Transnational imagination in action cinema: Hong Kong and the making of a global popular culture

Fighting Talk: Martial Arts Discourse in Mainstream Films

“…But the majority of people could be expected to recognise 'martial arts' when they see them. If not unequivocally 'popular', then, martial arts are certainly part of 'the popular' (Hall 1994) -stitched into the current 'popular cultural formation' (Morris 2004;Morris, Li, and Chan 2005).…”

What can agwei pordo? Cynthia Rothrock's Hong Kong career

“…Rothrock's American films are also beyond my scope in this article, although I have argued elsewhere (Morris 2004b) that US martial arts films are often best understood as Western melodramas of working-class gender and ethnicity, not as failed Hong Kong wu da pian, and in my view some of Rothrock's films are among the best of this kind: Fight to Win (1987); Tiger Claws (1991); Rage and Honor (1992); and her under-rated late film Outside the Law (2001). More difficult to step around than these valid and interesting topics, however, is the pressure that drives the 'failure' version of the Rothrock star biography to produce a rivalrous mode of comparison between Hong Kong and American action cinemas (opposed as discrete and contrasting formations) that tugs our attention inexorably towards the United States-perhaps most intensely when we generate an 'anti-American' critique.…”

“…I have no evidence for this beyond the ad hoc experience of watching her Chinese films with people who assess films critically in a 'value for money' spirit. Textually, however, Norton's nationality and Rothrock's gender set them both off-centre relative to the world-historical pretensions of the Hollywood action imaginary (Morris 2004b). This 'side-lining' of the white American woman and the white Australian man is played explicitly for comedy in one of their American low-budget films, Rage and Honor, when Norton and Rothrock are refused entry to a nightclub despite their efforts at acting out a Crocodile Dundee and a Valley Girl stereotype respectively.…”

Transnational Feminism and Communication Studies

“…Indeed, a focus on how globalized media practices articulate gender enables scholars to produce more situated and empirically driven research on globalization that can go beyond abstract and acontextual theorizations. As Meaghan Morris (2004) has recently lamented, "theories of globalization abound today but empirical work is needed to advance our understanding of how globalizing forces are working, or not working, in culture (p. 181).…”