"High octane kung fu action": Examining racialization in The 2nd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and Fantasia '98: Toronto Festival

Journal of Canadian Studies, Fall 2000 by Michael Ma

The 2nd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and Fantasia '98: Toronto Festival as spaces that produce racialization. This essay examines how these festivals operate through reified notions of "Asian" ethnicity and race; a reification that obscures the understanding that "race" and "ethnicity" are both socio-cultural constructions. Using a Foucauldian notion of subjection, or subject formation, this essay shows that these festivals seldom involve themselves in a self-reflexive critique of how or why an "Asian" subjectivity is constituted. The author argues that racialization becomes veiled and aestheticized as it is used to organize the "Asian" film festival.

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In the recent past, Toronto has hosted numerous ethnic cultural festivals. Recurring annual events such as Desh Pardesh, Caribana, Latin American Festival, Arab Canadian Heritage Day, Super Latin Fest, Festival of the Danforth, pan-Asian First Night and Vietnamese Festival of the Arts populate the festival landscape of Toronto. These art festivals and cultural events are based on community and ethnic identity. Although these festivals self-consciously identify with an ethnic community, we do not question what can be considered an essential representation of that community's identity. Instead, cultural identities rely upon unspoken assumptions of racial difference. In this respect, such cultural festivals are racializing events, and they produce a popular notion of "race" that becomes part of contemporary Canadian society.

In this essay, I look at The 2nd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and Fantasia '98: Toronto Festival.1 These two festivals do not ask what Asian or non-Asian identity is. For example, the two festivals assume notions of ethnic and racial identity such as "race," "ethnicity," "colour" and "mother tongue." These assumed notions are the basis for the content of the festivals. My central question is how racialization is used as an aesthetic in the organization of a cultural film festival.

The Racialized Film Festival

Fantasia '98: Toronto Festival was held at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto from 10 July to 9 August. In its advertising copy, the festival promised to present "the wildest films from Hong Kong, Japan, and the rest of the world!" The festival was an attempt to showcase extreme kung fu, action and horror cinema from Asia.

Festival director Julian Grant and programme coordinator Colin Geddes introduced gonzo activities at the night screenings, to create a festival atmosphere. There were grandiloquent MCs; kung fu demonstrations; and guest actors and producers. As well, audience members were invited onto the stage to answer skill testing film-trivia questions or perform embarrassing tasks that would elicit laughter. There was also a free goth-rock concert atop the Bloor Cinema marquee, and Chinese Lion Dancers performed before the screening of one film.

Already in the title of the festival there exists the ambiguous issue of what constitutes an "Asian aesthetic." Although the festival was called "Fantasia," not all the films were from Asia; many came from the United States and European countries including Spain and Germany. The festival's selection concept seemed to cover films made in Asia and films made elswhere but inspired by Asian cinema. So what is the "Asia" in Fantasia? Within the primary selection process or organizing principle of the festival content, there is ambiguity about what constitutes "Asian" or "Asianness." And, in this sense, the underlying notions of "race" and "ethnicity" are also ambiguous.

The second festival that this essay addresses is The 2nd Toronto International Reel Asian Film Festival, which showcases domestic and international films made by Asian filmmakers. The films in this festival are not all made in Asia, but they all possess ethnic content - an Asian author, actor, producer, director or theme. Some of the films dealt with the issue of Asian identity, but most were included because their creators were conventionally understood to be Asian. Thus, although racial or ethnic identity is an organizing principle of the festival, the films selected were not necessarily reflective of an Asian perspective or focus.

To begin the discussion, I must define one term used frequently by festival organizers. We usually think of an "aesthetic" as a philosophical system for appreciating an object as art and allowing its discourse. That Fantasia '98 and The 2nd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival assume an understanding or connoisseurship of things "Asian" means the festivals both produce and rely on a racialized aesthetic.

The definition of "aesthetic" that I use as a framework for the paper is from Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Eagleton says that opinion, appetite or inclinations are notions of individual desire that become a person's subjectivity. He also says a bourgeois subjectivity might be produced through an ideology of the aesthetic permitting the possibility of subjectivity (Eagleton 13-20). I will investigate how an intangible ethnic sensibility comes to be understood as a subjectivity. To begin, I question how an "aestheticization of Asianness," in the sense employed by Eagleton, coincides with "subject production" or "subjection," in the sense employed by Foucault.