Chinese Looks Fashion, Performance, Race [Hardcover]

From yellow-face performance in the 19th century to Jackie Chan in the 21st, Chinese Looks examines articles of clothing and modes of adornment as a window on how American views of China have changed in the past 150 years. Sean Metzger provides a cultural history of three iconic objects in theatrical and cinematic performance: the queue, or man's hair braid; the woman's suit known as the qipao; and the Mao suit. Each object emerges at a pivotal moment in US-China relations, indexing shifts in the balance of power between the two nations. Metzger shows how aesthetics, gender, politics, economics, and race are interwoven and argues that close examination of particular forms of dress can help us think anew about gender and modernity.

A welcome addition to theatre and performance studies, film studies, Asian American studies, fashion theory, and gender and sexuality studies,Chinese Looksis poised to provide entree into future conversations about China's continued rise in geopolitics, the next chapter in the Sino/American interface.

Introduction

Part I. The Queue
1. Charles Parsloe's Chinese Fetish
2. Screening Tails

Part II. The Qipao
3. Anna May Wong and the Qipaos American Debut
4. Exoticus Eroticus, or the Silhouette of Suzies Slits during the Cold War
5. Cut from Memory: Wong Kar-Wais Fashionable Homage

Part III. The Mao Suit
6. An Unsightly Vision
7. Uniform Beliefs?
8. Mao Fun Suits

Epilogue: The Tuxedo

Notes
Index

Cultivating both a careful examination of cinematic technique and a broad theoretical understanding of global cultural exchange, Metzger does an especially good job of putting the cultural industries of China and North America into conversation.This is an important work that should be of interest to scholars in the fields of theatre, performance, cinema, queer studies, art history, costume design, and visual culture.Professor Metzger offers a rich and detailed stuls*