Body of action, face of authenticity: Symbolic stars in the transnational marketing and reception of east asian cinema

Abstract

The achievements of East Asian cinema on the international stage in recent years reveal a multitude of approaches to marketing and a variety of critical discourses. Genre, Auteurism, and Orientalism have all played a key role in promoting potentially unfamiliar films to a new audience eager for something different. Stardom, too, has been a key factor. The globalization of cinema has led to the emergence of transnational stars, creating iconic personae that transcend national boundaries. However, East Asian stars rarely have fixed, stable, universal personae; their significance in the domestic context is often quite different to how they are perceived internationally. Furthermore, these international star personae are often constructed by distributors for specific marketing purposes, serving to create meaning and context as required. These new star images, then, may have little to connect them to the actual actor’s screen persona; they operate as signs and symbols, as brands, as rhetorical instruments to frame promotion and consumption. Thus, the inherent flexibility of the star’s image takes on a further dimension, as specific actors incorporate different meanings within new contexts, all under the broad auspices of appealing to a foreign audience.