Asian Invasion

[Joseph Murphy]

>I have learned a lot from the ongoing debate about the influx of Asian
>films into the US, but sense that it has gravitated toward two poles:
>China (incl. Hong Kong & Taiwan) vs. Japan, fueled seemingly by a sense
>of rivalry among KineJapan'ers toward the former area.  China's gain is
>perceived as Japan's loss, and vice versa--a kind of zero-sum game that
has unfortunately excluded discussion of other cinemas.  Kehr's article
does bring up Korean cinema, for example, but you wouldn't know it from
>the debate.

Ted, that's a good point and I would like to hear more about Korean 
film on this list.  But I didn't really feel that you hit the right 
undercurrent for the omission. Here's a couple reasons why.  First, 
as you note, because Chinese cinema includes a number of national 
cinemas, Hong Kong, Taiwan and cinema from the Republic of China, at 
least, it really doesn't constitute a pole, but rather a field.  i.e, 
it sort of undoes that polarity from the start, and you're already 
caught up in a question of representation among a variety of cinemas. 
Chinese cinema comes to the fore in this discussion because of the 
undeniable influence of Hong Kong cinema on the 90's wave of action 
movies, and the success in an international commercial market of 
directors like Ang Lee, Jackie Chan, and John Woo, and actors like 
Chou Yun Fat, Maggie Cheung, etc.  Despite the unquestionable merits 
of Korean cinema, I don't think there is any similar commercial 
visibility. If this were a perfect world in my view we would spend 
all our time talking about Masumura Yasuzo and Kim Ki-young, but this 
is precisely about how a messy knot of commercial considerations tied 
up with the dominance of Hollywood and the problem of subtitling 
trumps aesthetic and political considerations that might be more 
important to us as academics. But beyond that, I think from the start 
we brought up Kehr's article because there was a sense that whatever 
its principles of composition, it was not just more of the same. I 
think the premise of the discussion is that it is precisely the 
exaggerated position of Japanese film in the western critical 
imagination up till recently that has prevented vibrant cinema from 
countries like Korea from receiving the consideration it deserves 
(others please correct me on this if it doesn't speak for you). 
Aaron's posts bring up the question of South Asian cinema as well. I 
mean, there's been a certain ironic gesture to boosterism, but please 
take it with a grain of salt.
J. Murphy

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Joseph Murphy
E-mail: <urj7 at nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu>
TEL: (352) 392-2110/2442. FAX (352) 392-1443
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University of Florida, Box 115565, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
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