The Defiance Of Abject:The Re-presentation Of Chinatown And China In Wayne Wang’s Films

Chinese American images are not rare to be seen in Hollywood but it’s not until 1980s that Chinese Americans began to have a chance to scrutinize their own identity through Chinese American films(Peter Feng,Gina Marchetti,Jun Okada,Rey Chow),before which their images on screen were mostly manipulated by the dominant white group with their oriental gaze-mostly stereotyped,marginalized and powerless images for the benefit of white superiority.Wayne Wang,a prominent Chinese American director,is a pioneer in exploring Chinese American images and identity through films.His works have far-reaching influence in this field,which include Dim Sum:A Little Bit of Heart(1985),Eat a Bowl of Tea(1989),Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper Is Expensive(1989),The Joy Luck Club(1993),Chinese Box(1997),The Princess of Nebraska(2008),Snow Flower and the Secret Fan(2011),taking advantage of his complicated background(Wang was born in Hong Kong and finished undergraduate study in United States,after which he returned to Hong Kong and then again went back to United States and worked in Chinatown)and his interest in analyzing and discovering Chinese American identity as suggested in his interview(Tibbetts).Chinese American films,and among them,those of Wayne Wang,have succeeded in drawing attention from both ethnic Chinese audiences and white audiences.Out of the significant role of Chinese ethnic among ethnic minorities in America and the achievements Wayne Wang has made in Chinese American films,both Chinese scholars and American scholars have done researches on him.However,in terms of the discussion of Chinese American and Chinese,the existing literatures have three limitations:first,an effective theoretical framework is lacked in scrutinizing Wayne Wang’s films;second,most attention is paid to Chan Is Missing and Wang’s other films are seldom noted;third,Chinese scholars consistently condemn Wang for his contribution to furthering Orientalism through his films because Chinatown and China are mostly negatively represented.Based on these limitations,this paper aims to answer the following two questions:first,how to understand the construction of Chinatown and China as undesirably alien by the Whites?Second,as a Chinese American director,how Wayne Wang interrogates and challenges the undesirably alien role of Chinatown and China in his films?Four films that cover and represent the themes of Chinatown and China are selected as cases:Chan Is Missing,Dim Sum,The Joy Luck Club and The Princess of Nebraska.A textual analysis in relation to the social-political context of contemporary Hollywood cinema is adopted.This thesis adopts Julia Kristeva’s theory of abject/abjection as the framework.Abjection focuses on the construction of an independent subjectivity through rejecting and excluding the wastes(the abject),which is deemed to be rebellious and violent.After detailed analysis,the thesis concludes:Chinatown and China are relegated to the domain of abject as uncanny and inferior because the Whites want to secure their subjectivity and maintain their superiority for oppression and exploitation.However,Chinese American directors like Wayne Wang has contributed to contesting the role of Chinatown and China as abject through their films.Specifically,on one hand,to challenge the abject connotations of Chinatown,Wang depicts Chinese Americans living in Chinatown in an individualized manner which emphasizes their humanity,personality and diversity.In this way,the audiences are made to empathize with and rethink the abject they have constructed.On the other hand,in terms of the defiance of China as abject,Wang utilizes the strategy of exhibition.He exhibits China as abject which is in consistent with Orientalist fantasies in order to return the gaze of the viewing Whites and destroy their voyeuristic pleasure in the process of abjection.In this way,the position of China as abject is re-examined and challenged.