From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu (Critical Interventions)

Throughout the twentieth century, American filmmakers have embraced cinematic representations of China. Beginning with D.W. Griffith's silent classic Broken Blossoms (1919) and ending with the computer-animated Kung Fu Panda (2008), this book explores China's changing role in the American imagination. In the United States, the exceptional emotional charge that imbues images of China has tended to swing violently from positive to negative and back again: China has been loved and-as is generally the case today-feared. Using film to trace these dramatic fluctuations, author Naomi Greene relates them to the larger arc of historical and political change. Her consideration makes clear that while many stereotypes and racist images of the past have been largely banished from the screen, the political, cultural, and social impulses they embodied are still alive and well.