Orientalism Writes Back: Discourses of ‘Chinese’ DissemiNationalism in Transnational Martial Arts Films

Abstract

This essay revisits Edward Said’s famous conception of Orientalism and places it against the context of transnational Chinese cinemas, in particular Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas, to examine how the concept is unpacked and reconstructed in a way that is often described as ‘self-Orientalism’—the self-exoticising of local fabrics to satiate Western consumers. Focusing on three films, Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (2015), I argue that the act of self-Orientalising, rather than a passive submission to Western spectatorship, has served to rewrite and recode the idea of Chinese nationalism to present an alternative form of nationalism which I call dissemiNationalism and an alternative discourse to the mainland-centric narrative.