[KineJapan] Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian Cinema

Wed Mar 31 12:20:28 EDT 2021

Oh, you beat me to it, Aaron!  (The book's online version database is
something of a work in progress, so I was waiting for an update to the
keywords before announcing the book!)

So this book sat on a back burner for over 30 years. Back in grad school at
USC, I was eagerly watching every East Asian film I could get my hands
on—at Chinatown and Little Tokyo theaters, Koreatown and Monterey Park
supermarket videos, 16mm prints borrowed from the South Korean and
Taiwanese consulates, art house retrospectives, the few VHS tapes on home
video. I've always been fascinated by the relationship of text and screen,
and couldn't help notice the wonderful ubiquity of calligraphy in the
films. It was marvelous, lovely, and always creative (even when crude). For
me, it was one thing that set East Asian film apart—or held it together.

At the time, I thought this could make an interesting dissertation. I
sheepishly spoke to a couple prominent Asian art historians. They almost
laughed at me—"There's no calligraphy in film!" (You can read the book to
find out their reasoning.) Long story short, they scared me off the topic
and I set it aside but never forgot about it.

Then in 2008-9, the Reischauer Institute graciously hosted me for a year.
It was wonderful being around Stanley Cavell and David Rodowick—and
revisiting their work—and suddenly something clicked. I figured out what I
wanted to say about the cinematographic calligraph and moved the project to
the front burner.

I immersed myself in the subject. I visited the props departments of most
of the major film studios. Talked to celebrated calligraphers. I quickly
found that directors had nothing interesting to say, but propsmen and art
directors and poster designers were brilliant and an absolute delight
to talk to. It was so fun to research I hated to finish the writing.

But I did, and now it's out. It is open access at:
https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11373292

But I hope you get the ($40) hard back paper version. I wanted a book as
beautiful as the subject matter, and the University of Michigan Press
delivered for sure. I love the squarish design, the 150+ color images. I
hope you can at least have your library order it.

This was the first book I've ever written off a corpus. I was lucky to have
undergraduate research assistants help me make framegrabs from the 30,000+
DVDs in our Donald Hall Collection. Students started at A and Z
respectively, and met in the middle. When they were done, we had over 2,800
images of calligraphy from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, PRC and South Korea.

*And ALL of them are online*, and thoroughly linked to the online version
of the book (click the "*Resources*
<https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/4t64gq206#resources>" button to
go straight into the image database). In some regards, I think it stretches
the limits of the open access book. (Like I said, it's a work in progress.
The captions and keywords are being updated little by little. This has been
a huge project...)

I've depended on so many people in the course of research and writing. Many
of you are on KineJapan. I'm so grateful to you all.

Hope you enjoy the book!

Markus

---

*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design

*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 8:45 AM Gerow Aaron via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Markus Nornes’s new book Brushed in Light: Calligraphy in East Asian
> Cinema, published by the University of Michigan Press, seems to now be
> available! You can download it for free from Fulcrum:
>
> https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/4t64gq206
>
> Here is the blurb:
>
> Drawing on a millennia of calligraphy theory and history, Brushed in Light
> examines how the brushed word appears in films and in film cultures of
> Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and PRC cinemas. This includes silent era
> intertitles, subtitles, title frames, letters, graffiti, end titles, and
> props. Markus Nornes also looks at the role of calligraphy in film culture
> at large, from gifts to correspondence to advertising. The book begins with
> a historical dimension, tracking how calligraphy is initially used in early
> cinema and how it is continually rearticulated by transforming conventions
> and the integration of new technologies. These chapters ask how calligraphy
> creates new meaning in cinema and demonstrate how calligraphy,
> cinematography, and acting work together in a single film. The last part of
> the book moves to other regions of theory. Nornes explores the
> cinematization of the handwritten word and explores how calligraphers
> understand their own work.
>
> The online version is full of links to images, so you should check that
> out. But the hardbound book has the best images, so please have your
> library order it if you can.
>
>
>
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Professor
> Film and Media Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 320 York Street, Room 108
> PO Box 208201
> New Haven, CT 06520-8201
> USA
> Phone: 1-203-432-7082
> Fax: 1-203-432-6729
> e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
> website: www.aarongerow.com
>
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