Wu Huaiting. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-130). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction and Analytical Framework --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Local Agents and Global Alliance --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Particularization and Universalization --- p.51 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- "Distribution, Marketing and Exhibition" --- p.75 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- The Globalization of a Local Culture --- p.94 / "Appendix 1 Awards for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" --- p.104 / "Appendix 2 Credits for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" --- p.106 / Appendix 3 Ang Lee's Features --- p.108 / Appendix 4 Source List for Database --- p.110 / "Appendix 5 The Story of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" --- p.113 / "Appendix 6 Release dates for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" --- p.119 / Bibliography --- p.122

This project is an examination of the Hong Kong film industry, focusing on the years leading up to the handover of Hong Kong to communist China. The influence of classical Chinese culture on gender representation in martial arts films is examined in order to formulate an understanding of how these films use gender issues to negotiate a sense of cultural identity in the face of unprecedented political change. In particular, the films of Hong Kong action stars Michelle Yeoh and Brigitte Lin are studied within a feminist and cultural studies framework for indications of identity formation through the highlighting of gender issues.

The participatory cyberspace, epitomized by the concept of Web 2.0, has become a key venue of Chinese stardom in the post-cinema era.Web 2.0 invites its users to contribute to the content through an architecture of participation. Fans can search, poach, edit, and post filmic and publicity materials about stars, formulating seamless, collaborative reworkings of the star image and generating a new star-fan dynamic. At the crossroads of participatory cyberspace and cinema, transnational Chinese movie stars call our attention to the critical concern of Chineseness. In recent years, a number of Chinese movie stars have attained prominent presence in the global cinematic arena. These acting talents, who are either identified as martial arts performers or known for their performances in martial arts films, won global acclaim as a result of the worldwide reception and esteem for Hong Kong action films and Fifth Generation directors’ films from mainland China. As these stars begin to engineer personae stretching beyond their ethnic identities for the global setting, their stardom engenders discourses of ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.What does it mean to call these stars “Chinese” in the global cyber setting? How do their fans interact to reshape their star personae on the Web? How can one approach and understand “Chineseness” within cyber fan discourse? All these questions point to a central problem of how to conceptualize Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. My agenda in this study is to investigate Chinese movie stardom as a web-based phenomenon by establishing a new theoretical framework for considering Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. I have created a set of four analytical matrixes, each examining a particular Chinese star through a specific fan-based practice on a specific participatory site: vidding Donnie Yen and critiquing Zhang Ziyi on YouTube; photo-sharing about Jackie Chan on Flickr; “friending” Jet Li on Facebook; and discussing Takeshi Kaneshiro on fan forums. Through close investigation of these five Chinese stars, I demonstrate that the cyber setting enables collaborative fan reworkings of star texts and multiple directionality of approaching Chineseness. Cyber fans produce intertextual, multi-faceted star personae, different from traditional film personae whose meanings are anchored in a rigid established representational framework. Through the relentless scrutiny, quotation, manipulation self-affiliation by fans enabled by cyber technology, Chineseness becomes an utterly illusive and indefinable entity, a new form of signification whose meaning is always changing. This unstable, hybrid Chineseness challenges the notion of a star’s given ethnicity, redefining the archetypal martial arts body in unpredictable, manifold and provocative terms for the cyber era. With the aim of advancing the critical theorization of Chineseness, this study unfolds and analyzes the dynamics of the vital relationship between Chinese stardom, web technologies, and fan discourse. It also serves as a timely response to the challenges posed by cyber culture for the disciplines of cinema and cultural studies, in light of the proliferating yet inadequate current efforts in this field. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

As the twentieth century ended with globalization and commercialization, popular culture begins to challenge the dominance of national culture. The Chinese intellectual community tries to defend national culture against the incoming global culture and local cultures. The conflicts between localism and nationalism, and also between globalism and nationalism, are clearly demonstrated in the Hero phenomenon, which basically concerns the unanimous disparagement on director Zhang Yimou's debut martial arts film Hero within the Chinese critics' circle. Through a discursive analysis of the phenomenon, we can see how the conflicts between modernism and postmodernism, between elitism and commercialism shape the landscape of contemporary Chinese culture. In this article, I first seek to understand how modernism evolved into nationalism in China during the last century and what role the intelligentsia played in the process of such evolvement. I further seek to understand why the intellectual community has distaste for popular culture and commercialism. Other research on this topic has linked nationalism to national culture, and localism and globalism to popular culture.

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