysterical themes of eroguro-nansensu were also apt vehicles for the expression of traumatic events and tumultuous mutations, which were occurring within Japanese society in the interwar period. For instance, the devastating consequences of the Great Kant¯o Earthquake in 1923, which killed over one hundred thousand people, destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama and forced the government to declare martial law, were cathartically rendered within ero-guro-nansensu cultural products. Within Yasunari Kawabata’s eroguro-nansensu novel, Asakusa Kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa) (1930), for instance, which details the dangerous, decadent allure of the entertainment district of Asakusa, several chapters directly reference the Great Kant¯o Earthquake. Furthermore, stricter social and moral controls placed on the Japanese public by the state, keen to instil a sense of Japan’s civility amongst Western nations during the modernisation of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and, later, to promote its expansionist and fascist policies, contrasted greatly to the freedoms that modernity had brought the people. Booming industries (e.g. textiles), greater transport links to growing metropolises like Tokyo and the formulation of new public spaces like shopping malls, all contributed towards the proliferation of a Westernised consumer culture which encouraged people to experiment with their identities and try new subjective roles. The tension between discourses of subjective experimentation and conformation which characterised the Japanese people’s experience throughout the interwar period came to be expressed and negotiated in different ways within ero-guronansensu cultural products. The sexually charged, unapologetically bizarre subject matters associated with erotic, grotesque, nonsensical cultural products of the interwar period were constituted as a “transgressive gesture against state endorsed notions of constructive morality, identity, and sexuality” (Reichert 2001, 21) which aimed to help to rebuild and unify the nation during these turbulent times. Of particular focus within ero-guro-nansensu products were the paradoxical roles and identities of women in a transforming society. Modernity, and the new consumer culture especially, brought new freedoms for women. Deterring from the traditional, state-endorsed ry¯ osai kenbo, or good wife, wise mother role, whose domain was the household and who was submissive and obedient to first of all her father and then her

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husband, women were now able to seek employment in the new cafés and shopping malls, spend their income on newly available consumer goods, and engage in illicit activities such as smoking and casual sex. This liberated subject became known as a moga, or modern girl, a socially and politically awakened woman challenging traditional Japanese notions of femininity. The moga became part of the consumer culture herself, an alluring commodity or object to be gazed at and consumed by men. Her image, therefore, came to be represented within many ero-guro-nansensu cultural products, including in magazines (such as Shinseinen (The New Youth), 1920–1950, which “promoted Japan’s modernist movements” to youth audiences [Claremont 2008]), cartoon strips (e.g. Mogako and Mobor¯ o serialised within the magazine Shufu no Tomo in the 1920s– 1930s [Silverberg 2009, 53]), and in films (such as Jinsei no Onimotsu (A Burden of Life) [Heinosuke Gosho, 1935]). She was a performative body for a variety of outlandish and sexually charged acts.

Understanding Ero-guro-nansensu After the Interwar Period In the light of the reflective, cathartic function of ero-guro-nansensu discourses in the interwar period, we argue that its aesthetics and thematics have been re-appropriated within modern-day horror cinema as, similarly, it allows for the expression of contemporary societal, economic, political and cultural contradictions or conflicts. However, after the Second World War ended in a humiliating defeat for Japan in 1945, eroguro-nansensu themes and aesthetics receded to the peripheries of culture. The whole fabric of Japanese society and politics transformed when the allies, led by General Douglas MacArthur, occupied Japan (lasting up until 1952) and this also had a profound impact upon material culture. In attempts to reform, democratise and civilise Japan, cultural products were subject to strict censorship and were not permitted to promote old, traditional Japanese values. In efforts to appear as a modern, acceptable nation to the Western allies, Japan inscribed shame upon certain societal discourses (including such customs as mixed bathing) and forms of expression where it had not been located before. Thus, the themes and aesthetics of ero-guro-nansensu, perceived to be unacceptable to the new vision of a reformed, modern Japan, far from its primitive, brutal traditions and values of the past, were relegated from the cultural mainstream.

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The form and its traditions can, however, be found within exploitation cinema and soft-core pornography (pinku eiga as it is known in Japan) following the war. These genres eagerly embraced ero-guro-nansensu forms during the latter half of the twentieth century. Jasper Sharp (2008, 219), for instance, has proclaimed the importance of such earlier erotic themes and aesthetics to pinku eiga and the pinky violence sexploitation cinema which proliferated in the 1960s through to the 1980s. The latter, in particular, not only foregrounded the manic behaviour and formidably graphic depictions of sadomasochistic violence that characterises the eroguro-nansensu movement of the interwar years, but also, as Alice Kozma (2012, 3) states, allowed “Japanese cinema to showcase radical representations of gender and female sexuality through the subversive cinematic space of exploitation film”. The character of the sukeban, or girl gang boss, within pinky violence films such as Ky¯ ofu joshik¯ ok¯ o: b¯ ok¯ o rinchi ky¯ oshitsu (Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom) (Norifumi Suzuki, 1973), Sukeban Gerira (Girl Boss Guerilla) (Norifumi Suzuki, 1972) and Zenka onna: koroshibushi (Criminal Woman: Killing Medley) (Atsushi Mihori, 1973), was a particularly transgressive representation. The sukeban epitomised female agency and power as they, along with their gang, exploited normative society to survive and enacted violent justice on the systems and figures who had brutalised and marginalised them. Through such depictions, once again here, we can perceive the reflective, expressive function of ero-guro-nansensu at work. Today, the bizarre, lewd, horrific and violent aesthetics of the movement allow for the rendering of the contradictory, disorientating, cruel and fatalistic ways in which contemporary youths, or the Yutori no Sedai and the Satori no Sedai, in particular, experience and navigate contemporary Japanese society. The Satori no Sedai is contrastingly described to be either enlightened, free from material desire, self-aware and focused on finding essential truths to life, or as hopeless, lethargic, futureless and unmotivated. Similarly, the Yutori no Sedai are perceived as unambitious and uncompetitive and, as Anne Allison (2009, 97) describes, as “overspend[ing] time and money on pleasurable things such as brand name goods and the internet”. Japanese youths, as a whole, are viewed as a complex local demographic and are also criticised for floating “from job to job in a pattern called ‘freeta’”,2 for lacking “skills or employment 2 The term “freeta”, or fur¯ ıt¯ a in Japanese, is defined in opposition to the salaryman. It describes people, usually of younger generations, who engage in casual, temporary

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altogether in a pattern called NEET (not in education, employment or training)” and for “marry[ing] later or not at all” (Allison 2009, 97) as they are collectively labelled, as self-centred, even narcissistic (Nae 2017, 53) and disinterested in personal relationships. Japanese youths have been described as a lost generation; however, these social and economic situations they find themselves within may not be a choice. Due to the economic crash in 1990, followed by the recession of 2008, it became increasingly difficult for young people graduating from high school and university to attain the 1980s ideal of stable, fulltime employment, characteristic of the prosperous years of the bubble economy. This problem has been compounded by natural disasters that have struck in 1995 with the Great Hanshin Earthquake and in 2011 with the Great T¯ohoku Earthquake and Tsunami (discussed in more detail below). As such, Japanese youths may not have the means to leave their parental homes, leading to the development of the generational objectification of the “parasite single” who leeches off their parents long after they should have gained full financial independence. Connected to this, as national life narratives of corporate loyalty become increasingly eroded, Japanese youths may also not have the means to start and support families of their own, leading to this perception that they are rejecting traditional institutions of marriage and family. This view becomes further embedded when it is considered how today, increasingly, the young especially substitute the stability of familial and communal forms of sociality, support and identity building for technologically mediated, virtual forms. Many cultural commentators have discussed the dangers of this disintegration of familial and communal support networks, arguing that such horrific events as the Kobe child murders of 1997 and the Aum Shinriky¯ o sarin gas attack upon the Tokyo subway system in 1995, are a direct result. In 1997, a child of fourteen years mutilated and killed two younger children, writing in letters and journals found by the police about his torment and invisibility within the education system. Similarly perceived as symptomatic

employment such as seasonal work. The term first appeared in the mid-1980s and became widespread in the 1990s. Such work, particularly in the 1980s, was once desirable to younger generations, allowing them to fund the lifestyles they wished to lead without having to seek full-time employment. However, since the economic crash of 1990, it has increasingly become the only lifestyle option available to younger generations as employers, uncertain of their economic stability, are less inclined to take on full-time workers.

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of an increasingly uncaring and unempathetic society was the formation of the Aum Shinriky¯ o cult. Led by Asahara Sh¯ok¯o, the cult were on a mission to stop worldwide spiritual decay and to inaugurate a new era under the leadership of a core of people with psychic gifts. As Yumiko Iida (2002, 242) notes, many young, university educated people explained their motivations for joining the Aum Shinriky¯ o cult as “satisfying an emotional lack, and giving themselves a second chance to ‘mature’ in a protected space away from the ‘real world’ in which they felt they had failed”. The pathology of hikikomori has also been directly linked to the disintegration of familial and communal support networks. This term, literally meaning pulling inward or being confined, describes a contemporary cultural phenomenon where youths (particularly males) avoid all social contact, confine themselves to their rooms, stop going to school, college or work and stop maintaining their relationships with friends and family. Contrasting ideologies about youths have come to be represented within contemporary Japanese cinema. The perception of Japanese youths as resigned, self-centred and fatalistic, however, is one which pervades the contemporary horror genre in particular, finding expression through ero-guro-nansensu. Arjun Appadurai (2005) ascertains that it is necessary to converge the trends and functions of political, social and artistic “scapes” when critiquing contemporary culture. As such, we can again here intertwine a period of dramatic change in Japanese public life and an articulation of it within the popular. Here, what anthropologists’ term “youth-scapes”, are distinguished as an essential theoretical platform. Its primary function is to bring together these different areas when examining how many recent horror films have developed appraisals of the roles of youths, nationalism and citizenship within modern Japanese society. Contemporary youths are continually displaced within society. Yet, conversely, they have also become central to governmental policies for rebuilding the nation and the economy under Shinzo Abe’s “youth-economics” prerogative that was formed in the wake of the economic crash. The polarising, suspending positions that Japanese youths find themselves in (discussed in more detail below) have begun to be interrogated through popular local media. In representing these positionings, Japanese horror films have re-appropriated and renegotiated the role of ero-guro-nansensu within popular culture.

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The recent pronounced revival of local cultural mores through the explicit use of ero-guro-nansensu may seem eccentric to foreign spectators, even after the recent global marketisation, Western fetishisation and saturation of East Asian “extreme” cinema. This chapter contends that, to enable more consonant readings, a consideration of ero-guro-nansensu must now accompany the disciplines of globalisation studies, anthropology and gender politics within analyses of the current revisionist cycle. Otherwise we fall into danger of continuing recent derogative Westernbased criticism by interpreting the manic and sadistic as merely Japanoid scenes constructed for foreign audiences, eager to continue consuming the extreme in absence of local contexts. Such reductive diagnostics condemn the modern ero-guro-nansensu film to the depreciative reception that the original cultural movement was met with. As Miriam Silverberg (2009, 231) indicates, the slapstick, nonsense characteristic of ero-guronansensu products from the period was often reductively proclaimed as “nearly meaningless” by dismissive critics in the 1930s. Far from being meaningless, ero-guro-nansensu has had a surprisingly wide-ranging influence upon social and cultural life within Japan since the interwar period, so much so that it is widely mistaken as a modern style and ethos. The foregrounding of the culture of ero-guro-nansensu has, for instance, influenced attitudes towards sexuality, gender and familial relationships in contemporary local life. Notably, there has been a celebratory revival of the 1920s moga figure, of her style and attitude, in the 1980s and 1990s as a positive, feminist agency for the reinforcement of the intertwining of sisterhood and consumerism. Within contemporary culture, the figure of the kogyaru (sometimes referred to as the kogal ) has emerged as a counterpart to the moga. The Kogyaru, meaning high-school girl, is explicitly associated with the Yutori no Sedai and is a fashion subculture where teenagers wear clothing based upon their school uniform, usually consisting of a very short skirt with knee high socks and a bow clipped to the neck of the shirt. The kogyaru, much like the moga, are often perceived as superficial, materialistic and promiscuous young women who spend too much time and money indulging in their consumerist lifestyles and who subvert traditional, gendered expectations by seeking out sex and shirking the traditional role of the shufu (a term, meaning housewife, which replaced the more traditional slogan, ry¯ osai kenbo, after the Second World War). In terms of cinema since the interwar period, in what is now considered a masterwork of Japanese cinema history, Zigeunerweisen (Seijun

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Suzuki, 1980) is significant in its use of shock and horror through eroguro-nansensu as a means by which to critique sociological and political orientations. Zigeunerweisen is a surreal, supernatural film focused around the lives of two intellectuals and former colleagues who, upon reuniting, encounter death in various, bizarre ways and engage in dangerous sexual games with each others’ wives. Zigeunerweisen is part of a trilogy dubbed the “Taish¯ o Trilogy” which also includes the equally obscure and lewd films Kager¯ o-za (Seijun Suzuki, 1981) and Yumeji (Seijun Suzuki, 1991). Each of these films, set during the Taish¯ o era (1912–1926), a period (along with the early Sh¯ owa era) which saw ero-guro-nansensu proliferate within popular culture, incorporates erotic, grotesque nonsense to comment upon the Westernisation of Japanese society and its effects upon Japanese identity, drawing parallels between the 1920s and the 1980s which each saw Western influence in Japan reach new heights. Furthermore, as scholars such as Sharp (2008, 219) note, themes of sexual-based violence and depravity typical of ero-guro-nansensu remained notably visible within the pinky violence film cycle of the 1960s through to the 1980s. Presenting radical portrayals of gender and sexuality, these films illustrated deviant behaviour as perverse, but also as celebratory and liberating. As such, the depiction of erotic, grotesque and nonsensical violence inflicted upon and administered by characters, for example, Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji) in the popular exploitation film, Female Prisoner#701: Scorpion (Shinya Ito, 1972), has prompted feminist readings from scholars such as Alicia Kozma (2012). More than four decades later, Eiji Uchida pays respects to Meiko Kaji’s eccentric portrayal of Nami the anti-heroine in Greatful Dead. Like her namesake from the Female Scorpion series, Nami (Kumi Takiuchi), in Greatful Dead, confronts a reading as an anti-heroine through her perverse and destructive actions. Nami is a young woman who, with nothing else better to do with her time, begins stalking and documenting people whom she terms “solitarians”, social outcasts who have clear mental health issues, act out violently against others or else are lonely and depressed. She takes a particular interest in an elderly man named Shiomi (Takashi Sasano) who violently rejects attempts made by his son to reconnect and spend time with him. Shiomi, however, begins seeing a young Christian missionary for bible study, which makes him regret his actions and seek a reconciliation with his family. This development sends Nami into a psychotic rage and she decides to enlist the help of another solitarian in kidnapping Shiomi and the missionary. Carrying out

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her plan, one young missionary, accompanying Shiomi’s study partner, is brutally murdered with a hammer and Shiomi is beaten and raped. Although the film’s conclusion suggests that Nami has found a sense of personal closure and hollow spiritual awakening through her volatile interactions with Shiomi, she remains, like many of the central protagonists in New Generational Japanese Horror, caught in a downward trajectory, a literal helter skelter, as they navigate through the perils of modern urban life. The history of post-war cultural representations of Japanese women within local media is complex. Many representations have, however, tended to focus on their power as consumers, functioning within and driving capitalism through consumption. As New Generational Japanese Horror emerges, representations of young female characters and their sexualities become even more complex. The questions arise, are these representations derogatory or celebratory and how can we further examine them in a national and historical context? To explore, scholarship can further turn to historical local forms. Perhaps the influence of the infamous Sada Abe case from the interwar years can inform our understanding of these latest interpretations of young women in New Generational Japanese Horror Cinema. In 1936, Sada, a former geisha and sex worker, asphyxiated her married lover, Kichizo and severed his penis with a kitchen knife, before being arrested a few days later. Subsequently, her sentence was commuted, she became a media sensation and throughout the following decades, plays, novels and films based on her case infiltrated Japanese culture. Of particular relevance here is not only how her trial foregrounded a fascination with sexology, as Sada was “accused of exhibiting perversions discussed in contemporary sexual science - fetishism, sadism, masochism and nymphomania” (Marran 2005, 38), but also how these media narratives promptly switched from an emphasis on her as a melodramatic villain to an anti-heroine. As such, we cannot escape the influence of the case upon New Generational Japanese Horror, the subsequent re-interpretations and possible feminist readings that feed into this new cycle. Post-war adaptations of the Sada Abe story, most famously in Ai no Korida (In the Realm of the Senses ) ¯ (Nagisa Oshima, 1976), largely witnessed a shift to exonerating her from what Christine Marran terms as the “imaginative position of the disorderly woman” (2005, 82) and to a celebration of her actions as one of sexual empowerment and an act against patriarchal oppression. In our selection of contemporary horror films, the presentation of disorderly women and

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their evocation of the perverse is similarly neither fully celebrated nor entirely condemned.

Current Contexts and Contemporary Ero-guro-nansensu in Film In conjunction with such historical, local readings, it is now pertinent to explore the nature of contemporary Japanese society and how experiences of it have been rendered within New Generational Japanese Horror Cinema, shedding some light on the complexities of representation we encounter. Leading up to the economic crash of 1990, one of the most disruptive contemporary events, Japan underwent a period of unprecedented economic growth, peaking in the 1980s, which saw the country become the world’s second largest economy after the USA. The bubble economy was, however, built on “the unstable foundations of a highly favourable trade surplus, land speculation and unsecured bank loans” (Iles 2008, 22) and by 1990 the stock market spiralled unstoppably into decline. The crash caused mass unemployment and homelessness and brought scandal to Japanese politicians and corporations. Once steadfast institutions such as the state, the education and business sectors and even the family also began to crumble. The collapse of the bubble economy is not the only disruptive event, however, that should be considered here. Also continuing to impact the lives and experiences of Japanese people today are such disasters as the Great Hanshin Earthquake which struck Kobe in 1995, killing over six thousand people, and the Great T¯ ohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, which killed over fifteen thousand people. Like the Great Kant¯o Earthquake of 1923, these disasters caused huge amounts of damage to infrastructure and the economy, with the Great T¯ohoku Earthquake and Tsunami becoming the costliest natural disaster in history. Furthermore, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis (known as the Lehman shock in Japan) also continued to be felt for over a decade after the collapse of the US investment bank, the Lehman Brothers. The recession that this crisis caused in Japan created widespread economic hardship amongst individuals and businesses. As a combined result of these disasters and the structural breakdowns they created, a deep sense of malaise and nihilism set in amongst the Japanese population. There was no longer a clear path for national and individual progression through time, and, as such, the

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nation and its people became suspended, unable to make sense of their situation and reinstate some semblance of linearity and coherence. Essentially, the nature of the radical and unstable social, political, economic and personal narratives experienced in the interwar years, ripe conditions for the extraction of horrific, erotic, grotesque and nonsensical cultural products, have rematerialised. Japanese youths, in particular, face a number of difficulties in the contemporary climate. According to the Global Youth Wellbeing Index (International Youth Foundation 2017), despite a high initial graduate employment rate in 2017, that reflects the current, recovering economy, many youths still remain fatalistic about their future standards of wellbeing and financial security as they remain indefinitely suspended between childhood and adulthood. Many, graduating high school and university, since the economic crash of 1990, have, for instance, fallen into a pattern termed fur¯ıt¯ a or freeta. This state of economic precariousness amongst youths has been exacerbated by the shift in focus that the economy underwent in the light of the recession. The Japanese economy went from producing “high value-added industrial goods, such as automobiles and computer hardware, to information technology software and technology networks” (Iida 2002, 214). Such a shift meant that the economy became more flexible and immaterial, based upon service rather than manufacturing. Many Japanese horror films from the previous, Ringu cycle reflected upon this transition, largely commenting upon the detrimental effects of technology on Japanese society by producing socalled tech-horror tales, where such mediums as the videotape in Ringu provide a conduit for sinister, supernatural forces. The current horror cycle however, steering away from the supernatural, projects a view of these discourses that is more firmly embedded in realism. There are many representations of youth’s suspended, directionless state in New Generational Japanese Horror. Including within Helter Skelter, a tale about the supermodel and actress Liliko (Erika Sawajiri), who undergoes full body plastic surgery in order to stay at the top of her career. Liliko, often referred to as “Tiger Lily” from the Peter Pan franchise, is determined to stay young forever, never growing old, just like the children of Neverland. Liliko’s body begins to break down, however, as a result of these procedures and, along with it, her mind. Through this, the film depicts a pessimistic outlook for Liliko’s future. It appears that her only refuge is her home, a space removed from the outside world which

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is adorned with soft toys, highlighting further her suspension between childhood and adulthood. Increasingly desperate and unhinged, Liliko lashes out at those around her, including her boyfriend and assistant. Her state of mind is exacerbated when she is introduced to the young, popular model Kozue (Kiko Mizuhara) and Liliko sets out to sabotage the rising star. Graphic suicides, organ thefts, grotesquely comic body mutilations and bloody conflict, all constitutive of ero-guro-nansensu, run through Helter Skelter. As Liliko’s fragile vanity and vicious desire to succeed in the modelling world dominate her unbalanced psyche, the film comments upon the absurd, depraved nature of a shallow existence measured by appearance and conspicuous consumption prevalent in contemporary Japan (amongst the Yutori no Sedai), which increasingly resembles a malformed and reckless performance of ero-guro-nansensu. Helter Skelter contains a particularly scathing social commentary. Liliko’s rotting and decaying body literally signifies the social and moral disintegration that has perceivably occurred due to the proliferation of selfishness and vanity in contemporary Japan, where, particularly amongst the Yutori no Sedai, image totals identity formation. Destruction Babies is also laden with such representations and critiques of the directionless, morally depraved nature of Japanese youths. In the film, we follow the story of Taira (Y¯uya Yagira), a teenage orphan, who lives above a shipping yard with his younger brother Shota (Nijir¯ o Murakami). Despite the prospect of future employment offered to Taira by an elder, he chooses to forgo this path and take another, more violent and directionless route. Shortly after fighting with some other local youths, Taira leaves his hometown and his brother behind and begins aimlessly wandering around a neighbouring city, fighting various innocent members of the public. Taira seems to gain perverse and sadomasochistic pleasure from both inflicting pain on his opponents and being beaten himself. This suggests that he has become so jaded with the disappointing future set out before him that he must engage in a violent pilgrimage to feel alive and break-free from the hopelessness and monotony of his daily life. His destructive actions sporadically filmed and celebrated on social media, Taira joins other male characters in this revisionist cycle that illustrate an impotence (both physical and psychological) within contemporary masculinity that links to a lack of support networks and personal

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connections with others, economic ineffectuality, and a deficiency in selffulfilment. In these films, post-industrial masculinity is constantly depicted as despondent and melancholy. Today, male subjectivity and notions of masculinity have been displaced and transformed, radically diverging from the salaryman model prevalent within the 1980s. The salaryman figure was a loyal, persevering, modern-day samurai who worked tirelessly for his company, the national economy and his family. Prior to the economic crash, it was expected that all boys would grow up to be such ideal citizens. However, during the recession, such an ideal became more and more unattainable and was replaced by a consumer identity, dubbed the “new man”, as the government attempted to rebuild the nation and economy through conspicuous consumption. This has caused a crisis in masculine identity and a repurposing of gender roles. The “new man” is perceived to be much more feminised, embodying sensitivity, more willing to take up traditionally feminine roles (such as child rearing) and, most significantly, becoming a sexual object to be gazed at and consumed by women (Darling-Wolf 2004, 288). Men, once holding purposeful societal positions within patriarchal structures, have perceivably lost their status and they are now simply displaced consumers of technology, beauty and fashion products. As Yumiko Iida (2005) indicates, whilst the “feminisation of masculinity” (56) edges away at previously established patriarchal orders, its base can be located within an increase in material culture aimed at young Japanese men in the 1990s as “masculinity came to be a new site of capital’s colonization” (59). Within Destruction Babies , it is significant that the violent pilgrimage of Taira and Yuya (Masaki Suda), a bored, sexually frustrated high-school student who meets Taira in the city and joins him on his journey, eventually leads them to the heart of the consumer culture, a shopping mall, where they proceed to unleash a brutal attack upon members of the public. The characters revel in disrupting the monotonous, daily routine of the shopping mall and, through their attack, they are rebelling against a culture that positions them as consumers rather than contributors to society. Their new identity, as rebels with a cause, gives Taira and Yuya a clear sense of satisfaction and fulfilment lacking in the uncertainty of contemporary everyday life. Destruction Babies is interesting in its representations of Taira, a particularly active, male protagonist, as the men within many New Generational Japanese Horror films (including Greatful Dead and Kawaki [The World of Kanako]) are often willingly subservient to the sadomasochistic demands of the genre’s twisted anti-heroines.

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Historically, ero-guro-nansensu has been characterised by males inflicting pain upon female subjects. The depiction of male subservience to the perversions of anti-heroines is evidence of a curious turn within contemporary ero-guro-nansensu, as the aesthetic is re-appropriated at a time when the complexities of modern gender politics are at the forefront of Japanese political debate. Whilst narratives of youths as futureless and aimless have become popular, particularly with the state (which increasingly acknowledges the problems with youth unemployment and, for instance, the ageing population and the childbirth crisis, in its policies), it is important to acknowledge that youths have potentially found alternative, nonconformist ways of being and subjectivities which re-establish linearity and progression for them. New forms of subjectivity and ways of being beyond traditional ideals, centred around the salaryman role for men and the Shufu for women, were generated through the prevalent and expanding consumer culture during the 1980s and into the 1990s. This culture has been understood by commentators as embodying the attributes of “lightness, fragmentation, and stylistic sophistication freed from the burden of representing meaning and content” (Iida 2002, 7). During the 1980s, in times of economic prosperity, expansions of the consumer culture and the freedoms for experimentation with identity that it offered were received positively by Japanese society. Much akin to the interwar years, the consumer culture at this time was perceived to offer liberation from traditional forms of subjectivity and roles. However, following the economic crash in 1990 and the subsequent recession, it came to be perceived as a more malign force which broke down subjectivity and made it expressly more difficult for people to form stable senses of identity. Commercial penetration into the realms of subjectivity during the 1990s advanced far beyond what had been seen in the past, encompassing more fully such things as the body and sexuality. This was due to the proliferation of digital media, the expansion of the high-tech information-based economy and the instatement of a more flexible, immaterial model, which caused subjectivity to become “a preferred area for profit extraction” (Iida 2002, 8). Within contemporary Japanese society, the figure of the kogyaru has emerged as one such new, experimental identity. As detailed above, the kogyaru, like her interwar period counterpart, the moga, is a female subject who explicitly links her identity to the consumer culture. One of the most significant practices associated with the kogyaru and

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consumerism that has sparked widespread debate is enjo k¯ osai (compensated dating). Enjo k¯ osai is a practise where young girls meet, spend time with and even engage in sexual activity with older, usually middleaged, men (oyaji) in exchange for money, which they use to buy luxury consumer goods. Although the number of kogyaru actually engaging in this activity is relatively small, there has been a moral panic centred around this issue, making it appear more pervasive. Whilst some commentators, including Iida (2002, 232), have discussed how the practise of enjo k¯ osai is potentially liberating for young women, as they can escape sexual mores, social morality and self-governance, the harmful effects of the trend on individuals, as well as the Japanese nation and its traditions at large, are also oft-cited. Films such as Bounce Kogals (Masato Harada, 1997) and Enjo K¯ osai Bokumetsu Und¯ o (Stop the Bitch Campaign) (K¯osuke Suzuki, 2001), both released prior to the emergence of New Generational Japanese Horror, largely portray a negative perspective of the kogyaru and practices such as enjo k¯ osai. Within contemporary horror, we see a continuation of negative portrayals, however, we can perhaps perceive greater complexities of representation here which appear to celebrate these young women and their actions. Nevertheless, through the inclusion of genre codes and conventions and the re-appropriation of the aesthetic of eroguro-nansensu, the depictions of kogyaru within such cinema today are more shocking, violent and grotesque. Within Destruction Babies , for instance, the character Nana (Nana Komatsu) works as a hostess at a bar, selling herself to the Yakuza who patronise it in order to fund her passion for fashion. Kidnapped by Taira and Yuya as they steal the car she is riding in, Nana is far from a victim as she becomes a participant in the violent, gruesome acts of the rampaging duo. In a sadistic twist, inspiring revulsion of her character, Nana strangles a man after he spits blood on her dress. Revelling in the violence, in the closing scenes of the film, Nana deliberately crashes the car the trio are driving and, seeing her chance to get her revenge upon Yuya who abused and molested her, repeatedly crushes his injured body with the car door. Nana’s violent, vengeful act upon Yuya, however, whilst shocking, is celebratory and redemptive of her character, she becomes an anti-heroine who finally puts an end to the rampage of male-led violence. In a further critique of late capitalism and the modes of subjectivity that it fosters, depictions of the kogyaru as materialistic, selfish and immoral dominate Kawaki (The World of Kanako). Here, ex-detective Akikazu (K¯oji Yakusho), a downtrodden, unstable, alcoholic, searches for

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his missing teenage daughter, Kanako (Nana Komatsu) at the request of his ex-wife. Kanako is a gangster and pimp, operating both inside and outside of school, making money by extorting others to fund her lavish taste in designer goods. In one of the most horrific scenes, we witness the brutal rape of one of Kanako’s male school friends, who is then blackmailed into continuing to prostitute himself for Kanako. There is also the implication that Kanako herself indulges in the practise of enjo k¯ osai. Representations within Greatful Dead are perhaps a little more complex. Blame for Nami’s violent, sadistic, immoral nature is firmly placed at the door of her family, who, in various ways, neglected and abandoned her when she was only young. Abandonment causes Nami to turn to consumerism to fill the void of loneliness and disconnect that she feels. She obsessively watches a television shopping channel upon her mother’s departure from the family to conduct charity work abroad. As Nami becomes a young adult and her father commits suicide, leaving her a substantial inheritance, she compulsively purchases goods from the shopping channel as we see her home cluttered with items and empty delivery boxes. Whilst her consumerist lifestyle is not solely to blame for her unhinged and violent behaviour, the film makes clear that neither does it fulfil Nami or instil within her any sense of morality as belonging to a family or communal group would. In contrast, advocating a return to familial social structures, Shiomi, once isolated, lonely and aggressive towards his son, finds a new lease of life through Christianity and transforms his behaviour. The disintegration of foundational institutions like the family is a prominent source of horror within New Generational Japanese Horror films, leading to social degradation, turmoil and violent outbursts from individuals. Such representations can be understood as part of nationalistic sentiments and ideologies related to nation rebuilding as Japan and its society has traditionally been founded upon and organised around institutions of the community and family. There is a perceived need within Japanese society to re-establish and strengthen familial and communal structures in the light of various incidents and the isolation of modernist developments. These examples of New Generational Japanese Horror, therefore, may add to the call for such reinstatements. Within Japanese society, such events as the Aum Shinriky¯ o cult’s sarin gas attack upon the Tokyo subway system have been widely understood as symptomatic of the lack of communal and familial support available to, in particular, today’s youths. Many young people found that, within the cult,

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despite its violent, extortive nature, they could obtain the sense of unity, belonging, community and family that they had been missing in their lives. These absences have also been linked to other cases of violence occurring within Japan, including the Kobe child murders from 1997. The shocking nature of these incidents involving youths is clearly invoked within New Generational Japanese Horror films with their various depictions of brutal torture, mutilation, rape and murder, expressed through the lens of ero-guro-nansensu. As with the interwar years, real-life violent events serve as inspiration for ero-guro-nansensu culture.

Conclusion More than just nationalistic products, intoning the state line of a need to revitalise traditional, national institutions and structures of community and family to combat delinquency, deviance and violence, New Generational Japanese Horror films represent the wealth and complexity of contemporary experiences and issues and offer no one simple solution. These films represent an important movement within Japanese genre cinema, steering away from the supernatural tales of the previous cycle but re-appropriating aesthetics and thematics from the much earlier eroguro-nansensu movement. Ero-guro-nansensu constituted an important mode of expression during the interwar years, allowing for complex, multifaceted, often traumatic events and issues within Japanese society to be negotiated through culture. This chapter has argued that eroguro-nansensu has resurfaced today as Japanese society undergoes yet another turbulent and disturbing period in its history. Ero-guro-nansensu themes and aesthetics are uniquely positioned to render the contradictory, conflictual, hedonistic, decadent and cruel nature of contemporary cultures.

References Allison, Anne. 2009. “The Cool Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth”. Theory, Culture & Society 26: 2–3. Accessed 10 January 2019. https://jou rnals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263276409103118. Appadurai, Arjun. 2005. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Balmain, Colette. 2008. Introduction to Japanese Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Blake, Linnie. 2008. The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Claremont, Yasuko. 2008. “Shinseinen in the Interwar period (1920-30).” Paper Presented at 17th Biennial Conference of the ASAA. Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, Australia, July 1–3. Darling-Wolf, Fabienne. 2004. “Women and New Men: Negotiating Masculinity in the Japanese Media.” The Communication Review 7 (3): 285–303. Hand, Richard J. 2005. “Aesthetics of Cruelty: Traditional Japanese Theatre and the Horror Film.” In Japanese Horror Cinema, edited by Jay McRoy, 18–21. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Iida, Yumiko. 2002. Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. “Beyond the ‘Feminization of Masculinity’: Transforming Patriarchy with the ‘Feminine’ in Contemporary Japanese Youth Culture.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6 (1): 56–74. Iles, Timothy. 2008. The Crisis of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Film. Leiden: BRILL. International Youth Foundation. 2017. Global Youth Wellbeing Index. International Youth Foundation. Accessed 23 January 2019. https://www.youthi ndex.org/full-report. Kermode, Mark. 2003. “Dread and Dripping.” The Observer Online, June 8. Accessed 9 January 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/jun/ 08/features.review. Kozma, Alicia. 2012. “Pinky Violence: Shock, Awe and the Exploitation of Sexual Liberation.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 3 (1): 37–44. Lowenstein, Adam. 2005. Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Marran, Christine. 2005. “So Bad She’s Good: The Masochist’s Heroine in Postwar Japan, Abe Sada.” In Bad Girls of Japan, edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley, 81–96. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nae, Miculina. 2017. “The More They Change, the More They Stay the Same; Japanese Millennials and Their Attitudes to Work and Family.” Euromentor 8 (4): 53–70. Reichert, Jim. 2001. “Deviance and Social Darwinism in Edogawa Ranpo’s ¯ Erotic-Grotesque Thriller Koto no Oni.” Journal of Japanese Studies 27 (1): 113–41. Sharp, Jasper. 2008. Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press. Silverberg, Miriam. 2009. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Weisenfeld, Gennifer. 1994. “Mavo’s Conscious Constructivism: Art, Individualism, and Daily Life in Interwar Japan.” Art Journal 5 (3): 64–73.

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Film/Television ¯ Ai no Korida (In the Realm of the Senses ). Directed by Nagisa Oshima. Towa, 1976. Film. A Nightmare on Elm Street. Directed by Wes Craven. New Line Cinema, 1984. Film. A Quiet Place. Directed by John Krasinski. Paramount Pictures, 2018. Film. Bounce Kogals. Directed by Masato Harada. Shochiku-Fuji, 1997. Film. Destruction Babies. Directed by Tetsuya Mariko. Tokyo Theatres K.K., 2016. Film. Enjo K¯ osai Bokumetsu Und¯ o (Stop the Bitch Campaign). Directed by K¯ osuke Suzuki. King Records, 2001. Film. Female Prisoner#701: Scorpion. Directed by Shinya Ito. Toei, 1972. Film. Gakusei Romansu: Wakaki Hi (Days of Youth). Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku Eiga, 1929. Film. Get Out. Directed by Jordan Peele. Universal Pictures, 2017. Film. Greatful Dead. Directed by Eiji Uchida. Ark Entertainment, 2013. Film. Halloween. Directed by John Carpenter. Columbia Pictures, 1978. Film. Helter Skelter. Directed by Mika Ninagawa. Asmik Ace Entertainment, 2012. Film. Jinsei no Onimotsu (A Burden of Life). Directed by Heinosuke Gosho. Shochiku, 1935. Film. Ju-On: The Grudge. Directed by Takashi Shimizu. Lions Gate Films, 2002. Film. Kager¯ o-za. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Cinema Placet, 1981. Film. Kawaki (The World of Kanako). Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima. GAGA, 2014. Film. Kyôfu joshikôkô: bôkô rinchi kyôshitsu (Terrifying Girls’ High School: Lynch Law Classroom). Directed by Norifumi Suzuki. Toei, 1973. Film. Paranormal Activity. Directed by Oren Peli. Paramount Pictures, 2007. Film. Rec. Directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2007. Film. Ringu. Directed by Hideo Nakata. Toho, 1998. Film. Sukeban Gerira (Girl Boss Guerilla). Directed by Norifumi Suzuki. Toei, 1972. Film. Yumeji. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Genjiro Amato Pictures, 1991. Film. Zenka onna: koroshibushi (Criminal Woman: Killing Medley). Directed by Atsushi Mihori. Toei, 1973. Film. Zigeunerweisen. Directed by Seijun Suzuki. Cinema Placet, 1980. Film.

Genre and Censorship: The Crime Film in Late Colonial Hong Kong Kristof Van den Troost

No writing on censorship and the cinema can fully capture the impact of the former on the latter. Doing so would require taking stock of the could-have-been, or would amount to writing alternative histories about the course cinema would have taken if the censors had or had not intervened. This type of speculation is something film scholars and historians cannot conventionally engage in. The furthest they can go is to uncover and record specific acts of censorship by digging into the archives, while hinting at the pervasive and harder to document self-censorship that takes place after the censors have indicated the red lines that should not be crossed. As a result, censorship often receives only limited attention in standard film histories, despite its pervasive influence on the films we watch. In this chapter, I will argue that genre theory offers a way to conceptualise more clearly the effects of the censors’ scissors on cinema as we know it. I will first lay out the parameters of a recent shift in film genre theory that allows for this better accounting for the role of censorship. After

K. Van den Troost (B) Centre for China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_9

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a brief reconsideration of earlier research on the genre-censorship relationship in 1930s Hollywood—the main context in which this question has previously been explored—I will make a case for greater attention to censorship in studies of film genre. I will do this by exploring a few crucial turning points in film censorship as it was practiced in Hong Kong during the last few decades of British colonial rule, focusing in particular on the censorship of crime and violence. I will first show how the censors were a crucial influence on successive shifts in local genre film production in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from period martial arts (or wuxia) to kung fu and contemporary crime films. I will then deal with a more unexpected— but no less crucial—connection between political censorship and Hong Kong genre cinema in the 1980s and early 1990s, when film classification was first introduced. Drawing on declassified materials in Hong Kong and British government archives, I will show that the colonial government’s desire to retain the power to censor films likely to upset the Chinese government in Beijing was a key factor in the long-delayed introduction of film classification in Hong Kong. Both the protracted absence of classification and its eventual introduction in 1988 had significant repercussions. In a coda to this chapter, I will briefly explore productive effects of film censorship by probing the impact of classification on Hong Kong filmmaking in the late 1980s and 1990s, arguing that the censors in effect created a new “proto-genre”, the Category III film (sanji pian). Treating genre as process and as a cultural category constructed through discourse, I will demonstrate how Hong Kong’s censorship regime engaged the competing goals and demands from the Hong Kong film industry, the general public and the colonial government, and had a profound influence on the territory’s most well-known genres, the crime film in particular. In other words, paying attention to film censorship can help us rewrite the history of Hong Kong cinema, and its genres.

Process, Context and Discourse To gauge the impact of film censorship more accurately, it is useful to make a detour and consider how genres’ change over time has previously been conceptualised. As early as the 1970s, Tzvetan Todorov (1975, 6) took issue with the biological connotations of the term “genre evolution”, stressing that unlike in the evolution of species, “every work modifies the sum of possible works, each new example alters the species”. While

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Todorov does not address issues of censorship, we can adapt his formulation to astutely indicate the consequences of the censor’s actions: each film altered (or banned) by the censor alters cinema as a whole. The censor’s activity is therefore not only restrictive: it is also productive. If, for example, the glorification of gangsters is not permitted, then filmmakers will depict the gangster in a different way or direct their energies towards different film genres. Despite the high acclaim of Todorov’s work, most scholarship on genre over the next twenty years did not follow up on this particular insight. Instead, it tended to consider genres as the modern incarnations of ancient myths, and consequently treated them as generally permanent and stable structures, not as constantly changing and fluid categories (Altman 1998, 2). Accordingly, when censorship was dealt with at all, the focus was usually on its restrictive aspects, not on its productive effects. This static understanding of genre has increasingly been questioned since the 1990s, with Rick Altman’s definition of genre as process proving particularly influential.1 For Altman (1998, 6), genre is “not the permanent product of a singular origin, but the temporary by-product of an ongoing process ” (italics in the original). Like Todorov bothered by the biological connotations of the term “evolution”, Altman proposed “process” as a more neutral alternative for understanding genres’ change over time. Other theorists have further developed this understanding of genre, notably Celestino Deleyto (2012, 222), who, drawing on chaos theory, argues that “genres are not discrete units, or categories, but are part of a complex system that works chaotically but in unison and is constantly mutating through the films themselves and other discourses, both internal and external to the industry”. While Deleyto in his essay is arguing for a return to a textual approach to genre analysis, his definition of genre here also acknowledges another tenet of recent theory, which stresses the historical and cultural contexts of genres and regards genres as discursively constituted. Jason Mittell, who in his work on television genres has arguably taken the contextual-discursive approach the furthest, returns us to the role of censorship in genre. Conceiving of genres as “cultural categories”, Mittell (2004, xii) treats (television) genre as “a process of categorisation that is not found within media texts, but operates across the 1 Another important work that further signalled this shift in genre studies was Steve Neale’s Genre and Hollywood (2000), which came out a year after Altman’s Film/Genre (1999).

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cultural realms of media industries, audiences, policy, critics, and historical contexts”. Within this framework, regulators (such as censors) are “a facet of the institutional apparatus of media that can exert powerful discourses that shape genre categories” (Mittell 2004, 46). While the history of film censorship is explored in a substantial number of books and articles, there has so far been relatively little work taking the genre-censorship link as a central concern. One notable exception in the context of Hollywood cinema is the impact of the Production Code on the “classical” gangster film, the horror film and the fallen woman film upon the Code’s increasingly strict enforcement in the early 1930s.2 It has for example long been a convention to regard the end of the “classical” gangster film cycle in the early 1930s as the outcome of censorship pressures, even though scholars from Colin McArthur (1972, 38) onwards have argued that the cycle was already declining before censorship became an issue.3 Jonathan Munby (1999, 7), in his more recent study of the gangster film, posits that the change of the gangster formula was the result of many factors (such as formal exhaustion and the changing needs of the audience), but that “censorship had always played a crucial role in determining the nature and meaning of the gangster’s mutations”. Moving beyond a strictly “prohibitive” definition of censorship’s import, Munby (1999, 10–11) argues that censorship caused responses that in turn influenced both censorship priorities and the form of the crime film itself. It has often been noted, for instance, that the studios responded to 1930s censorship by producing so-called G-Men films focusing on law enforcement rather than criminal heroes.4 Leger Grindon’s (1998) work on the 1930s boxing film further illustrates that the censorship of one genre often has unexpected knock-on effects as well. He argues that the censorship of the gangster film was one factor in the mutation of the boxing film, which absorbed conventions such as the gangster film’s “critique

2 Influential studies of film censorship in this period are Jacobs (1997), Maltby (1993), and Vasey (1997). 3 Similar arguments have been made regarding censorship’s impact on the 1930s horror film. For a recent account in this vein, see Peirse (2013). Peirse pays a considerable amount of attention to the role of censorship institutions, especially those in the United States and Britain. 4 Examples are “G” Men (1935) and Bullets or Ballots (1936). Both films starred actors already famous for their gangster roles (James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson) as undercover detectives infiltrating the mob.

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of the ethos of opportunity and the ambitions of the ethnic outsider” (Grindon 1998, 360). The work on censorship and specific genres mentioned so far considers the impact of censorship on film genre mostly at the level of the film text. Like genre studies, the study of censorship has however also seen efforts at redefinition along poststructuralist lines, most notably in the work on early British film censorship by Annette Kuhn (1988). While not dealing much with genre, Kuhn’s redefinition of film censorship is strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault and prefigures similar moves by Altman in the context of genre theory. Just as Altman later argued for an understanding of genre as process, Kuhn (1988, 7) describes censorship as regulation, “an ongoing and always provisional process [my italics] of constituting objects from and for its own practices”. She illustrates the productive power of film censorship by arguing that a 1917 distinction made by the British Board of Film Censors between “commercial” and “propaganda” films in effect led to the creation of the propaganda film as a genre (Kuhn 1988, 47–48). While not referring to Kuhn, an excellent PhD dissertation on 1930s horror by Alexandra Naylor (2007) asserts a similar connection between film genres and the censors’ discursive power. Drawing in particular on the work of Altman (1999) and Neale (2000), Naylor pays close attention to the discourses on horror’s affects produced by film marketing, the trade press, spectators, censorship campaigners, censorship authorities and others. Based on these sources, Naylor analyses the effects of censorship and the controversies surrounding it on the creation of horror as a genre. She notably highlights how the power between the many participants in this critical dialogue surrounding horror was not equally distributed, with censorship authorities such as the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) and its successor, the Production Code Administration (PCA), playing a relatively more central role (Naylor 2007, 8).5 As a body created by the film industry but dependent for its credibility and survival on satisfying the general public, local censorship boards and censorship campaigners, the SRC and later the PCA in effect played the role of arbiter, working with

5 Also in this regard, Naylor’s work parallels that by Kuhn, which had moved beyond the usual scope of censorship studies (with its focus on laws and censorship institutions) to look at the role of a wider range of actors and the evolving relationships and power struggles between them.

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film studios to ensure they released films that would not lead to calls for censorship by the government. The textual and contextual-discursive approaches to genre are complementary in that they highlight different aspects of film censorship. Through accounts focused on the film text, it becomes possible to imagine more clearly the impact of the act of censorship on specific films and the genre as a whole. The contextual-discursive approach meanwhile allows us to place censorship in a broader socio-historical context, taking into account the power relations and the broad range of actors involved in censorship and genre as process. In the following sections, I will mainly focus on the changes in censorship policy resulting from the competing discourses and interests of the Hong Kong film censors, the press and the film industry, and the effects of these policy changes on Hong Kong film genres, with a focus on the Hong Kong crime film in particular. Only towards the end, I will follow more closely in Naylor and Kuhn’s footsteps, looking at an especially obvious case in which the discursive power of the film censor was translated into the creation of a (quasi-)film genre, the Category III film (sanji pian).

Censorship and Genre in Post-War Hong Kong The Theatres Regulation Ordinance of 1908 was the first legislation introducing a rudimentary form of film censorship in Hong Kong.6 It required written descriptions of each scene in a film to be submitted to the government prior to public screening. While the government had the power to refuse a permit based on these descriptions, the film itself was not subjected to censorship under this Ordinance. The considerable attention paid to “cinematograph display” in the Theatres Regulation Ordinance indicated that the new medium had quickly become of significant concern to the government. This is further confirmed by the introduction of the Places of Public Entertainment Regulation Ordinance only eleven years later, in 1919. Even more than the Theatres Regulation Ordinance, this new law, applying to all kinds of public entertainment, devoted a disproportionate level of attention to cinema, introducing censorship of the film itself and placing the authority over censorship with the Commissioner of

6 Legislation in Hong Kong in fact predated similar legislation in Britain, where film censorship was introduced with the Cinematograph Act of 1909.

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Police and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs.7 Unlike in the UK and the United States, then, film censorship in Hong Kong was from the start carried out directly by the government. Few relevant government documents are available from this period, so we mainly have to rely on laws, memoirs and sporadic newspaper reports to get an idea of the practice of censorship at the time. In the most comprehensive study of Hong Kong film censorship to date, Herman Yau (2015, 66–69) has argued that a prominent concern of colonial censors in these early years was to avoid offending friendly nations.8 In the first half of the twentieth century, this mainly referred to China and Japan. Yau (2015, 68–69; 84–87) has found evidence of at least two locally produced films being banned for their “national defence” and anti-Japanese themes: the Cantonese film Lifeline (Shengming xian, Guan Wenqing, 1935) and the Mandarin film March of the Guerrillas (Youji jinxing qu, Situ Huimin, 1938). The censors nevertheless allowed dozens of similar films to be screened in Hong Kong in the late 1930s and early 1940s; they mainly just pushed filmmakers to make their criticisms of Japanese aggression not too explicit. After the Japanese eventually occupied Hong Kong in December 1941, they implemented much stricter censorship. Due to the unwillingness of filmmakers to collaborate, however, only one propaganda film, The Battle of Hong Kong (Xianggang gonglüe zhan, Shigeo Tanaka, 1942), was made in Hong Kong during the war, while towards the end of the war even film screenings became a rarity, as electricity was being rationed.9 The British resumed authority over Hong Kong after the war and it is from this period onwards that more detailed government records on censorship are available. From these records, it is clear that censorship, which before the war had been under the control of the police, was soon re-established under the coordination of the Public Relations

7 In the “Places of Public Entertainment Regulations, 1934”, the Director of Education was added to the newly established “board of censors”. In practice, these officials often delegated their censorship duties to subordinates. 8 Michael Ng (2017) has found similar concerns influencing the censorship of newspapers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hong Kong. We shall see below that the wish to avoid offending friendly nations—the governments in Beijing and Taipei in particular—was an enduring trait of Hong Kong film censorship until the 1990s. 9 For a more detailed account, see Yau (2015, 93–100).

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Office (PRO), a new department created in 1946.10 A Panel of Censors was established in 1947, its membership of around twenty mostly drawn from the ranks of officials as well as British and Chinese elites.11 The files from this period hint at a relatively casual approach to censorship— officials often had their wives join the Panel to stand in for them and there was no remuneration for the work. The intensifying Cold War nevertheless increased the importance of censorship in the eyes of the colonial government, which eventually led to the legislation of the Film Censorship Regulations (1953).12 These Regulations described in more detail the procedures of censorship and created an appellate body, the Board of Review, which could reconsider the decisions made by the Panel of Censors. Reflecting the tense political climate, censorship in the ensuing decade was primarily concerned with politics, although the archives provide some hints as to the other ways the censors influenced Hong Kong’s film genres during these years.13 A 1950 “Directive for Film Censors”, for instance, included restrictions on depictions of crime, violence and horror, as well as, in a particularly broad manner, “matter which offends against or brings into contempt the accepted rules of morality and decency” (HKPRO 1950, HKRS163-1-1159). The profound impact of censorship on film genres is best illustrated by taking a closer look at the changes in Hong Kong cinema and censorship practice in the late 1960s and early 1970s.14 This was a pivotal era in local film history, witnessing a dramatic turn away from more female-oriented melodramas and musicals to male-oriented action films. The same period also saw the growth of a distinct local identity and Hong Kong cinema’s 10 The PRO would become the Information Services Department (ISD) in 1959. It remained responsible for film censorship until 1972. See Ho (2004, 308–12; 331–33) for more info on the relevant government departments. 11 One example was Dr. Irene Cheng, who was appointed as film censor in 1948. Dr. Cheng was the daughter of Eurasian tycoon Sir Robert Ho Tung and was also Woman Inspector of Vernacular Schools at the time. See HKPRO (1948, HKRS2139-21). HKPRO stands for Hong Kong Public Records Office. 12 The changes in film censorship in this period have been closely analysed in Du (2017,

120–25). 13 For political film censorship in Hong Kong during the Cold War, see Chang (2019), Du (2017), Ng (2008), and Yau (2015). 14 I have written more extensively on this period’s film censorship in two earlier publications, Van den Troost (2014, 2017). The below discussion draws on these two articles.

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first global successes. While these changes were part of complex broader shifts in cinemas around the world, the local censor had a gatekeeping role, exerting influence on how these changes played out exactly in Hong Kong. Given the substantial continuity of Hong Kong cinema from the 1970s to the present, the role of the censor in the late 1960s and early 1970s can therefore not be overemphasised. A close look at the censorship guidelines, the extensive media coverage of film censorship, and the behind-the-scenes discussions of the government departments and other non-governmental stakeholders involved reveal intimate connections between film censorship and the overall direction in which film genres were changing at this time. The successive popularity of period swordplay (or wuxia) films (late 1960s), kung fu films set in the more recent past and the present (early 1970s), and eventually films dealing with contemporary crime in Hong Kong (mid-1970s onwards) can be closely linked to changes in film censorship. Despite the influence I am here ascribing to them, the late 1960s and early 1970s were likely a time when the censors felt especially powerless. Indeed, one could say they were caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the unstoppable flood of sex, crime and violence in international cinema of this period left them little choice but to relax local standards. The overseas critical and popular acclaim of some of these films—such as Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969)—was not unknown to the Hong Kong public, its film distributors and exhibitors, making the censors’ cuts and bans easy targets for criticism by local cinephiles and the film industry, which lamented the economic damage done by excessive censorship. On the other hand, the absence of film classification in Hong Kong exposed the censors to increasing calls for stricter censorship, as films released for public screening were open to audiences of all ages, including children and adolescents. This was particularly controversial because juvenile delinquency was a widespread concern in this period, with filmic sex and violence often blamed for young people’s criminal behaviour. Specific censorship policies then were the outcome of the struggles and competing interests of different stakeholders, of which the government—itself divided on the issue of censorship—was just one. The relaxation and (occasional) tightening of censorship that followed in response subtly influenced the path Hong Kong cinema took during these years. An early accommodation to international trends can be found in the 1963 update of the Directive for Film Censors, the “General Principles

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for Guidance of Film Censors and the Film Censorship Board of Review”. Remarkable in this document is the shift of attention from politics to the depiction of sex and violence, with a new clause included asking censors to distinguish between violence set in a much earlier age, and violence set “in current surroundings” (HKPRO 1963, HKRS934-5-34). This set up a hierarchy in which violence set in the past was treated more leniently than violence set in the present, and violence overseas more leniently than violence in Hong Kong. In practice, this meant that Hong Kong films were discriminated against, something that local filmmakers picked up on, despite the official secrecy surrounding film censorship at the time. These filmmakers would subsequently use the accusation of discrimination to further erode restrictions on Hong Kong films, lodging appeals against the censors’ decisions with the Board of Review.15 While the censors generally relaxed their standards in the late 1960s, they simultaneously also tried to resist the overall trend. Out of 659 films submitted for censorship in 1966–1967, 49 were subjected to cuts and 31 were banned. In 1970–1971, 762 films were submitted for censorship, out of which 62 were banned and 144 were cut. In the same period, the number of appeals grew from 22 to 50 (HKPRO 1971b, HKRS1101-2-14). These numbers clearly reflect the growing contentiousness of film censorship. In terms of Hong Kong cinema’s genres, it is striking that the 1963 relaxation of censorship of violence set in an earlier age was soon followed by the Shaw Brothers’ studio launching of a “new wuxia century” (Teo 2009, 90–93). Taking a cue from the bloody Japanese samurai films that had proven popular in Hong Kong in the preceding years, these new wuxia or period swordplay films distinguished themselves from their predecessors by their much bloodier violence. The role of the censor becomes more apparent when one considers that Japanese yakuza films were also well-received in Hong Kong at the time, but no significant attempt was made to produce violent gangster movies locally.16 It would take filmmakers a few more years of struggling with the censors before

15 A crucial turning point was Shaw Brothers’ appeal against the cuts to Death Valley (Duanhungu, Lo Wei, 1968). The Board of Review used this appeal to re-evaluate the censorship of sex and violence in films, resulting in a further relaxation of standards. For a more detailed account, see Van den Troost (2014, 64–65). 16 Several yakuza films starring Takakura Ken made their way to Hong Kong in the mid-1960s, including at least one film from the influential Abashiri Prison series, Zoku Abashiri Bangaichi (1965, released in Hong Kong in 1966). See Wah Kiu Yat Po (1966).

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they could begin to explore the crime genre in earnest. As late as 1970, chief film censor William Hung for instance reported that despite the greater tolerance towards sex, violence and nudity in films over the past five years, “what is currently prohibited by the Police should not be permitted in a film which portrays the present-day Hong Kong” (HKPRO 1970, HKRS1101-2-13). In the same year Hung wrote these words, however, the shift from swordplay films—set in the distant past—to kung fu films—set in the late nineteenth century and the present—marked another step towards films depicting crime and violence in contemporary Hong Kong. Shaw Brothers director Chang Cheh—then at the peak of his career—pushed the boundaries by making gangster films set in the early twentieth century, such as The Duel (Dajuedou, 1971) and Boxer from Shantong (Ma Yongzhen, 1972, co-directed with Pao Hsueh-Li). Another strategy employed by Chang was to use a foreign setting for films involving contemporary crime: his Duel of Fists (Quanji, 1971) was set in Thailand, for instance. Similar strategies were adopted in the kung fu films starring Bruce Lee, with The Big Boss (Tangshan daxiong, Lo Wei, 1971) set in Thailand and The Way of the Dragon (Menglong guo jiang, Bruce Lee, 1972) pitting Lee against mafia thugs in Italy. Censorship was certainly not the only factor leading to these decisions regarding location and historical period, but it was likely an important consideration. This becomes more obvious when one considers the fate of John Law Ma’s The Bodyguards (Shennü baobiao, 1973), also known as Back Street (Xuesa houjie), probably the first locally set film depicting triad violence. The film was banned in June 1972, just months before Bruce Lee fought the mafia in Rome. As more such films—notably Chang Cheh and Kuei Chih-hung’s The Delinquent (Fennu qingnian, 1973)—started to appear and managed to pass the censors, there were renewed calls for stricter censorship of violence. New film censorship standards were drafted and were—for the first time—presented to the public in May 1973. This document introduced a problematic distinction between crudely made films “lacking good taste and artistry” and films “made with integrity and skill” (Television and Films Division 1973, par. 5(d)). The distinction was likely meant to deal with highly acclaimed Hollywood films—such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972)—that should technically not be

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shown in Hong Kong given the existing film censorship standards.17 As such it was merely a reincarnation of the “current surroundings” clause of the 1963 Principles. Given the subjective nature of this new distinction, the censors exposed themselves to renewed accusations of discrimination, and it is no surprise that this principle was soon abandoned in practice, albeit after a brief period of tightening control towards the end of 1973. The banning of several films for excessive violence in this period is a likely factor in the subsequent de-emphasising of violence in early crime films such as Kuei Chih-hung’s The Teahouse (Chengji chalou, 1974). Kuei, who in this period often clashed with the censors, adopted in this film a realist, less action-oriented mode to explore the public’s concern with juvenile crime, the ineffectiveness of the courts and the police, and the existence of triad societies.18 Aside from being less violent, Kuei’s “ripped-off-the-headlines” approach danced around censorship in another way too. In the 1973 film censorship standards, the government had indicated a dislike for “gratuitous” violence, but also had acknowledged that violence could be used “to make a substantial point about society and human relations” (Television and Films Division 1973, par. 13). Following the success of The Teahouse, films of a similar nature started to appear, such as Ng See-yuen’s Anti-Corruption (Lianzheng fengbao, 1975), which again downplayed action while recounting the events leading up to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) a year earlier. By acting against gratuitous violence, the censors might therefore have inadvertently encouraged filmmakers to more thoroughly explore local crime culture and social problems. The above abundantly indicates the role of the censors in the history of Hong Kong film genres. The successive dominance of wuxia, kung fu and crime films was linked to changes in censorship standards. In this case, censorship’s impact was fairly direct, with particular censorship principles and their adjustment affecting the types of films being made and released in the territory. In the next section, I will turn to another pivotal moment in the history of Hong Kong cinema and film censorship: the much delayed introduction of film classification in 1988. The 17 An article in The Star (1973) noted this inconsistency in the treatment of The Godfather versus that of violent films made locally. 18 In an example of one such clash, Kuei in a 1975 interview with The Star accused the censors of having a “double standard” for local and foreign films as they had just shot down his script for a film on a famous local crime boss.

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events running up to this illustrate how the censorship of politics directly and indirectly influenced the development of Hong Kong film genres. The 1988 Film Censorship Ordinance meanwhile also offers an excellent example of the censors’ discursive power, as a film category created by the censors came to function, to some extent, as a film genre in its own right.

Political Censorship and the 1988 Film Censorship Ordinance The relaxed censorship of local crime and contemporary social problems in Hong Kong films of the 1970s was the result of broader trends within the capitalist world, as well as of the increasing self-confidence of the Hong Kong government, which in the 1970s and beyond became more willing to accept depictions of social reality that would in the past have been interpreted as an attack on its authority and legitimacy. Police and official corruption, distrust in the judicial system and the crime problem all became the subject of films and TV series during this time. This new self-confidence of the authorities stemmed from the aftermath of one of the defining moments of the Cold War in Hong Kong, the violent 1967 riots, and the decade-long Cultural Revolution across the border, of which the riots were an outgrowth. These events convinced most of the local Chinese residents that British colonial rule was not all that bad by comparison, especially as Hong Kong during this period experienced phenomenal economic growth. The colonial government for its part learned from the turmoil of the late 1960s, and boosted its legitimacy by gradually becoming more alert and responsive to the needs of the population. To improve its governance and expand social welfare provisions, the government itself grew rapidly over the 1970s and became increasingly run by Hong Kong Chinese rather than Britons (Tsang 2004, 197–208; Carroll 2007, 150–76). From the 1970s to the early 1990s, political censorship therefore persisted mainly in the treatment of films with the potential to harm Britain’s international relations, especially films which criticised the competing regimes in Beijing and Taipei. Whereas the communist government in Beijing mainly exercised pressure through diplomatic channels and through the protests of local leftist groups, the Kuomintang government exerted control by denying access to the crucial Taiwan market to those films and filmmakers connected to or supportive of the government

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in Beijing.19 As a result, political censorship by the Hong Kong government increasingly became censorship intended to avoid upsetting Beijing. When Hong Kong’s impending handover to China became an issue of concern in the 1980s, this form of censorship came under public scrutiny, crowding out the 1970s anxieties surrounding sex, violence and crime in films. With the prospect of being under the control of an authoritarian communist government from 1997 onwards, much pressure existed to expand and safeguard Hong Kong’s freedoms under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. Crime and politics occasionally intersected in films even before the 1997 handover was a major concern, illustrating how crime films could easily be turned into vehicles questioning the political and social status quo. The censors themselves noted the appearance in 1980 of several crime films showing “the symptoms of a disease-ridden society” (HKPRO 1981a, HKRS313-7-3). Several of these films—such as The Happenings (Yeche, Yim Ho, 1980), Dangerous Encounter—1st Kind (Di yi leixing weixian, Tsui Hark, 1980) and The Beasts (Shangou, Dennis Yu, 1980)—are now considered part of the Hong Kong New Wave (Cheuk 2009). Only one of these films, Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounter, got into serious trouble with the censors. Officially this was solely due to its excessive violence, but it was widely speculated that the film’s apparent reference to the 1967 riots was a more important reason.20 While the censorship report of Tsui’s film is not available in the government archives, the reports and communication surrounding a now nearly forgotten film, Tony Liu Chun-ku’s The Stowaways (aka The Big Circle Boys , Toudu laike, 1979) were deemed important enough by the censors

19 The pressure of leftist groups was a real concern in the 1960s and early 1970s. It famously caused problems for Patrick Lung Kong’s adaptation of Albert Camus’s “The Plague”, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Zuotian jintian mingtian, 1970), which was interpreted as an anti-Cultural Revolution and anti-leftist allegory. The film was released after a two-year delay and with massive cuts, not by the government censors but presumably by the production company itself (Ng 2009, 60). In Taiwan, films with Chinese communist connections were banned from the 1950s to the early 1990s, even if the film itself was widely interpreted as anti-communist. A well-known example is Ann Hui’s Boat People (Touben nuhai, 1982), which in Hong Kong was read as an indirect expression of the anxieties surrounding the 1997 Handover, but which was banned in Taiwan because it was shot in mainland China and funded by a known leftist actress, Hsia Meng (Liang 2004, 247–50). 20 For a detailed account of the film and its encounter with censorship, see Tan (1996).

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to be preserved for future reference. As this film deals with illegal immigrants from China who form a gang and fight local triads in Hong Kong, the censors were clearly concerned with its political implications. After several viewings and consultations with various officials, the film was eventually passed with cuts, which included removal of all specific references to the Big Circle Boys, a term often used at the time to describe gangs of illegal mainland immigrants in Hong Kong (hence the film’s two English titles). In lengthy comments on the film, Chief Film Censor Pierre Lebrun had proposed to ban the film to avoid trouble with the Beijing government, noting that “the ex-political adviser, Mr. Allan [sic] Donald, would never have passed this film a couple of years ago, in the climate of the politics of those days” (HKPRO 1978, HKRS313-7-10).21 The fact that the film was eventually approved with cuts illustrates the relatively more relaxed political environment in China at this time. More importantly, it also shows how crime films were affected by political censorship and not just by the censorship of depictions of crime, violence and sex. Ironically, Lebrun’s caution proved justified two years later, when the political climate in China changed and a major scandal broke surrounding political censorship in Hong Kong. This scandal involved the March 1981 release of the Taiwanese film The Coldest Winter in Peking (Huangtian houtu, 1981). Directed by Pai Ching-jui for Taiwan’s government-controlled Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC), Coldest Winter was based on a work of scar literature by Xia Zhiyan and deals with the ravages of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Originally cleared by the censors for public release in Hong Kong, the film was abruptly withdrawn after screening for only one day. In a short statement to the press, Pierre Lebrun claimed: “When I first passed the film I interpreted it as an entertainment drama based on a series of well-known historical facts. However, it has now come to my attention that the film has political overtones which are liable to exploitation, and thus falls within a category normally banned in the circumstances of Hong Kong” (HKPRO 1981b, HKRS70-8-1371). This sudden reversal happened just weeks after Deng Xiaoping personally had blocked the release of the film Bitter Love (aka Unrequited Love, Ku lian, Peng Ning, 1981), a mainland movie on the Cultural Revolution, and instructed the Chinese press to condemn it. This clampdown became known as the “Bai 21 The reference here is likely to Alan Donald, who served as Political Adviser to the Governor of Hong Kong between 1974 and 1977.

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Hua Incident”, after the scriptwriter of Bitter Love, and ended a period of relative artistic freedom in 1979–1980. Given these recent developments, the Hong Kong media did not accept Lebrun’s statement and speculation was rife that the government had been pressured by China to ban the film. That this was indeed the case has been confirmed in recently released archival documents. Via the Hong Kong office of the Xinhua News Agency, Beijing told the Hong Kong government that it wanted the film withdrawn and banned—it was hinted in no unclear terms that if the government did not comply, an upcoming high-level meeting to discuss the future of Hong Kong after 1997 would be affected (Wong and Lam 2017). While the banning of films for political reasons had made headlines in the past, the highly public and embarrassing reversal in the Coldest Winter case led to accusations of government incompetence, and stoked fears about the city’s future after 1997. From the Taiwan side, the CMPC refused to let the issue go away easily, lodging an appeal to the Board of Review, and threatening to sue the Hong Kong government.22 Two subsequent highly visible bans of Taiwanese films, in August 1981 and October 1982, ensured that political censorship remained in the headlines. The first ban was of Wang Tung’s If I Were Real (Jiaru wo shi zhende, 1981), based on a play satirising contemporary Chinese society, which had in 1980 been banned in China after being criticised by Hu Yaobang, then the CCP’s Propaganda Chief. The next film to be banned for political reasons was the Taiwanese version of Bai Hua’s Bitter Love script, again directed by Wang Tung and also known under the English title Portrait of a Fanatic. This film was submitted to the Hong Kong censors in October 1982 and its banning received only limited attention in the press. Criticism of political censorship of films would nevertheless return repeatedly over the following years, coming to a head spectacularly in 1987.23 In that year, confidential documents leaked to the press revealed that the government had continued to censor films in Hong

22 The appeal was rejected by the Board in May. The CMPC never followed up on its threat to sue the government. 23 Other Taiwanese films banned in this period are The Battle of Ku Ning Tou (Guningtou da zhan, Chang Tseng-chai, 1980), The Anger (Shaonv chuyequan: Shanghai shehui dang’an, Wang Chu-Chin, 1981) and Twilight in Geneva (Reneiwa de huanghun, Pai Ching-Jui, 1986).

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Kong for at least fourteen years after learning that its censorship might in fact be technically illegal (Ching 1987a).24 The scandal arose in the context of the long-delayed introduction of film classification. Hong Kong only implemented an effective film classification system in the late 1980s, even though the British Board of Film Censors had already in 1951 introduced the so-called X rating in the UK.25 The Hong Kong government’s records reveal that the idea of introducing film classification was first raised internally as early as 1954, and became a subject of lengthy interdepartmental debate in 1960– 1961. It was finally shelved after consultation of the Chinese Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, who rejected the idea, partly because it was feared that classification would merely attract more people to “adult” films and partly because cinema owners—fearing economic losses—opposed it (HKPRO 1961a, HKRS934-5-34; HKPRO 1961b, HKRS934-5-34). There was little progress on the issue despite occasional calls for classification in the press, until in the early 1970s the explosion of sex and violence on the screen led to an effort to update the 1953 Film Censorship Regulations.26 During the drafting of the new Regulations, officials ordered a small-scale survey, which showed public support for a local version of the British “X” rating (HKPRO 1971a, HKRS1101-2-13). Still, despite extensive internal debate, classification did not make it into the amended Regulations of 1971, nor in the more thoroughly revised Regulations of 1976. When in 1980 a survey indicated that a large majority (72%) of the population was in favour of enforced restriction of access to certain films by age, Nigel Watt, the then Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing (CTEL), decided to blow new life into the effort to introduce classification.27 It 24 I will return to the potential illegality of the government’s censorship later. 25 Originally this indicated that the film was suitable to those over 16 years only. In

1970, this was changed to those over 18 years. Showing an X-rated film to someone under this age is illegal. 26 A minor change was made in 1968, when films and related promotional materials so classified had to indicate they were not suitable for children. It was not illegal to show such films to children, however. 27 The 1980 survey focused on television, but two questions involved film censorship. See HKPRO (1980, HKRS2139-2-14). A dedicated survey on film censorship in 1981– 1982 indicated 80% of respondents supported legally restricting admission to cinemas to prevent “persons of certain ages from viewing some types of films”. See HKPRO (1982, HKRS70-8-1368).

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would however take another seven years before the relevant legislation was introduced, indicating that the government remained reluctant to act. What caused the government’s stalling on this issue? Why did it wait so long to introduce classification, which would have made the censors’ activity much less vulnerable to public criticism? Opposition to classification in the 1970s and 1980s seems to have come mainly from the Hong Kong film industry, which by this time had become an important contributor to Hong Kong’s economy and international image. With Hong Kong people being amongst the most frequent cinemagoers in the world, theatre owners in particular were worried that age restrictions would have an impact on their business, as into the 1970s, cinema viewing in Hong Kong was often a family activity (Sing Tao Jih Pao 1974). In a 1978 interview, Pierre Lebrun admitted as much, saying that without cinema owners’ and film distributors’ approval it would be impossible to implement classification (The Star 1978). The 1987 scandal revealed another reason for the government’s tardiness in introducing classification, perhaps a more decisive one. In the official documents leaked to the Asian Wall Street Journal , it was shown that since 1972 the government had doubted the legal basis of its own film censorship (Ching 1987a).28 The leak also revealed that the government had recently considered adjusting the law to introduce film classification and to at the same time sneak in some changes to give itself proper legal authority to censor, but had eventually decided to introduce film classification administratively and to not adjust the law in order to avoid drawing unwanted attention to the issue (Ching 1987b). The main reason for this was the government’s desire to maintain its authority to censor films on China’s behalf: it feared that the revelation that its censorship might in fact have been illegal for the past thirty-four years could give rise to an outcry both in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and in Britain’s Parliament, forcing it to limit its own powers to censor, especially in the already contested area of politics (Ching 1987a). The leak forced the government to change course: just weeks after the revelations in the Asian Wall Street Journal , it released a draft Film Censorship Bill for public consultation. A revised Film Censorship Ordinance would be passed by the Legislative Council in 1988, finally introducing film classification in Hong Kong. 28 For a deeper analysis of the possible illegality of film censorship prior to 1988, see Chan (1988, 212–13).

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The tortuous path to film classification in Hong Kong was clearly influenced by Cold War politics. Would British colonial officials have waited this long to introduce a classification system if they were not worried about losing their ability to censor politics in the process? Film classification is mostly concerned with standards of sex and violence in films and does not preclude political censorship.29 However, the fact that the introduction of classification was tied to fixing a flawed law and giving a legal basis to censorship shows how in Hong Kong the two were intimately intertwined. It is not hard to imagine that the prolonged absence of classification had a significant influence on local cinema. Indeed, if classification had been introduced earlier, Hong Kong cinema’s “golden age” of the 1980s and its genres might have looked very different. This argument gains extra force considering the changes in Hong Kong cinema after the 1988 Film Censorship Bill came into force.

Coda: Category III and the Censors’ Discursive Power By creating film categories and in particular by creating a legally enforced adults-only classification (Category III), the censors introduced a new grid through which to look at Hong Kong cinema. It is a grid that shapes our understanding not only of new films released in Hong Kong, but also pre-1988 films that are shown in Hong Kong theatres or sold in various formats for private viewing. In these final paragraphs, I briefly consider two aspects of the impact of classification: first, how it influenced actual Hong Kong (crime) film production, and second, how it discursively shapes our knowledge of Hong Kong cinema. These two aspects are intertwined: the way we perceive and talk about Hong Kong films feeds into the creation of new films, while new films influence the way we perceive and talk about Hong Kong cinema. Let us start with the impact of film classification on actual film production in Hong Kong. Although government officials had repeatedly reassured the public that film classification would not lead to a 29 Indeed, political censorship continued under the new law until 1994, when the clause allowing censorship to avoid affecting good relations with other countries was finally scrapped. The “good relations” clause was used only once after 1988, to cut sixteen minutes from a 1989 Taiwanese documentary on the June Fourth Massacre (South China Morning Post 1994; Stoner 1989).

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relaxation of censorship standards, the introduction of an “adults-only” category led to a (temporary) explosion of sex, gruesome violence and indecent language in Hong Kong films.30 Darrell W. Davis and Yeh YuehYu (2001, 13) estimate that between 1988 and 1997, an astounding 25% of new Hong Kong films were classified as Category III. However, Hong Kong had already since the 1970s gained a reputation for producing “extreme” films. As numbers for previous decades are not available, we cannot confirm that the 1990s indeed saw a boom in the production of such films. What is certain, however, is that after 1988, these films achieved an unprecedented prominence locally, with some reaching the top of the box office and even winning awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Even if there was no actual boom in Category III film production, there was a widespread impression of such a boom. Davis and Yeh (2001, 14–20) divide Category III films into three main types: quasi-pornographic films (often based on Qing dynasty literature), genre films (gangster films, horror, campy detective thrillers and art films, but then with more sex, gore and/or violence), and what they call “pornoviolence”. While Category III’s reshaping of existing genres is important, the “pornoviolence” films are arguably even more significant. Davis and Yeh (2001, 18) describe these films as “the most appalling and sensational Category III films”, dividing them into two main types—gruesome true crime stories and sadistic period pictures. Crucially, they regard these films as possibly unique to Category III, in particular the true crime films (Davis and Yeh 2001, 17). A significant portion of Category III films in the 1990s can then be said to have made up a cycle in the local crime film genre. Telling stories of rapists, serial killers and psychopaths, these films combine crime with horror tropes and clearly draw inspiration from Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Prominent examples of such films are Danny Lee and Billy Tang’s Dr. Lamb (Gaiyang yisheng, 1992) and Herman Yau’s The Untold Story (Baxian fandian zhi renrou chashaobao, 1993): both are based on actual serial killer cases in Hong Kong and Macau. These two films provide a way to come to terms with the discursive power of the Hong Kong film censors. While the term “Category III film” in Hong Kong can be used broadly to refer to the three kinds of films Davis and Yeh describe, the distinctiveness and box-office success 30 See, for example, South China Morning Post (1983). The claim here is attributed to Pritam Singh, then Secretary of the Television Authority.

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of Dr. Lamb, The Untold Story and films that followed in their wake created a narrower notion of “Category III film”, along the lines of Davis and Yeh’s pornoviolence category. This is especially the case for Category III films’ overseas reception and analysis. Scholarly accounts— such as Stringer (1999), Williams (2005) and Grossman (2014)—devote most of their analysis to this particular type of Category III film. These films’ extreme (sexual) violence and bad taste have also earned them an international cult following. For example, EasternKicks.com, a prominent website devoted to Asian cinema, has a section called “Cinextremes”, which celebrates “the excesses of Hong Kong Category III, Asian extreme and exploitation cinema…” The existence of a devoted audience for these films, both locally and overseas, has ensured the occasional return of Hong Kong filmmakers to this particular tradition of exploitation film, recent prominent examples being Pang Ho-cheung’s Dream Home (Weiduoliya yihao, 2010) and, more ambiguously, Philip Yung’s Port of Call (Taxue xunmei, 2015). The term “Category III film” (sanji pian) has thus come to function as a quasi-generic category in its own right. Indeed, in the historicist, contextual-discursive approach towards genre promoted by Altman and Neale, an important prerequisite for the existence of a genre is the widespread use of the genre’s name to refer to a certain type of film. The Category III film evokes, at least to some extent, a particular “narrative image” (Neale 2000, 39), as a film containing extremely violent (sexual) crimes and gore. The scholarly and critical reception of the Category III film overseas contributes to its discursive construction as a genre, in a process that brings to mind the creation of the propaganda film as a genre following the actions of British film censors in the 1910s (Kuhn 1988, 47–48). Another useful case for comparison is the history of film noir. James Naremore (1998) has convincingly argued that film noir is an ex post facto category: it was a term first used by post-war film critics in France to talk about certain tendencies they discerned in recent American cinema.31 Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s began American filmmakers themselves to self-consciously make films they thought of as film noir (or neo-noir). For Naremore, film noir is therefore primarily a genre created in the discourse of film critics and scholars—an “idea” rather than a definable group of texts. Similarly, although Category III films were initially 31 Naremore’s work is often named together with Altman’s and Neale’s as heralding the 1990s shift in genre studies towards a historicist, contextual-discursive approach.

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the result of the film censor’s activity, filmmakers, audiences and critics have subsequently begun a “genrification process”, further developing what we understand under this term. As with film noir, overseas film critics play an important role in this process. But as with the propaganda film in the UK, it is the creation of a category by the censors that started it all. Rick Altman’s account of the birth of film genres further illuminates the “genrification” of the Category III film. He points out how early uses of a genre term are adjectival—“describing and delimiting a broader established category” (Altman 1998, 3). When the term starts to be used as a substantive, it indicates the existence of a new genre. He cites the example of the western: “Before the western became a separate genre and a household word virtually around the world, there were such things as western chase films, western scenics, western melodramas, western romances, western adventure films, and even western comedies, western dramas, and western epics” (Altman 1998, 4). Academic and critical accounts of Category III films display significant ambiguity as to how these films should be referred to, with the adjectival form dominating: Williams (2005, 208) talks of “the Category 3 [sic] crime narrative”, while Grossman (2014, 211–12) frequently refers to “Category III horror”. The adjectival usage predominates also on EasternKicks.com, although there is also the occasional reference to simply a “Category III film”. Stringer (1999, 362), meanwhile, describes Category III films as “both a genre of filmmaking in its own right and a stylistic hybrid”, but never clearly defines what he means by this. Most aware of the difficulties in naming Category III films in any conventional way, Davis and Yeh (2001, 13) describe them as a “microcosm” of Hong Kong cinema as a whole. Based on these varied uses of the term, it is perhaps premature to describe the Category III film as a genre, but calling it, to use Altman’s (1998) term, a “proto-genre”, is certainly not far-fetched. What should be beyond doubt is the crucial role of the censor in Hong Kong film history. Whether it is a changing censorship policy influencing the appearance of particular genres in the 1960s and 1970s, political censorship delaying the introduction of film classification in the 1980s, or censorship categories reshaping the generic landscape of Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s, the censor has undeniably been a part of Hong Kong cinema’s source code.

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Tzvetan Todorov. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Cornell University Press. Van den Troost, Kristof. 2014. “Born in an Age of Turbulence: Emergence of the Modern Hong Kong Crime Film.” In Always in the Dark: A Study of Hong Kong Gangster Films, edited by Po Fung, 48–68. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive. CD-ROM. ———. 2017. “Under Western Eyes? Colonial Bureaucracy, Surveillance and the Birth of the Hong Kong Crime Film.” In Surveillance in Asian Cinema: Under Eastern Eyes, edited by Karen Fang, 89–112. London: Routledge. Vasey, Ruth. 1997. The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wah Kiu Yat Po. 1966. “Fengliu nv dutu” (Zoku Abashiri Bangaichi). March 28. Williams, Tony. 2005. “Hong Kong Social Horror: Tragedy and Farce in Category 3.” In Horror International, edited by Steven Jay Schneider and Tony Williams, 203–18. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Wong, Klavier, and Eddie Pang Ka Lam. 2017. “Uncovering the Ban of The Coldest Winter in Peking” (“‘Huangtian houtu’ bei jin qishi lu”), Decoding Hong Kong History Project. November 15. https://drive.google.com/file/d/ 1iyITKQqxImwB7jkw2r2EIgMMO95XhHzW/view. Yau, Herman Lai To. 2015. “The Progression of Political Censorship: Hong Kong Cinema from Colonial Rule to Chinese-Style Socialist Hegemony.” PhD diss., Lingnan University.

Old Shanghai and Film Noir Cross Over Lin Feng

After nearly three decades of operating under a strictly centrally controlled propaganda filmmaking system, Chinese cinema saw a relaxation from the government on film production during the early 1980s. In 1984, the central government announced the Decision of Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Economic System Reform to open up the country for globalisation and to speed up economic reform through privatisation. As part of the reform process, the decision changed the film industry from shiye danwei (state-owned public institute) to qiye danwei (business-oriented enterprises). Forcing the film industry to take responsibility for their own profit, China’s changing politico-economic landscape has endowed local film studios some freedom to select their own projects. Since then China’s film industry has gradually opened up

L. Feng (B) School of Arts, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6_10

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for marketisation and commercialisation, and it soon saw a flourish of genre filmmaking.1 However, despite the popularity of genre films in China’s film market since the 1980s, both Chinese domestic and international critics during the time predominantly placed their attention on the rise of the Fifth and Sixth Generation filmmakers, and in some cases retrospectively on the Fourth Generation. The lack of critical attention on Chinese genre films produced during the period was evinced in many publications on Chinese film history and screen culture.2 Whereas international film critics’ attention on the generations of Chinese cinema suggested a top-down approach that privileged selected cultural elites for their association with art cinema and prestige film festival circle, Chinese critics’ discussion of genre films was largely confined within the debate on a film’s social function. As Yin Hong and Ling Yan (2006, 143–44) note, many Chinese film scholars, theorists and critics at the time continued to see film as a tool of education—an idea that was populated in nearly three decades of propaganda filmmaking and critique practices since the founding of People’s Republic of China in 1949. As a result, Chinese conservative film critics, despite recognising genre films’ entertainment and commercial value, regarded those films as less “aesthetic” and “educationally” valuable in comparison with art and zhuxuanlü (leitmotif) films (Yin and Ling 2006, 144). To those critics, the move of some Fifth Generation filmmakers, such as Li Shaohong, Zhou Xiaowen and Tian Zhuangzhuang, to genre filmmaking from the late 1980s was not only a sign that Chinese cultural elites “surrendered” to the commercialism, but also an indication that Chinese cinema fell into the trap of “low quality” filmmaking

1 Examples include martial arts films Wudang (Sun Sha, 1983), The Magic Braid

(Zhang Zi’en, 1986) and The Swordsman in Double-Flag Town (He Ping, 1991); melodrama Thunderstorm (Sun Daolin, 1984) and You Can’t Tell Him (Shi Shuqin, 1989); comedies The New Stories of Du Xiaoxi (Wang Weiyi, 1984), Master of Suffering (Wu Yigong, 1987), Er Zi Has a Little Hotel (Wang Binlin, 1987) and Soccer Heroes (Xie Hong, 1987); and thriller/horror The Case of the Silver Snake (Li Shaohong, 1988), Hell and Heaven (Yang Yanjin 1989) and The Lonely Spirit in An Old Building (Liang Ming an Mu Deyuan, 1989). 2 For further details, see Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell (2010, 637–43), Berenice Reynaud (1998, 543–49), Shekhar Deshpande and Meta Mazaj (2018, 260– 81), Esther Yau (1996, 693–704), Yin Hong and Ling Yan (2006, 118–42), and Ding Yaping (2016, 106–224).

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(Yin and Ling 2006, 143). Similar to their international counterparts, Chinese conservative film critics at the time also followed a top-down approach that stressed a hierarchical structure of film appreciation, which lifted art and leitmotif films as more serious and elitist cultural products and concurrently they depreciated genre films as low-brow entertainment for mass consumption. As such, genre films, or more broadly speaking commercial-oriented entertainment films, became unworthy for ‘serious’ film critics’ attention in China. The perception of this hierarchical relationship was, and to some degree still is, popular among many international and Chinese film critics who continued to prefer the elitism and status quo of certain auteur filmmakers. It is under this remit that this chapter examines Chinese genre films, in particular those what I call Shanghai heibang films, produced since the 1990s. The reason to do so is not because of those films’ production value or aesthetic quality, but because of their popularity among ordinary audiences and their repetitive occurrences on certain themes and topics. Thus, the key question this chapter asks is why this particular type of film became popular at a particular cultural space during a particular period of time. As aforementioned, Chinese genre films started to flourish from the late 1980s, and among which are a large number of Shanghai heibang films, such as Foes and Lovers (Xu Weijie, 1993), Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, 1995), Shanghai Grand (Pan Wenjie, 1996), Temptress Moon (Chen Keige, 1996), Purple Butterfly (Lou Ye, 2003), Blood Brothers (Alexi Tan, 2007), Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (Andrew Law, 2010), My Kingdom (Gao Xiaosong, 2011), Gone with the Bullets (Jiang Wen, 2014), The Last Tycoon (Wong Jing, 2012) and The Wasted Time (Cheng Er, 2016). Although commonly translated as gang, clan or triad, the term heibang is actually composed of two characters. Whereas only the second half bang is associated with the common translation, the first half hei means black, dark or noir. Since repetition is a precondition of genre formation, it is important to note some recurring traits in those films. Firstly, these films often share some interests in plots of crime, triad rivalry or conspiracy (such as espionage). However, as I will demonstrate in this chapter, these plots only form a backdrop of the films’ theme. The undercurrent of these plots is actually new migrants’ investigation and bewilderment of their new urban surrounding. Secondly, they often feature character archetypes, including but not limited to a powerful mafia

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leader or gang boss who demands absolute loyalty from his subordinates, a new migrant who either voluntarily or reluctantly joins the gang organisation, and a glamorous woman who very often has a profession as a performer, such as a singer, dancer or actress. In particular, these female characters, whether they appear to be mysterious or deadly and unruly, often fit well with the archetype of femme fatale in noir convention. Thirdly, these films are all set against a cosmopolitan backdrop of a former colonial city located at China’s coastal region. As the term Shanghai heibang films already indicates, they often tell a story occurring in China’s largest city—Shanghai, in particular the old Shanghai between the 1920s and 1940s before the Communist Party took over the government in 1949. Although other cities, such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Qingdao, may also appear in Chinese heibang films, Shanghai stands out as the most popular city in the genre as demonstrated by the aforementioned film titles. The contemporary Chinese cinema’s retrospective interests in the period thus divide the city into two time phases based on the nation’s political history: the old Shanghai of the pre-1949 Republican era and the new Shanghai of the post-1949 Socialist era. Together, these common features raise a question about Chinese cinema’s rhetorical articulation between now and then, in particular in relation to the discussion of urbanisation, migration and gendered space that I will return back in more detail in the following sections. Alan Woolfolk (2006, 117) points out that film noir “merges narrative space, time, and events in such a way as to give priority to time past”. Given the majority productions of Shanghai heibang films were taking place after the 1990s when Shanghai was finally allowed to undertake a full-scale re-globalisation and urban regeneration, this chapter questions how China’s contemporary cinema uses noir conventions to transform the pre-1949 Shanghai into a cinematic noir city on the big screen. Here I must clarify that my intention in this chapter is neither to trace the history of the development of Shanghai heibang films nor to examine film genre as a boundary concept that defines what Shanghai heibang film is. Rather, the aim is to question why Shanghai, especially the pre-1949 Shanghai, is chosen by contemporary Chinese filmmakers as an imaginative space of interrogating China’s modernity and how genre convention is localised to shape Shanghai’s urban imagery as a noir city. Through a close reading of selected heibang films, this chapter argues that Chinese cinema’s on-screen construction of noir Shanghai enacts an imaginative space for examining China’s urbanisation during the period of the nation’s

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post-socialist transformation. In doing so, it features a political effort of allowing certain levels of liberal capitalism within the nation’s socialist system that still emphasises China’s existing social order.

Making Shanghai Noir: Heibang Film as a (Sub-)Genre Interrogating Urbanisation Although the concept of noir film was initially applied to a group of postwar urban-setting American films, many film scholars now acknowledge that the term should be understood beyond its original context of Hollywood (Gallagher 2014, 2; Teo 2014, 140; Fay and Nieland 2010, xi). Mark Gallagher (2014, 5) points out “the urban focus of much classical noir finds ready parallels in many East Asian noirs across historical periods” and cities such as Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong “have become common settings for cinematic imaginings of crime, vice, deception, eroticism and other situations generating psychological and physical tension”. The emerging popularity of Shanghai heibang films since the 1990s provides a compelling case to understand how Chinese commercial cinema adopts genre conventions to express local social concerns. In this regard, the cinematic imaginary of Shanghai (and very specifically Republican Shanghai) plays a vital role in revealing genre films’ response to China’s drastic social changes brought by fast urbanisation and urban regeneration—a process bearing certain similarities to the post-war America’s urban expansion. Yet before going into a detailed analysis of Shanghai heibang films as a sub-genre of noir films, I would like to review some key debates surroundings the question whether noir can be seen as a genre. Within the realm of seeing genre as a narrative-driven category, early film scholars, such as Janey Place and Lowell Peterson (1974, 65), insist noir should only be read as a style that relies on visual techniques rather than narrative structure or story theme. In their study, Place and Peterson provide a detailed analysis on noir films’ high contrast lighting and distorted picture composition. Focusing on the formalist elements of mise-en-scène, Place and Peterson argue that the distinctiveness of noir rests on these films’ shared cinematographic techniques. From a different perspective, Paul Schrader (1972, 8) and Raymond Durgnat (1970, 37) address noir’s emotional affect and view it as a tone or mood. Moving beyond the visual elements of dark and shadowy pictures, Schrader’s and Durgnat’s analyses direct readers’ attention to the psychological darkness of noir film.

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Whereas recognising that noir’s narrative and theme often bear similarities to many other types of films, such as drama, crime, thriller, musical and even western, this group of scholars suggest that it is noir films’ portrayal of morally ambiguous characters and psychological tension brought by a person’s sense of fear, desire, suspense and paranoia which set them apart from other genre films. James Damico (1978, 97), Marc Vernet (1993, 21), and Foster Hirsch (2008, 211) disagree with both strands of the argument that noir is merely a style or mood, and they argue a repetitive narrative undercurrent of urban-based crime fiction underpins noir films. Despite their disagreement, those film scholars all agree that noir constitutes multiple and even conflicting perspectives that challenge the boundary-defined genre classification. Such a view is well summarised by Steve Neale (2000, 154) who regards noir as a plural concept and uses the terms “genre canon” and “noirs” to criticise early theorists’ attempt “to homogenise a set of distinct and heterogeneous phenomena”. In a sense, a consensus is reached among scholars to view noir film as a distinctive hybrid that provides a site for exploring social anxiety and cultural identities (Telotte 1989, 200). In particular, noir’s function of examining urban space has been highlighted in many scholarly analyses on the relationship between American cinema and society.3 Noir’s correlation with urban narrative is well summarised by Susan Hayward (2013, 150) that “The essential ingredients of a film noir are its specific location or setting… The cityscape is fraught with danger and corruption…The net effect is one of claustrophobia, underscoring the sense of malaise and tension”. Despite urban settings not being exclusive to noir films, the distinctive style and the narrative strategies of noir films inevitably shape the ways an American city is perceived and imagined. Moving back to East Asia, Gallagher (2014, 5) notes that in East Asian noir films, cities are “often caught at moments of chaotic transformation”. Gallagher’s argument could be easily applied to old Shanghai in the heibang films. In his analysis of Chinese youth films, Liu Haibo (2016, 36) recognises that Shanghai is abundant with filmic stories not only because the city was China’s film production centre between the 1920s and 1940s, but also because the city and cinema are connected by their mutual rapport with modernity. Although China’s political turmoil 3 For analysis of film noir and (American) urban space, see Edward Dimendberg (1992), Gyan Prakash (2010), Geraldine Pratt and Rose Marie San Juan (2014), and James J. Ward and Cynthia J. Miller (2017).

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and centralised film policy from the 1950s to 1970s suffocated the city’s film production capacity and even destroyed the city’s status as the centre of Chinese cinema, Liu (2016, 36–37) noticed a new cinematic trend of featuring old Shanghai’s urban space in Chinese genre films, especially gangster and espionage films, that has emerged since the 1990s. Whilst Liu’s observation highlights contemporary Chinese genre cinema’s favourable choice of associating old Shanghai’s urban space with cinematic concerns of social darkness such as crime and conspiracy, it also directs readers’ attention to those films’ sensual effect of excitement brought by a fast-changing society. In retrospect, Shanghai had already become the most cosmopolitan city in China by the 1920s. Ironically Shanghai’s embracement of globalisation and multiculturalism was not only a result of its unique geographic location as a seaport that connects the Yangtze River and East China Sea, but also a result of the city’s semi-colonial history that divided Shanghai into different (international) settlement zones. Whereas multiple political controls over different settlements had inevitably created fragmented administration gaps and inconsistent law enforcement within the city, these gaps became grey areas where adventurers took advantage of in either legal or illegal ways. In addition, a number of wars, including but not limited to the Second World War and China’s Civil War, taking place in China during the Republican era, saw a large number of domestic and international migrants moving into and out from the city. According to the Office of Shanghai Chronicles (2008), the city’s population rose threefold from 1.29 million to 3.85 million in less than three decades from 1910 to 1937. The cross-border mobility also facilitated both opportunities and risks in the city where both excitement and anxiousness were anticipated. As a result, the city developed into one of the most important locations in the world for international trade and information exchange during the first half of the twentieth century.4 Whereas Republican Shanghai became a famous sin city with a nickname of maoxianjia de leyuan (Paradise for Adventurers),5 it also provided an ideal space for Chinese filmmakers 4 For studies of the topics related to Shanghai’s modern history, see Bernard Wasserstein (2017), Frederic Wakeman Jr. (2003), Louise Edwards (2016), and Michael Barry Miller (1994). 5 Shanghai, together with Paris and Berlin, is featured in CBC’s historical documentary Legendary Sin Cities (2005).

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to interrogate social changes and problems. It was under this historical context that the early Chinese cinema6 started to experiment with film languages, develop character prototypes and practice storytelling techniques, some of which were coincidental with what was later known as noir conventions in American cinema. For instance, the Chinese left-wing classic drama The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934) tells a story of a woman (Ruan Lingyu) who has dual identities as a suffering mother and alluring prostitute. As a victim of social injustice, she was imprisoned for killing a bullying gangster boss (Zhang Zhizhi) whilst rescuing her son. In addition to the narrative of crime and sex, there are other stylistic elements that are often associated with noir films, such as urban backstreets, lowkey lighting and a distorted frame composition. Similar cases could also be found in many other films such as Rendezvous (Li Pingqian, 1936), Street Angeles (Yuan Muzhi, 1937) and Two Magic Girls (Wu Cun, 1948). Strictly speaking, these early Chinese films could not yet be read as noir films as their storytelling tactics were still largely based on a binary narrative structure of the new versus the old, the modern versus the tradition, the self-reliant versus the parasitic and an innocent traditional countryside versus the deceitful modern city. In other words, they did not entail moral ambiguity, which underlines noir features. Nevertheless, it is important to note that through those early urban-based films, Shanghai’s ambivalent image as a seductive and yet dangerous city was already familiar to Chinese audiences. Remotely, the post-1990s Shanghai also experienced a fast speed of urban regeneration and re-globalisation, which once again witnessed a large number of migrants moving to the city to seek job opportunities. Whereas a film setting often involves careful staging, location selection, and production design, Chinese cinema’s interests in the old Shanghai in this regard are by no means a coincidence. Whilst China has a vast landscape, the nation’s transition to modernity was, and still is, taking place at different speeds and phases across different geographic regions. As I will illustrate in the next two sections, the noir space of the old Shanghai enables Chinese cinema to directly contest with urban modernity. Despite those films focusing on a specific location, they are not just about a single urban space, but instead they are more about the encounter 6 Whilst Shanghai was China’s filmmaking centre and the home where the majority of Chinese films were made during the Republican era, Shanghai cinema is often used as a synonym of early Chinese cinema.

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between the rural and the urban. Focusing on the process of transition, this particular Chinese form of noir—Shanghai heibang film—focuses on new urban migrants’ experience. They question an ongoing process of urbanisation and social issues concerning China’s changing demographic structure of urban and rural population. The tension between the characters in Shanghai heibang films reveals many Chinese people’s identity anxiety resulting from their experience of becoming, rather than being, an urban resident.

Adventure in a Noir City: The Contemporary Reconstruction of Old Shanghai on the Big Screen Many film scholars point out that by the end of the fourth decade of the twentieth century Shanghai had already established its distinctive cosmopolitan image featuring modernity, consumerism and multiculturalism (Lee 1999; Lu 2002; Sun 2009). However, after the Communist Party took over the government in 1949, China’s mass media and literature often presented the city as an alien space from the rest of China because of its semi-colonial history, westernised urban landscape, cultural liberty and embracement of capitalism (Lu 2002, 182). In addition to the alienness, Shanghai was also portrayed as a sin city because of the same reasons. As a result, the protagonists in the post-war Chinese cinema often carried a duty to reform the city, as Yomi Braester (2010, 56–57) points out. In those films, newcomers such as Li Xia (Sun Daolin) in The Eternal Wave (Wang Ping, 1958) and Zhao Dada (Yuan Yue) in Sentinel Under the Neon Lights (Ge Xin and Wang Ping, 1964) often explicitly expressed their dislikes of their new lifestyle and surroundings in this modern city. Their distaste for Shanghai’s sound (such as pop music and local dialect), fashion code, building and furniture style, and even the smell of the air not only associated the Republican Shanghai with consumerism, but also positioned the city at the wrong side of the binary opposition between the decayed capitalist class and the great proletarian class under the lens of the Communist Party’s political propaganda agenda. Although Shanghai’s urban space was often dismissed during the Mao era, the city soon returned to China’s big screen in the 1980s shortly after Chinese cinema started to re-embrace commercial filmmaking. In

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particular since the 1990s, Chinese filmmakers found a new way to articulate social changes through developing old Shanghai from a sin city to a noir city. One example is Alexi Tan’s Blood Brothers . The film portrays three young men, Fung (Daniel Wu), Kang (Liu Ye) and Kang’s younger brother Hu (Tony Yang), who travel to Shanghai to find opportunities of improving their lives and to achieve their ambition of being successful. Along with the three young men moving into a gangster life, their relationship gradually changes from good friends and brothers to mortal enemies. Whereas Kang transforms himself to a merciless gang boss, Fung and Hu start to question their path and life choices. During their journey, Fung and Hu make friends with the gang’s former assassin Mark (Chang Chen) and Lulu (Shu Qi)—an enigmatic woman who was the gang’s former boss Hong (Sun Honglei)’s mistress, but who fell in love with Mark. Similar to Fung and Hu, both Mark and Lulu are also questioning their own paths. In comparison with the scene set in agricultural China of a tranquil water town where the frontal lighting is used to brighten up actors’ faces and surroundings, the majority of scenes set in urban Shanghai adopted sidelight to cast a shadow on the characters’ faces—a lighting technique that has been frequently used in noir films to signify the characters’ moral ambiguity. Along with the development of the film plot that the protagonists gradually transform themselves from naive country young men to urban gangsters, the film increasingly adopted low-key illumination that cast the characters against a very dark background. In addition, the background of the film’s Shanghai scenes also appears to be cramped. The protagonists’ bodies often either fill the entire frame or are swamped by people. The lack of open space accordingly creates a sense of tension and claustrophobic crowdedness of the city life in old Shanghai. Whilst the shadow on their faces also becomes much darker, the lighting and framing seem to indicate the deeper corrupted world that they fell into and become trapped within. The contrast between the scenes set in the agricultural village and urban Shanghai is evident in many other Shanghai heibang films produced since the 1990s, such as Zhang Yimou’s Shanghai Triad and Chen Kaige’s Temptress Moon. These films’ mise-en-scène and visual techniques, whilst all falling into noir convention, appear to continue to link Shanghai with the image of a sin city through making it a dangerous, dark and sinister place. However, the old Shanghai’s image in many of the aforementioned heibang films is more ambiguous in comparison. Whilst it

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continues to associate with crime, conspiracy and power struggles, it is also portrayed as an appealing place that originates opportunities for career success and improved living conditions. Indeed, many of the protagonists in Shanghai heibang films are new migrants who had little experience of big city life, just like Li Xia and Zhao Dada in the Chinese propaganda films from previous decades. Yet, those Shanghai heibang film characters rarely hide their excitement and curiosity to the city life when they first arrive in Shanghai. Unlike the Maoist characters, who are assigned a task in Shanghai and reluctantly stay in the city to fulfil their duty as a communist soldier, these new migrants in Shanghai heibang films, such as Duan Wu (Kevin Lin) in Temptress Moon, Cheng Daqi (Chow Yun-fat and Huang Xiaoming) in The Last Tycoon as well as the three young men in Blood Brothers, often choose to move to Shanghai voluntarily. Whether they are newcomers as are the three young men in Blood Brothers or veteran migrants as Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li) in Shanghai Triad, the majority of Shanghai heibang films’ protagonists either shamelessly express their aspiration for money, fame, power and social status, or admit that the opportunities that they can get in the big city are too appealing to resist. Many of Shanghai heibang films’ characters determine, or as a minimum show a desire, to settle in the city and become a new Shanghai resident, at least until they become a victim to their own desire and action. Moreover, few of those protagonists in Shanghai heibang films show any intention to reform or change the city. Instead Shanghai’s cosmopolitan landscape and its capitalist consumerism signify an irreversible urban modernity that transforms these individuals. In this regard, individuals in Shanghai heibang films conform and negotiate their belonging to, rather than confronting against, the urban modernity as represented by the city. The noir space of the Republican Shanghai in Chinese heibang films indeed highlights the ambiguity of old Shanghai’s modern urban image. In Chinese language, the word “old” could mean both jiu and lao. Whilst the former word jiu suggests the outdated, worn, obsolete and stale, the latter one lao can be interpreted as elapsed, bygone, heretofore and accordingly it has a strong sense of reminiscence and nostalgia. As the cases in Maoist propaganda films demonstrate, the old Shanghai was associated with the concept of jiu, which links the city with its former colonial history. As a sin city from the past, Shanghai’s lifestyle, urban landscape and cosmopolitan culture therefore need to be destructed and reshaped by the new socialist order promoted by the new Communist government.

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As a contrast, the notion of lao Shanghai connects the city with a post-colonial urban space whose relationship with the past needed to be revisited and restructured, as illustrated by the nostalgic imagination of Republican Shanghai in many Hong Kong films, such as Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love (2000), Stanley Kwan’s Centre Stage (1991), Red Rose White Rose (1994) and Everlasting Regret (2005), and Ann Hui’s Love in a Fallen City (1984), and Eighteen Springs (1997).7 Zhong Xueping (2007, 310) argues that since the early 1990s the radical changes in Shanghai brought back sentiments of the city’s past glory, and the “love affair” with the old Shanghai urged the world to look at it again. In these lao Shanghai films, the city’s past and urban culture is often romanticised to invite a fantasy and a memory of an elegant and refined lifestyle of the petty bourgeoisie class. However, the old Shanghai in the heibang films is neither jiu nor lao. Unlike the city in Maoist films, Republican Shanghai is no longer a capitalist sin city that is to be demolished and reformed, although the lighting, framing composition and narrative continue to link the city with corruption, chaos and even something sinister. Even though many of the main characters in these heibang films are killed at the end, these films often show a more sympathetic attitude to these characters’ tragic endings as a contrast to Maoist films’ frenzied celebration over the enemy’s death or defeat. Yet neither does it solicit a fantasy of a utopian past, because almost every protagonist in the heibang films shows some sort of identity crisis through their self-questioning of belonging. As such, the noir space of the old Shanghai locates somewhere in-between of the jiu and the lao. Whereas Shanghai is presented as an exciting cosmopolitan city full of opportunities, audiences can also sense that danger, betrayal, distrustfulness, and dog-eat-dog competition are not far away. The darkness of the storyline often involves the main characters’ struggle to survive, such as Xiao Jinbao in Shanghai Triad and Zhongliang (Leslie Cheung) in Temptress Moon, or the deadly way they fight to move up the ranks in a gang, such as Kang in Blood Brothers and Cheng Daqi in The Last 7 Hong Kong and Shanghai shared some similar urban experience as a colonial city. As another key film production centre, Hong Kong absorbed many film professionals from early Shanghai cinema during and after the second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War. This directly results in Hong Kong cinema’s fascination of Shanghai-related stories as illustrated by those film titles. For detailed discussion of the two cities’ cinematic connection, see Guo Shiyong (2005), Ren Zhonglun (2007), Yiman Wang (2013), and Poshek Fu (2003).

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Tycoon. It is precisely the contemporary Chinese cinema’s ambivalent view to Shanghai’s modern image that associates the city with a noir space. As a type of film closely related to gangsters and triad, Shanghai heibang films frequently feature plots of crime and violence such as murder, street fight and gang war. Based on David Cook (cited in Farquhar 2007, 175)’s argument that violence in noir films holds a “dark mirror” to modern society, Mary Farquhar (2007, 175) claims that the bleak story of Chinese gangster noir film, such as Shanghai Triad, “juxtaposes the city as a dark, criminal space against images of the countryside as a place of past innocence”. Farquhar is correct to point out the seemingly binary juxtaposition between the city and the countryside in Shanghai Triad. However, as illustrated in the previous section, the narrative of the “dark mirror” to China’s modern society in these films is much more ambiguous than Farquhar suggests. Whereas this binary structure between the rural and urban is not at all new in Chinese films, it is important to note that the rural is no longer presented as an innocent paradise. For example, in Shanghai Triad the peasant woman Cuihua (Jiang Baoying) confesses on a few occasions that making a living in the rural area is hard, despite of the quiet and beautiful surroundings. The image of the rural or pre-modern town in Temptress Moon is even bleaker. As Ray Chow (2007, 32) points out in her analysis of the male protagonist Zhongliang’s action in the film, “backward, decadent countryside of the Pangs [sic.] is significant as the site of a sexual primal scene that has shaped his character negatively”; it is a place he must escape from. Here the countryside town and its local wealthy family Pang clan is not only isolated from the outside world, but also is filled with stories of drug (opium) addiction, poisoning, forced incestuous intimacy and deprived autonomy. The suffocation from the rigid patriarchal system and the lack of social mobility removes the countryside’s claim of its moral superiority as was upheld in many films produced in previous decades during the Mao era. Whereas the protagonists in almost every Shanghai heibang film share a similar identity as a migrant, the narrative of their path to making a living, thriving for success and surviving in a highly competitive society all became familiar to Chinese audiences when the new social contexts of those films being produced are taken into consideration. In addition to China opening its door to the outside world shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution and starting to embark on a path of a market-led economy in the 1980s, its coast cities quickly re-emerged as key regions

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of the nation’s economic growth. Cities like Shanghai and its embracing of cosmopolitanism, consumerism and a service-based economy are also celebrated as a symbol of the nation’s achievement of urban modernity and global connection, a symbol that was condemned just a few years previously. However, there was a delay of Chinese cinema to capture the nation’s new attitude to the city on its big screen, partially because it took time for the Chinese film industry, which suffered heavily from previous decades’ damage,8 to digest and respond to the government’s new marketisation policy. Another factor that contributed to the delay was that the economic reform and open-door policies did not quite affect China in full scale until the 1990s when Deng Xiaoping, then China’s paramount leader, went on a famous Southern Tour to further promote and strengthen his policies on economic reform.9 It was not until then in the 1990s, Shanghai eventually had an opportunity to launch a new wave of urban regeneration featuring privatisation, infrastructure upgrade, and loosened control over labour and resource

8 From the 1950s to the 1970s, Chinese cinema was highly politicised. By 1966, over 650 films produced between 1949 and 1965 were classified as ducao (poisonous weeds). The majority of those films were shelved from public viewing and were publicly condemned in the national newspapers, official documents and so-called big-character posters. Moreover, many filmmakers and intellectuals were imprisoned and persecuted, among whom at least sixteen filmmakers from Shanghai Film Studio and seven from Beijing Film Studio died in the following years during the Cultural Revolution (1966– 1976). The damage to Chinese film industry not only was reduction in creativity, but also included an aftermath impact on filmmakers’ mentality in terms of free expression. The fear of political persecution continued to silence many filmmakers and intellectuals even after the Cultural Revolution. For further details, see Yin and Ling (2006, 84–85, 103) and Ding Yaping (2016, 71–76, 99–102). 9 Shortly after Tiananmen Square Incident, Deng Xiaoping decided to promote a fullscale economic reform as a key strategy to deviate global attention on China’s political unsettlement and to release social anxiety and uncertainty brought by the Incident. The Southern Tour enabled Deng to strengthen his power and position in the Party.

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mobility.10 It has not only quickly re-globalised itself as China’s financial centre, but also endeavoured to become Asia’s and even the world’s new leading economic hub. As one of the most affluent cities in China, Shanghai offered migrants plenty of job opportunities and diversity of cosmopolitan urban culture. As a result, Shanghai became one of the most popular host cities for both domestic and international migrants. Along with China’s further transition from a planned economy to a socalled socialist market economy, the number of new migrants to the city is soaring again. According to China’s 2010 population census (Shanghai Statistic Bureau 2017), domestic migrants to the city rose from 1.06 million in 1988 to 3.06 million in 2000 and then to 8.98 million in 2010, and the figure saw domestic migrants accounted for 39% of the entire resident population in Shanghai by 2010. In this regard, Shanghai’s urban history during the first half of the twentieth century and the turn of the new millennium shared similar traits in terms of fast-changing demographic structure with a high number of migrants who strived to improve their living standard. It is under this context that Shanghai is no longer portrayed as a corrupted sin city that was subject to socialist reform. Yet Shanghai’s changing image from a sin city to a noir city in the heibang films to some degree still highlights modern China’s ambiguous attitude to an urban-based modernity. As Tim Oakes (2000, 667) claims, whereas some of China’s coast cities are among the most cosmopolitan and finest in the world, “the interior claims a moral superiority that comes only from its assertion of cultural purity; the interior is the ‘true’ organic China”. Although since the 1980s China’s new economic development urges filmmakers to embrace urban modernity and updates the image of coastal cosmopolitan cities, the friction between regions remains.

10 After China declared its intention of adopting an open-door policy and started economic reform in 1978, only four Southern cities, Shenzhen, Zhanjiang, Xiamen and Zhuhai, which are geographically close to Hong Kong and Taiwan, were set up as special economic zones. Despite the government further opening up fourteen cities, including Shanghai, in 1984, the development of the city was relatively slow due to its historical burden of contributing a high percentage of its income to national revenue. By the end of 1980s, Shanghai’s urban infrastructure had already suffered from inadequate maintenance over years. It was not until the 1990s when the central government opened the Pudong New Area, that Shanghai was allowed to retain a larger portion of its income for the city’s own development. It was since then that the city started a speedy recovery and urban regeneration.

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Unlike the nostalgic portrayal of the lao Shanghai films that often tell stories about Shanghai residents or those that emigrate from Shanghai, the heibang films rarely tell their stories from the perspective of local citizens. Instead, Shanghai is often presented through, if not entirely objectified from, the eyes of migrants from inland or rural regions. For instance, Shanghai Triad opens with a scene of the arrival of a country boy Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) who is waiting at a crowded dock for his uncle to pick him up. In this scene, Shuisheng is wide-eyed in a mix of amazement and anxiousness by his new buzzling surroundings. Later on, the film uses sound and POV to highlight the country boy’s perplexity of modern machines and technological gadgets, such as the car, telephone, neon lights, as well as architecture style, interior decor and westernised dress codes. Whereas Shuisheng’s facial expression suggests that he had never had any experience of seeing, hearing or using these modern items before he arrived in Shanghai, the film also creates a division between the rural and the city. Similar examples could also be found in Temptress Moon, The Last Tycoon and Blood Brothers . Indeed, whereas some migrants managed to become successful, the majority of migrants work hard to survive and make a living in their new host cities. Among them, some might fail to adapt and even become a victim of a fast-changing society. Thus, the moral ambiguity of those characters in Shanghai heibang films, men or women, are often integrated with their contemplation of staying or leaving the big city. Such ambiguity is well illustrated by Gong Li’s character Xiao Jinbao in Shanghai Triad. In the film, Xiao Jinbao has made very contradictory comments about her life in Shanghai. On the one hand, she deliberately tempts a young innocent country girl Ah Jiao (Yang Qianqian) with her luxury and exciting urban lifestyle in Shanghai, and on the other hand, she comments in a different scene that “Shanghai is all bad”. Providing a backdrop for both opportunity and seduction of materialistic corruption, the noir space of old Shanghai thus is neither outdated nor has a strong sense of reminiscence. Instead, the Republican Shanghai is portrayed as a fast-changing world, of which the new order, rules and personal relationships could be hard to grasp especially by the new migrants. In this regard, the ambiguity of the city’s modern space invites investigation from the migrants (or newly urbanised migrants)’ perspective, which will be detailed in next section.

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Gendering Noir Space: From the Post-colonialist to the Post-socialist Migrants’ subjectivity plays a vital role in Shanghai heibang films, enacting rural China’s examination of the nation’s newly adopted urbanised and globalised image. On the one hand, migrants’ perspective fragmentally associates Shanghai with something new, exciting, exotic and modern. On the other hand, the city appears to be a piece of a puzzle seen through a kaleidoscope. The latter image is probably best illustrated in the scenes set in places such as nightclubs (or in some cases theatres and dance halls), which are very often located in the colonial zones of international settlements. Examples include but are not limited to Xiaoyao City (Happy and Unfettered City) in Shanghai Triad, Tiantang (Heaven) Nightclub in The Blood Brothers , Casablanca Nightclub in Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, Great World entertainment complex in Gone with the Bullets and the Grand Shanghai Nightclub in The Last Tycoon. Full of dazzling lights, smoky club music (or what Andrew F. Jones [2001] called “yellow music”) and even sexual flirtation, it is not just a place for business, pleasure, aspiration and even lust, but also a location inviting new migrants’ intense active gaze (Fig. 1). As a recurring setting in almost every Shanghai heibang film, nightclubs, theatres and dance halls share a similar function, that is, they are designed to be space for performance. Whereas customers are sitting or dancing at a relatively dark area, a stage is lit up by a bright spotlight for

Fig. 1 Cheng Daqi (Huang Xiaoming) and his friend gazing at Grant Shanghai Nightclub when they arrive Shanghai in The Last Tycoon (Wong Jing, 2012)

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(almost exclusively female) performers. Separated from the outside ordinary real world, nightclubs are not only where the climax of the film, such as the final shootout in Blood Brothers , often takes place, but also a place allow characters to disguise or reveal their true feelings under a masquerade of indulgence and performance, which could be illustrated by Zhongliang’s expression of his agony of self-doubt and guilt in a dance hall in Temptress Moon. Whereas the shows and entertainment do not last forever, the setting also associates the city with something temporal, fragmentary and performative. In this respect, this setting signifies the urban complexities of modern China, of which its compatibility with the traditional Chinese value and social relationship needs to be constantly investigated by the representatives of the ‘organic’ rural China, i.e. the new migrants. Functioning for social gatherings and entertainment, the nightclub is a place of fluidity and transience. In contrast to a small agricultural community in which traditional interpersonal relationships rely on brotherhood, friendship, families and relatives, the nightclub projects a mini-urban space where different people come together: acquaintances and strangers, the rich and the poor, newcomers and veterans, the powerful and the powerless, Chinese and foreigners, the one who is serving and the one who is being served. In this space, the relationship is determined by money, power, social networks, and the ability to compete rather than kinship and friendship. As many of the Shanghai heibang films illustrate, such changing interpersonal relationships play a crucial role in underpinning the migrant characters’ anxiety, sense of loss as well as their desire for success. More importantly, it is a place where the protagonist often meets with and gets attracted to a femme fatale-type character. In almost every Shanghai heibang film, either leading or supporting female characters are associated with professions of songstress, performer, actress and dance hostess, such as Xiao Jinbao in Shanghai Triad, Lulu in The Blood Brothers, Ah Bao (Monica Mok) in The Last Tycoon and Xiao Liu (Zhang Ziyi) in The Wasted Times . As a performer or entertainer, these women use their makeup, costumes, singing voice and body movement within the dance to display an ultra-femininity that invites the male protagonist’s fetishistic desire. Just as the spectacle of the urban landscape and dazzling urban image that are often intensively gazed at by the new migrants in the films, the female body is also often placed in an exhibitionist position

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whilst male protagonists, who are often the new migrants from inland China, are endowed with a power of gazing. The only exception among these Shanghai heibang films is Chen Kaige’s The Temptress Moon, in which the male protagonist Zhongliang and female protagonist Ruyi (Gong Li) flip their gender roles, with the former taking on a traditional femme fatale-type image and the latter a new arrival from a reclusive pre-modern town has an access to the active gaze. The gender role flipping is more evident when Ruyi, after her father died and her brother suffered permanent brain damage from his opium addiction, becomes the head of the family—a role that was conventionally reserved for the family clan’s most senior man in the pre-modern rural China. As a contrast, young Zhongliang, despite being the brotherin-law of Ruyi’s brother, was treated like a servant boy. Furthermore, adult Zhongliang’s sexualised image and his being-looked-at-ness are not only established immediately in the first shot that shows his face, but are also constantly mentioned in the film via his role as a gigolo who knowingly uses his handsome looks to charm and seduce wealthy women for blackmail.11 Hayward (2013, 151) argues that the femme fatale often seeks empowerment through their sexuality and the female masquerade functions to help them to get what they want, such as fame, wealth and sexual liberation. Whilst knowingly using their highly sexualised vocal and body performance to attract men’s (and in Temptress Moon’s case wealthy women’s) attention, Chinese femme fatales, such as Xiao Jinbao, Lulu, Xiao Liu and gender-flipping Zhongliang, hardly hide their desire for fame, career achievement, and sexual liberty as well as their sufferance from the moral confusion confined by the patriarchal society. In this regard, the femme fatale characters, the nightclubs and the city of old Shanghai, form a triple projection of each other on the big screen. Whilst the Chinese femme fatale’s image is highly sexualised on the stage or other performance space in the films, it also underlines their multifaceted self-identification, which would be gradually revealed. For

11 Two years before Temptress Moon, Leslie Cheung played Cheng Dieyi, a Peking

opera actor who is specialised in female roles, in Chen Kaige’s well-acclaimed Farewell My Concubine (1993). Since then Cheung’s own sexuality as a bisexual man has become openly known to the mass media and the public. Cheung’s own off-screen sexuality and his feminised on-screen and on-stage image further complicates the character Zhongliang’s gender identity as a gender-flipping femme fatale.

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instance, in Shanghai Triad Xiao Jinbao, despite initially appearing to be both a flirtatious and mean woman who treated the country boy Shuisheng—her new servant—poorly, gradually discloses her desire for passionate love and a peaceful life in addition to her anxiety of trying to survive in a beguiling urban society. Similarly, Lulu in Blood Brothers confesses to her lover Mark that she has a fond memory of her childhood as a country girl. In the scene, Lulu expresses her wishful thinking of returning to a much simpler life and walking away from the gang boss Hong who treats her as his own property. Whereas the triumvirate of femme fatale/nightclub/city are not easy to see through because of their masqueraded, fragmented and performative image, the trio mirror each other as a mysterious object that is captivating to the new arrivals (in this case the migrant protagonist). The gendered space can be found in many genre films as the recycling of similar type of character frequently reinforces certain gender image. In her study of horror genre, Carol Clover (2015, 161) establishes a link between the “maleness of the country” and “femaleness of the city” because those brute “country folk” command physically demanding skills, such as animal killing, and thus pose a threat to city visitors and residents. Clover’s argument of the gendered rural and urban space could also be applied to noir films, considering that the city offers more service-based job opportunities and accordingly encourages women’s liberty through joining the workforce and achieving financial independence. However, unlike the horror genre, noir films enable urbanised (female) characters to destablise male power and dominance in a patriarchal society, even though their threat could face a punishment at the end of the film. Similar to their American counterparts, the majority of Chinese femme fatales are also often active and sexually expressive characters who break with submissive Chinese womanhood as an ideal mother, wife and daughter in a patriarchal society. Yet in those heibang films men usually own these nightclubs and form the dominant group of customers. Such a set-up mirrors a larger society that is still overwhelmingly patriarchal. Performing their ultra-femininity on stage, those female characters knowingly collude to survive within a patriarchal society. However, their knowledge of how patriarchy functions to position them, according to Hayward (2013, 137), destabilises the male gaze and thus poses a threat to male dominance. Moreover, the nightclub setting also enables the Chinese femme fatale to enter the traditional male space. Especially on the stage, their performer identity allows them to move freely across male

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and female space through changing their costumes from glamorous sexy evening gowns to tailored men’s suits (Figs. 2 and 3). In addition, the Chinese femme fatale often secretly challenge men’s control over their body. Despite often colluding with a powerful gang boss in order to survive and financially support herself in a patriarchal society, Chinese femme fatale such as Xiao Jinbao, Lulu and Xiao Liu are all secretly have an affair with another man with whom they fall in love. Similarly, in The Temptress Moon, Zhongliang’s moral ambiguity would eventually lead him to an action of renouncing the gang boss Dada (Xie Tian)’s authority. In other words, those femme fatale characters, rejecting to fulfil their (sexual) loyalty that is imposed on them, are ready to defy those powerful men who are in charge. Frank Krutnik (1991, 112) argues that the femme fatale often functions as a mirror of male dilemmas, desire and anxieties. As in many other noir films, the femme fatale and their sexual appeal in Shanghai heibang films are often associated with danger. Although these glamorous urban(ised) women and men in Shanghai heibang films, such as Xiao Jinbao, Lulu, Xiao Liu and Zhongliang, often appear to be sexually attractive and mysteriously captivating, they are often revealed as a powerful gang boss’s mistress, lover or subordinate. In this regard, they

Fig. 2 Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li) in Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, 1995)

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Fig. 3 Lulu (Shu Qi) in Blood Brothers (Alexi Tan, 2007)

also appear to be morally corrupted in a conventional sense of a patriarchal society that stresses a woman’s sexual purity and a lower-class man’s hierarchical loyalty to their master. Falling in love (as in the cases of Mark to Lulu in Blood Brothers and Ruyi to Zhongliang in Temptress Moon) or developing a sympathetic feeling (as in the case of Shuisheng to Xiao Jinbao in Shanghai Triad) to those femme fatale thus often leads to an undesirable ending, such as death, a wounded body or a cruel punishment from the powerful gang boss. Such narrative arrangements confirm Hayward’s (2013, 151–12) observation that femme fatale in noir films are not only “the object of the male’s investigation” but also “more often than not according to the preferred reading, is the perpetrator of all his trouble”. However, unlike their American counterparts, the gender narrative in Shanghai heibang films do not simplify the binary division between the two sexes of man and woman. Instead, it is complicated with the maleness of the rural and femaleness of the urban, with the latter starting to challenge and even pose a threat to the rural-based patriarchal society. As such, in Shanghai heibang films, the femme fatale character could indeed

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be a man, as Zhongliang’s case in Temptress Moon illustrates. As such, I would modify Krutnik’s argument and propose that in Chinese cinema the femme fatale, often projecting an imaginative urban image, functions as a mirror of the (rural) nation’s desire and anxieties during its transition to a more urbanised country. In his study of Republican Shanghai’s popular culture dating back to the 1930s and 1940s, Sun Shaoyi (2009, 152) notes that under the influence of global cinema and gender liberation of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, Shanghai women quickly adopted and favoured new Shanghai-style qipao that shows off a woman’s curvy body and femininity. Whereas some liberal authors phrased the new fashion style as a sign of new women’s control of their own bodies, sexual liberty and financial independence back to the Republican era, it also faced a backlash from mainstream media as an evidence of a city’s corruption of woman under the patriarchal lens (Sun 2009, 153). Accordingly, both the sin city of Shanghai and the “fallen” women—the impersonator of the city—were condemned in order to re-establish a patriarchal control over Chinese modern society (Sun 2009, 154, 162–63). These fallen women continued to be condemned in the following years in Chinese cinema during the Mao era. To reform and remove the feminine threat to man’s power, women’s bodies became genderless. Whereas the masculine image of the Steel Girl was portrayed as an ideal, Chinese cinema’s de-feminisation during the Mao era retains its patriarchal power to control and to reform women’s body (Roberts 2010, 17; Cui 2003, 81 and 241). However, China’s re-globalisation, re-embrace of consumer culture and urbanisation inevitably challenged the traditional gender relationship that up to then was still largely informed by the patriarchal system that is often associated to a labour intensive agricultural economy. Within the context of China’s fast urbanisation and increasing number of domestic migrants moving from rural areas to big cities since the 1990s, the labour structure in both city and rural regions is changing. According to the World Bank’s (2018) estimation, China’s rural population dropped rapidly from 82.1% in 1978 to 50.78% in 2010. Among those new urban migrants are a large number of women who explore the job opportunities in the urban-based labour market. Along with an increasing number of women starting to take control of their financial independence, the traditional gender hierarchical relationship starts to crumble. As many of the Shanghai heibang films reveal, the femme fatale characters are often migrants too. What is interesting is that they are often

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portrayed as a veteran migrant who has already urbanised and developed a taste of an urban-based modern lifestyle. It is their urban experiences which have expanded their sphere and desire as well as leading to their action of seeking empowerment to achieve their sexual liberty, better material life and freedom. Whereas they often introduce the urban life to the new migrants, the Chinese femme fatale challenged the construction of traditional womanhood and manhood defined by the patriarchal system through their unruliness. In comparison with many of China’s rural and inland areas, China’s coast cities, with their service-based industries and economic infrastructure, value intellectual skills over physical labour. As a result, the employment market in those cities is more friendly to women than those interior regions of which their economy still rely on heavy industry, mining or agriculture. Unlike the gender relationship in the traditional economy, in which the woman was supposed to follow the man—the breadwinner—to wherever he goes, the new economic system encourages women to take a lead and enables a shifting pattern of who follows whom. Just as the nightclub in Shanghai heibang films, this femme fataleassociated space is their workplace, rather than a domestic domain. They rely on themselves (body, voice, or performing talent), rather than their husband, father or son. Whereas the Chinese femme fatale destablises the patriarchal power through attempting to take control of their own body and definition of femininity, the popularity and emergence of Shanghai heibang film in Chinese cinema effectively captures the fast social changes in an increasingly urbanised China. Often with a strong and sexually expressive woman as its lead, noir film inevitably has an inherited undercurrent theme—power negotiation of gender relations. Yvonne Tasker (2013, 364) points out, in the end film noir often concerns who has the voice to control the image of the woman. As discussed earlier, the femme fatale’s costume provides flexibility of their gender identity and allows them to enter a male space. However, their liberty and power to destablise male dominance does not occur without a price. Despite urbanisation destablising the traditional gender division between the (male) professional and (female) domestic spaces, Chinese cinema and society is still predominantly controlled by men, which could be demonstrated by the fact that all of the aforementioned Shanghai heibang films were directed and produced by men. This probably explains why Shanghai heibang films also punish the femme fatale characters to provide a closing off, or what Hayward (2013,

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152) calls a completion of “the symbolic Order” or “the Law of the Father”. For instance, Xiao Jinbao, Lulu, and gender-flipped Zhongliang are all killed at the end of the films for their attempt to defy the hierarchical order in patriarchal society, as exemplified by the gang boss’s authority. Just as many post-war American noir films did, by removing the femme fatale’s threat, the closing off restores the male dominance within a patriarchal society. Nevertheless, unlike the 1940s and 1950s’ American noir films that revealed male’s post-war anxiety of reclaiming their control over workplaces and other public spheres that were filled by women during the war era, the closing off of the femme fatale in Shanghai heibang films discloses Chinese men’s anxiety over losing their dominant position in the changing gender relationship brought by fast urbanisation and migration that are now endorsed by the government’s new marketisation policies.12 As a symbol of China’s mega coast city, the post-1990s Shanghai and the pre-1940s Shanghai shared some similarity in terms of their encouragement of female liberty and mobility. However, the interior (agricultural) China’s claim of their ownership of an organic Chineseness suggests that China’s traditional value and social system, including the gender relationship in a patriarchal society, persisted, even though China’s new economic policy and coast cities’ cosmopolitan hybridity has gradually destabilised the traditional social and economic structure. As a result, Shanghai’s image as a noir city functions as a site where the traditional and new values encounter and clash. Thus, the closing up of femme fatale characters in Shanghai heibang films reveals rural society’s anxiety and Chinese cinema’s ambivalent attitude to a fast changing and urbanised China.

12 Chinese government’s decision of embracing marketisation and globalisation had also encountered resistance from the conservative officials within the governing party. During the turn of the 1990s, a number of major official newspapers and political magazines, such as People’s Daily, Jiefang Daily, Qiushi, published a number of column articles, debating over whether marketisation would lead China’s socialist system to collapse and move towards a capitalist social system. The debate was eventually settled at the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) that formally adopted a socialist market economy after Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour.

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Conclusion Urban spaces are probably one of the most prominent features of noir films. Along with China undergoing a dramatic transition from socialist to post-socialist society, the changing image of the Republican Shanghai in Chinese films produced since the 1990s captures the social excitement and anxiety during a period when China was experiencing a rapid change. During this period, the old order (e.g. planned economy, moral value and gender relationship) is collapsing whilst the new one has not yet been fully established. In these heibang films, Republican Shanghai is neither utopian nor dystopian. Unlike the previous generation of heroes in Chinese cinema, the protagonists in Shanghai heibang films no longer intend to reform the city but instead they adapt themselves to the city, for better or for worse. What sets Shanghia heibang films apart from the conventional crime or gangster films is that their major concerns spill beyond the narrative of solving crime or gang culture. Instead they are more about an individual’s response to a fragmented and changing society brought on by urbanisation and commercialisation. Through adopting noir conventions on mise-en-scène and the archetypal character of the femme fatale, Shanghai heibang films enable their audiences to take a glimpse of how the globalisation and urbanisation destabilise the patriarchal society of China, as well as the battle between the two ideologies of liberal and conservative gender relationships. Hence, in Shanghai heibang films, the main (migrant) character’s moral ambiguity often underlines the struggle and puzzle that they are trying to figure out about their urban life. The darkness of those films is thus neither negative nor positive, but a status of uncertainty. Rather than criticising a bleak corrupted urban society, the noir space of Shanghai heibang films is multi-shades of greyness, which fascinates, excites and frightens the filmmakers and the newly urbanised Chinese population.13 Whereas Republican Shanghai prior to 1949 and re-globalised new Shanghai after the 1990s shared many similar urbanisation features, such as fast urban infrastructure regeneration and soaring migrants, the noir depiction of old Shanghai projects social anxiety in a fastchanging migrant society. In this regard, the noir space of old Shanghai

13 It is worth to point out that almost all of those Shanghai heibang films were directed by non-local filmmakers, such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Alexi Tan and Cheng Er, who inevitably hold an outsider’s gaze to the city of Shanghai through their portrayal.

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provides an ideal alternative space for investigating China’s newly engaged cosmopolitan modernity. However, the large number of migrants also suggests that cultural clash, reconfiguration and remix is happening every day in the city. During this process, many Chinese migrants are caught between fragmented and various phases of social development, culturally, economically and politically. As such, Shanghai heibang films are not just about urban space per se, but about the process of urbanisation. Here the transition of becoming, rather than the result of being, underpins the popularity of Shanghai heibang film in Chinese cinema since the 1990s.

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Index

0–9 38th parallel, 124 39 Steps, The (1935), 157 1967 riots, 203, 204 1997, 56, 204, 206, 210. See also Handover, The 1997 Asian financial crisis. See Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 2008 financial crisis, 181 2046 (2004), 156

A ABC, 23 Abe, Sada, 180 Abe, Shinzo, 177 Acquisition, 23, 36 Action cinema, 23, 70, 76, 79 Action film, 5, 22, 36, 49, 50, 71, 198 Adaptation, 15, 42, 49, 54, 55, 62, 95, 100, 108–110, 113, 122, 123, 126, 127, 180, 204

Adaption, 69 Admiral: Roaring Currents, The (2014), 15, 70, 88, 132, 134 Aesthetic(s), 2, 3, 7, 14, 15, 41–44, 46, 53–56, 69–71, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 85, 88, 89, 120, 121, 130–132, 138, 143, 149, 154, 164, 168–171, 174, 175, 185, 186, 188, 218, 219 “aesthetic of excess”, 79, 82, 86 aesthetics of cruelty, 171 Africa, 10, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88 Agency, 9, 58, 82, 121, 152, 175, 178 Aimless Bullet (1961), 53, 54 Aitsu to Watashi (1961), 52 Allison, Anne, 175, 176 All the King’s Men (1983), 27 Allusion, 140, 142, 146, 149, 150, 152, 154, 157–159 Altman, Rick, 5–7, 193, 195, 211, 212

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Feng and J. Aston (eds.), Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55077-6

247

248

INDEX

Ambiguity, 30, 143, 144, 212, 224, 226, 227, 232, 237, 242 America, 28, 107, 108, 124, 221 American cinema, 3, 211, 222, 224 American film, 37, 43, 49, 50, 53, 58, 104, 124, 171, 221 Americanisation, 42, 55, 72, 124 Andrew, Dudley, 115, 116 Anger, The (1981), 206 Animal World (2018), 37 Anime, 62 An, Si Hwan, 132 Anti-Corruption (1975), 202 Anti-heroine, 179, 180, 184, 186. See also Heroine Anxiety, 19, 56, 57, 73, 132, 135, 204, 222, 225, 234, 236, 237, 239, 241, 242 Appadurai, Arjun, 177 Appropriation, 47, 51, 69, 71, 72, 120, 121, 132, 133, 135, 139, 186 Argento, Dario, 168 Army Day (China), 78 Art cinema, 22, 218. See also Art house Art film, 18, 23, 210, 218 Art house arthouse cinema, 22, 25, 128 arthouse circuit, 27 arthouse venue, 25 Asahara, Sh¯ok¯ o, 177 Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, 47, 130 Asian Games, 128 Asian Wall Street Journal , 208 Asia Releasing, 32–35, 37 Assembly (2007), 75 As Tears Go By (1988), 28, 31 Audience, 4, 18–21, 23–25, 27–38, 41, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59, 62, 73–75, 84, 87,

101, 104, 107, 114, 115, 120, 123–127, 129, 141, 167, 168, 174, 178, 194, 199, 211, 212, 219, 224, 228, 229, 242. See also Spectator; Viewer Aum Shinriky¯ o cult, 177, 187 Austin, James, 130 Auteur, 20, 22, 26, 219. See also Auteurism, Auteurship Auteurism, 1, 2. See also Auteurship, Auteur Auteurship, 8. See also Auteurism, Auteur Authenticity, 46, 71, 86, 111, 121, 132. See also Inauthenticity Authority, 78, 80, 82, 84, 148, 157, 159, 195–197, 203, 208, 237, 241 B Back Street (1973). See Bodyguards, The (1973) Back-to-back release, 37. See also Day-and-date release Bai, Hua, 206 Bai Hua Incident, 206 Balmain, Colette, 7, 107, 108, 167 Banquet, The (2006), 73 Barefoot Youth (1964), 53 Bass, Saul, 149 Bataan (1943), 78 Battle of Hong Kong, The (1942), 197 Battle of Hwangsanbeol, 119 Battle of Ku Ning Tou, The (1980), 206 Battle of Memories (2017), 138, 139, 152–159 Battle of Myeongnyang, 88, 132 Bava, Mario, 168 Bay, Michael, 69, 79, 85, 86 BBC2, 22 B-cinema, 57

INDEX

Beardsley, Audrey, 106, 107 Beaststalker (2008), 31 Beasts, The (1980), 204 Beijing, 137–139, 142, 144, 147, 148, 152, 153, 155, 159, 160, 192, 197, 203–206. See also Government (Chinese) Beijing Film Studio, 230 Believer (2018), 60 Belonging, 107, 108, 152, 187, 188, 227, 228 Belt and Road Initiative, 83 Bennett, Bruce, 79, 86 Berlin, 99, 223 Berliner, Todd, 138, 139, 159 Berry, Chris, 70, 71, 89, 120, 121 Betrayal, 228 Better Tomorrow 2018, A (2018), 62 Better Tomorrow, A (1986), 56–58, 60, 62 Better Tomorrow, A (2010), 60 Better Tomorrow II, A (1987), 58 BFI, 21, 22, 33 Big Boss, The (1971), 201 Big Circle Boys, 205 Big Circle Boys, The (1979). See Stowaways, The (1979) Big Red One, The (1980), 78 Binchunmoo (2000), 129 Birmingham, 23, 36 Birth of New China, The (1989), 75 Bitter Love (1981), 206. See also Portrait of a Fanatic (1982) Blaxploitation, 23 Blind Detective (2013), 156, 157 Blockbuster, 13, 15, 24, 32, 34, 35, 38, 70, 72, 75, 81, 83, 87–89, 95, 120, 121, 129–135, 153 Blood Brothers (2007), 219, 226–228, 232–234, 238 Blu-ray, 2, 23

249

Board of Review (Hong Kong), 198, 200, 206 Boat People (1982), 204 Body, 41, 49, 53, 57, 62, 81, 105, 131, 134, 172, 174, 182, 183, 185, 186, 195, 198, 234, 235, 237–240 Bodyguards, The (1973), 201 Bollywood, 33, 34 Bong, Joon-ho, 45 Border, 76, 83, 84, 203. See also Boundary Bounce Kogals (1997), 186 Boundary, 3, 69, 74, 132, 171, 201, 220. See also Border Boxer from Shantong (1972), 201 Boxing film, 194 Braester, Yomi, 225 Branded to Kill , 50, 51 Bristol, 17, 21, 23, 25 Britain, 19, 36. See also UK British Board of Film Censors, 195, 207 British Film Institute. See BFI Brotherhood, 29, 77, 86, 234. See also Sisterhood Browning, Tod, 109 Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, 108 Bu, Wancang, 105 Byeon Gang Soe (1986), 128 Byun, Sung-hyun, 60

C Camus, Albert, 204 Cantonese, 9, 20, 35, 197 Capitalism, 53, 171, 180, 186, 221, 225 Carlton Theater (Shanghai), 101 Carpenter, John, 151, 168 Category III film, 192, 196, 210–212 Caterpillar, The (1929), 171

250

INDEX

Cave of the Silken Web, The (1927), 9, 99 CCP, 142, 145, 153, 159, 206 Censorship, 55, 59, 73, 128, 137, 139, 142, 145, 146, 148, 151, 155, 160, 174, 191–204, 207, 208, 210 film censorship, 56, 59, 103, 138, 139, 192, 194–202, 207, 208 political censorship, 192, 203–206, 209, 212 self-censorship, 191 Central Motion Picture Corporation. See CMPC Centre Stage (1991), 228 CGI, 86, 131 Chan, Felicia, 7 Chang, Cheh, 81, 201 Chan, Gordon, 152 Chan, Jackie, 71, 75, 86 Channel 4, 22 Chan, Peter, 152, 156, 157 Cheang, Soi, 148, 152 Cheng, Irene, Dr, 198 Chen, Kaige, 21, 219, 226, 235, 242 Chen, Leste, 138, 143–145, 153, 154 Cheung, Leslie, 151, 228, 235 Chiang, Kai-shek, 75 China, 19, 21, 24, 34, 69–79, 81–85, 87, 88, 100, 102–106, 108, 116, 137, 139, 152–155, 157, 160, 197, 204–206, 208, 219–226, 229–231, 233–235, 239–243 China Film Co., 34 China Lion Film, 34, 37 Chinese Academy of Sciences, 153 Chinese cinema, 8, 19, 21, 22, 62, 81, 83, 89, 101–103, 108, 110, 116, 139, 217, 218, 220, 223–225, 229, 230, 239–243

Chinese film, 19, 36, 38, 42, 69, 71, 73, 75, 100, 102, 103, 139, 218, 219, 224, 229, 242 Chinese language cinema, 19, 20, 24–27, 31, 32, 38. See also Chinese cinema Chinese language film, 17–22, 24–26, 29, 32–34, 36–39 Chinese New Year film, 32, 34, 37 Chinese Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils (Hong Kong), 207 Cho, Eunsun, 53 Choi, Jinhee, 58, 120, 121 Choi, Min-sik, 88 Chong, Felix, 31, 157 Chow, Ray, 229 Chow, Stephen, 24, 38 Chow, Yun-fat, 28, 30, 227 Cho, Younghan, 41, 47, 48 Chuanqi, 108 Chun, Doo-hwan, 128 Chunhyangjeon, 123 Chunhyang Story (1955), 124–126 Cine Asia, 23, 36, 37 Cinema of excess, 69 CinemaScope, 126 Cinematograph Act of 1909, The, 196 Cinephile, 150, 199 Cinephilia, 159 Cinextremes, 211 Citizen, 57, 77, 78, 81–84, 86–88, 184, 232 City, 45, 50, 60, 82, 94, 101, 102, 116, 154, 183, 184, 206, 220, 222–236, 239, 241–243 Civil War, 78, 86, 223, 228 Classroom of Youth, The (1963), 52 Clover, Carole, 236 CMC Pictures, 36 CMPC, 206

INDEX

Coldest Winter in Peking, The (1981), 205 Cold Eyes (2013), 60 Cold War, 198, 203, 209 Cold War 2 (2016), 34 Collectivism, 77, 79 Colonialism, 54, 59, 120, 133 colonial era, 122 colonial period, 52 colonial rule, 48, 124, 192, 203 semi-colonial history, 223, 225 Colonisation, 121, 184 Columbia Pictures, 24 Combat film, 69, 78, 86 Come Drink With Me (1966), 27 Commerce, 72, 73 Commercial cinema, 1, 4, 9, 89, 221 Commercialisation, 50, 157, 218, 242 Commercialism, 218 Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing (CTEL) (Hong Kong), 207 Commissioner of Police (Hong Kong), 197 Communism, 124, 153 Communist Party (Chinese), 220, 225. See also CCP Community, 74, 80, 107, 116, 187, 188, 234 Confucianism, 47, 57 Confucian ethic, 74, 153 Confucian traditions, 47 Confucian values, 47, 74, 85 Consumer culture, 170, 172–174, 184, 185, 239 Consumerism, 178, 186, 187, 225, 227, 230 Consumption, 1–4, 8, 9, 25, 32, 33, 47, 48, 62, 171, 180, 183, 184, 219 Control (2013), 157 Coppola, Francis Ford, 201

251

Co-production, 34, 62, 70, 152 Cornerhouse (Manchester), 21, 25. See also HOME (Manchester) Corruption, 55, 61, 152, 203, 222, 228, 232, 239 Cosgrove, Mark, 17 Cosmopolitanism, 115, 230 Costume drama, 20, 108 Cowboy Bebop (1998), 62 Crazed Fruit (1956), 49 Creativity, 2, 6, 73, 116, 121, 124, 160, 230 Crime, 28–31, 43, 51, 54–57, 60, 101, 131, 147, 153, 155, 156, 192, 198, 199, 201–205, 210, 211, 219, 221–224, 227, 229, 242 Crime film, 25, 27–31, 41, 43, 44, 49, 50, 53, 56, 59, 192, 194, 196, 202, 204, 205, 210, 242 CRIME: Hong Kong Style, 25, 27–31 Criminal Woman: Killing Medley (1973), 175 Crisis, 131, 181, 184, 185 Criterion Collection, 44, 49 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), 7, 24, 70–72, 129 Cultural cinema, 17, 18, 20, 24–26 Cultural Revolution, 203, 205, 229, 230 Curation, 24, 27, 29, 30, 35 Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), 24, 73 Curzon, 25

D Daiei Studio, 53 Dai, Jinhua, 73 Damico, James, 43, 222 Dan, Duyu, 9, 99, 103, 108, 109, 113, 114, 116

252

INDEX

Danger, 38, 78, 85, 178, 222, 228, 237 Dangerous Encounter—1st Kind (1980), 204 Daughter, 61, 123, 141, 187, 198, 236 Davis, Darrell W., 210, 212 Day-and-date release, 32, 33, 35, 36. See also Back-to-back release Days of Being Wild (1990), 228 Days of Youth (1929), 172 Dazhongguo (The Great China Film Co.), 100 Deadpool (2016), 37 Dearest (2014), 152 Death, 80, 81, 114, 143, 148, 149, 179, 228, 238 Death Valley (1968), 200 Decision of Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Economic System Reform (China), 217 De-feminisation, 239. See also Feminisation Deleyto, Celestino, 193 Delinquent, The (1973), 201 Demme, Jonathan, 158, 210 Democracy, 53, 59 Demon of the Lonely Isle, The (1929-1930), 171 Deng, Xiaoping, 205, 230, 241 De Palma, Brian, 168 Desire, 27, 31, 46, 106, 110, 115, 123, 125, 127, 134, 138, 144, 149, 169, 175, 183, 192, 208, 222, 227, 234–237, 239, 240 Desser, David, 46, 49, 56 Destruction Babies (2016), 169, 183, 184, 186 Deus ex machina, 145 Diaspora, 20, 32, 34–38. See also Ex-pat

Digital effect, 130–132 Digitalisation, 131 Dilemma, 153, 237 Dillon, Mike, 7 Directive for Film Censors (Hong Kong, 1950), 198, 199 Distribution, 1–3, 9, 17–26, 28, 32–34, 36, 38, 47, 49, 58, 60 Diversity, 6, 116, 231 Donald, Allan, 205 Dracula (1897), 99, 100, 108 Dragon Inn (1967), 27 Dreadnaught, The (1966), 29 Dream Home (2010), 211 Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, The (1814), 170 Dr. Lamb (1992), 210, 211 Drug War (2012), 60, 152 Drunken Angel (1948), 49 Duel of Fists (1971), 201 Duel, The (1971), 201 Dunkirk (2017), 26 Durgnat, Raymond, 43, 221 DVD, 2, 23, 44 Dyer, Richard, 44 Dystopia, 153

E East China Sea, 223 Eastern Heroes, 23 EasternKicks.com, 211, 212 Easy Rider, 199 Economic reform, 43, 50, 51, 55, 72, 217, 230, 231 Economics, 9, 61, 107, 121 Edinburgh, 20, 31, 36 EDKO Distribution, 34 Edogawa, Ranpo, 171 Eighteen Springs (1997), 228 Election (2005), 31 Elite, 78, 84, 198, 218

INDEX

Elitism, 18, 219 Employment, 38, 174, 176, 182, 183, 240. See also Unemployment Empowerment, 180, 235, 240 Empress Wu Tse-Tien (1963), 20 Enchanting Shadow, The (1960), 20 Enjo k¯ osai, 186, 187 Entertainment, 20, 169, 173, 196, 205, 218, 219, 233, 234 Eo Wu Dong (1985), 128 Equivocation, 142, 145, 146, 152, 154, 159 Eros International, 33 Erotica, 128, 129 Ero-guro-nansensu, 170–175, 177–179, 183, 185, 186, 188 Eternal Empire (1994), 129 Eternal Wave, The (1958), 225 Eunuch (1968), 126, 127 Europe, 2, 6, 10, 20, 41, 83, 103, 108 European cinema, 1, 3, 4, 100 Everlasting Regret (2005), 228 Exceptionalism, 83, 85 Ex Files 2 (2015), 33 Exhibition, 2, 4, 5, 9, 17–25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 38, 70 Ex-pat, 81. See also Diaspora Exploitation cinema, 7, 175, 211 Exploitation film, 23, 179, 211 “Extreme” cinema, 178 “Extreme” film, 210 Eye in the Sky (2007), 60

F Face Reader, The (2013), 132 Fallen women, 239 Family, 29, 54, 77, 80, 110, 141, 158, 168, 169, 176, 177, 179, 181, 184, 187, 188, 208, 229, 234, 235

253

Fanpaiya, 104, 105, 108, 112, 115. See also Vampire Fantastic hesitation, 142–144 Fantasy, 37, 100, 108, 156, 228 Fantasy film, 102, 103, 130 Farewell My Concubine (1993), 235 Farquhar, Mary, 229 Fatalism, 45 Fate of Lee Khan, The (1973), 27 Father, 173, 187, 235, 240 Feast of Fun, A (1959), 19 Female Prisoner#701: Scorpion (1972), 179 Femininity, 174, 239, 240 ultra-femininity, 234, 236 Feminisation, 184. See also De-feminisation Femme fatale, 53, 104, 147, 148, 150, 220, 234–242 Feng, Xiaogang, 73, 75 Fetishisation, 85, 170, 178 Fifth Generation, 2, 21, 218 Fight Club (1999), 157 Film archive, 108 Harvard University Film Archive, 27, 28 Hong Kong Film Archive, 29 Film Bureau (China), 72, 138, 143, 144, 152–154 Film Censorship Bill (Hong Kong, 1988), 208, 209 Film Censorship Ordinance (Hong Kong, 1988), 203, 208 Film Censorship Regulations (Hong Kong, 1953), 198, 207 Film classification, 192, 199, 202, 207–209, 212 Film festival Cannes Film Festival, 20 Edinburgh International Film Festival, 20 Hong Kong Film Festival, 21

254

INDEX

London Film Festival, 21 London Korean Film Festival, 44 San Sebastian Film Festival, 44 Toronto International Film Festival, 21 Filmhouse (Edinburgh), 25, 26 Film industry Bollywood film industry, 33 British film industry/UK film industry, 18, 33 Chinese film industry, 34, 72–74, 137, 154, 157, 159, 217, 230 Hong Kong film industry, 27, 31, 192, 208 Japanese film industry, 49, 52, 55, 168 Korean film industry, 48, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 120 Filmmaking, 1, 3, 21, 27, 28, 70, 74, 75, 101, 107, 108, 111, 116, 125, 130, 134, 143, 153, 192, 212, 218, 224, 225 Films and Filming , 20 Fisher, Terence, 109 Fist of Fury (1972), 22 flashback, 43, 53, 60, 143, 145, 150, 153–157 Flaubert, Gustave, 105 Foes and Lovers (1993), 219 Folklore, 122, 130 Folktale, 123. See also Folklore Fool There Was, A, 104 Fortress, The (2017), 134 Foucault, Michel, 195 Founding of the Republic, The (2009), 75 Fox Network, 71 Freedom, 73, 128, 137, 171–173, 185, 204, 206, 217, 240. See also Free expression Free expression, 137, 159, 230. See also Freedom

Freeta, 175, 182 French Impressionism, 116 French New Wave, 46 From Vegas to Macau III (2016), 34, 37 Fugitive, The (1993), 72 Fuller, Sam, 46, 78 G Gallagher, Mark, 45, 221, 222 Game, The (1997), 157 Gangster, 28, 30, 56, 57, 60, 187, 193, 194, 200, 223, 224, 226, 229 Gangster film, 53, 60, 139, 194, 201, 210, 242 Gaze, 132, 134, 144, 149, 233, 235, 236, 242 Gender, 6, 53, 101, 114, 133, 172, 175, 178, 179, 184, 185, 235, 236, 238–242 General Principles for Guidance of Film Censors and the Film Censorship Board of Review (Hong Kong, 1963), 200 General’s Head, The, 106 General’s Son, The (1990), 60 Genre bending, 159. See also Genre breaking Genre breaking, 159. See also Genre bending Genre convention, 3, 69, 75, 85, 220, 221. See also Genre norms Genre development, 7 Genre norms, 138, 154, 156. See also Genre convention German Expressionism, 3, 116 Get Out (2017), 168 Girl Boss Guerilla (1972), 175 Gish, Lillian, 104 Gladiator (2000), 129 Glasgow, 32, 36

INDEX

Gledhill, Christine, 4 Globalisation, 47, 71, 72, 120, 178, 217, 223, 241, 242 “G-Men” film, 194 Goddess, The (1934), 224 Godfather, The (1972), 201, 202 Golgo 13 (2008-2009), 63 Gone with the Bullets (2014), 219, 233 Gong, Li, 227, 232, 235 Government Chinese government, 85, 192, 241. See also Beijing colonial government, 124, 192, 198, 203 communist government, 203, 204, 227 Hong Kong government, 203, 204, 206, 207 Korean government, 52, 54 Kuomintang government. See Kuomintang (KMT) Taiwan government. See Taipei Gravity (2013), 154 Great Battle, The (2018), 134 Great Depression, 43 Greatful Dead (2013), 169, 179, 184, 187 Great Hanshin Earthquake, 176, 181 Great Hypnotist, The (2014), 138–153, 155–159 Great Kant¯ o Earthquake, 171, 173, 181 Great T¯ ohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, 176, 181 Grossman, Andrew, 211, 212 Gwangju uprising/Gwangju democratic uprising, 56, 59 H Halloween (1978), 168 Handover, The, 56, 57. See also 1997

255

Happenings, The (1980), 204 Harmony, 69, 85 Hayward, Susan, 222, 235, 236, 238, 240 Heibang film, 219–222, 225–229, 231–243 Heine, Heinrich, 105 Helter Skelter (2012), 169, 182, 183 Heritage, 3, 119, 123, 125, 128, 130–132, 134, 153 Hero, 30, 76, 77, 80, 82, 85, 89, 128, 132, 146, 147, 149–151, 155, 156, 194 Hero (2002), 24, 71, 73, 74, 157 Heroic bloodshed film, 42, 56–59 Heroine, 150. See also Anti-heroine Heroism, 77, 79, 80, 133 High concept, 3 Hirsch, Foster, 43, 222 Historical drama, 52, 122. See also Period film Hitchcock, Alfred, 149, 150, 157 Hokusai, Katsushika, 170 Hollywood, 3–6, 8, 27, 37, 38, 42, 45–48, 50, 53–55, 58, 59, 61–63, 69–75, 77, 79, 82, 83, 85, 88, 89, 101, 107, 115, 116, 120, 121, 124, 130, 133, 134, 139, 147, 154, 157, 168, 192, 194, 201, 221 Home, 23, 27–31, 54, 78, 100, 127, 168, 176, 182, 187, 224 HOME (Manchester), 25, 26. See also Cornerhouse (Manchester) Hong Kong, 8, 9, 19, 20, 22–24, 26, 28–34, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 55–62, 70, 108, 151, 157, 192, 196–210, 220, 221, 228, 231 Hong Kong cinema, 25, 28, 30, 56, 58, 59, 192, 198–200, 202, 209, 212, 228

256

INDEX

Hong Kong film, 9, 20, 27, 29, 30, 35, 45, 48, 51, 58–60, 62, 86, 196, 200, 202, 203, 209, 210, 212, 228 Hong Kong Film Awards, 210 Hong Kong Legends, 23, 36 Hong Kong New Wave, 2, 204 Honour, 29, 56, 78, 85 Hopper, Dennis, 199 Horror, 93, 95, 96, 99, 116, 138, 142, 144, 146, 147, 149, 151, 157–159, 168, 171, 174, 194, 195, 210, 218, 236 Category III horror, 212 Hollywood horror, 157 J-horror/Japanese horror, 7, 70, 141, 167–170, 177, 180–182, 184, 186–188 Slasher, 168 House of Flying Daggers (2004), 24, 71, 73 Hsia, Meng, 204 Hui, Ann, 204, 228 Hu, Jintao, 74 Hu, King, 3, 7, 27 Hung, William, 201 Hunt, Leon, 6, 22 Hu, Yaobang, 206 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 105 Hwang Jin I (1957), 125 Hwang, Yun Mi, 122 Hybridisation, 120, 131, 132, 157 Hybridity, 2, 84, 119, 241

I Iconography, 77, 122, 132 Identification, 4, 235 Identity, 7, 74, 75, 128, 130, 133, 141, 142, 150, 153, 157, 173, 176, 179, 183–185, 198, 222, 224, 229, 235, 236, 240

Ideology, 72, 79, 85, 122, 125–128, 140, 142, 145, 159, 172, 177, 187, 242 If I Were Real (1981), 206 Iida, Yumiko, 177, 182, 184–186 I Look Up When I Walk (1962), 53 IMF crisis, 130, 133 Im, Kwon-taek, 60, 128 Imperialism, 81, 124 Inauthenticity, 44. See also Authenticity Inception (2010), 139 Independence, 120, 124, 133, 176, 236, 239 Independent cinema, 21, 26, 27, 30, 38 Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) (Hong Kong), 202 India, 21, 110 Individualism, 49, 125, 153 Industrialisation, 50, 55, 126 Inferiority complex, 87 Infernal Affairs (2002), 28, 31, 60, 70 Information Services Department (ISD) (Hong Kong), 198 Inner Sense (2002), 151 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), 21 Integrity, 74, 143 Integrity (2019), 157 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 130 International settlement, 233 Interstellar (2014), 154 Intertext, 146, 147, 149, 151, 159 In the Mood for Love (2000), 228 In the Realm of the Senses (1976), 180 Ip Man (2008), 73, 74, 81 Iron Monkey (1993), 86 Ishihara, Shintaro, 49

INDEX

Ishihara, Yujiro, 49 Ishii, Teruo, 49 Italian Neorealism, 3 Iwabuchi, Koichi, 46–48, 50

J James, Henry, 143 Japan, 8, 21, 41, 42, 44, 47–52, 55, 61, 62, 87, 103, 105, 108, 124, 169, 170, 172–175, 178, 179, 181, 183, 187, 188, 197 Japanese cinema, 167, 177, 178 Japanese film, 42, 48, 50–55, 62, 168 Jeon Woo Chi (2009), 130, 131, 134 Jianghu, 79, 80 Jia, Zhangke, 22, 152 Joseon, 122–126, 128, 130 Journey to the West , 100, 110. See also Xiyouji Justice, 85, 143, 175 Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), 167

K Kabuki, 171 Kager¯ o-za (1981), 179 Kaji, Meiko, 179 Karpovich, Angelina, 7 Kawabata, Yasunari, 173 Kermode, Mark, 168 Kill Bill (2003, 2004), 71 Killer Constable (1980), 30 Kim, Kyung Hyun, 132, 133 King and the Clown (2005), 119, 132 King Boxer (1972), 22 King Sejong the Great (1978), 128 Knight errant, 79, 80, 85 Kobe child murders, 176, 188 Kogyaru, 178, 185, 186 Koo, Louis, 31 Korea, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 51–61, 70, 108, 119, 120, 123–126, 128–134

257

Korean cinema, 42, 53, 58, 119, 121–126, 128–134 Korean film, 45, 48, 52, 53, 55, 60, 120, 121, 128, 129, 132 Korean New Wave, 120, 121, 133 Korean War, 48, 54, 59, 124, 125 Korean Wave. See Korean New Wave Kozma, Alicia, 179 Krutnik, Frank, 237, 239 Kuei, Chih-hung, 201, 202 Kuhn, Annette, 195, 196, 211 Kung Fu craze, 22, 32, 37 Kung Fu Hustle (2004), 24, 38 Kuomintang (KMT), 75 Kurosawa, Akira, 2, 27, 46, 49 Kwan, Stanley, 228 L Lakeshore Spring Dream, The, 105 Lam, Dante, 28, 31, 69, 84 Lam, Ringo, 28–30, 85 Last Laugh, The (1924), 101 Last Tycoon, The (2012), 219, 227, 229, 232–234 Latin America, 87 Lau, Andrew, 31, 60, 70 Lau, Ching-wan, 31 Laura (1944), 147 Law, John Ma, 201 Law of the Father, The, 241. See also Patriarchy League of Gods (2016), 37 Lebrun, Pierre, 205, 208 Lee, Ang, 22, 24, 70, 71, 129 Lee, Bruce, 22, 81, 201 Lee, Byung-hun, 131 Lee, Danny, 210 Lee, Doo-yong, 128 Leeds, 36 Lee, Gil Sung, 127 Lee, Hyangjin, 57, 123 Lee, Hyunseon, 120, 121 Lee, Nikki J.Y., 45, 47, 53

258

INDEX

Leftist cinema, 103 Legend of Ginko, The (2000), 129 Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (2010), 219, 233 Legislative Council (Hong Kong), 208 Lehman Brothers, 181 Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), 119 Letter with the Feathers (1954), 20 Liang, Qichao, 81 Liberation, 52, 53, 105, 112, 114, 124, 171, 185, 235, 239 Life (1958), 126 Lifeline (1935), 197 Li, Han-hsiang, 20 Li, Jet, 75, 81 Ling, Yan, 218, 219, 230 Li, Shaohong, 218 Literature, 52, 112, 114, 125, 128, 137, 143, 170, 172, 210, 225 classical literature, 122, 123 Gothic literature, 108 scar literature, 205 Liu, Haibo, 222, 223 Liu, Jianzhong, 72 Liu, Tony Chun-ku, 204 Liverpool, 36 Localisation, 131 Localism, 173 London, 21–23, 31, 33, 36, 37 Lost in Hong Kong (2015), 32 Lost in Thailand (2011), 32 Love in a Fallen City (1984), 228 Loyalty, 29, 56, 86, 128, 176, 220, 237, 238 Lung, Patrick Kong, 204 Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng, 6 Lu, Xun, 107, 112–115

M MacArthur, Douglas, General, 174

Made in Hong Kong, 23, 36, 197 Madman Entertainment, 44 Magic Paintbrush, The (1954/55), 19 Magnificent Concubine, The (1962), 20 Magnum Films, 37 Mainland China, 19, 21, 24, 31, 32, 34–36, 56, 71, 150, 151, 159, 160, 204 Mainstream cinema, 2 Mak, Alan, 31, 60, 70, 157 Maleness, 236, 238 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 105 Manchester, 21, 25, 26, 31, 32, 36, 37 Mandarin, 35, 197 Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School, 103 Manhunt (1976), 62 Manhunt (2017), 62 March of the Guerrillas (1938), 197 Marketisation, 178, 218, 230, 241 Marran, Christine, 180 Marriage, 110, 113–115, 152, 176 Martial arts, 3, 7, 22, 23, 33, 35, 71, 74, 108, 113. See also Wuxia Martial arts cinema, 27, 73, 79, 81 Martial arts film, 22–24, 26, 52, 73, 74, 76, 81, 218. See also Wuxia film kung fu film, 23, 199, 201 swordplay film, 52, 200, 201 Martian, The (2015), 154 Martin, Daniel, 28, 30, 45, 46 Marvel, 37 Marvellous, The, 142–145, 147, 156 Masculinity, 80, 81, 133, 134, 183, 184 hypermasculinity, 133, 134 Masquerade, 234, 235 Masquerade (2012), 131, 132, 134 Masuda, Toshio, 53

INDEX

Material culture, 171, 174, 184 Materialism, 170 Matrix, The (1999), 86 Matsumoto, Seicho, 49 Mavo artist group, 172 May Fourth, 105, 112, 114, 115. See also New Culture Movement Meek, Scott, 21 Melodrama, 198, 212, 218 Memento (2000), 157 Memory, 140, 145, 152, 155, 156, 228, 236 Merciless, The (2017), 60, 61 Mermaid, The (2016), 37 Migrant, 219, 220, 223–225, 227, 229, 231–236, 239, 240, 242, 243 Migration, 220, 241 Miike, Takashi, 168 Mildred Pierce (1945), 46 Military film, 75, 76, 81, 84, 85 Mingxing Film Company, 105 Mise-en-abyme, 142 Mise-en-scène, 48, 85, 119, 147, 150, 154, 221, 226, 242 Misery (1990), 158 Mittell, Jason, 193, 194 Miyao, Daisuke, 50, 51 Mobility, 2, 10, 143, 223, 229, 231, 241 Modernisation, 47, 122, 134, 173 Modernism, 171 Modernity, 42, 43, 47, 54–57, 59, 62, 124–126, 131, 172, 173, 220, 222, 224, 225, 227, 230, 231, 243 Moga, 174, 178, 185 Moju: The Blind Beast (1931), 172 Monkey King 2, The (2016), 37 Monkey King Conquers the Leopard (1927), 100 Monthly Film Bulletin, 20

259

Morality, 123, 172, 173, 186, 187 Moreau, Gustave, 105 Mother, 54, 173, 187, 224, 236 Mother (2009), 45, 46 motif, 43, 78, 143, 146–150, 155 Motion Picture Law (South Korea), 55 Mud Spattered Purity (1963), 53 Multiculturalism, 223, 225 Munby, Jonathan, 194 Murnau, F.W., 99–101, 109, 116 Musa (2001), 129 Musical, 3, 29, 101, 198, 222 My Best Friend’s Wedding (2016), 37 My Sassy Girl (2001), 70 Mystery (2012), 157 Mythology, 108 My Wife is Confessing (1964), 53

N Nakata, Hideo, 70, 167, 168 Naremore, James, 43, 46, 211 Narrative, 2–4, 7, 43, 45, 51, 53, 54, 56, 60, 61, 76–80, 82, 86, 102, 103, 122, 123, 127, 132, 134, 137, 144, 151, 154, 158, 169, 182, 221, 222, 224, 228, 229, 238, 242 Nation, 6, 49, 51, 72, 74, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89, 116, 120–124, 126–128, 130, 131, 133–135, 173, 174, 177, 182, 184, 186, 187, 197, 220, 224, 230, 233, 239. See also State National cinema, 1, 6, 8, 9, 26, 45, 48, 53, 72, 119–122, 128, 130, 131, 169 National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC), 241 National Film Production Centre (South Korea), 55

260

INDEX

National Film Theatre (NFT), 19, 21, 26 Nationalism, 53, 74, 81, 133, 134, 172, 177 Naylor, Alexandra, 195, 196 Nazimova, Alla, 104 Neale, Steve, 4, 5, 43, 193, 195, 211, 222 NEET, 176 Negri, Pola, 104 Neo-Romanticism, 101 New Blood (2002), 148 New Culture Movement, 112, 115, 239. See also May Fourth New Taiwan Cinema. See Taiwan New Cinema New World (2013), 60 New Youth, The, 174 Ng, See-yuen, 202 Nightmare on Elm Street, A (1984), 168 Nihilism, 59, 181 Nikkatsu Action, 51, 53, 63 Nikkatsu Noir, 49 Nikkatsu Studio, 49, 50, 62 Nocturnal Animals (2016), 156 Noir, 41–51, 53–57, 59–63, 147– 149, 151, 154, 155, 159, 211, 219–222, 224–226, 229, 231, 232, 236, 237, 240–242 classical noir, 221 neo-noir, 211 Nolan, Christopher, 26, 157 Nomura, Yoshitaro, 49 North America, 2, 33, 34 North by Northwest (1959), 157 Norwegian National Library, 108 Nosferatu (1922), 99, 100, 108–112, 115, 116 Nostalgia, 227 Nottingham, 23, 32 Nowhere to Hide (1999), 45

O Oakes, Tim, 231 ODEON, 23, 32, 36, 37 Oh, Young Sook, 125 Okamoto, Kihachi, 49 Ok, HyeRyoung, 120 Oldboy (2002), 45 Olympic Games. See Olympics Olympics Beijing Olympics, 87 Seoul Olympics, 58 On a Stormy Night (1925), 103 Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (2003), 119 “One Country, Two Systems”, 204 One Second (2019), 152 Operation Mekong (2016), 69, 76, 78, 84, 85, 87 Operation Red Sea (2018), 69, 75, 78, 84, 85, 87, 89 Order, 52, 76, 82, 125, 208, 221, 227, 232, 237, 239, 241, 242 Orphan Rescues His Grandfather, An (1923), 102 Our Times (2015), 33–35 Overheard (2009), 31 Oxford, 36 Ozu, Yasujiro, 3, 172, 173 P Pai, Ching-jui, 205, 206 Painted Skin (2008), 152 Palace Theater (Shanghai), 99 Panavision, 126 Panel of Censors (Hong Kong), 198 Pang, Ho-cheung, 211 Paradise for Adventurers, 223 Paradox (2017), 152 Paranormal Activity (2007), 169 Park, Chung-hee, 54, 56, 61, 127 Park, Geun-hye, 61 Patriarchy. See also Law of the Father

INDEX

patriarchal oppression, 180 patriarchal order, 184 patriarchal society, 235–238, 241, 242 patriarchal structure, 129, 184 patriarchal system, 229, 239, 240 patriarchal value, 123 Patriotism, 74, 78, 79, 128 Pendleton, David, 27 People’s Liberation Army. See PLA People’s Republic of China, 75, 78, 137. See also PRC Performance, 22, 106, 134, 183, 233–235 Performativity, 131 Perhaps Love (2005), 157 Period film, 57, 119–122, 124–129, 131, 132, 134, 135 Peterson, Lowell, 43, 221 Pickford, Mary, 104 Picturehouse, 25 Pigsy To Be a Bridegroom (1927), 100 Pinky violence film, 179 Piracy, 35 PLA, 77, 78, 80, 86 Place, Janey, 43, 221 Places of Public Entertainment Regulation Ordinance, The (Hong Kong), 196 Planned economy, 231, 242 Pleasurable History of the Zhaoyang Palace, 112 Pleasure, 105, 159, 183, 233 Point of view. See POV Police Story (1985), 28, 31 Policy, 20, 55, 72, 73, 78, 124, 128, 129, 177, 194, 196, 212, 223, 230, 231, 241 Political correctness, 142, 145 Politics, 7, 9, 121, 127, 128, 172, 174, 178, 185, 198, 200, 203, 204, 208, 209

261

Polybona, 34 Popular culture, 9, 47, 111, 128, 169, 177, 179, 239 American popular culture, 47, 49, 50 Japanese popular culture, 52, 171 Pop-up cinema, 19 Pornoviolence, 210, 211 Portland Street Blues (1998), 28 Port of Call (2015), 211 Portrait of a Fanatic (1982), 206. See also Bitter Love (1981) POV, 144, 232 Power, 8, 74, 110, 123, 125, 127, 175, 180, 192, 195, 196, 203, 208, 210, 227, 230, 234, 236, 239, 240 soft power, 74, 78, 85, 87, 88 superpower, 87, 130 PRC, 143, 151, 153, 157 Precipice Game, The (2016), 157 Preminger, Otto, 147 Prince Yeonsan (1961), 126, 127 Private Tutor (1958), 52 Private Tutor (1963), 52 Privatisation, 217, 230 Production, 1, 2, 4, 8, 19, 20, 22–24, 26–29, 31–35, 37, 42, 45, 47–49, 51, 55, 57–62, 69–73, 76, 77, 85, 88, 100, 119, 120, 122–126, 128, 129, 134, 135, 157, 171, 210, 220, 224 cultural production, 7, 50, 102 film production, 8, 9, 42, 48, 56, 158, 192, 209, 217, 219, 222, 223, 228 Production Code, 194 Production Code Administration (PCA), 195 Project Gutenberg (2018), 157 Promotion, 4, 5, 78

262

INDEX

Propaganda, 55, 73, 77, 87, 127, 195, 197, 211, 212, 217, 218, 225, 227 Protectionism, 72, 74, 84 Provencher, Ken, 7 Prowess, 74, 77, 85, 130 PTSD, 140 Publicity, 5, 138 Public Relations Office (PRO) (Hong Kong), 198 Pudong New Area, 231 Punishment, 236, 238 Pure cinema, 101 Pu, Songling, 112 Puzzle film, 138, 139, 141, 145–150, 152, 153, 156, 157 Q Quiet Place, A (2018), 168 R Raining in the Mountain (1979), 27 Rape, 187, 188 Rayns, Tony, 21, 22 Realism, 86, 103, 121, 133, 182 Rec (2007), 169 Reception, 4, 47, 70, 71, 89, 178, 211 Recession, 176, 181, 182, 184, 185 Red Cliff (2008), 73 Red Rose White Rose (1994), 228 Remasculinisation, 133 Rendezvous (1936), 224 Representation, 47, 49, 54, 119–122, 132, 134, 135, 138, 169, 170, 175, 180–184, 186, 187 Rhee, Syngman, 125 Ringu (1998), 70, 167, 169, 182 Robe, The (1953), 126 Romantic comedy, 70 Rosemary’s Baby (1968), 158

Royal Tailor, The (2014), 132 Rush Hour (1998-2007), 71 Russell Group, 33, 36 Russia, 9, 87 Ry¯ osai kenbo, 173, 178 S Sa Bang Ji (1988), 128 Salaryman, 175, 184, 185 Salome, 105, 106 Samurai film, 1, 3, 27, 200 SAPPRFT, 138, 139, 140, 148, 150, 155 Satori no Sedai, 169, 175 Saving Private Ryan (1997), 72, 75, 78 Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, The (1930), 173 Schatz, Thomas, 5, 107 Schrader, Paul, 43, 221 Science fiction, 139, 153–155. See also Sci-fi Sci-fi, 153–155. See also Science fiction Screen Quota System (South Korea), 58 Se7en (1995), 158 Season of the Sun (1956), 49 Second World War, 178, 223. See also World War II Secretary for Chinese Affairs, The (Hong Kong), 197 Secret Window (2004), 156 Sentinel Under the Neon Lights (1964), 225 Seong Chun Hyang (1961), 126, 127 Seoul, 52, 54, 130, 221 Sex, 174, 178, 180, 199–201, 204, 205, 207, 209, 210, 224 Sexploitation cinema, 175 Sexuality, 172, 173, 175, 178–180, 185, 235 Shadow of the Vampire (2000), 109

INDEX

Shanghai, 99, 101, 102, 105, 106, 116, 139, 219–232, 235, 239, 241, 242 Shanghai cinema, 224, 228 Shanghai Film Studio, 230 Shanghai Fortress (2019), 153 Shanghai Photoplay Company, 111 Shanghai Triad (1995), 219, 226–229, 232–234, 236, 238 Shaolin Soccer (2001), 38 Sharp, Jasper, 175, 179 Shaw Brothers, 30, 81, 200, 201 Sheffield, 31, 36 Shi, Hui, 20 Shim, Ae-Gyung, 53–55 Shi, Nansun, 154 Shin, Sang Ok, 126 Shiri (1999), 120, 133 Shi, Zhecun, 106 Shufu, 178, 185 Shufu no Tomo, 174 Shunga, 170, 171 Shyamalan, M. Night, 146 ‘Sick man of Asia, The’, 81, 87 Sight and Sound, 20 Silence of the Lambs, The (1991), 158, 210 Silent cinema, 115, 122, 123 Sisterhood, 178. See also Brotherhood Sixth Generation, 2, 22, 218 Sixth Sense, The (1999), 146, 147, 149–151 Slapstick, 178 Socialist market economy, 231, 241 Social media, 37, 183 Sound cinema, 115 Sound film, 123 Source Code (2011), 139 Southampton, 36 South Bank (London), 26 Southern Tour, 230, 241 Sovereignty, 87

263

Soviet Montage, 3, 115, 116 Soviet Union, 124 Space, 5, 6, 8, 10, 17, 20, 22–24, 32, 52, 69, 70, 77, 132, 143, 171, 173, 175, 177, 182, 219, 220, 222–225, 227–229, 232–236, 240, 242, 243 Special economic zone, 231 Spectacle, 73–76, 83, 85–87, 120, 128–131, 134, 234 Spectator, 145, 178, 195. See also Audience; Viewer Spellbound (1945), 149 Spinning the Tales of Cruelty towards Women (1984), 128 SPL 2 (2015), 152 Spring Willow Society, 105, 106 State, 72, 73, 75, 78, 122, 123, 128, 129, 139, 141, 145, 146, 173, 181, 185, 188. See also Nation State Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television. See SAPPRFT Stealth, 142, 146–148, 152, 154, 158, 159 Steel Girl, 239 Stoker, Bram, 99, 100 Stop the Bitch Campaign (2001), 186 Story of Chunhyang, The (1923), 122 Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon, The (1924), 122 Story of Shim Cheong, The (1925), 122 Stowaways, The (1979), 204 Stranger Than Fiction (2006), 156 Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, 112 Stray Dog (1949), 49 Streaming services, 2, 23, 35 Street Angeles (1937), 224 Stringer, Julian, 45, 47, 53, 70, 71, 211, 212

264

INDEX

Studio Relations Committee (SRC), 195 Studio system, 4, 5, 26, 115 Style, 26, 29, 41, 42, 53, 60, 62, 79, 83, 106, 120, 124, 129, 148, 151, 178, 221, 222, 225, 232, 239 Subjectivity, 134, 184–186, 233 Suicide, 131, 140, 171, 183, 187 Sukeban, 175 Sunrise (1927), 101 Sun, Shaoyi, 239 Sun Tribe, 49, 51, 52 Superhero, 80 Superhero cinema, 88 Supernatural film, 179 Surrogate Woman, The (1986), 128 Suzhou River (2000), 157 Suzuki, Seijun, 44, 46, 50, 51, 62, 179 Swallow Thief, The (1961), 29 System, The (1979), 30

T Taboo, 148, 152, 154, 160 Taipei, 197, 203 Taiwan, 9, 19, 21, 24, 26, 34, 70, 108, 203–206, 231 Taiwan New Cinema, 2, 21 Tale of Chunhyang, The (1935), 123 Talmadge, Constance, 104 Talmadge, Norma, 104 Tan, Alexi, 219, 226, 238, 242 Tang, Billy, 210 Tarantino, Quentin, 71 Tasker, Yvonne, 5, 240 Taste, 9, 35, 107, 187, 211, 240 Teahouse, The (1974), 30, 202 Television, 7, 37, 58, 127–129, 187, 193, 207

Temptress Moon (1996), 219, 226–229, 232, 234, 235, 237–239 Teo, Stephen, 7, 59, 80, 107, 129, 139, 200, 221 Terrifying Girls’ high School: Lynch Law Classroom (1973), 175 Thailand, 78, 201 That Demon Within (2014), 28, 31 Theatre, 2, 22, 23, 102, 123, 128, 170, 208, 233 Theatres Regulation Ordinance, The (Hong Kong, 1908), 196 Theatrical release, 20, 34, 36, 59 Threat, 59, 76, 80–82, 84, 87, 153, 206, 236, 238, 239, 241 Thriller, 28, 51, 151, 210, 218, 222 Tiananmen Square Incident, 72, 230 Tian, Han, 103–106, 108 Tianyi (The Unique Film Co.), 100 Tian, Zhuangzhuang, 218 Tik Tok (2016), 157 Titanic (1997), 72 Todorov, Tzvetan, 142, 143, 192, 193 To, Johnnie, 28, 31, 60, 152, 156 Tokyo, 50, 51, 172, 173, 176, 187, 221 Too Many Ways to be No 1 (1997), 28, 31 Torture, 127, 171, 188 Touch of Sin, A (2013), 152 Touch of Zen, A (1971), 27 Tradition, 3, 26, 50, 54, 88, 108, 120, 130, 170, 172, 174, 175, 186, 211, 224 Tradition (1955), 29 Tragic Prince, The (1956), 125 Transnational cinema, 6, 9, 71, 72, 74, 120 Trauma, 59, 60, 133, 151 Triad, 56, 202, 205, 219, 229

INDEX

Trinity Film, 23, 33–37 Trump, President, 82 Tse, Patrick Yin, 29 Tsubouchi, Shoyo, 104 Tsui, Hark, 28, 30, 85, 204 Turn of the Screw, The (1898), 143 Twenty Eight Famous Murders with Verse (1860), 170 Twilight in Geneva (1986), 206 Two Magic Girls (1948), 224 Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle), 21 U Uchida, Eiji, 169, 179 UK, 17–26, 28–38, 197, 212 Ukiyo-e, 170, 171 Unbreakable (2000), 146 Uncanny, The, 143, 145, 156 Unemployment, 181, 185. See also Employment United Kingdom. See UK United States (U.S.), 5, 6, 25, 41, 48, 50, 53, 54, 58, 69–72, 75–77, 79, 82, 83, 86, 88, 107, 124, 181, 197 Unity, 6, 76, 82, 86, 88, 89, 188 Untold Scandal (2003), 119 Untold Story, The (1993), 210, 211 Urbanisation, 47, 50, 55, 220, 221, 225, 239–243 Urban regeneration, 220, 221, 224, 230, 231 Usual Suspects, The (1995), 157 V Valiant Ones, The (1975), 27 Vampire, 99, 101, 103–105, 108, 109, 111, 114–116 Vampire film, 101, 108, 112 Vampire, The (1913), 104 Vampirism, 105

265

VCR, 58–60 Vernet, Marc, 43, 222 Vertigo (1958), 149–151 VHS, 23, 33, 58, 59 Victim, 82, 87, 127, 141, 186, 224, 227, 232 Viewer, 76, 138, 141–144, 146, 147, 150, 155, 156, 158. See also Audience; Spectator Violence, 44, 55, 69, 79, 85, 86, 88, 127, 133, 134, 152, 158, 165, 168, 175, 179, 186, 188, 192, 198–202, 204, 205, 207, 209–211, 229 Vistavision, 126 Vue, 32, 36, 37 W Walk in the Sun, A (1945), 78 Wandering Earth, The (2019), 153 Wang, Jimmy Yu, 81 Wang, Tung, 206 War Diary, A (1977), 128 War film, 20, 26, 32, 75–77, 83, 87–89, 132 Warriors of the Dawn (2017), 134 Wasted Time, The (2016), 219, 234 Watershed (Bristol), 17, 21, 25 Watt, Nigel, 207 Way of the Dragon, The (1972), 201 Way We Dance, The (2013), 26 Western, 3, 5, 50, 107, 212, 222 Spaghetti Western, 23 Westernisation, 47, 54, 57, 124, 172, 179 West, the, 8, 44, 46, 48, 70, 71, 107 What Made Her Do It (1930), 9 White Haired Girl, The (1950), 19 White Snake, 112–114 Why the Crow is Black (1956), 19 Wife, 140, 153, 158, 173, 179, 198, 236

266

INDEX

Wife Confesses, A (1961), 53 Wild City (2015), 28, 29 Wilde, Oscar, 105, 106 Williams, Tony, 57, 211, 212 Wolf Warrior (2015), 35, 69, 76 Wolf Warrior II (2017), 35, 69, 75, 85, 89 Wolf Warrior II , (2017), 35–37, 75 Womanhood, 236, 240 Wong, Kar-wai, 22, 46, 156, 228 Woo, John, 28, 30, 45, 46, 56–60, 62, 63, 73, 157 World cinema, 115, 116 World of Kanako, The (2014), 169, 184, 186 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 73, 157 World War II, 9, 43, 47, 49, 50, 69, 75, 77, 83 Wrong Man, The (1956), 157 Wu, Daniel, 31, 226, 227 Wu, Jing, 35, 69, 76, 78–80 Wuxia, 27, 69, 79–81, 85, 88, 139, 192, 200, 202. See also Martial arts Wu Xia (2011), 156 Wuxia film, 27, 30, 52, 57, 79, 199. See also Martial arts film X Xia. See also Knight errant Xia, Zhiyan, 205 Xinhua News Agency, 206 Xiyouji, 108, 109. See also Journey to the West “X” rating, 207 Y Yakuza film, 57, 200 Yangtze River, 223

Yan Ruisheng (1921), 102 Yau, Herman, 197, 198, 210 Yecies, Brian, 53–55 Yeh, Yueh-Yu, 210–212 Ye, Lingfeng, 106, 107 Yellow Earth (1984), 21 Yemen, 83 Yen, Donnie, 74, 75 Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (1970), 204 Yin, Hong, 218, 219, 230 Yin, Mingzhu, 100 Yip, Wilson, 73, 152 Yi, Sun-Sin, 88, 128, 132 Yokohama, 50, 173 Yoshitoshi, Tsukioka, 170 Young China, 106 Youth, 49, 52, 168, 169, 175–177, 182, 183, 185, 187 Youth film, 49, 52, 222. See also Youthpics Youth of the Beast (1963), 62 Youthpics, 138. See also Youth film Youth-scapes, 177 Yuen, Woo-ping, 71, 86 Yumeji (1991), 179 Yung, Peter, 30 Yung, Philip, 211 Yutori no Sedai, 169, 175, 178, 183

Z Zhang, Xin, 7 Zhang, Yimou, 3, 21, 24, 71, 73, 152, 157, 219, 226, 237, 242 Zhang, Ziyi, 75, 234 Zhiguai, 108 Zhou, Xiaowen, 218 Zhu, Shouju, 103 Zhuxuanlü, 218 Zigeunerweisen (1980), 178, 179