Abstract
This article asks what exactly makes the trans a key concept in our understanding of Sino-American filmic transactions. By studying two silent films of the Chinese American film pioneer, Anna May Wong (1905–1961), with special attention to her mercurial sartorial performances, I analyze her interstitial trans position between nations, communities, cultures, between audiences here-now and elsewhere-another time, and between objecthood and subjecthood. I stress the trans position as a tension-ridden field that resists easy resolution, thereby challenges American assimilationism and China’s ethno-nationalism all at once. I argue that this trans position, which appears to be stuck and suspended, offers a theoretical and methodological framework for unpacking Wong’s legacy, and more broadly, the complexity of diasporic Chinese and Chinese American film cultures.
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