Organizer: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, University of Iowa
Chair: Wimal Dissanayake, East-West Center
Discussant: Yoshikuni Igarashi, Vanderbilt University
This panel consists of four diasporic scholars who find themselves in various stages of negotiation with post-colonial structures of violence. The desire for a neutral, free dialogue exists not only among post-colonial intellectuals, but has disseminated among people who have been marginalized by hegemonic powers. Our task here, therefore, is to let the desire that is inscribed in texts, emerge out into ecriture.
The diversity of national cinema is such that a unitary approach to Asian Pacific cinemas is not possible. There is little dialogue among these different national cinemas; although they are constructed on sites of post-colonial hegemony, they are nevertheless constructed differently. The panel is thus organized to address the differences and similarities in those texts, and how those texts themselves need our criticism: Kyung Hyun Kim's paper examines the narrative structure and the representation of Communist ideology, the treatment of the feudal elements, and the nationalist discourse reflected in recent Korean films about the Korean War. Aaron Han Joon Park's paper is about the shifts in Hong Kong and the martial arts genre. Roland B. Tolentino analyzes, as a transnational discourse, the ways that the various Asian Pacific national cinemas present narratives of nation that implicate other geographies and nationalities, specifically in films depicting the circulation of Filipino bodies. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano's paper examines the discourse on the "Kamata style" of Japanese films in the 1920s and 30s and unravels the long-standing practice of positioning Japanese cinema as the Other to the West/Hollywood.
Post-Colonial Criticism of Japanese Cinema: Shochiku Kamata Style in the 1920s
and 1930s
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, University of Iowa
The prewar Japanese film industry was constructed amidst the studio rivalries between Shochiku vs. Nikkatsu, Shochiku vs. Toho. The Kamata style that distinguishes many Shochiku films of this period, 1920-36, has been described as Hollywood influenced or simply an imitation, with the producer Kido Shiro's preference for Americanisms being cited as evidence. Outside of vague definitions, however, the Kamata style has never been deciphered for what it actually is. Consequently, my paper will include a close examination of the films of four representative directors who, with the exception of Ozu, are underexamined: Shimazu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, Gosho Heinosuke and Ozu Yasujiro.
David Bordwell, writing on this period of Japanese cinema, says: "However one might hope to discover a radically alternative film practice in Japan, the fact is . . . Japanese cinema is solidly based on classical Hollywood dramaturgy and style," and "Japanese filmmakers deviated, in isolated and controlled ways, from classical norms." Should definitions of "alternative practice" and "classical norms" be solely determined next to Hollywood models? Clearly, Japanese film history and Japanese film studies have depended heavily on historical data and interpretation based on Euro-Amerocentric practices.
My paper will examine the discourse on the Kamata style, how the films' obsessions with modernization transfigured the borrowed cinematic codes, reinscribing the films with the desires of the Japanese themselves. This examination consequently questions the position of Japanese films as the Other to the Western classical norms.
Reframing the Korean War Narrative in the Korean Cinema of the 1990s
Kyung Hyun Kim, University of Southern California
The South Korean cinema, which arguably was remobilized to aid the political desires of the South Korean state after the Korean War, has made hundreds of Korean War narratives during its relatively short history. Most of these films that constituted the highly popular Korean War genre were not allowed to project outside the realm of the official plot and spirit imagined by the military governments. Through its various channels of censorship and coercion, the South Korean state, until very recently, directly steered the film productions to endorse patriotic heroes and American involvement while condemning the communist ideology and denying the existence of people's insurgency.
In the early 1990s, after remaining relatively invisible since the mid-80s, the Korean War has again become one of the most popular settings for the Korean cinema. Highly respected and popular filmmakers such as Chang Kil-su, Park Kwang-su, and Im Kwon Taek have directed feature-length films, Silver Stallion (1991), To the Starry Island (1993), Taebaek Mountain Range (1994), respectively, using the Korean War as their backdrops. Influenced by the intense movement for democracy in the 1980s and promoted by radical catch-phrases such as "anti-U.S." "pro-North," and minjokju-ui (nationalist) films, these "reinterpretations" of the Korean War have entered the site of contestation in academia where the origins of the war have been fiercely interrogated and debated.
This paper will examine the narrative structure-the representation of Communist ideology, the treatment of the feudal elements, and the nationalist discourse reflected in the three films. Through critical analysis, the following questions will be addressed. What is the "alternative" version of the Korean War presented in the narratives? What form of national identity is formulated in these "new" war movies? How are the projects of modernity and rationality mediated through the films? And how are the Korean War films of the 1990s to be distinguished and discriminated from the ones made during the period of military dictatorship? Whether a radical break with the past has been made in the New Korean Cinema will be a critical issue that will be fully explored here. Considering these questions will hopefully allow us to recast the role of cinema within the purview of the social and determine the condition of popular culture and its relationship to the (un)shifting political hegemony.
The Hong Kong Martial Arts Films of Lee, Chan, and Li: Controlled Violence and
the Popular Imagination
Aaron Han Joon Park, University of Iowa
The martial arts genre is synonymous with the Hong Kong filmindustry. Since the end of World War II, the genre has maintained its position as the most prolific and profitable filmmaking venture for the Hong Kong film market. It continues to capture the popular imagination by respinning popular legends and creating new ones. In the international sphere, it marked its arrival in 1973 with the screening of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon in the United States. Since then, the genre has been carried by Jackie Chan and more recently by Jet Li.
I propose to document the changes in this genre with Lee, Chan, and Li as pivotal points of demarcation. I will focus on these three individuals because they are actual masters of the martial arts. Issues to be discussed include the cinematic portrayal of martial arts; the screen personas of the martial artists; the underlying social-economic situation in Hong Kong; and the tensions created by the political shifts between the PRC and the ROC.
Subcontracting Imagination and Imageries of Bodies and Nations: The Philippines
in Contemporary Asia Pacific Cinemas
Roland B. Tolentino, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
The growing prominence of the Asia Pacific rim as a global and economic force presents new challenges in examining the ways the region has been constructed and in the ways the region constructs itself. This paper focuses on the rim's internal dynamism; specifically, the interrelationship of the various national cinemas of the Asia Pacific region. I will be analyzing the transnational discourse involved in the ways the various national cinemas present narrativesof nation that, in turn, implicate other geographies and nationalities.
As a Filipino scholar, I am especially interested in how contemporary Asian Pacific films that attempt to define their national spacesand identities have implicated the Philippines and Filipino/a bodies in this ensuing transnational discourse. While certain Asian Pacific cinemas have moved beyond their respective borders in their project of national identity production, they have also encroached on less economically developed spaces and bodies. In so doing, these cinemas have culturally reproduced certain colonialist ethos and desires. The growing significance of the region to the Philippines is an area largely unexplored. Taiwan and Japan are displacing the U.S. as the primary source of foreign aid and investment. With dire need for higher incomes, Filipino/as are opting to work overseas-an increasing number of them work "menial jobs" in the booming economies of East Asia: 98 percent of domestic workers in Hong Kong are Filipina; 50,000 Filipinas work in the sex trade in Japan; an undetermined number legally and illegally work in Taiwan and South Korea. Australia becomes a hub of the Filipina "mail-order bride" trade.
I am particularly interested in how three films become symptomatic of these social developments in the dialectical relationship of the Philippines and the Asian Pacific rim: All Under the Moon (Tsukiwa Docchni Deteiri, Japan) tackles the intertwining lives of a Filipina karaoke singer and a Korean Japanese cab driver; Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai , Hong Kong, 1991) depicts the search for Hong Kong origin in the Philippine landscape; Priscilla Queen of the Desert (Australia, 1994) renarrativizes the story of a Filipina "mail-order bride," from victim to oppressor. A form of transnational subcontracting in national identity formation is operationalized in contemporary Asia Pacific films, utilizing the resources and imageries of less developed nations to further the national ideals and imaginations of more developed economies.
While the films foreground the affects of the circulation of the "First World" Asia Pacific capital, these have also foreshadowed the circulation of the Filipino/a bodies and the construction of the Philippine national space within Asia Pacific sites. My interest is to further make specific the sliding of the imaging of the Philippines, not as one coming from Hollywood, as it has often been the case, but as generated by the newly fueled economies of East Asia, Japan and Australia, and their cinemas. Though I am supportive of these various cinemas' attempts to construct the space of marginal national identities-as formations within these economies remain to exist in the "Third World" realm-I, however, undertake this study with the intent of forewarning against the further slide that unenviably positions the Philippines in a double margin or displacement. With representations of economic backwardness, the Philippines is othered from the Asia Pacific rim drives of progress and development. Femininely positioned in the sexual economy of the region, the Philippines becomes open target for "First World" penetration and dominance. These positions further isolate the Philippines from its own modes of imagining the nation and its own national imageries.
I begin the paper with a brief background on the construction of the Asia Pacific rim as part of a project of capital that desires international cooperation and the safeguarding of trade routes and gateways. This consolidated playing field of capital (with the U.S. remaining at the helm of capital intrusion of the west) lays the ways in which the region is constructed. I proceed to the ways the region internally constructs itself, discussing how the films can function as symptomatic of the dominant paradigm of Asia Pacific drives for development and progress, displacing the more developed economies' feminization by the West by their remasculinization through their femininization of less developed economies within the region. The operation of subcontracting becomes the modus operandi in which transnationalization is being experienced by and defined for the Philippines. The Philippines, however, further engages in this transnational operation of nation building. In such films as Kakaba ka ba? (Are You Nervous ), Lino Brocka's social drama works, and the recent Flor Contemplacion, a Philippine transnational operation is at work in defining nation that implicates other geographies and identities. The conclusion refines the notion of subcontracting imagination and imageries of nations and bodies as a useful tool for analyzing "transnational" cinemas.