Pub Date : 2023-10-30DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265693
Brian Tsui
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Pub Date : 2023-10-30DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265695
Tze-ki Hon, Chan Hok-yin
ABSTRACTSpace is not only a concrete object but also a symbol. The symbolic meaning of space is particularly clear in a memorial landscape—a special spatial arrangement to evoke or enforce a collective memory. In this article, we will examine two memorial landscapes of Cold War Hong Kong: the Sung Wong Toi Garden in Kowloon Bay and the Benjamin Franklin Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories. Opened in 1958 and 1969, respectively, these two memorial landscapes were part of the British government’s attempt to re-position Hong Kong in the bipolar global system. By highlighting Hong Kong’s roots in Chinese history (as shown in the Sung Wong Toi Garden), the British government took the city out of “Red China” (which rejected Chinese tradition) and inserted it into “Cultural China” (which supported Chinese tradition). By highlighting Hong Kong’s commitment to higher education (as shown in the Benjamin Franklin Centre), the British government included the city into the “Free World” of market economy and industrial modernization. Together, these two memorial landscapes signified a fundamental shift in Hong Kong’s position in the world. Instead of being an entrepot serving British corporations in the China trade, Hong Kong became a strategic node in the global competition between communism and capitalism, authoritarianism and democracy, the planned economy and the market economy. In these two memorial landscapes, we see how space can be configurated to win hearts and minds.KEYWORDS: Benjamin Franklin CentreBerlin of the EastCold Warmemorial landscapeSung Wong Toi Garden Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 As is well known, the dominant language in Hong Kong is Cantonese, not Mandarin. Thus, in this article, names are given in Cantonese as the locals say them. But for readers who do not speak Cantonese, pinyin are also provided. When referring to Chinese characters, only pinyin is given.2 Although the three characters written on the rock were Song Wang Tai (Song King’s Terrace), they were read by the Qing loyalists of the 1920s as Song Huang Tai (Song Emperor’s Terrace). Behind this subtle change in reading the three characters lay the loyalists’ attempt to give the Southern Song loyalists the legitimacy in fighting against the Mongols. For the Qing loyalists, the Song loyalists were fighting to keep the Song Dynasty alive even though the odds were stacked against them. They were risking their lives to make a moral statement, that is, they would rather die than succumbing to the Mongols’ rule. In reading Song Wang Tai as Song Huang Tai, the Qing loyalists affirmed the nobility of failure of the Song loyalists’ futile attempt to resuscitate the Song Dynasty. By the same token, the Qing loyalists used the nobility of failure of the Song loyalists to glorify their own futile attempt to resuscitate the Qing dynasty.3 In this quotation, I keep the original English spellings of Chinese names which rendered Cantonese i
{"title":"A historical garden and a student centre: two memorial landscapes to reposition Hong Kong, 1959–1968","authors":"Tze-ki Hon, Chan Hok-yin","doi":"10.1080/14649373.2023.2265695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2023.2265695","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTSpace is not only a concrete object but also a symbol. The symbolic meaning of space is particularly clear in a memorial landscape—a special spatial arrangement to evoke or enforce a collective memory. In this article, we will examine two memorial landscapes of Cold War Hong Kong: the Sung Wong Toi Garden in Kowloon Bay and the Benjamin Franklin Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories. Opened in 1958 and 1969, respectively, these two memorial landscapes were part of the British government’s attempt to re-position Hong Kong in the bipolar global system. By highlighting Hong Kong’s roots in Chinese history (as shown in the Sung Wong Toi Garden), the British government took the city out of “Red China” (which rejected Chinese tradition) and inserted it into “Cultural China” (which supported Chinese tradition). By highlighting Hong Kong’s commitment to higher education (as shown in the Benjamin Franklin Centre), the British government included the city into the “Free World” of market economy and industrial modernization. Together, these two memorial landscapes signified a fundamental shift in Hong Kong’s position in the world. Instead of being an entrepot serving British corporations in the China trade, Hong Kong became a strategic node in the global competition between communism and capitalism, authoritarianism and democracy, the planned economy and the market economy. In these two memorial landscapes, we see how space can be configurated to win hearts and minds.KEYWORDS: Benjamin Franklin CentreBerlin of the EastCold Warmemorial landscapeSung Wong Toi Garden Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 As is well known, the dominant language in Hong Kong is Cantonese, not Mandarin. Thus, in this article, names are given in Cantonese as the locals say them. But for readers who do not speak Cantonese, pinyin are also provided. When referring to Chinese characters, only pinyin is given.2 Although the three characters written on the rock were Song Wang Tai (Song King’s Terrace), they were read by the Qing loyalists of the 1920s as Song Huang Tai (Song Emperor’s Terrace). Behind this subtle change in reading the three characters lay the loyalists’ attempt to give the Southern Song loyalists the legitimacy in fighting against the Mongols. For the Qing loyalists, the Song loyalists were fighting to keep the Song Dynasty alive even though the odds were stacked against them. They were risking their lives to make a moral statement, that is, they would rather die than succumbing to the Mongols’ rule. In reading Song Wang Tai as Song Huang Tai, the Qing loyalists affirmed the nobility of failure of the Song loyalists’ futile attempt to resuscitate the Song Dynasty. By the same token, the Qing loyalists used the nobility of failure of the Song loyalists to glorify their own futile attempt to resuscitate the Qing dynasty.3 In this quotation, I keep the original English spellings of Chinese names which rendered Cantonese i","PeriodicalId":46080,"journal":{"name":"Inter-Asia Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136068412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-26DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265679
Chun-yen Wang
ABSTRACTThis essay examines the genre of documentary theater with a particular focus on environment issues by the theater group “Assignment Theater” (chaishi juchang). Chung Chiao, the founding leader of Assignment Theater, was inspired by Taiwanese leftist writer Chen Ying-zhen and began his collaboration with People’s theater groups in many Asian countries since the 1990s post-Cold war period. Chung investigates histories, social issues and current circumstances through testimonial performances and documentary dramas with villagers, aiming to develop esthetic and critical reflections on social and cultural issues. In 2016, Chung directed and produced a work of documentary theater entitled Return to Hometown: A Story of Taixi Village by focusing on how villagers were suffering from severe air pollution, marginalization, and the complexity of their experiences since the launch of the Formosa Plastics Corp’s (FPC) sixth naphtha cracker complex in 1998. The essay starts with a critical question raised by Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” in the hope of re-locating the question in Return to Hometown. It continues to explore how Assignment Theater positions itself in the historical context of the leftist movement in post-war Taiwan by paying attention to the people. By re-examining the above, the essay discusses the ways in which environmental discourses, the village people, documentary theater, and the imagined subject of Taiwan nationality, etc. are interwoven.KEYWORDS: Assignment TheaterChung Chiaodocumentary theaterpeople’s theaterleftist movementTaiwan theaterthe people Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 The original definition in Chinese goes as follows: “民眾劇場,屬於人民、由人民創作、為人民發聲的劇場。”2 For more information about “Assignment Theater,” please see: https://taiwantop.ncafroc.org.tw/group_detail/800.3 A documentary theater is a performance based on facts, as documented in materials such as records, films, newspapers, official reports, and transcripts of trials. See The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre (Citation1972).4 The original manifesto in Chinese goes as follows: “孤魂即是生前孤獨死後無處可依的靈魂之稱,其悲慘哀痛猶如活在現代的無產階級,依此,組織孤魂聯盟,竭力於無產階級解放運動” (Wang Citation1989, 22).5 Also referred to as “Theatre of testimony,” introduced by Loren Kruger. It is a theater term by constituting theater as a “virtual public sphere” with an expression of performers’ or participants’ role as of “witness” to the political events in South Africa (Kruger Citation2019). It also refers to the theatre “conventionally associated with the anti-apartheid movement.” See https://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Testimonial_theatre.6 The Meinong Dam was initially planned to build, yet the Meinong People’s Association was formed by bringing together environmental, cultural, artist and social groups to organize a series of protests against the plan. For more information, please see Community Identity and Homeland Discourse: A Case Study of the Jiao-gong Band in the Meinung Anti-Dam Moveme
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Pub Date : 2023-10-23DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265687
Shala Ashraf, Ikram Badshah, Usman Khan
ABSTRACTThe article attempts to highlight the issue of enforced disappearances in Balochistan and in particular the Baloch population. The focus is on blood relatives and specifically mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and other close female relatives of forcibly disappeared persons. The Baloch women are at the forefront of the struggle against these enforced disappearances. They are experiencing hardships in seeking justice for the victims and continue to search for the whereabouts of their forcibly disappeared loved ones. The politically motivated women activists have initiated a collective struggle for the safe recovery of the disappeared victims. The families created an organization by the name of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) in 2009, which provides the families legal, political, human rights, and emotional support with a strong aspiration to bring justice to the aggrieved families. The data were obtained using an ethnographic method of participant observation, interviews, and conversations with VBMP members, families, and especially female family members of the enforced disappeared victims. The article concluded by saying that, the Baloch women’s activism and resistance have opened a new horizon for the participation of victims’ relatives in a patriarchal society. The Baloch women have strived hard to bring back their loved ones, thus adding a new dimension to the ethnolinguistic politics and recognition in the age of state project of homogenization and suppression.KEYWORDS: Political activismenforced disappearanceBalochistanwomen Additional informationNotes on contributorsShala AshrafShala Ashraf is a Lecturer of Sociology at the Balochistan University of information, Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Quetta Balochistan. She has done her Masters in Philosophy and in Anthropology from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. Her research interests include Baloch Women, Women’s collective actions, Women’s agency and feminist consciousness of Baloch Women.Ikram BadshahIkram Badshah is an Assistant professor at Department of Anthropology, Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad. His research interests include Pakhtun culture, peace poetry, identity politics, students politics, necropolitics, postcolonial states and content analysis of text books.Usman KhanUsman Khan is a Postdoctoral fellow at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Xi’an International Studies University, China. His research area covers colonial and post colonial states, social movements, borderland regions, Pashtuns of Pakistan.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-17DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265684
Wai-Siam Hee
ABSTRACT“Amorous histories” represent an unofficial historical tradition that once served as a legitimate mechanism for narrating same-sex desire in Chinese culture. This tradition not only celebrated love (qing) but also explored obsession (pi) within the Chinese context. This article reexamines the erotic arts, including notes and erotic fictions, that constituted the narrative mechanism of amorous histories to rethink the intricate stance of both praise and critique towards male love during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The analysis reveals how these texts repeatedly employed a narrative tactic of combining enticement and moral suasion to represent male love. While legitimizing male love, these representations were simultaneously regulated by the moral norms of official histories. However, during the late Qing and early Republican era, the tradition of amorous histories began to wane and eventually gave way to the emergence of pathological narratives under the guise of “sexual histories” in modern China. Within the discourse of sexual histories, the tradition of praising qing and pi was substituted by Western-influenced “the science of sexuality,” which pathologized same-sex desire. This article traces the changes in the meaning of “pi,” which underwent a phase of non-pathologized development in Ming and Qing dynasties, before being pathologized by May 4th literati. Finally, this article analyses the impact of the replacement of amorous histories with pathologized sexual histories on the debates over homosexuality between Hu Qiuyuan and Yang Youtian in modern China. It shows how changes in historical narratives influenced early twentieth century perceptions of same-sex desire.KEYWORDS: Yanshi (amorous histories)xingshi (sexual histories)Taohua yanshiBian er chaipi (obsession)Zhang Dainanse (male love)homosexuality AcknowledgementsThank you to the two anonymous reviewers for their evaluation and provided revision suggestions. Special thanks go to the editors of this journal for their support and, ultimately, for approving this article. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Center for Chinese Studies, Taiwan and the generous support from the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taiwan which enabled me to utilize the rich collections of the Academia Sinica Library, National Central Library and other libraries to complete the revisions for this article. This article was invited to be presented at “The China Academic Network on Gender (CHANGE) Biennial Conference: Re-Envisioning Gender in China” organized by The Universite libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, Europe. I would also like to thank Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and other reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Lastly, I would like to extend my gratitude to Meng Jiajie for the assistance provided in gathering data.Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 Although Zhang Jingsheng was active in Republican Chi
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Pub Date : 2023-10-17DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2265682
Geng Song
ABSTRACTThe term “milky puppy” (xiao naigou) gained popularity as a slang term in Chinese cyberspace since 2017, symbolizing a young, endearing, and adorable male figure, much like the perception of a puppy. This phenomenon, influenced by Hallyu 4.0 and the toshishita romantic motif prevalent in Japanese and Korean popular cultures, has led to the emergence of an “older woman-younger man” relationship pattern as a new trend in Chinese digital entertainment, particularly TV dramas. In this context, the younger, “pet” boyfriend is commonly referred to as a “milky puppy.” This article investigates the transnational flow and cultural translation of the Pet Man imaginary in East Asia, arguing that the bodily rhetoric of “milky puppy” signifies a Chinese variant of moe culture and represents the commodification of the male body. The article presents critical analyses of two recent Chinese TV dramas within this romantic subgenre, Find Yourself and The Rational Life, and compares them to the South Korean drama Something in the Rain. Through this comparative study, the article aims to identify distinctive Chinese characteristics in the portrayal of pet man masculinity in these dramas. By engaging with feminist and governmentality theories, the study explores how gender dynamics in these dramas negotiate between neoliberal subjectivity and the resilience of patriarchal gender norms in postsocialist China.KEYWORDS: Chinamasculinitycultural translationEast AsiaTV dramaneoliberal subjectivity Notes1 Online commentaries pointed out many similarities between the drama and I’m Taking the Day Off, including the character of the protagonists, funny family members, and a beloved dog in the female protagonist’s family, as well as the existence of an older man who has a crush on the female protagonist and approaches her on the pretense of offering her relationship advice. For more details, see https://star.ettoday.net/news/1634057 (accessed May 19, 2022).2 The “bossy CEO” (badao zongcai) refers to a subgenre of revamped Cinderella stories in online fiction and TV dramas. The stories center on a love story between a wealthy and domineering young man and a humble girl. See Song (Citation2023) for a discussion of this subgenre.3 https://movie.douban.com/review/12207102/ (accessed June 8, 2022).4 Boys Over Flowers is originally a Japanese manga series by Yoko Kamio serialized during 1992–2008. It has been adapted into films and TV dramas in a variety of East Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Thailand, and has become an icon of the Pan-East Asian aesthetic of male effeminacy.Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeng SongGeng Song is an Associate Professor and Director of the Translation Program in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. He has been selected as a Luce East Asia Fellow at the National Humanities Centre, USA, for the 2022/23 academic year. Song’s research interests span transcultural, transdiscipli
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Pub Date : 2023-09-19DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2243708
Jocelyn Yi-Hsuan Lai
ABSTRACTThis article investigates the working life of Taiwanese TV screenwriters who have commuted across the Taiwan Strait since the 2010s to supplement previous research on Taiwanese creative workers in China. My analysis is divided into three parts: (1) the screenwriters’ work structure and problems; (2) how their self-enterprising ethos pushes them to adhere to the Chinese state-market regime; and (3) the competitions in the screenwriting field, their solutions to the problems, and their attitudes toward building collective solidarity to empower themselves. This article argues that the Taiwanese screenwriters working across the Taiwan Strait have three common features: self-enterprising, self-censorship, and self-interests. Their competition has resulted in internal rivalry, jealousy, and personal attacks. So far, their resolutions to problems are individually based, and they do not change the structural relations that the screenwriters collectively face.KEYWORDS: Chinacultural and creative workerneoliberalismprecarityself-precarizationTaiwanese TV screenwriters AcknowledgementsThis research is approved by the Institutional Review Board at the researcher’s affiliated institution. The ethics approval number is C108042. The interviewees were fully informed about this research when they provided informed consent. The author wishes to thank all of the people who I interviewed. Different versions of this article were presented at the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Virtual Conference (26–30 July, 2021) and at the Taiwan-based Chinese Communication Society Annual Conference (18–19 June, 2022). I wish to thank Leo Ching, Doobo Shim and Fang-chih Irene Yang and all of the reviewers who commented on the earlier versions of the article.Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 Taiwanese national health insurance and pension scheme were established in 1995 and 2007.2 Sara and her family moved to Beijing in January 2018 but returned to Taipei in July 2019. Celia and Andy were asked to live in their Beijing company’s housing during 2018 and 2020. They returned to Taiwan before the COVID-19 pandemic and have lost contact with the company ever since.3 Kat and Vivi told me that Chinese companies are their agents representing them in the Chinese screenwriting labor market.Additional informationFundingThis research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [grant number MOST 109-2410-H-030-002].Notes on contributorsJocelyn Yi-Hsuan LaiJocelyn Yi-Hsuan Lai (PhD) is Assistant Professor of the Department of Communication Arts at Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the impacts of neoliberalism on Taiwanese television culture and workers. She has published essays in Taiwan’s academic journals and English anthologies. She coguest-edited a special issue on Confucian values and television in East Asia in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.
摘要本文以2010年代以来往返两岸的台湾电视编剧的工作生活为研究对象,作为对台湾在大陆创作工作者研究的补充。我的分析分为三个部分:(1)编剧的工作结构和存在的问题;(2)他们的自我进取精神如何推动他们坚持中国的国家市场体制;(3)编剧领域的竞争,他们对问题的解决方案,以及他们对建立集体团结以赋予自己权力的态度。本文认为两岸台湾编剧有三个共同的特点:自我进取、自我审查和自我利益。他们的竞争导致了内部竞争、嫉妒和人身攻击。到目前为止,他们对问题的解决都是基于个人的,并没有改变编剧集体面临的结构性关系。关键词:中国文化创意工作者新自由主义不稳定性自我不稳定性台湾电视编剧致谢本研究已获所属单位机构评审委员会批准。伦理批准号为C108042。受访者在提供知情同意书时已被充分告知本研究。作者要感谢我采访过的所有人。本文的不同版本分别在Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society虚拟会议(2021年7月26日至30日)和台湾中文传播学会年会(2022年6月18日至19日)上发表。我要感谢Leo Ching、Doobo Shim和Fang-chih Irene Yang以及所有对本文早期版本发表评论的评论者。1台湾的国民健康保险和养老金计划分别于1995年和2007年建立。7.2 Sara和她的家人于2018年1月搬到北京,但于2019年7月返回台北。西莉亚和安迪被要求在2018年和2020年期间住在他们北京公司的房子里。他们在新冠肺炎疫情前返回台湾,此后一直与该公司失去联系Kat和Vivi告诉我,中国公司是他们在中国编剧劳动力市场的代理。本研究由台湾科学技术部支持[批准号MOST 109-2410-H-030-002]。作者简介赖以萱(博士),台湾新北市辅仁天主教大学传播艺术系助理教授。她的研究重点是新自由主义对台湾电视文化和工作者的影响。她曾在台湾学术期刊和英文选集上发表文章。她在《媒体与文化研究杂志》上客串编辑了一期关于东亚儒家价值观和电视的特刊。
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Pub Date : 2023-09-19DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2242147
Leo T. S. Ching
ABSTRACTThe “new” Great Game suggests that, like the imperial competition of the past, we are witnessing a trans-imperial moment whereby Japan and China are vying for hegemony in East Asia. This is a new moment because East Asia, unlike Europe, has never had two co-existing superpowers. The prospect of a new imperial competition is complicated by the still-present American military power and the non-statist arena, especially in popular culture, where the imperial games are played out. Using two popular anti-Japan videogames, Glorious Mission Online (2013) and The Invisible Guardian (2019) as case studies, I argue these games are symptomatic of the relations between warfare and game in general. I then outline the trend in game development that subverts conventional wargames. Finally, I speculate on alternative game design over the disputed territories in the Southern China Sea that prioritizes ecology over human conflict and development.KEYWORDS: Wargamesanti-Japandecolonizationgame designChina’s rise Notes1 The distinction between real and virtual warfare is beginning to breakdown. As US General Martin Demsey discussed with our students in the Games and Culture class at Duke University some years ago, drone pilots also suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after their missions not unlike soldiers fighting in the battlefields.2 For a critique of the Second Amendment that justifies gun ownership in the US and its historical efforts to disenfranchise African Americans see Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.3 As Darren Byler has argued, the Chinese state has appropriated the American term, War on Terror, to implement surveillance technologies and “re-education” camps to Sinicize Uyghur Muslim communities in Xinjiang (Citation2022).Additional informationNotes on contributorsLeo T. S. ChingLeo T. S. Ching teaches Japanese and East Asian Cultural Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia (Duke University Press, 2019).
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Pub Date : 2023-09-19DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2242150
Debopriya Shome
ABSTRACTPost-war Sri Lanka has witnessed revitalised tourism in the North. Tourism initiatives are now taking shape within a contested terrain still marred by decades of violence. Yet, tourism is reconfigured in the background of divided and often exclusive sovereign claims to territory and life-worlds. It is evident that dark tourism’s consumptive practices are prevalent, instituting careful memorialisation of war; mollifying the sensibilities of the Sinhala majority. These practices valorise the Army and effectuate relations of supremacy and subjection. Moreover, with the Army as pre-eminent rulers this stark reality also entails narratives of displacement, exclusion, and surveillance. The paper argues that transformation of the North as governed by the Army alongside aggressive development constitutes necrocapitalism.KEYWORDS: Sri Lankadark tourismmemorialisationarmyethnic conflictnecrocapitalism AcknowledgementAn earlier version of this paper was presented online at the “Innovations in the Social Sciences and Humanities” (ISSH) conference 2021, organised by Ton Duc Thang University et al.Additional informationNotes on contributorsDebopriya ShomeDebopriya Shome is a PhD student at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is currently researching the growth of platform labour in India. As a young political scientist, he has contributed popular pieces on different subjects. His research interests include platform labour, dark tourism, digital political communication, digital political economy, Marxism, etc.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-19DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2023.2242145
Keith B. Wagner
ABSTRACTThis study is prompted by two of the most famous Hollywood blockbusters set above and below the ocean—The Abyss (1989) and Waterworld (1995). These films tell us something about catastrophic environmental degradation as much as they point us to the cultural power that is embedded in deep-sea structures and vehicles: the underwater drilling platform, built-up steampunk atolls and submersibles. The continuation of this fantastical infrastructure imagining occurs out at sea in The Meg (2018) and underground in The Wandering Earth (2019). As new Chinese science fiction films, each provide representations of other high-tech complexes—from an underwater research facility to massive Earth engines—each vying to show the struggles over technological ingenuity being usurped for military purposes. Thus, premonitions of China’s rise out at sea and off-world are argued to relate to its recent construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. This is formulated by me to be a part of a “baseworld phenomenon.” An additional two tropes coalescence with The Meg and The Wandering Earth: mainly, that these films are part of an ever-expanding corpus of global SF cinema. Throughout the essay, the concept of “cultural pillarization”, where worlds created for Chinese audiences are partitioned and multiculturalism is compromised, is also analyzed.KEYWORDS: The MegThe Wandering Earthfantastical infrastructure imaginingglobal science fiction cinemabaseworld phenomenonhydrogeographiescultural pillarizationChina-hollywood co-production Special termsTableDownload CSVDisplay TableNotes1 For example: incursions into other Asian air spaces such as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan (BBC 2022; Reuters Citation2022); a flash conflict on its mountain border with India, where special forces from both sides perished after falling to their deaths during the skirmish (NYT 2021; Gettleman and Myers Citation2021); to its creation of its own baseworld phenomenon at the edges of its dominion through the construction of seven artificial islands since 2015.2 With the US, NATO, and Japan, alongside other Pacific Rim military alliances now trying to contain China’s military ambitions, some commentators in and outside of the postsocialist country rightly chastise these hypocritical calls, given Europe, Japan, and America’s past exploits related to colonialism and pre-emptive strikes.Additional informationNotes on contributorsKeith B. WagnerKeith B. Wagner is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Media Communication at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. He was formerly Assistant Professor at University College London and held a visiting professorship in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He is the co-editor of Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique (Routledge, 2011), China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), Korean Art from 1953: Collisio
【摘要】这项研究是受到两部最著名的好莱坞大片——《深渊》(1989)和《水世界》(1995)的启发。这些电影向我们讲述了灾难性的环境退化,同时也向我们展示了深海建筑和交通工具中蕴含的文化力量:水下钻井平台、蒸汽朋克式的环礁和潜水器。在《巨齿鲨》(2018)和《流浪地球》(2019)中,这种对基础设施的幻想继续出现在海上和地下。就像新的中国科幻电影一样,每一部电影都展现了其他高科技综合体——从水下研究设施到大型地球引擎——每一部电影都在争相展示科技创造力被军事目的所篡夺的斗争。因此,对中国在海上和世界之外崛起的预感,被认为与中国最近在南中国海建造的人工岛屿有关。我将此表述为“基础世界现象”的一部分。与《巨齿鲨》和《流浪地球》相结合的另外两个比喻:主要是这些电影是不断扩大的全球科幻电影的一部分。本文还分析了“文化支柱化”的概念,即为中国观众创造的世界被分割,多元文化主义受到损害。关键词:巨型《漫游地球》奇幻基础设施想象全球科幻电影基地世界现象水文地理文化支柱中国-好莱坞合拍特稿stabledownload csv显示表注1例如:入侵其他亚洲空域如韩国、日本和台湾(BBC 2022;路透Citation2022);在与印度接壤的山区发生了一场突如其来的冲突,双方的特种部队都在冲突中阵亡(纽约时报2021;Gettleman and Myers Citation2021);随着美国、北约和日本以及其他环太平洋军事联盟现在试图遏制中国的军事野心,这个后社会主义国家内外的一些评论员正确地谴责了这些虚伪的呼吁,因为欧洲、日本和美国过去的殖民主义和先发制人的打击。本文作者keith B. Wagner是韩国首尔诚信女子大学媒体传播系的客座教授。他曾任伦敦大学学院助理教授和首尔国立大学通识学院客座教授。他是《新自由主义和全球电影:资本、文化和马克思主义批判》(劳特利奇出版社,2011年)、《中国的一代:21世纪的电影和运动影像文化》(布卢姆斯伯里学院出版社,2014年)、《1953年以来的韩国艺术:碰撞、创新和互动》(费顿出版社,2020年)、《弗雷德里克·詹姆逊和电影理论:世界电影中的马克思主义、寓言和地缘政治》(罗格斯大学出版社,2022年)和《全球银幕上的伦敦》的共同主编。游客,世界主义者和超级多样化城市的迁移愿景(曼彻斯特大学出版社,2023)。目前,瓦格纳博士正在完成两本新书:《全球电影的极端行为》和《电影的多重全球化再理论化》。
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