This wide-ranging, historically grounded exploration of motion picture remakes produced in East Asia brings together original contributions from experts in Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas and puts forth new ways of thinking about the remaking process as both a critically underappreciated form of artistic expression and an economically motivated industrial practice.
Exploring everything from ethnic Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il's Unforgiven (2013), a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood's Western of the same title, to Stephen Chow's The Mermaid (2016), a Chinese slapstick reimagining of Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) and Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, East Asian Film Remakes contributes to a better understanding of cinematic remaking across the region and offers vital alternatives to the Eurocentric and Hollywood-focused approaches that have thus far dominated the field.
INTRODUCTION East Asian Film Remakes – David Scott Diffrient PART I: Re-fleshing the Text: Sex, Seduction, Desire CHAPTER 1. How to Sell a Remake: The Gate of Flesh Media Franchise – Irene González-López CHAPTER 2. Against Anaesthesia: An Empty Dream, Pleasurable Pain, and the ‘Illicit’ Thrills of South Korea’s Golden Age Remakes – David Scott Diffrient CHAPTER 3. Two Faces of Seduction: Tragic Heroines and Heroic Victims in Chor Yuen’s Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan and Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan – Andrew Grossman CHAPTER 4. Japanese Self-Made Film Remakes as Self-Improvement: Professional Desires and DIY Fulfilment, from Panic High School to Tetsuo – Mark Player PART II: Serialising Ozu: The Enduring Legacy of a Cinematic ‘Tofu Maker’ CHAPTER 5. Definition and Progression: Ozu Yasujirō’s ‘Noriko Trilogy’ – Alastair Phillips CHAPTER 6. A Remake, But…: Media Infantility in Ozu Yasujirō’s Good Morning – Rea Amit CHAPTER 7. The Cinema of Serial Vitality: Ozu Yasujirō and Yamada Yoji – Steve Choe PART III: Revisiting Personal/Political Traumas in East Asian Action Films, Gangster Films and Westerns CHAPTER 8. Opting Out of History: Miike Takashi’s New Graveyard of Honor – Earl Jackson CHAPTER 9. The Promise of Hokkaidō: Trauma, Violence, and the Legacy of the Imperial Frontier in Lee Sang-il’s Unforgiven – Lance Lomax CHAPTER 10. Benny Chan’s Connected and the Post-Handover Hong Kong Action Film – Gary Bettinson CHAPTER 11. Vessels and Cargos: Spaces of Inclusion and Exclusion in Johnnie To’s Drug War and Lee Hae-young’s Korean Remake Believer – Jinhee Choi PART IV: Local Flavours and Transcultural Flows in East Asian Comedies, Dramas and Fantasies CHAPTER 12. The Power of Healing in Little Forest(s): Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Friendship, and Self-Identity, from Japan to South Korea – Nam Lee CHAPTER 13. More than Blue and Man in Love: Transnational Korean-Taiwanese Film Remakes as a Facilitator for Taiwan Cinema – Ting-Ying Lin CHAPTER 14. The Pan-Asian Miss Granny Phenomenon – Jennifer Coates, Hsin Hsieh, Sung-Ae Lee, and Kate E. Taylor-Jones CHAPTER 15. Remaking in the Age of Chthulumedia: Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid – Kenneth Chan
David Scott Diffrient is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Colorado State University. Kenneth Chan is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Northern Colorado.
Reviews for East Asian Film Remakes
East Asian Film Remakes offers a rich banquet of revelations, ranging from directors who remake their own films as they refine their auteur obsessions to vibrant, humorous and even scandalous pop culture appropriations that display breath-taking creativity.--Chris Berry, King's College London
