Remaking Gender and the Family

Front matter

REMAKING GENDER ANDITHEFAMIEY

Perspectives on Contemporary

Chinese-language Film Remakes

Contents

Acknowledgements 1x

1 Introduction 1 Defining a Remake 2 Originality, Similarity and Cross-Culturality 5 The Cross-Cultural Remake 6 Franco-American Exchanges 6 Remaking Images of Japan 7 Remakes in Chinese-language Cinema 8 Gendering Remakes 13 Gender in Franco-American Remakes 13 Chinese Remakes and Gender 15 Aims and Structure of This Book 19

2 Remaking the Modern Family 22 The Construction of Gender in What Women Want 24 Good, Ol’ Fashioned Masculinity: Men in What Women Want (2000) 24 The New Chinese Man: Remaking Masculinity in What Women Want (2011) 26 Performing Gender in What Women Want 27 What Do Women Want? Femininity in What Women Want 29 What Do Chinese Women Want? 30 Sexuality in What Women Want 32 Freud and What Women Want 32 Jung and What Women Want 35 The Paratextual Construction of Gender in What Women Want 36 The Family in What Women Want 37 The ‘Traditional’ Chinese Family 38 The ‘Modern’ Chinese Family 39 Commerciality and the Modern Family 43 Reflections 46

Introduction

For as long as there has been cinema, there has been the remake; and for as long as there has been the remake, there has been a sense of critical unease about the value of making a film which has ‘already been made’. And yet, wave upon wave of remakes continue to wash over audiences worldwide. Arguably the most prolific global creator of these remakes, Hollywood, has audiences geared up for another round of re-imaginings, with 2016-2020 looking to feature, among others, new versions of Mary Poppins (1964), Jumanji (1995), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Death Note (2006) (All Upcoming Movie Remakes/ Reboots (2017-2022), 2017). No era, or genre, is immune from the remaking phenomenon.

While the value of the remake is no longer debated in academic circles at least, with the remaking practices of Hollywood having been scrutinised in monographs and academic articles, there is one dimension of remaking which remains comparatively under-researched—the cross-cultural remake. Despite all of the complexities and nuances that might inhabit this form of remaking, the cross-cultural remake has so far been primarily investigated through the lens of Hollywood film. Early work on the subject by scholars including Durham (1998), Mazdon (2000) and Verevis (2006), focused on how American remakes of French films might reflect, in hindsight, quite static notions of cultural difference, articulating the dynamics of the cultural-political relationships between national cinemas, particularly Hollywood and ‘Other’ cinemas, within a set time-period and socio-cultural context of production, such as the 1980s. From this body of research emerged a complex set of factors involved in transferring a source film into its remake form.

However, studies into Asian cinematic remakes are still a relatively new endeavor in remake studies. From Death Note (2006 and 2017) to other pairings such as Ringu (1998) and The Ring (2002), The Grudge (2003 and 2004) and Ghost in the Shell (1995 and 2017), it is clear that cross-cultural remaking is alive and well today. Despite this, there are very few full-length monographs that address the remake in Asian cinema—a situation which does not reflect the true power of the industries and audiences in these regions. This is particularly true in the case of China, which has seen a period of astounding growth in film production and viewership both domestically and abroad. Remake studies in the Chinese-language cinematic sphere have so far demonstrated

© SARAH WOODLAND, 2018 | DOI:10.1163/9789004363304_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Cc BY-NC 4.0 license.

the same tendency as early French studies, focusing on the relationship between Hollywood and ‘Other’ cinema—in this case, Hollywood remakes of Hong Kong and Chinese-language films (Chan, 2009; Li, 2011). As such, they have only considered in depth issues and themes of remaking in this direction, lending themselves to a focus on Hollywood’s tendency towards cultural (mis) appropriation. This focus does not engage with a Chinese-language cinema industry that now remakes films from other countries, as well as its own films.

This book attempts to move beyond a focus on questions of cultural politics, to look at the phenomenon of remaking in Chinese-language cinema from a myriad of perspectives. It aims to take full advantage of the unique opportunity provided by remakes to compare and contrast two versions of the same narrative, and expand this to incorporate the latest developments in research in a number of disciplines. It draws upon a combination of textual, psychoanalytic and semiotic analysis techniques inspired by earlier studies (Durham, 1998; Mazdon, 2000; Verevis 2006) and builds on recent research that has engaged with Chinese-language film remakes (Chan, 2009; Li, 201; Wang, 2013). Through the following chapters, this book will bring together eight films created across different time periods, genres and cultural contexts which have not been analysed together in remake studies before. In doing so, the aim is to investigate the changes that occur between source films and remakes, framed through gender representation and depictions of the family. What changes might have occurred, and what is the significance of these changes?

The films which will be analysed (in their pairs) are What Women Want (2000 and 201) (RAU At»), Blood Simple (1984) and A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop (2009) (S10 RI), A Chinese Ghost Story (1987 and 2011) (ff KM), and Spring in a Small Town (1948) and Springtime in a Small Town (2002) (NZE). Through conducting comparative analyses between and across pairs of films and their remakes, interrogating how textual elements such as narrative, camera angles, costumes and settings work to construct gender and the family, this work looks closely at questions of sexuality, marriage, love, gender roles, and familial structures, using gender and the family as a form of narrative barometer that effectively measures difference and change. The study is thus located at the juncture of remake studies, Chinese-language cinema studies, cultural studies and gender studies.

Defining a Remake

While the introduction to this book has so far used the term ‘remake’ liberally, in order to understand the function of remakes, there must first be a clear definition of what a ‘remake’ is. This is particularly important, as, according to Constantine Verevis, the term ‘remake’ has been “conceived more through actual usage and common understanding than through rigorous definition” (Verevis, 2006, p. 1). As a result, a large amount of research in the field has been directed towards developing taxonomies of remakes, determining what classifies a film as a remake, and what makes a remake unique among other cinematic works or forms of media. As the aim of this book, however, is not to re-define the term ‘remake’, the definition applied in this work will draw upon the definition of remakes already established in the literature.

According to Verevis (2006), the most overt indicator that a film is a remake is a textual reference to the legally sanctioned use of another person's work, usually indicated in the form of a screen credit. To audiences, critics and academics, this open acknowledgement of the repetition and reproduction of semantic and syntactic elements from a source film is the most clear-cut identifier of a remake. This overt recognition of a source film also sets the remake apart from the ‘adaptation’ and its associated arguments, which are often more concerned with issues that arise from “the movement of texts between different semiotic registers” (most often literature to film) (Eberwein, 1998 as cited by Verevis, 2006, p. 82), as well as from other types of films such as ‘spin-offs’, ‘sequels, or ‘made-over’ films, which all imply more significant changes to source material.

While there is still significant discussion regarding the boundaries of what constitutes a remake, the majority of remake studies acknowledge that for a film to be considered a remake, there must be a significant reliance on repetition and re-production, usually in narrative themes and characterizations, but also in other filmic features such as editing, shots, location, costumes and style (Durham, 1998; Eberwein, 1998; Horton & McDougal, 1998; Loock & Verevis, 2012; Mazdon, 2000; Verevis, 2006). Further investigations into where the boundaries of remakes lie have seen the development of taxonomies of remakes by authors such as Druxman (1975), Greenberg (1998), Eberwein (1998) and Leitch (1998), which were subsequently adapted by authors such as Verevis (2006), all of whom categorise films according to how much they openly disclose and seek to maintain their relationship with a source film, and the degree to which these films repeat or transform elements of the source text. According to Verevis, “films are situated on a continuum based on how they seek to maintain semantic and syntactic relationships present in the original as much as possible through a process of ‘repetitional transferral’ (close remake), transformed or disguised remakes in the middle (transforming semantic more than syntactic elements), to the non-remake which adopts a tactic of ‘differential dispersal” (2006, p. 85). In the process of establishing this relationship, ‘any given remake can seek to define itself either in relation to the film it remakes or to the material on which the films are based’ (Verevis, 2006, p. 12). As will be seen in the films chosen for this study, differing approaches to these issues have implications for the reading of remakes.

An equally important factor in establishing the legitimacy of a remake is in how it engages with extra-textual structures (Verevis, 2006). In addition to the textual copyright acknowledgement, the remake may also employ various extra-textual markers, such as drawing upon the original film’s reception and promotion, as evidence of its reproduction from an earlier source. These extra-textual markers are important, as they “stabilize the film’s point of origin when otherwise similarities between could just be put down to cinematic conventions” (Verevis, 2006, p. 86). Extra-textual markers include interviews in which director and cast establish a relationship between the source film and the remake, promotional materials which link the two films, exhibition practices such as re-release/re-prints and the simultaneous release of originals and remakes (indicative of a symbiotic rather than competitive relationship between the two versions), and critical reviews (Verevis, 2006).

Rather than interrogating taxonomies of remakes in great detail, or questioning existing definitions within the literature, this study focuses on acknowledged remakes and the cultural, political, social and cinematic elements that distinguish these remakes from their source texts. The films chosen for this study are therefore not controversial in their position as remakes. They all openly acknowledge and heavily rely upon their source films. As a result, in this monograph, the description of remakes as described by these previous scholars, considering remakes to be acknowledged reproductions of a source film, will be adopted. However, even after copyright is sought for a film to be classified as a remake of another, there is an enormous range of difference which occurs between original and remake. The boundaries of what is considered an appropriate amount of change can be quite fluid, depending on how the above-mentioned elements are combined, and this book will look at some of the reasons for, and the significance of, these changes.

Additionally, the films chosen for analysis in this book allow for the investigation of two dimensions of cross-cultural remakes, dividing this type of film into two further subcategories of “inter-cultural’ and “intra-cultural” remakes, in order to try to encompass the variety of cultural, temporal and generic contexts and different target audiences that they respond to. In doing so, it endeavours to investigate the complexities of remaking processes in a Chinese-language cinematic context, with a view to exploring the ways in which remakes might reflect different perspectives on Chinese society more broadly, through their ability to compel the viewer to reflect not only on the past, by virtue of the relationship with a source text, but also on the present, through the way in which the remake reshapes this text to address its audience.

Originality, Similarity and Cross-Culturality

So, despite being compelled to demonstrate such strong narrative similarities to another text, why do remakes often speak to questions of difference? Recent scholarly works relating to Hollywood remakes have attempted to answer this question, with edited monographs and readers! investigating the depth and breadth of the remake phenomenon, discussing the boundaries of what constitutes a remake, what motivates filmmakers to create remakes, and how these films relate to wider trends of the reproduction and repetition of texts.

These studies adopt some key methodologies which warrant mention, as they form the basis of scholarly understanding of remakes to date. The first of these methodologies is intertextual analysis, which involves the reading of a remake in light of “the co-existence of two or more texts” (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 3). While remakes can be understood to be independent works, Horton and McDougal argue that their reading by audiences is often influenced by comparisons with the original film, and that this effect can be heightened by self-conscious references which may also be deliberately inserted to exaggerate communication between the texts (Horton & McDougal, 1998, pp. 3-6). This book will consider the intertextual relationships between source texts and their remakes, with each pair of films demonstrating a slightly different perspective on this issue.

Bound up with the idea of intertextuality is the notion of originality, a concept which is complicated by the remake. As a film which actively draws upon the work of others through its citation, allusion to, and perhaps even plagiarism of, texts that came before it, the remake is often subject to criticism for a lack of originality (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 163). Questions regarding the originality of a remake also implicate the auteur, who figures strongly in remake studies, with a number of perspectives given on why directors might choose to remake a film. For films that fit the intracultural typology proposed in this book, Stuart McDougal discusses how Alfred Hitchcock’s remaking of his own films connected with the director's desire to perfect his craft (1998).

1 See Play it Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes (Horton & McDougal, 1998); Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (Forrest & Koos, 2002); Film Remakes as Ritual and Disguise: From Carmen to Ripley (Zanger, 2006); Second takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel (Jess-Cooke & Verevis, 2010), and Film Remakes, Adaptations and Fan Productions (Looke & Verevis, 2012).

Harvey R. Greenberg (1998) relates Steven Spielberg’s remake Always (1989), a remake of Victor Fleming’s A Guy Named Joe (1943), to psychoanalytic theory, positing an Oedipal relationship between original and remake that reflects Spielberg’s conflicting need to both honour and supersede the original director’s work, in the same way a son might compete with a father. This study, however, concerns itself with another angle, considering how the backgrounds and styles of certain directors may have influenced the changes that have occurred to the source film, and what this means for understanding remakes in a Chinese-language cinematic context.

Importantly, Horton and McDougal, amongst others, identified another factor in understanding the remake, that is, the significance of cultural and historical context. Using the film pair Cape Fear (1962 and 1991) as an example, Horton and McDougal highlight that watching the remake “is not just to watch widely differing acting and directorial styles but to experience the historical and cultural changes that have occurred within the twenty-nine years separating these films” (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 6). This temporal factor is also an important factor in the reading of Chapter Five’s film pairing, Spring in a Small Town (1948) and Springtime in a Small Town (2002). The reading of a remake is thus also contingent on the changing conditions of spectatorship, and as Robert Eberwein notes, different audiences bring their own knowledge of the original film as well as their understanding of their own context to reading a remake (Eberwein, 1998, p. 16). This connection with audience expectations and understanding plays a role in all of the remakes, to varying degrees, across the following chapters.

What these scholarly works show is that reading a remake actually involves understanding the complex interplay between many factors. As Horton and McDougal state, “significant strands of narrative, cinema, culture, psychology, and textuality come together” in the remake (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 6). While being a product of a source text, remakes must also balance concerns of commercial viability and success, the personal styles of directors and stars, and a dynamic social context. Thus, the “investigation of remakes, takes us into several distinct areas: the personal (psychological), the sociocultural (political-cultural-anthropological), and the artistic (cinematic narrative: stylesubstance-presentation)” (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 6).

The Cross-Cultural Remake Franco-American Exchanges These remake studies also established the value of the cross-cultural remake as a reflection of the complexity of translating narratives across time, space and culture. Very early discussions of the cross-cultural remake often positioned this kind of film as a vehicle for cultural imperialism, and change between a source film and its remake as evidence of how Hollywood had remade and re-distributed (in most cases, French) films in its own patriarchal, hegemonic image. Carolyn Durham states that critics made a number of assertions about remakes, labelling them an ultimately futile attempt to replicate an inimitable, superior product of French national cinema and culture; a stateless, cultureless void, or a blatant application of American dominant culture which sought to eliminate the cultural Other (Durham, 1998, p. 11).

However, these researchers in Franco-American remake studies including Lucy Mazdon (2000), Durham (1998, 2002) and Verevis (2006) worked to discredit this myth, with each of their books in part discussing how remakes are a longstanding part of cinematic tradition, and not just examples of cultural imperialism at work. These scholars also aimed to break down the pervasive attitude that privileged the French cinema/source text as ‘high’ art, and labelled the American film/remake as a degraded, mass cultural product. Their research opened up possibilities for using remakes as a fruitful means of investigating the cultural specificity of film. However, many of these studies were also written in response to the political and cultural issues of their times, and were thus dominated by concerns surrounding the perceived Americanisation of French culture epitomized by the Euro-Disney saga? (Durham, 1998). As such, these works did not fully disengage from the argument surrounding cultural imperialism, and therefore are at times slightly defensive in their attempts to re-balance the power dynamics between French cinema and Hollywood.

Remaking Images of Japan From an Asian cinematic perspective, research on remakes so far has primarily focused on the Japanese cinematic industry and its relationship with other cinemas. Seiko King’s thesis “Remade in Asia: Transformation across Asian Markets and Popular Culture” (2012) discusses how rights to products such as films, TV shows and manga/anime are traded around Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in a dynamic process of cultural exchange (King, 2012). Focusing on remakes of television dramas Akai Giwaku and Winter Sonata and manga Hana yori Dango and Janguru Taitei, King argues that these cross-border exchanges bring to bear questions of economic, industry and legal rights, as well as notions of cultural identity as stories from one region are transformed for different audiences. The benefits for the Japanese media industry of such

2 According to Durham (1998), the Euro-Disney saga refers to the negative response of the French people to perceived peddling of American culture via a newly opened Disneyland in France in the 1990s.

remake exchanges are manifold, with economic gains from the sale of products within East Asia, a growth market for cultural products, providing important capital for economic growth and development in Japan. Furthermore, the dissemination and popularity of Japanese cultural products such as manga have had a much wider effect of improving the perception of Japanese culture globally as well as in the East Asia region, and arguably political relationships between Korea and Japan in particular (an example of “soft power” at work).

While manga is the most recent popular global product out of Japan, an earlier wave of genre films paved the way for Japanese cinema to enter the global cultural sphere, through its impact on Hollywood in the 1990s. In this period, Hollywood film experienced what Kevin Heffernan refers to as the ‘J-horror remake cycle” (Heffernan, 2014, p. 62), a period in which an inordinate amount of Hollywood remakes of Japanese films were made. Heffernan’s work addresses production trends behind such remakes, explaining that in the context of a growing desire to broader horror’s generic horizons as well as tap into emerging Asian markets, savvy Hollywood film production agents bought rights to several East Asian films, which were remade as mid-budget Hollywood films that “displayed tremendous suppleness and ingenuity in their deployment of motifs drawn from both the original movies and contemporaneous horror films’ (p. 62). In changing the focus towards a Chinese-language cinematic context, methodologies and arguments in the field of remake studies will need to be re-evaluated in terms of how they address (or do not address) the specific factors involved in creating Chinese-language remakes.

Remakes in Chinese-language Cinema Following on from these previous works, a small body of research on Chinese-language cinema and Hollywood film remakes has now emerged. In a similar vein to earlier research, these studies seek to establish remakes as an important tool for illuminating cross-cultural issues. However, they also begin to adapt prior scholarship to suit the specific historical, cultural and social context of the Chinese-language cinematic landscape.

Where these scholars most overtly diverge from prior theory is their employment of transnational theory. While early works on remakes in a Franco- American context tended to place comparatively more emphasis on the distinctions between films and their separate and distinct modes of production, the transnational nature of contemporary Chinese-language cinema has taken scholarship on Chinese remakes in a different direction. These transnationally-oriented studies are instead underpinned by theory that assumes an increasingly globalized film market, in which the traditional barriers between film industries, which also served as a means of clearly attributing nationality and culture to a film, have broken down. On the reception side, audiences are now able to access films from across the world, and filmmakers make films targeted to a range of different viewers, or a ‘global’ audience. Transnationalism has been used to test the boundaries of what constitutes ‘Chinese’ cinema, and thus this theory is closely tied to representations of culture, as a means of exploring what it means to be Chinese. Studies investigating the evershifting boundaries of Chinese cinema have addressed themes including, but not limited to, representations of gender, diasporic cinema, politics, economics and industry structures (see for example, Berry, C. & Farquhar, M. 2006; Kam, Marchetti & Feng, 2009; Lu, 1998).

Chinese-language remake studies have similarly drawn upon transnational theory in their attempts to emphasise the subjective, fragmented and international nature of ‘Chinese cinema’. Rather than positioning remakes as a form of inferior ‘rip-off’ of other films, Patricia Aufderheide considers Hong Kong’s reenvisionings of Hollywood films and genres to be representative of a “flourishing, unabashedly imitative cinema inescapably commenting on surrounding social and political tensions in the choices of its adaptations” (Aufderheide, 1998, p. 192). Aufderheide argues that Hong Kong cinema’s obsession with borrowing from Hollywood is a dual-purposed endeavour that uses any means to make a film commercially successful while at the same time using parody, mimicry and allusion to mock Hollywood's internationally dominant film culture. By “imitating Hollywood styles and narratives, the treatment, style, and selection of films become more important than the originality of raw material, thus Hong Kong remakes represent a creative and enterprising form of commercial and cultural appropriation of the source text” (Aufderheide, 1998, P. 193).

Kenneth Chan’s book Remade in Hollywood takes a much broader look at how ideas and politics relating to ‘China’ are remade in the films of mainland Chinese-born, Chinese-American and Chinese diasporic film-makers and stars in Hollywood, particularly after the 1997 Hong Kong handover. Chan undertakes analyses of a broad range of films, including remakes such as Infernal Affairs (2002) and The Departed (2006), as well as stand-alone films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and House of Flying Daggers (2004). Through his “mapping of the topical problematic, through the tracing of the significant and predominant themes, ideas, trends, questions and concerns” (K. Chan, 2009, p. 9), Chan seeks to investigate how “transnational and multinational collaborative production affects cultural, political and aesthetic expression in movies involving the Chinese in Hollywood” (K. Chan, 2009, P. 4).

Drawing upon the theory of transculturation, Chan describes the Chinese- Hollywood cinematic relationship as one characterized by asymmetrical power relations, whereby the Chinese are often branded Other by the dominant Hollywood cinema industry, even as ethnic Chinese directors self-exoticise to engage with non-Chinese viewers (K. Chan, 2009, p. 11). This uneven relationship produces films which are characterized by tension, ambiguity and slippages, reflective of the difficulties of locating ‘Chineseness’ and the Chinese identity in this type of industry and power structure (K. Chan, 2009, p. 77). Chan’s approach positions Hollywood not just as a collaborative partner, but ultimately as a dominant party that is uncomfortable with, or unable to fully appreciate, a non-Western presence within its cinema. Chan argues that within the dominant film culture of Hollywood, the production of ‘China’ is often displaced, dislocated, or attempting to subvert the Hollywood hegemony. This theoretical approach does not so much focus on observable differences between texts as it does on perceived power imbalances in the much broader state of affairs between America and China.

Jinhua Li (20u, p. iv), following Chan, also argues that Chinese-language cinema in the last twenty years has been “characterized by transnational production and distribution strategies’, and that exchanges between Hollywood and Chinese cinema involve the “transformation of prior narratives to accommodate new political, ideological, gender and cultural agendas” (J. Li, 201, pp. iv-v). Using Hollywood remakes of Chinese-language films, Li seeks to explore whether the changes which occur in five pairs of cross-cultural remakes are the result of purely “linguistic transformation’, a necessary endeavour when translating a film into another language, or whether these changes go beyond this basic function into the realm of appropriating culture and politics (J. Li, 20n, p. v). Li builds upon and extends the work of Chan, also partially addressing issues of differences between the development of the Hong Kong, mainland Chinese and Taiwanese cinema industries, by including in her study the original Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (2002) and the original Taiwanese film Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). While films from these three areas are all categorized as Chinese-language cinema, their industries have followed distinctly different developmental patterns (K. Chan, 2009; J. Li, 2011). Through the inclusion of these two films, Li’s study highlights how Hong Kong films in the 1980s and 1990s reflected concerns of integration and identity, while the cinema of Taiwan in the 1990s similarly expressed confusion over the region’s political and cultural future (J. Li, 201, p. 6).

But the primary focus of Li’s work, with its emphasis on Hollywood remakes of Chinese-language films, is like Chan's, weighted towards Hollywood cinematic re-interpretations of Chinese films. As such, while her work carefully outlines the transnational flows and interactions between these two cinemas, it also addresses the Sino-American cinematic relationship in cultural/ political terms. Li concludes from her analyses that Hollywood remakes appropriate Chinese culture and impose Western notions of individualism, capitalism and patriarchy to reassert Hollywood’s dominance as the primary player in a global context where it is losing its monopoly on cultural production. When combined, these works by Chan and Li appear to approach the cultural politics framework from slightly different angles, but still come to a similar conclusion about, and against, Hollywood’s tendency to (mis)appropriate other cultures.

However, Li’s discussion also presents an interesting twist on this cultural politics argument through the analysis of the Disney “remake” of the story of Mulan. In this final chapter, Li argues that the Chinese-language film deploys a comparatively multicultural, post-feminist, transnational, almost benevolent approach to cinema, in contrast with its Hollywood source film. Li states that “a new rhetoric of Chinese post-feminism characterizes transnational Chinese cinemas, and Eurocentric cultural politics become symptomatic of Hollywood commercial cinema’s remaking of these Chinese language films” (J. Li, 201m, p- x). Thus, a new divide emerges between Hollywood and Chinese cinemas which actually inverts the power relationship between these two industries, privileging the Chinese film over the Hollywood source text. Simultaneously, there is a de-emphasis of the potential for Chinese-language films to also be engaged in the promotion of stereotypical or hegemonic values and political agendas to their own audience/s.

Li’s final chapter thus provides an insight into what has been a serious turning point in the theory of cultural politics in cinema more broadly, where Hollywood has begun to lose its clout in the global cultural political scene, and the theoretical approaches to film analysis are evolving as a result. Leading scholars in Chinese cinema are now discussing the Sino-Hollywood relationship as a “battlefield”, in which China seeks to flex its growing economic muscle to promote soft power globally. As the Chinese film industry grows, forging new alliances with international production houses and strengthening the influence of its own companies at home and abroad, the Chinese-language remake’s attempts to cross cultural, political, social and economic divides form a vital part of this environment of “courtship and competition” (Zhu, Y, 2015).

Following on from this argument, Yiman Wang’s book Remaking Chinese Cinemas (2013) shifts further away from the earlier discussions in the field that fixated on cultural imperialism. Like Aufderheide (1998), Wang refuses to simply accept that Hollywood remakes represent “another instance of hegemony that vampirises and destroys peripheral film industries” (Y. Wang, 2013, p. 1), arguing that this does not reflect the “historical complexity of remaking practices” in the context of East Asian cinema (Y. Wang, 2013, p. 1). Wang discusses the relationship between Hollywood and East Asian cinema through consideration of film remaking practices between Hollywood, Shanghai, and Hong Kong throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The focus is on considerations of national cinema and collective subjectivity through the lens of cross-Pacific film remaking. The book includes a wide span of films, including Hollywood remakes of The Departed (2006), The Eye (2008), The Ring (2002) and The Karate Kid (2010), as well as collaborative works such as Kung Fu Panda (2008), and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), and remakes of silent films.