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Szeto (Appalachian State Univ.) provides a critical examination of three major Chinese filmmakers whose work is transnational: Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan. They reflect "cosmopolitical consciousness" as a new way to theorize identity, particularly by working transnationally in Asia and Hollywood and creating critical constructions of "Chineseness." An initial chapter offers a brief history of martial arts cinema and an analysis of regional, diasporic, and transnational networks, film industries, and markets. The author then considers each artist individually. She offers a variety of analyses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, especially through feminism and "double consciousness"--a critical mode of reflection on gender, ethnicity, and culture, encompassing Lee's Taiwanese and Asian-American sensibilities. By analyzing binaries in the film, Szeto reframes it in a way that demonstrates it as both Chinese and American, and yet neither. She then offers a series of close readings of several of Woo's films, focusing on the transnationalization of the gangster film, homosocial relations, and constructions of masculinity.
Last, she explores Chan's "comic displacement" of both his own identity and national identity in many of his films. Though brief, this is an inspired study of three filmmakers well known in Western classrooms. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --
K.J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University
— K.J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICE
120Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USX-NONEX-NONE
Szeto (Appalachian State Univ.) provides a critical examination of three major Chinese filmmakers whose work is transnational: Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan. They reflect "cosmopolitical consciousness" as a new way to theorize identity, particularly by working transnationally in Asia and Hollywood and creating critical constructions of "Chineseness." An initial chapter offers a brief history of martial arts cinema and an analysis of regional, diasporic, and transnational networks, film industries, and markets. The author then considers each artist individually. She offers a variety of analyses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, especially through feminism and "double consciousness"--a critical mode of reflection on gender, ethnicity, and culture, encompassing Lee's Taiwanese and Asian-American sensibilities. By analyzing binaries in the film, Szeto reframes it in a way that demonstrates it as both Chinese and American, and yet neither. She then offers a series of close readings of several of Woo's films, focusing on the transnationalization of the gangster film, homosocial relations, and constructions of masculinity.
Last, she explores Chan's "comic displacement" of both his own identity and national identity in many of his films. Though brief, this is an inspired study of three filmmakers well known in Western classrooms. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --
K.J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University
— K.J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICE
Szeto (Appalachian State Univ.) provides a critical examination of three major Chinese filmmakers whose work is transnational: Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan. They reflect "cosmopolitical consciousness" as a new way to theorize identity, particularly by working transnationally in Asia and Hollywood and creating critical constructions of "Chineseness." An initial chapter offers a brief history of martial arts cinema and an analysis of regional, diasporic, and transnational networks, film industries, and markets. The author then considers each artist individually. She offers a variety of analyses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, especially through feminism and "double consciousness"--a critical mode of reflection on gender, ethnicity, and culture, encompassing Lee's Taiwanese and Asian-American sensibilities. By analyzing binaries in the film, Szeto reframes it in a way that demonstrates it as both Chinese and American, and yet neither. She then offers a series of close readings of several of Woo's films, focusing on the transnationalization of the gangster film, homosocial relations, and constructions of masculinity.
Last, she explores Chan's "comic displacement" of both his own identity and national identity in many of his films. Though brief, this is an inspired study of three filmmakers well known in Western classrooms. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --
K.J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University
— K.J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICE
"Through the lens of cosmopolitanism applied to the genre of martial arts, Kin-Yan Szeto has produced a nuanced study not only of how, but also why Chinese film artists like John Woo, Ang Lee and Jackie Chan were able to transform Hollywood’s aesthetic of action. Anyone interested in globalization will profit from this subtle analysis of how Chinese film artists were uniquely positioned to adopt, transform, and adapt the aesthetics of movement, performance, editing and CGI to create the brand of “Hong Kong” cinema and transpose it to the new Hollywood."—David Desser, coeditor of The Cinema of Hong Kong
"In an increasingly crowded field of Chinese film studies, Kin-Yan Szeto clears out some space with The Martial Arts Cinema of the Chinese Diaspora: Ang Lee, John Woo and Jackie Chan in Hollywood. At once the sustained examination of three auteurs and their martial arts ouevres in Hollywood, Szeto's study takes the subject global, looking at the production and reception of Chinese martial arts cinemas in the world, but also at the diasporas and cosmopolitanisms they effect. Szeto's skillful maneuvers parallel the work she considers, generating a highly energetic choreography in its own right."—Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern California
"Kin-Yan Szeto's book offers a refreshing look at an old film genre that has perpetually fascinated film audiences from around the world. This is a vigorous, insightful study of transnational cinema by focusing on three key figures from the Chinese diaspora. General readers and specialists can all learn something from Szeto's refined film analysis and clear historical delineation."—Sheldon Lu, editor of Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender
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Szeto (Appalachian State Univ.) provides a critical examination of three major Chinese filmmakers whose work is transnational: Ang Lee, John Woo, and Jackie Chan. They reflect "cosmopolitical consciousness" as a new way to theorize identity, particularly by working transnationally in Asia and Hollywood and creating critical constructions of "Chineseness." An initial chapter offers a brief history of martial arts cinema and an analysis of regional, diasporic, and transnational networks, film industries, and markets. The author then considers each artist individually. She offers a variety of analyses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, especially through feminism and "double consciousness"--a critical mode of reflection on gender, ethnicity, and culture, encompassing Lee's Taiwanese and Asian-American sensibilities. By analyzing binaries in the film, Szeto reframes it in a way that demonstrates it as both Chinese and American, and yet neither. She then offers a series of close readings of several of Woo's films, focusing on the transnationalization of the gangster film, homosocial relations, and constructions of masculinity.
Last, she explores Chan's "comic displacement" of both his own identity and national identity in many of his films. Though brief, this is an inspired study of three filmmakers well known in Western classrooms. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --
K.J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University
— K.J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICE