From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda

Images of China in American Film

Datos Bibliográficos

ID19972744
AutoresNaomi Greene (0000-0003-4045-7817, autor de correspondencia), Sheldon H Lu (0000-0001-7336-1649)
Año2014
Páginas288
Fecha de publicación2014-03-31
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaFrom Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialUniversity of Hawaii Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.21313/hawaii/9780824838355.001.0001
OpenAlexW4235332959
Open LibraryOL28800683M
ISBN9780824838355
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

Throughout the twentieth century, American filmmakers have embraced cinematic representations of China. Beginning with D.W. Griffith’s silent classic Broken Blossoms (1919) and ending with the computer-animated Kung Fu Panda (2008), this book explores China’s changing role in the American imagination as seen in American films. It analyzes a series of influential films that suggest the welter of intense and conflicting impulses that have surrounded China and make clear that China has often served as the very embodiment of “otherness.” In the United States, the emotional charge that imbues images of China has tended to swing violently from positive to negative and back again. Using film to trace these dramatic fluctuations, the book relates them to the larger arc of historical and political change. Suggesting that filmic images both reflect and fuel broader social and cultural impulses, it argues that they reveal a constant tension or dialectic between the “self” and the “other.” Significantly, with the important exception of films made by Chinese or Chinese American directors, the Chinese other is almost invariably portrayed in terms of the American self. Placed in a broader context, this ethnocentrism is related both to an ever-present sense of American exceptionalism and to a Manichean world view that perceives other countries as friends or enemies

Aesthetics · American exceptionalism · Art · China · Chinese americans · Context (archaeology) · Ethnic group · Literature · Political science · Politics · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · In motion pictures · Motion pictures · united states