Transnational remakes: Gender and politics in Chinese cinemas and Hollywood (1990–2009)

Jinhua Li, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of Chinese and American film remakes in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. During these transnational exchanges, Chinese cinemas re-inscribed gender and political discourses in the transnational remakes to re-imagine a post-socialist China in a globalized cultural economy. Hollywood appropriated and re-articulated these transnational remakes to diversify its cultural production and maintain its entertainment leadership in the precariously balanced power dynamics between the vibrant Chinese cinemas and Hollywood. These transnational exchanges allow us to map Hollywood-China relationship in the new millennium, which transcends literal and figurative borders and boundaries and obtains new significations through different cultural articulations. While a new rhetoric of Chinese postfeminism characterizes transnational Chinese cinemas, and Eurocentric cultural politics become symptomatic of Hollywood commercial cinema's remaking of these Chinese language films, both Chinese and Hollywood films transform prior narratives to accommodate new political and cultural agendas.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Ross, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Comparative literature|Gender studies|Film studies

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