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King's Research Portal View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by King's Research Portal King’s Research Portal DOI: 10.18573/j.2015.10022 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Wong, W. (2015). Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom by Sabrina Yu. Martial Arts Studies Journal, (1), 86-96. 10.18573/j.2015.10022 Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. 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Download date: 18. Feb. 2017 BOOK REVIEW Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Chinese audiences may find it difficult to accept Jet Li’s latest Transnational Film Stardom characterisation in Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables 3 (2014). At the Sabrina Yu end of the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger cuddles up to Li, and the final glimpse of these two characters is of them nuzzling into each other. This scene strongly suggests (as has been confirmed by the director) Edinburgh University Press, 2015 a homosexual relationship – something rarely portrayed by such 224 pages $34.95 /£19.99 protagonists in the hardcore action genre. Embodying his name in the film (Yin Yang), Li’s diverse, often conflicting transnational star image – involving a constant oscillation between masculinity and femininity, hero and villain, and even national and transnational – is a central motif of Sabrina Yu’s multifaceted examination of Li’s complicated star text, Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom. Yu argues that Li’s gender transgressive screen persona started two decades earlier, in Swordsman II (1992), a film in which he allows himself to be emotionally attached to Asia the Invincible, a transsexual man. The transnational career of Asian stars (especially male stars) can be encapsulated in a famous line uttered by the transsexual character – ‘mutilate your genitals before learning the invincible martial arts’. This is a line that reveals the politics and dynamics of transnational kung fu stardom. It is no coincidence that the ascending path to transnational success resembles the painful process of acquiring the invincibility via kung fu, which requires sacrifice and denial not only in terms of personal star image but also of national pride and cultural specificity. Of course, Li is not the first transnational star to play out such a dramatic narrative, and Yu is not the first to explore such issues. Stephen Teo [1997, 2009] found traces of similar culture-crossing characterizations in his pioneering bicultural readings of the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. David Bordwell [2000], meanwhile, goes beyond individual characterizations and offers a formalist analysis of the traditions of martial arts aesthetics that foregrounds East Asian theatre traditions as well as American and Soviet filmmaking traditions. Finally, Leon Hunt [2003] crosses myriad boundaries from (among others) Asia to America, literature to theatre, theatre to film, film to gaming, and analogue to digital. Yu’s book continues the legacy of ambitious contemporary martial arts cinema scholarship by focusing on the increasing transnational presence of Chinese kung fu stars and their shifting meanings in various REVIEWER cultural contexts. In retrospect, Gina Marchetti [1993] provided a solid framework for studies of Asian stars in Hollywood. In the late 1990s, Wayne Wong is a joint PhD student at the Department of Stephen Teo [1997], Mark Gallagher [1997], and Yvonne Tasker Comparative Literature at The University of Hong Kong and the Film [1997] scrutinized the context of transnational kung fu stardom and Studies Department at King’s College London. interrogated the crossover images of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan in their Hollywood adventures. Since the handover, film scholars such as David Desser [2005] and Kenneth Chan [2009] have noticed the gradual exportation of Hong Kong film talents and have explored the increased DOI 10.18573/j.2015.10022 MARTIAL Jet Li Reviewed by ARTS STUDIES Sabrina Yu Wayne Wong Edinburgh University Press Chinese presence in Hollywood. Through the cultivation of a ‘cosmopolitical awareness’, Hong Kong martial arts stars and filmmakers have transcended boundaries demarcated by disparate film industries and achieved transnational success [Szeto 2011: 18]. There have been ample studies of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan’s representations of masculinity, which focus on the hyper-masculine kung fu body, physical risk, etc. [Witterstaetter 1997; Hunt 1999, 2004; Yau 2001; Louie 2002; Morris, Lu, and Chan 2005; Gallagher 2006; West 2006; Donovan 2008; Farquhar and Zhang 2010]. Yet, despite his transnational success and global fandom, Jet Li rarely receives such scrutiny – perhaps due to his ambiguous negotiation of Chinese masculinity on Western screens. The martial arts bodies of Lee and Chan respectively embody the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ ends of the masculine spectrum [Tasker 1997; Shu 2003; Lo 2004]. Li, however, seems less keen on either showcasing his body or on allowing comedic elements to dominate his action. Yu attempts to account for Li’s unique negotiation of masculinity by introducing a Chinese paradigm according to which theatrical and literary traditions play an indispensable part in the interpretation of Chinese masculinity and the wuxia ethos (xia). She argues that one of the most interesting aspects of Li’s persona is his flexibility, not only in terms of physical mobility across film industries but also his versatility in performing diverse, often conflicting roles, along with his willingness to engage with special effects and his emphasis on maintaining an ordinary and low-key off-screen persona. While current studies of martial arts cinema primarily revolve around key questions such as action aesthetics and genre conventions [Bordwell 2000; Barrowman 2014], links with philosophy and cultural theory [Bowman 2010, 2013], and ideological or allegorical readings [Teo 1997; Sek 1997; Stokes and Hoover 1999; Sarkar 2001], Yu takes a detour and explores the transnational or transcultural meanings of some of the most important motifs in the martial arts genre – such as authenticity, masculinity, and the wuxia ethos. From her meticulous empirical studies of audience reception across races, social classes, and platforms, she contends that discrepancy (and similarity) in judgment may exist between critical discourses and ‘real’ audiences. Given the inspiring quotes drawn from personal interviews and online fan sites such as The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), readers may be surprised to discover that fandom consists of much more than a homogenized mass of somnambulistic viewers incapable of individualized and culture-specific thinking. While acknowledging different critical perspectives, fans also adopt a ‘holistic’ perspective, showing more sympathy and sometimes even offering insightful ideas with the potential to reinvent the genre. In other words, Yu carries on the legacy of empirical research in the studies of stardom and fandom, and asserts that the ‘assumed spectator’ favoured by Western scholars may not be the best critical perspective. This is especially so considering the fact that academic discourses on stardom are gradually being ‘decentred’ (from Hollywood), disrupted by peripheral stars (Asian) and genres (martial arts), and metamorphosed by the Internet [Yu 2012: 182-183]. The first four chapters of Yu’s text focus on the solid construction of Li’s star persona as a wuxia hero by Chinese and Hong Kong critics and viewers, while the last four explore Li’s diverse crossover images and transcultural receptions by global audiences. It is worth noting that Yu’s reading of Li’s films is highly selective, as she chooses to analyse films that best exemplify the conflicting views characterised by transcultural readings of kung fu film stardom. For example, Once Upon a Time in China [1991], Swordsman II, and Fong Sai-yuk [1993] embody what she calls the ‘new wuxia cinema’ [Yu 2012: 33], in which traditional kung fu heroes are reinvented and deconstructed by rapid technological advancement, proliferating views on gender transgression, and the diminishment of patriarchy in specific social, historical, and filmic contexts. martialartsstudies.org 87 MARTIAL Jet Li Reviewed
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