Film stars in the perspective of performance studies: play, liminality and alteration in Chinese Cinema

2017 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Yingjin Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Male Roles ◽  
Ang Lee ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Film Stars ◽  
Chinese Films

Star studies sees film stars as “structured polysemy” and anticipates a salient system of meaning for us to decode and appreciate. Performance theory treats meaning as “conjunctural” rather than “structured” and privileges improvisation and juxtaposition. Approaching star studies through performance theory helps explore a wealth of filmic techniques and performative tactics. This article focuses on Tony Leung Chiu-Wai’s “self-effacing” performance of repetition and examines special cases of play and liminality as well presence and absence in In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) and Lust Caution(Ang Lee, 2007). These cases challenge our conventional habit of thought and cognition and reveal the unacknowledged potential of artistic alternative and alteration vis-à-vis history and reality. This study of Tony Leung’s performance directs attention beyond action stars to romantic male roles in Chinese films.

Acting Up: Performing Masculine Delinquency in the Teen Movie

2017 ◽  
pp. 21-63
Author(s):  
Frances Smith
Keyword(s):  
Related Field ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Car Crash ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Textual Basis ◽  
Film Stars ◽  
Mail Service

James Dean’s fatal car crash on 30 September 1955 ensured the actor’s swift canonisation as an icon of youth rebellion. This chapter examines Dean’s performance in Rebel Without a Cause, in addition to those of John Travolta in Grease and Christian Slater in Heathers. James Dean, to be sure, was a star. Will Scheibel observes the quasi-idolatry in which he was held even among his fellow performers, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, not to speak of the legions of fans whose acres of correspondence required Warner Brothers to create a dedicated mail service. Fascinated by the intense identifications that such magnetic performers cultivate with their audiences, Richard Dyer identifies the star as a complex nexus of texts, ideologies and desires. His seminal work continues to provide a touchstone for scholars working in star studies, and testifies to the enduring ideological and textual basis for stardom. Since then, a new and related field of celebrity studies has taken account of the extraneous labour in which film stars are now routinely obliged to engage (as well, of course, as those for whom fame itself is a vocation).

Introduction

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-105
Author(s):  
KRISTINA HAGSTRÖM STÅHL
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Critical Step ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Gender

In the past decade and a half, feminism and gender studies have undergone a process of critical self-scrutiny and re-assessment. Presently, the fields of theatre and performance studies are undertaking a similar project of self-evaluation, as evidenced by recent calls to assess the ‘state of the field’ as well as its future directions. Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harrison suggest in their recent co-edited volume, Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory, that any attempt to envision the future must begin by examining the present, which in turn entails looking to, and reflecting on, the legacies and remains of the past. In her article for this issue of TRI, ‘A Critical Step to the Side: Performing the Loss of the Mother’, Aston does precisely this, asking, ‘in what ways it might be critically productive to come back to the maternal as a subject for feminism’.

scholarly journals Imagining a Woman's World: Roles for Women in Chinese Films

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Carolynn Rafman
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Women ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Chinese Films

Chinese cinema embraces a paradoxical relationship to its own traditions, especially concerning the abusive treatment of women. Films like Yellow Earth, Judou and Raise the Red Lantern which desire to uncover a repressed history, tend instead to reinforce and sustain an image of women's suffering to modern audiences. While exposing discrimination and injustice, some films perpetuate the stigma that women are still second class citizens. Three Chinese women filmmakers have challenged the dominant confusion ethos: "Male honorable, female inferior" (nan zun nü bei) by portraying women as independent and thinking individuals. This article analyses Passion (Zui ai) by Sylvia Chang, Song of the Exile (Ketu qiuhen) by Ann Hui and Three Women (San ge nüren) by Peng Xiaolian.

Revisiting Star Studies

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
International Research ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Genre Studies ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Image Performance ◽  
The Way

This collection revisits star studies with themes and methods from the latest international research into stardom and fandom across the globe. It challenges the Hollywood-centrism in star studies by presenting new angles and models, and raises important questions about image, performance, gender, sexuality, race, fandom, social media, globalisation, and translocal stardom. This volume seeks to expand the notion of stardom that is traditionally associated with glamour and desirability to include less glamourous, more troubling stardom (e.g. ageing stars, ‘crip’ stars), or previously unacknowledged stardom (e.g. porn stars, animal stars). It also aims to expand star studies to a wider range of critical disciplines by engaging with performance studies, genre studies, sound studies, disability studies, animal studies and so on. From Hollywood to Bollywood, from China to Spain, and from Poland to Mexico, this collection revisits the definitions of stars and star studies that have been previously based on the study of Hollywood stardom, and points the way forward to new ways of approaching the field.

scholarly journals The Historical Roots and Cultural Core of the Chinese Film School

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Author(s):  
Haizhou Wang
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Films

Abstract Chinese cinema has its own unique features, created through nationally distinct methods. Once revealed, these methods make possible the construction of a unique “Chinese film school.” This article explores the historical development of Chinese film arts in order to uncover general trends along its winding path. While being open to the world, the Chinese film school ultimately returns to traditions in Chinese art as a method to construct a unique theory of Chinese film. This methodology has enabled Chinese films to reflect wider developments in world cinema, while also maintaining distinctive Chinese cultural characteristics.

scholarly journals Watch the Birdie: The Star Economy, Social Media and the Celebrity Group Selfie

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Wright
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Star Image ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Vicarious Consumption ◽  
Film Stars ◽  
Heads Of State

This work will explore some of the broader implications of celebrity group selfies, through the example of Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded group shot, taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony, Joan Collins’ 2014 Prince’s Trust Award selfie, just days after, and Collins’ subsequent ‘view from the other side’ tweet; exploring notions of authenticity, performance, intimacy, self-promotion, public visibility, identification, imitation, vicarious consumption and audience participation. Engaging with existing work upon celebrity tweeters, Twitter and other online fandom, photographic theory, star studies and, in particular, Bourdieu’s theories surrounding cultural capital, taste formation, and cultural distinctions, this work not only explores some of the reasons behind the frequently negative judgements of celebrity group selfies, but also seeks to identify some of the very real social functions and more personal gratifications, both for celebrity and fan, that the celebrity group selfie, as a communication and a self-promotional tool, may actually satisfy. More specifically, it is this paper’s contention that selfies offer an ostensibly unmediated, accessible and virtually instantaneous means of articulating and disseminating a coherent, identifiable, aspirational (yet bizarrely, also, seemingly ‘ordinary’) and eminently marketable star image, via a popular and up-to-date medium. With celebrity group selfies this is also the case, but here the photographer subject presents an image of themselves to the world, in relation to a specific group of peers (who themselves also function as signifiers and commodities); perpetuating the notion of a pantheon of star ‘gods’ and the myth of a coherent celebrity community; reinforcing the divide between ‘famouses’ and ‘normals’ and participants and observers; prompting an exponential rise in fan/public interest as more stars enter the equation and allowing the celebrity participants within the image to either borrow some of the greater ‘worth’, ‘status’ or cultural capital of other, more eminent, celebrity subjects also pictured or alternatively, lend their superior cultural capital to less successful celebrities within the image. As such, this work seeks to move beyond a hasty dismissal of such images, their subjects, and their audiences and instead, hypothesise a coherent set of reasons why the most-photographed individuals on the planet (not just film stars, but heads of state and religious leaders) might feasibly choose to create, appear in and/or disseminate such images (or, indeed, decline to participate as did Prince Charles in Joan Collins’ group shot) and why the public may find these images of such interest.

Younghusband Redux: Chinese Dramatisations of the British Invasion of Tibet

Inner Asia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-234
Author(s):  
Robert Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Red River ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Red River Valley ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films

AbstractA film, a television series, four plays and an opera have been produced in China since 1997 dramatising the invasion of Tibet by the British in 1903 04. These works were part of an official effort to enhance patriotic spirit among Chinese and Tibetan people through historical example, as well as an attempt to represent Tibetans as participants in a broader Chinese resistance to Western aggression and humiliation. They coincided with an official call for film-makers to make propaganda more appealing and a decisive turn in Chinese cinema towards commercialised films and Hollywood-style narrative. The paper contextualises these dramatisations and their ideological features within the history of Tibetan representations in Chinese film and television dramas, and discusses foreign critiques of the most influential of the dramatisations of the Younghusband expedition, Feng Xiaonings 1997 film Honghegu (Red River Valley). It notes difficulties with criticisms about the lack of accuracy in these Chinese films, discusses several ways in which they match the historical record, and compares them with the little-known television series Jiangzi 1904.

In your face: Montgomery Clift comes out as crip in The Young Lions

2017 ◽  
pp. 225-239
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Girelli
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Star Image ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Crip Theory ◽  
Film Stars

This chapter concerns the “aberrant” star image of Montgomery Clift in The Young Lions, after his accident and the loss of his conventional good looks. It analyses Clift’s deliberate self-distortion as an act of subversive intervention in his own image and seeks to challenge traditional star studies which overwhelmingly highlight notions of pleasure and attraction in relation to film stars. With reference to queer theory and crip theory, the chapter opens the field of star studies to the troubling, painful and allegedly ghastly connotations of film stars.

YouTube as archive: fans, gender and Mexican film stars online

2017 ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Niamh Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Digital Archive ◽  
Star Studies ◽  
Mexican Film ◽  
Film Stars ◽  
Star Text ◽  
Aesthetic Forms

This chapter proposes that YouTube should be understood as a digital archive with its own developing aesthetic forms where fans act as attentive and specialist curators of a star text. Through an analysis of three Mexican stars from the so-called Golden Age of industrial cinema, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and Emilio Fernández, this chapter focuses on their YouTube star texts, and draws out what these mean for the nascent field of online re-meditated star studies. It also considers the ways in which the star’s gender determines how fans produce an online star text and how YouTube can be understood to function as a precarious archive.

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