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Hong Kong University Press
14/F Hing Wai Centre
7 Tin Wan Praya Road
Aberdeen
Hong Kong
© Hong Kong University Press 2010
Hardback ISBN 978-988-8028-05-4
Paperback ISBN 978-988-8028-06-1
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library
Secure On-line Ordering
http://www.hkupress.org
Printed and bound by Caritas Printing Training Centre, Hong Kong, China
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Time without Measure, Sadness without Cure 19
2 Photography’s Absent Times 51
3 The Post-Classical Art Film 73
4 The Haunted Movie Theater 95
5 Chance Encounters and Compulsive Returns 123
Coda 147
Notes 151
Bibliography 175
Index 193
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Acknowledgements
This book is the product of a long incubation, and to acknowledge the
individuals who have contributed to its journey makes for a significant part
of the satisfaction of its completion. I owe much to my teachers at the University
of Chicago, Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen, and Lauren Berlant, who oversaw the
dissertation from which this book springs with incredible generosity and rigor. Their
insights and feedback at the earliest formative stage of this project helped me to
clarify its conceptual stakes and future direction. Their steadfast encouragement has
sustained me at every stage of my intellectual development, and the high standard
they uphold continues to inspire all of my scholarship and teaching.
My immense gratitude goes to my colleagues at Stanford University: Scott
Bukatman, for being always an energetic interlocutor, exacting reader, and mentor
extraordinaire; and Pavle Levi, for helping me to demystify the monolith of the First
Book. Our invigorating exchanges serve as a daily reminder of how fortunate I am
to work alongside colleagues who cultivate and share a far-ranging enthusiasm for
ideas and an inexhaustible love of cinema.
My work has brought me into contact with an exceptional group of scholars
who have deeply influenced my thinking and offered invaluable advice at various
stages in the development of this book. I thank all the colleagues who have taken
the time to respond to my writing, pushed me to refine my arguments, and extended
opportunities to present my research: Kaveh Askari, Weihong Bao, James Chandler,
Yvonne Chang, Rob Culp, Rosalind Galt, Guo-Juin Hong, James Lastra, Sandra
Macpherson, Jun Okada, Dana Polan, Karl Schoonover, Xiaobing Tang, Ban
Wang, Ken Wissoker, Esther Yau, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Josh Yumibe, and fellow
members of the Mass Culture Workshop at the University of Chicago. My friend
and collaborator Karen Beckman consistently amazes me with her intellectual verve
and generous spirit; working with her has been a great learning experience and an
enormous pleasure. It is difficult to imagine academic work without the sustenance
of certain relationships whose scope far exceeds the professional path along which
they are situated. Salute to my brilliant and fabulous friends for their support,
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viii Acknowledgements
humor, and affection: Melissa Anderson, Barbara Ess, Leah Gilliam, Jonathan M.
Hall, Chika Kinoshita, William Orchard, Lisa Outar, Nerina Rustomji, and Julie
Sze.
At Hong Kong University Press, I have been fortunate to find an exceptionally
supportive and efficient editor in Michael Duckworth. Dawn Lau oversaw the book’s
production with aplomb and graciousness. The two evaluators of the manuscript
offered thoughtful and detailed editorial feedback, and I am grateful to have had
the opportunity to refine my arguments in dialogue with their suggestions. Song
Hwee Lim combed through the entirety of the manuscript with a sharp critical eye,
raising canny and significant questions about all of its core ideas. I thank him for his
meticulous engagement with my work, which has helped me tremendously.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the James and Doris McNamara Fund,
which provided a subvention toward the production cost of this volume. Thanks to
Kristine Samuelson and the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University
for making this possible. Research for this project was supported by a Franke
Institute for the Humanities Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Chicago. I
thank Duke University Press and Oxford University Press for their permission to
publish chapters 2 and 3 in an extended version.
At every turn I have relied on the unswerving love and support of my parents,
who never question my choices and are always behind me, and my sisters, who help
me to keep everything in a healthy perspective. I dedicate this book to Ayling, CQ,
Yvette, and Amber.
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Introduction
An encounter between a man in a crowd and a mysterious woman takes place
in the elliptical opening sequence of a Wong Kar-wai film. The sequence
unfolds in a crowded bazaar, amid a seemingly endless blur of shops and restaurants
joined by labyrinthine walkways. Tracking through the crush of bodies, the camera
lingers on a woman garbed in the noirish trappings of a blonde wig, sunglasses,
and trench coat and, in another section of the marketplace, a young man with an
intent expression on his face. Accompanying these images is a voiceover remarking,
“Every day we rub shoulders with other people. Although we may not know one
another, we might some day become good friends.” The voice identifies itself as
that of the young man, an undercover policeman named He Zhiwu. Then, with the
clatter of a physical struggle that rises above the hum of the crowd, He Zhiwu takes
off in pursuit of one of the culprits. Along the way, he momentarily collides with the
blonde-wigged woman, and as he continues his chase we are told, “At our closest
point, we were just a hundredth of a centimeter apart. But fifty-seven hours later, I
fell in love with this woman.”
The sequence makes for a compelling prologue for the picture that follows,
Chungking Express (Chongqing senling, 1994), which introduced international
audiences to Wong Kar-wai as his first production to receive a commercial theatrical
release outside of Hong Kong.1 The film’s Chinese title translates literally as
“Chungking Jungle,” a fitting caption for the mise-en-scène of contemporary urban
life depicted therein, at once widely recognizable in its representation of the crowded
cityscape and locally inflected in the unique architectural configuration and ethnic
mélange that describe the notorious jungle of the Chungking Mansions complex
in Kowloon. The perceptually overwhelming qualities of this mise-en-scène also
register in the instability of the image itself, transformed into a kinetic blur by the
use of step-printing. This process — one of Wong’s visual trademarks, developed
in collaboration with his editor and production designer William Chang — involves
an elimination of twelve contiguous frames on a one-second strip of film and a
reduplication of each of the remaining twelve frames.2 While the manipulation of
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