Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh - Resume and Abstract

Name	Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh
Title	Professor at the Department of Cinema-TV Director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research Hong Kong Baptist University
Brief Introduction	Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is Professor at the Department of Cinema-TV and Director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her publications include: TAIWAN FILM DIRECTORS: A TREASURE ISLAND (Columbia University Press, 2005, Co-author), CHINESE-LANGUAGE FILM: HISTORIOGRAPHY, POETICS, POLITICS (University of Hawaii Press, 2005, Co-editor) and EAST ASIAN SCREEN INDUSTRIES (British Film Institute, 2008, Co-author).

On Wenyi (文藝): Establishing a generic and critical category in Chinese film studies

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh
School of Communication
Hong Kong Baptist University

Abstract

Scholars have adapted Western theories of melodrama to Chinese melodrama (Berry; Berry and Farquhar; Browne; Ma). Their work offered fresh, provocative insights compared to conventional thematic approaches. But these Western practices may not explain wenyi pictures from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and might also bring theoretical baggage from distant quarters: “The point should be to develop conceptual formulations that are generated from within the Asian context rather than to mimic work designed for the West . . ..” (Louie & Edwards, 138). To lend an endogenous framework for large swathes of Chinese family films, romances and art cinema, it is advisable to locate an intrinsic and perhaps more illuminating concept than melodrama to explain Chinese-language cinemas.

This paper is a preliminary discussion on the historical construct wenyi as a term to clarify, map and discuss key issues in Chinese film history and criticism. These are: the ethical role of cinema in modern forms of spectatorship; transmission of progressive ideals to dispersed populations; the role of literary adaptation; stylistic innovations responding to Western melodrama; and the role of filmmakers as socially responsible artists. By pursuing an extensive, in-depth review of the term wenyi and its shifting meanings, contexts, and applications, the new corpus of wenyi cinema will emerge as a distinct historiography in film scholarship.

References:

Berry, Chris, and Farquhar, Mary. “Realist Modes: Melodrama, Modernity, and Home.” China on Screen: Cinema and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 75-107.
Berry, Chris. “The Sublimitive Text: Sex and Revolution in Big Road.” East-West Film Journal 2.2 (1988): 66-86.
Browne, Nick. “Society and Objectivity: On the Political Economy of Chinese
Melodrama.” New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Eds. Nick Browne et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 40-56.
Ma, Ning. “Spatiality and Subjectivity in Xie Jin’s Film Melodrama of the New
Period.” New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Ed. Nick Browne et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 15-39.
Ma, Ning. “Symbolic Representation and Symbolic Violence: Chinese Family
Melodrama of the Early 1980s.” East-West Film Journal (December 1989): 32-49.
Louie, Kam, and Edwards, Louise. “Chinese Masculinity: Theorizing Wen and Wu.”
East Asian History 8, December (1994): 135-148.