Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of 'Hero'

The film Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou and released in 2002, is widely regarded as the first globally successful indigenous Chinese blockbuster. A big expensive film with multiple stars, spectacular scenery, and astonishing action sequences, it touched on key questions of Chinese culture, nation and politics, and was both a domestic sensation and an international hit. This book explores the reasons for the film'¬"s popularity with its audiences, discussing the factors which so resonated with those who watched the film. It examines questions such as Chinese national unity, the search for cultural identity and role models from China'¬"s illustrious pre-communist past, and the portrayal of political and aesthetic values, and attitudes to gender, sex, love, and violence which are relatively new to China. The book demonstrates how the film, and China'¬"s growing film industry more generally, have in fact very strong international connections, with Western as well as Chinese financing, stars recruited from the East Asian region more widely, and extensive interactions between Hollywood and Asian artists and technicians. Overall, the book provides fascinating insights into recent developments in Chinese society, popular culture and cultural production.

Introduction: Chinese Cinema's Changing Markets - Local, Regional, Global Gary D. Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, and Julian Stringer Part I: Shifting Narratives of National Heroism 1. Political Narrative(s) of Hero Gary Rawnsley 2. National Unification Overrides All: The Heroism of Hero Yingjie Guo 3. The Emperor and the Assassin: China's National Hero and the Myth of State Origins Yiyan Wang 4. Hero in the Context of Other Heroic Films Kam Louie 5. Penetrating Experiences: Swords and Sex with Women Warriors Louise Edwards Part II: Intercultural Aesthetics and Genre Transformations 6. Visions of 'All Under Heaven' (tian xia): Zhang Yimou's Political Thought and Aesthetic Values in Hero Xiaoming Chen and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley 7. The Format of Chinese Martial Arts Films and the Rewriting of Such Formats by Hero Haizhou Wang 8. The Death of Heros in China Xiaoling Zhang 9. Heroic Music: From Hunan to Hollywood Katy Gow Part II: Anatomy of a Transnational Blockbuster 10. Hero: The Political Economy of Nationalism Anthony Fung and Joseph Chan 11. Lover, Not a Fighter?: Hero and Tony Leung's Polysemic Masculinity Mark Gallagher 12. Learning to Enjoy Desire for an (Asian) Empire: The Critical Reception of Hero in South Korea Nikki J.Y. Lee 13. Martial Arts, Star Dust and Historical Memory: The Culture of a Blockbuster Yi Zheng 14. Hero: How Chinese Is It? Julian Stringer and Qiong Yu