Make it New!

Thus far, I’ve written mostly about cinema, and how cinema features in cinema. I now intend depart from this theme and focus on two particular artists with whom I am absolutely besotted: Anna May Wong and Ezra Pound. I intend to discuss both figures in the context of ‘The Chinese Character.’ And, for this discussion, I shall employ multiple designations of the term ‘character’ (significantly, that of a person represented in drama, and that of a symbol used in a writing system) while keeping in mind the particular definition that is “a significant visual mark or symbol.”

Also, I must pre-emptively make the following caveat: I have no intention to answer questions of why the Chinese character (read: I shan’t be explicitly engaging with the politics of racial difference); instead, because of the focus of this blog, I will be discussing what the Chinese character does – on screen and in poetry – as a result of artists’ engagement with that which is 'otherly.'

In short: the next two entries will be about cinematic elements and implications of the ‘The Chinese Character.’