In Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium, Mila Zuo examines how female Chinese actors perform “vulgar beauty” as a way of “worlding” to create community and belonging through affective shocks, and specifically, to produce feelings of Chineseness. By using the sense of taste, and specifically the flavors bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour, as a framework, Zuo delves into close readings of television and cinematic case studies to look at the different ways vulgar beauty is deployed by these actors. In its analysis, this book offers a reconceptualization of feminine beauty outside of white western dictates and suggests that (vulgar) beauty can be utilized as a potentially disruptive and transformative force, specifically in destabilizing racial and patriarchal power structures.
Keyword: film studies
Review of Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones by Marc DiPaolo (State University of New York Press)
Marc DiPaolo’s Fire and Snow engages with the burgeoning ‘cli-fi’ genre which speculates on climate change themes and corollary effects. Through close examination of such diverse works as Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, and “low-culture” films Snowpiercer and Mad Max: Fury Road, DiPaolo both argues in favor of non-partisan collective action against climate change and explores broader public engagement with environmental themes. Primarily a survey text, Fire and Snow nevertheless provides considered analysis of the relationship between authors, producers, and consumers in the dissemination of cli-fi messaging in popular culture.