In Vulgar Beauty Mila Zuo offers a new theorization of cinematic feminine beauty by showing how mediated encounters with Chinese film and popular culture stars produce feelings of Chineseness. To illustrate this, Zuo uses the vulgar as an analytic to trace how racial, gendered, and cultural identity is imagined and produced through affect. She frames the vulgar as a characteristic that is experienced through the Chinese concept of weidao, or flavor, in which bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour performances of beauty produce non-Western forms of sexualized and racialized femininity. Analyzing contemporary film and media ranging from actress Gong Li’s post-Mao movies of the late 1980s and 1990s to Joan Chen’s performance in Twin Peaks to Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy specials, Zuo shows how vulgar beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar beauty, then, becomes the taste of difference. By demonstrating how Chinese feminine beauty becomes a cinematic invention invested in forms of affective racialization, Zuo makes a critical reconsideration of aesthetic theory.

Mila Zuo is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction: Tasting Vulgar Beauty  1
1. Bitter Medicine, Racial Flavor: Gong Li  39
2. Salty-Cool: Maggie Cheung and Joan Chen  73
3. Pungent Atmospheres: Bai Ling and Tang Wei  113
4. Sweet and Soft Coupling: Vivian Hsu and Shu Qi  152
5. Sour Laughter: Charlyne Yi and Ali Wong  193
Conclusion: Aftertaste  234
Notes  241
Bibliography  267
Index  289