East Asian Film Stars

by Willis, Andy; Wing-Fai, Leung

• ISBN13: 9781137029188
• ISBN10: 1137029188
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-05-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

East Asian Film Stars brings together some of the world's leading cinema scholars to offer their insights into the work of regional and transnational screen legends, contemporary superstars and mysterious cult personas. This collection of original essays will explore some of the most globally recognizable and popular, yet academically underexplored, film stars from Japan, Korea and Chinese language cinemas, placing them into their economic, cultural and social contexts, and discussing them in relation to notions of gender, ethnicity and identity. It offers an extension of star studies beyond its traditional geographical and cultural focus on Hollywood and European performers, exploring stardom across national and regional borders, and taking into account the increasingly important phenomenon of international co-productions and distribution that are aimed at diverse markets. East Asian Film Stars traverses disciplinary boundaries and considers film stardom as part of ever-changing cultural practices and discourses.

Author Biography

Andy Willis is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Salford, UK. He is the co-author of The Cinema of Alex de la Iglesia (2007), and the editor or co-editor of Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (2004), Spanish Popular Cinema (2004) and Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste (2003).

 
Leung Wing-Fai is Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University College Cork, Ireland. She was previously at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. She co-edited East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (2008) and she is currently writing a monograph titled, Multi-media Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance, Identity.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; Andy Willis and Leung Wing-Fai
PART I: MARKETS AND RECEPTION
1. Body of Action, Face of Authenticity: Symbolic Stars in the Transnational Marketing and Reception of East Asian Cinema; Daniel Martin
2. Pop-orientalism and Asian Star Body: Rain and the Transnational Hollywood Action Movie; Nikki J.Y. Lee
3. National Idols? The Problem of 'Transnationalizing' Film Stardom in Japan's Idol Economy; Christopher Howard
4. Zhang Ziyi: The New Face of Chinese Femininity; Leung Wing-Fai
PART II: REGIONAL AND GLOBAL STARS
5. Maggie Cheung, 'une Chinoise': Acting and Agency in the Realm of Transnational Stardom; Felicia Chan
6. Joan Chen: National, International and Transnational Stardom; Jie Zhang
7. Translocal Imagination of Hong Kong Connections: The Shifting of Chow Yun-fat's Star Image Since 1997; Lin Feng
8. Asano Tadanobu and Transnational Stardom: The Paradoxical Polysemy of Cool; Anne Ciecko
9. Too Late the Hero? The Delayed Stardom of Donnie Yen; Leon Hunt
PART III: STARDOM AND STARS: FROM THE PAST
10. Grace Chang: Dreaming Hong Kong; David Desser
11. Kyo Machiko: East Meets West; Martin Carter
12. Stars as Production and Consumption: A Case Study of Brigitte Lin; Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley
13. A Genealogy of the South Korean Action 'Star': Jang Dong-hwi, Hwang Jeong-ri, Jeong Du-hong; Mark Morris
Index