Wuxia Cinema of Chor Yuen
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Re-Dreaming China: Reflexivity, Revisionism, and Orientalism in the Wuxia Cinema of Chor Yuen by Zachariah Campbell A Thesis in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Film Studies) at Concordia University Montréal, Québec, Canada February, 2016 © Zachariah Campbell 2016 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Zachariah Campbell Entitled: Re-Dreaming China: Reflexivity, Revisionism, and Orientalism in the Wuxia Cinema of Chor Yuen and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts ( Film Studies ) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: _______Haidee Wasson___________________ Chair _______John Locke______________________ Examiner _______Bart Testa_______________________ Examiner _______Peter Rist_______________________ Supervisor Approved by ____ ______________________________________ Date Graduate Program Director ____ ______________________________________ Date Dean of Faculty iii ABSTRACT Re-Dreaming China: Reflexivity, Revisionism, and Orientalism in the Wuxia Cinema of Chor Yuen Zachariah Campbell Although significant scholarship has been devoted to Hong Kong martial arts cinema in recent decades, with emphasis on King Hu and Change Cheh as key creative figures, relatively little attention has been devoted to Chor Yuen, who directed over forty-seven feature films for the Shaw Brothers studio between 1971 and 1985, most of them in the wuxia genre. In this paper I argue that a critical investigation of Chor Yuen’s work through an auteurist lens reveals a director with a distinct vision and formal sensibility, and encourages a reconsideration of his role in shaping the development of the genre. Through a reading of Chor Yuen’s directorial style and his ludic deployment of Chinese cultural tropes in his wuxia films, I will illustrate how these produce a form of reflexive and self-orientalizing cinema that both affirmed and subverted the 'dream of China' proffered by Shaw Brothers to the Chinese diaspora. By heightening the factitious, orientalist dimension of this nostalgic production, Chor interrupted its capacity to work in pure ideologically nationalistic terms. Communicating this transmuted ‘dream’ forward, influencing future directors and variations of the genre, Chor Yuen has contributed meaningfully both to the development of Hong Kong’s cultural hybridity, and to promoting new, essentialized, mobile permutations of ‘Chineseness.’ iv Special Thanks to: Peter Rist Sarah Mitchell Jonah Campbell Ariel Khazzam David Hanley Yves Gendron Claudia Mitchell Ann Smith Ronika Khanna Brock Hanly v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 Cinema and Hong Kong Identity ................................................................................................ 6 The Hong Kong Film Industry Before 1965 ............................................................................... 7 The Rise of Shaw Brothers Studios .......................................................................................... 11 A New Cantonese Cinema ........................................................................................................ 18 CHAPTER 2 The Wuxia Genre ...................................................................................................................... 21 Shaw Brothers and New Style Wuxia ....................................................................................... 29 Wuxia and Kung Fu: Genre as Identity ..................................................................................... 38 Orientalism and the Wuxia Cinema .......................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER 3 Chor Yuen’s Early Cantonese Cinema ..................................................................................... 50 Chor Yuen at Shaw Brothers .................................................................................................... 57 The Gu Long Cycle ................................................................................................................... 64 From New Style to New Wave ................................................................................................. 77 Chor Yuen as an Auteur ............................................................................................................ 81 CHAPTER 4 King Hu, Chang Cheh, and New Style Wuxia .......................................................................... 85 Wuxia Masculinities: Wu and Wen ........................................................................................... 93 The Yanggang Hero .................................................................................................................. 96 Chor Yuen and the Romantic Hero ........................................................................................... 99 The Romantic Hero and Society ............................................................................................. 103 CHAPTER 5 Chor Yuen and Visual Style ................................................................................................... 112 Theatricality and Studio Space ............................................................................................... 117 The Multiplying Frame: Obstructions, Partitions, and Mise-en-Abyme ................................. 126 Colour and Abstraction ........................................................................................................... 134 Figure vs Ground: Martial Spectacle and Visual Occlusion ................................................... 137 Ornamentalism and Material Orientalism ............................................................................... 140 Reflexivity and Genre Fantasy................................................................................................ 144 CHAPTER 6 Film Discussions ..................................................................................................................... 148 Cold Blade ........................................................................................................................... 148 Duel for Gold ....................................................................................................................... 153 Magic Blade ......................................................................................................................... 157 Death Duel ........................................................................................................................... 168 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 174 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 186 Campbell 1 INTRODUCTION During its glory days, Hong Kong’s movie industry sat comfortably among the three largest film producers in the world, no mean feat when one pauses to consider its relative position as a tiny, congested British colonial port nestled on the cusp between the looming geopolitical presence of the Chinese Mainland, and the polyglot sphere of Southeast Asia. For nearly half a century, Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers studio held a centrifugal position in the culture of the entire region, reaching a height of film production and influence through the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of the celebrated media mogul Sir Run Run Shaw. Although Shaw Brothers was an intensely commercial enterprise dedicated to providing a broad array of populist entertainment, through its sheer volume of cinematic product, the studio was also an active, pervasive voice in the formation and distribution of Chinese cultural identity. This applied not only to Hong Kong and its local specificities, but also across transnational boundaries, speaking to global diasporic Chinese communities, and making forays into the non-Chinese world as well. On the worldwide stage, the cinema of Hong Kong has been lauded for its exuberant physical performances, stylistic excesses, and cultural colour. During the 1990s, Hong Kong film enjoyed a global surge in both popularity and scholarly interest. Stars, stylistic influences, and creative talent were imported into the Hollywood film industry, and a host of English-language books and articles were published on the subject of Hong Kong movies. These were devoted in large part to the vibrant action spectacles and the cinematic martial arts traditions that had made these films so remarkable and sensational. In spite of this, only a handful of the directors from the sprawling Shaw Brothers studio era have attracted a significant degree of critical or scholarly attention in the international milieu. In this modest company we find seminal figures of genre cinema like King Hu, Chang Cheh1, and Lau Kar-leung, but it has only been relatively recently that Chor Yuen2 has emerged as a particular subject of interest. 1 Chang Cheh is also sometimes credited under the Mandarin version of his name as ‘Zhang Che’. However, ‘Chang Cheh’ remains the most commonly recognized romanization of his name, and will be used in this thesis. 2 Chor Yuen is