East Asian Film Stars This Page Intentionally Left Blank East Asian Film Stars

East Asian Film Stars This page intentionally left blank East Asian Film Stars

Edited by

Leung Wing-Fai School of Asian Studies, University College Cork, Ireland and Andy Willis School of Media, Music and Performance, University of Salford, UK Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Leung Wing-Fai and Andy Willis 2014 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2014

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-02918-8

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44005-4 ISBN 978-1-137-02919-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137029195 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents

List of Figures vii

Notes on Contributors viii

Introduction: Star Power from Hollywood to East Asia 1 Andy Willis and Leung Wing-Fai

Part I Markets and Reception

1 Body of Action, Face of Authenticity: Symbolic Stars in the Transnational Marketing and Reception of East Asian Cinema 19 Daniel Martin

2 Pop-orientalism and the Asian Star Body: Rain and the Transnational Hollywood Action Movie 35 Nikki J.Y. Lee

3 National Idols? The Problem of ‘Transnationalizing’ Film Stardom in Japan’s Idol Economy 49 Christopher Howard

4 Zhang Ziyi: The New Face of Chinese Femininity 65 Leung Wing-Fai

Part II Regional and Global Stars

5 Maggie Cheung, ‘une Chinoise’: Acting and Agency in the Realm of Transnational Stardom 83 Felicia Chan

6 Joan Chen: National, International and Transnational Stardom 96 Jie Zhang

7 Translocal Imagination of Hong Kong Connections: The Shifting of Chow Yun-fat’s Star Image Since 1997 113 Lin Feng

v vi Contents

8 Asano Tadanobu and Transnational Stardom: The Paradoxical Polysemy of Cool 128 Anne Ciecko

9 Too Late the Hero? The Delayed Stardom of Donnie Yen 143 Leon Hunt

Part III Stardom and Stars: From the Past

10 Grace Chang: Dreaming Hong Kong 159 David Desser

11 Kyo Machiko: East Meets West 175 Martin Carter

12 Stars as Production and Consumption: A Case Study of Brigitte Lin 190 Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley

13 A Genealogy of the South Korean Action ‘Star’: Jang Dong-hwi, Hwang Jeong-ri, Jeong Du-hong 205 Mark Morris

Index 222 Figures

10.1 The ﬁrst of many covers the beauteous Ms Chang would grace for the Cathay Organization’s house organ, International Screen, here from March 1956. Photo courtesy of David Wells 163 10.2 The touristic gaze and the ability to go native were exemplary attributes of MP&GI’s cosmopolitan modernity. Still from Air Hostess (Evan Yang, 1959) 168 13.1 Lee Byung-hun 208 13.2 Jang Dong-hwi 209 13.3 Hwang Jeong-ri 214 13.4 Jeong Du-hong 216

vii Contributors

Martin Carter is Principal Lecturer in Stage and Screen Studies at Shefﬁeld Hallam University, UK. His research interests include British cinema and documentary. He has contributed reviews to Vertigo maga- zine, along with chapters to the edited collections Ealing Revisited (2012) and The Directory of World Cinema: Britain (2013).

Felicia Chan is Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the construction of national, cultural and cosmopolitan imaginaries in cinema, as well as the inﬂuence of institutional and industrial practices on the production, distribution and reception of ﬁlm. She has published in several journals and edited volumes, including Chinese Films in Focus I & II (ed. Chris Berry, 2003, 2009) and Theorizing World Cinema (ed. Lucia Nagib et al., 2012). She is also co-editor of Genre in Asian Film and Television: New Approaches (2011).

Anne Ciecko is an international cinema educator and academic researcher, critic and arts/culture writer and curator. She is the editor of Contemporary Asian Cinema: Popular Culture in a Global Frame (2006), and her writing has appeared in Afterimage, Asian Cinema, Asian Journal of Communication, Cinema Journal, Cinemaya, Film Quarterly, History, Jour- nal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Literature/Film Quarterly, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Spectator: Journal of Film and Television Criticism, Tamkang Review, Velvet Light Trap and other journals and anthologies.

David Desser is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies, University of Illinois. He is the author of The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa and Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema;the co-author of American Jewish Filmmakers; the editor of Ozu’s Tokyo Story; and co-editor of Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History; Cinematic Landscapes: Observations on the Visual Arts of China and Japan; Hollywood Goes Shopping; The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, among others. He is a former editor of Cinema Journal and the co-editor of The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.

viii Notes on Contributors ix

Lin Feng is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Hull, UK. Her research interests lie in the ﬁelds of star and celebrity studies, Chinese and transnational cinemas and East Asian popular culture. She has published a number of articles on Chow Yun-fat’s stardom. She is currently working on a research project on cinematic Shanghai. This project inves- tigates how ﬁlms (re)construct a city’s urban space and citizenship to interpret China’s cosmopolitan culture within the contemporary global contexts.

Christopher Howard graduated with a PhD in media and ﬁlm studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and currently teaches in the School of Literature and Journal- ism, Chongqing University, PRC. His work has appeared in East Asian Cinemas (2008) and the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.Heis currently the reviews coordinator for the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.

Leon Hunt is Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Brunel University, UK. He is the author of British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger, BFI TV Classics: The League of Gentlemen and Cult British TV Comedy: From Reeves and Mortimer to Psychoville, and co-editor of East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film and Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television.

Nikki J.Y. Lee is a Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research interests cover globalization and East Asian film industries, transnational East Asian film and media, genre-branding, stardom, film festivals and food media. She has contributed chapters on Korean directors such as Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-young, and on East Asian cinema, to many academic volumes. Her articles on the contemporary Korean film industry have appeared in Cinema Journal and Transnational Cinemas Journal. She is a co-editor of The Korean Cinema Book (forthcoming).

Leung Wing-Fai is Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Univer- sity College Cork, Ireland. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, after completing her doc- toral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently writing a monograph on multimedia stardom in Hong Kong. She has also co-edited, with Leon Hunt, East Asian x Notes on Contributors

Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (2008). Her articles have appeared in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Journal of Chinese Studies, Journal of Asian Cinema and Film International.

Daniel Martin is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and also holds a post as Honorary Researcher in the Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster Uni- versity. His recent research concerns the international circulation of ﬁlms from South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. He is the co-editor of Korean Horror Cinema (2013), and has published articles in Cinema Jour- nal, Film International, Acta Koreana, Asian Cinema and The Journal of Korean Studies.

Mark Morris is Lecturer in East Asian Cultural History at the Univer- sity of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His main teaching and research interests involve Korean cinema, Japanese cinema, modern Japanese ﬁction, and the social and cultural history of Japan’s minori- ties. He is an occasional advisor to the London Korean Film Festival and frequent contributor to Korean ﬁlm events in London, Cambridge and elsewhere.

Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley is Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on the media, cinema, culture, society and identities in Taiwan and China. Her most recent publications include Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of Hero (ed. with Gary Rawnsley, 2010) and Little Study, Big Uni- verse (Li Xu, 2010, in Chinese). She is currently writing a monograph on Culture and Democratization in Taiwan: Cinema, Theatre and Social Change (forthcoming). She is also Secretary-General of the European Association of Taiwan Studies.

Andy Willis is Reader in Film Studies and the Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Film Studies, University of Salford, UK. He has over 20 years’ experience of teaching ﬁlm and media studies, working extensively in adult, further and higher education. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of Cornerhouse, Manchester’s international mixed arts venue. He has written and edited several books and has co-curated various programmes at Cornerhouse and is a founding member of the Chinese Film Forum, UK. Notes on Contributors xi

Jie Zhang is Associate Professor of Chinese at Trinity University, San Antonio, TX. She has written in the areas of Chinese cinema, late- imperial Chinese ﬁction and drama, and contemporary Chinese literature. Her work appears in anthologies on Chinese literature and ﬁlm, as well as scholarly publications including Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Southeast Review of Asian Studies, ASIANetwork Exchange and Hundred Schools in Arts (in Chinese).