Hollywood’s Sino-Chic: Kung Fu Parody, Mimicry, and Play in Cross-Cultural Citationality

Abstract

This chapter discusses the emergence of Kung fu Sino-chic through Hollywood's appropriation of Chinese action cinema. It first looks at how Jackie Chan works the global/local conjuncture by balancing the cinematic Americanization of his work, especially through the themes of cultural adaptation, appropriation, and acceptance of Asian migrants in the US, while simultaneously building his cosmopolitan appeal to a wide global audience, all through the processes of “mimicry as failure” in The Tuxedo (2002), Shanghai Noon (2000), and Shanghai Knights (2003). It then examines cross-cultural citationality in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2, suggesting that films such as these incorporate and synthesize multiple revenge film traditions from various national and alternative cinemas. It also describes how Tarantino reinvents exploitation aesthetics and represents them as Hollywood blockbusters.