"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

Like The 2nd Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Fantasia '98 functions as an illustration of racial Asian subjection. At first glance, it would seem that Fantasia '98 is not an "Asian" racialization conducted by subjected Asians upon themselves, since none of Fantasia '98's organizers is Asian or Oriental. The particular film-fan exuberance that fuels Fantasia '98 could be understood as a classic form of Orientalized imagination, in which the exotic, "inscrutable Chinese" plays a major role. It too must be understood as an expression of power-knowledge, producing an effect of racial subjection while simultaneously being the articulation of racial differentiation. It is not useful to construct an orientalist straw-man out of Fantasia '98, however, where "white" organizers covet an imagined Asian aesthetic. It is more productive to argue that the manifestations of racialized subjection in Asian film festivals need to be identified, not hidden behind other discussions, whether of Orientalism and its glorification of Asian cinema, or identity politics and its contribution to the building of diasporic pan-Asian commonality.

In Fantasia '98 organizers Colin Geddes and Julian Grant understand Asian cinema to be a "secret cinema" that needs to be made available to a larger audience (Geddes/Grant). They believe that a specific Asian aesthetic absent from Hollywood exists in films produced in the Orient; specifically, this Asian aesthetic is present in the kung fu fantasy/action genre of Asian cinema and is understood to be extreme, going beyond anything "Western" cinema can produce.

The conventional aesthetic framing is to present the objects of which the discourse is comprised (in this case, films) along with a canon or narrative explaining their thematic importance. Accordingly, Fantasia '98's month-long screening of kung fu action/drama films was provided with a catalogue, much like a tourist or auction guide, in which a synopsis explained the dynamic of each film, followed by a commentary explaining the importance of each film and its place within its genre. In a classic example of the operation of an unexamined racialized aesthetic, however, Fantasia '98 organizers are not able to name or even clearly describe what makes the films they showcased "Asian." They believe simply that "audiences get this" even while it is unclear what "this" is (Geddes/Grant): at one moment, "it" seems to be the extreme, high-- adrenaline style of Hong Kong films like The Killer, at another, "it" seems to be the lyrical time-space compression of films like Wong Kar-wars Ashes of Time. Similarly, "Asian" film refers not only to films made in Asia but films made with "Asian" crews or, again, ones that simply reflect the imagined "Asian" aesthetic. Interestingly, although the festival purports to represent Asia proper, the majority of the films shown at the festival are in fact made in Hong Kong.

We may ask, is film-fan exuberance or aesthetic enough? Or does the fan's celebration of Asian stars such as Chow Yun Fat buttress the existence and confirm the persistence of Orientalism? Is Chow Yun Fat liked because he is an actor? Or is he liked because he is an Asian actor who acts as a foil for all that is considered Oriental (i.e. exotic) about Asian film? Perhaps the answers lie once more with Foucault: namely, that the object of study is merely the articulation of a power that finds its expression as an aesthetic. Film theory has it that the viewer sees with the eye of the protagonist, but these particular screenings and contextualizations could better be understood as the construction of a filmic eye that sees Asian film culture as a confirmation of the desire for an Asian subject. The organization of racialized films into a festival is both manifestation and continual articulation of power-- knowledge, congealing the whole process of ethnicization.