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OverviewIn Vulgar Beauty Mila Zuo offers a new theorization of cinematic feminine beauty by showing how mediated encounters with Chinese film and popular culture stars produce feelings of Chineseness. To illustrate this, Zuo uses the vulgar as an analytic to trace how racial, gendered, and cultural identity is imagined and produced through affect. She frames the vulgar as a characteristic that is experienced through the Chinese concept of weidao, or flavor, in which bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour performances of beauty produce non-Western forms of sexualized and racialized femininity. Analyzing contemporary film and media ranging from actress Gong Li's post-Mao movies of the late 1980s and 1990s to Joan Chen's performance in Twin Peaks to Ali Wong's stand-up comedy specials, Zuo shows how vulgar beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar beauty, then, becomes the taste of difference. By demonstrating how Chinese feminine beauty becomes a cinematic invention invested in forms of affective racialization, Zuo makes a critical reconsideration of aesthetic theory. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Mila ZuoPublisher: Duke University Press Imprint: Duke University Press Weight: 0.454kg ISBN: 9781478018117ISBN 10: 1478018119 Pages: 312 Publication Date: 11 March 2022 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction: Tasting Vulgar Beauty 1 1. Bitter Medicine, Racial Flavor: Gong Li 39 2. Salty-Cool: Maggie Cheung and Joan Chen 73 3. Pungent Atmospheres: Bai Ling and Tang Wei 113 4. Sweet and Soft Coupling: Vivian Hsu and Shu Qi 152 5. Sour Laughter: Charlyne Yi and Ali Wong 193 Conclusion: Aftertaste 234 Notes 241 Bibliography 267 Index 289ReviewsIn this gorgeously written book, Mila Zuo captures how Chinese female film stars perform beauty in ways that reflect their negotiation with the racial sexualization of their femininity. With a rigorous and lucid ferocity, Zuo boldly brings together critical theory, philosophy, aesthetics, women of color feminism, feminist film theory, and performance theory to help us understand Chinese women's presences on screen. Fearless and powerful, Vulgar Beauty is a pleasure to read. -- Celine Parrenas Shimizu, author of * The Proximity of Other Skins: Ethical Intimacy in Global Cinema * "“In this gorgeously written book, Mila Zuo captures how Chinese female film stars perform beauty in ways that reflect their negotiation with the racial sexualization of their femininity. With a rigorous and lucid ferocity, Zuo boldly brings together critical theory, philosophy, aesthetics, women of color feminism, feminist film theory, and performance theory to help us understand Chinese women’s presences on screen. Fearless and powerful, Vulgar Beauty is a pleasure to read.” -- Celine Parreñas Shimizu, author of * The Proximity of Other Skins: Ethical Intimacy in Global Cinema * ""[Zuo's] metaphoric language, mostly revolving around food, offers the reader not only an intellectual exploration of the power of vulgar beauty to destabilize racial and patriarchal power structures but also a flavorful and aesthetic journey in and of itself."" -- E. Nastacia Schmoll * Lateral * ""Anyone interested in performance, in gender and sexuality, in race on an international stage, in Chinese politics and history in this century of suffering, needs to read this book. Anyone hungry, voracious perhaps, for interdisciplinary diasporic and transnational critique that engages not only with cultural but also intellectual traditions from China and Korea had better prepare to feast."" -- Vivian L. Huang * Film-Philosophy *" Author InformationMila Zuo is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |