Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Chua Beng Huat, Asia Research Institute and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore 

ABSTRACT

Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) has been attacked by film and cultural critics, who often interpret it as an example of fascist aesthetics that supports totalitarianism in general and the Chinese authoritarian state in particular. I analyze Hero as an investigation into culture and its relationship to political power under the conditions of globalization. Although Zhang’s earlier film To Live (1994) was much more popular among intellectuals than was Hero, its crafting of the relationship between political power and culture anticipates the trajectory of the later film.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Wendy Larson is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Oregon. She received her PhD in Oriental Languages from the University of California, Berkeley. A specialist on modern Chinese literature and film, Prof Larson’s research monographs include From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China (Stanford UP 2009); Women and Writing in Modern China (Stanford UP 1998); and Literary Authority and the Chinese Writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography (Duke UP 1991). Larson translated Wang Meng’s modernist novel Bolshevik Salute (Washington UP 1991), and co-edited two volumes, Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Rowman and Littlefield 2005), and Inside Out: Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literary Culture (Aarhus UP 1993). Broadly speaking, her research investigates the negotiations of Chinese filmmakers and writers with the conditions of modernity and post-modernity. Larson’s upcoming monograph is tentatively entitled Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture. This research analyzes Zhang’s films as investigations into the possibilities for Chinese culture within the emerging global environment.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg