Binary eeflexivity–The change of John Woo ’s auteurism in Hollywood and its implications

Lau Wai Sim, Dorothy

Hollywood, the profoundly world-dominant cinema, is characterized by its consensus ideology, crude economic power and distinctly homogeneous style that wittingly demonstrates cultural imperialism and hegemony. It bears transnational and temporal universality that transcends the geographical boundary and historicity suggesting profits and global containment; it does not only circulate images and sounds but also produces and mobilizes ideological consciousness and universal sensorium. The premiere position it gains, which heavily depends on ‘not only the quality of certain directors, but also the vitality and, in a certain sense, the excellence of a tradition’ that blatantly embodies the negotiable relation between individuals and the system, literalized in the stylistic principles of Hollywood, innovations made by individual talents and the tension in the filmmaking process. Hollywood is subsumed by what Bazin coins, ‘the genius of the system’, or the goal of maintaining the stability of the dominant set of norms as a whole – guarantee the paradigmatic currency of production practices, economic system and ideological architecture. Bear this in mind, it is hugely responsive to the phenomenal flood of émigré filmmakers to Hollywood in the scaffold of questions like how can the stability of Hollywood’s norms be sustained? How is the co-optic power attributed to the financial structure and ideological (yet avoiding the culturally overdetermined term, imperialist) discourses? In the case of Hong Kong filmmakers’ migration, what are the power relation and the identity politics constructed between the two systems? How are these émigré figures situated in the public horizon of entertainment in which Hong Kong action or aesthetics is translated in the American context of reception? This exciting phenomenon reassess the juncture of cinema and hegemony, reframes the border crossing of Hong Kong cinema and thus unveils the simplistic masquerade that foreign filmmakers bring along their personal insights to Hollywood to constitute the multi-dimensional cultural artifacts. When Hong Kong public cherishes the bold invasion of local heroes to Hollywood as well as the global currency it generates, which seemingly raises Hong Kong’s cultural status in international circus, what is worth noting is the maintenance of the authenticity and genuine quality of the auteur’s works, and thus whether the whole hoopla is beneficial to Hong Kong cinema remains to be seen. The reflexive horizon for both the uniformity and alteration of auteurism addressed by critics and scholars becomes the prominent doctrine to examine the ploys of Hong Kong filmmakers’ survival in Hollywood and its logic of commercial and cultural mechanism, the specific impact of this co-optic power is thus formulated and their films can be more accurately and obtrusively encompassed in the global cinematic blueprint.

2001.07.05

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