| Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility Contributor(s): Chow, Rey (Author) |
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ISBN: 0231133332 ISBN-13: 9780231133333 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $31.68 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2007 Annotation: What is the sentimental? How can we understand it by way of the visual and narrative modes of signification specific to cinema "and" through the manners of social interaction and collective imagining specific to a particular culture in transition? What can the sentimental tell us about the precarious foundations of human coexistence in this age of globalization? Rey Chow explores these questions through nine contemporary Chinese directors (Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Ann Hui, Peter Chan, Wayne Wang, Ang Lee, Li Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang) whose accomplishments have become historic events in world cinema. Approaching their works from multiple perspectives, including the question of origins, nostalgia, the everyday, feminine "psychic interiority," commodification, biopolitics, migration, education, homosexuality, kinship, and incest, and concluding with an account of the Chinese films' epistemic affinity with the Hollywood blockbuster "Brokeback Mountain," Chow proposes that the sentimental is a discursive constellation traversing affect, time, identity, and social mores, a constellation whose contours tends to morph under different historical circumstances and in different genres and media. In contemporary Chinese films, she argues, the sentimental consistently takes the form not of revolution but of compromise, not of radical departure but of moderation, endurance, and accommodation. By naming these films sentimental "fabulations"& mdash;screen artifacts of cultural becoming with irreducible aesthetic, conceptual, and speculative logics of their own& mdash;Chow presents Chinese cinema first and foremost as an invitation to the pleasures and challenges of criticalthinking. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Social Science | Popular Culture - Literary Criticism | Asian - Chinese |
| Dewey: 791.430 |
| LCCN: 2006039237 |
| Series: Film and Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.57" H x 6.17" W x 8.88" (0.86 lbs) 288 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Chinese |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: What is the sentimental? How can we understand it by way of the visual and narrative modes of signification specific to cinema and through the manners of social interaction and collective imagining specific to a particular culture in transition? What can the sentimental tell us about the precarious foundations of human coexistence in this age of globalization? Rey Chow explores these questions through nine contemporary Chinese directors (Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou, Ann Hui, Peter Chan, Wayne Wang, Ang Lee, Li Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang) whose accomplishments have become historic events in world cinema. Approaching their works from multiple perspectives, including the question of origins, nostalgia, the everyday, feminine "psychic interiority," commodification, biopolitics, migration, education, homosexuality, kinship, and incest, and concluding with an account of the Chinese films' epistemic affinity with the Hollywood blockbuster Brokeback Mountain, Chow proposes that the sentimental is a discursive constellation traversing affect, time, identity, and social mores, a constellation whose contours tends to morph under different historical circumstances and in different genres and media. In contemporary Chinese films, she argues, the sentimental consistently takes the form not of revolution but of compromise, not of radical departure but of moderation, endurance, and accommodation. By naming these films sentimental fabulations--screen artifacts of cultural becoming with irreducible aesthetic, conceptual, and speculative logics of their own--Chow presents Chinese cinema first and foremost as an invitation to the pleasures and challenges of critical thinking. |
Contributor Bio(s): Chow, Rey: - Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University and the author of numerous influential books, including several published by Columbia University Press: Primitive Passions; The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism; and Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films. A collection of her writings, The Rey Chow Reader, was edited by Paul Bowman. Her work has appeared in more than ten languages. |