The cultural politics of race in Chinese cinema: Nationalism and the changing representation of whiteness in Big Shot’s Funeral and Crazy Alien

Abstract

Research on whiteness in Western cinema has effectively revealed how cinematic representation contributes to formulating, perpetuating, normalizing, and contesting white superiority in Western cultural discourses. However, little research considers how Chinese cinema imagines and negotiates whiteness. Using the visual-textual analysis method, this article examines the representations of white identities in Big Shot’s Funeral (2001, dir. Feng Xiaogang) and Crazy Alien (2019, dir. Ning Hao). These are two well-received post-socialist Chinese dark comedy films depicting encounters between Chinese people and Westerners in contemporary China. Approaching racial identity as a form of social positioning, I analyze how various meanings are ascribed to white identities in the films, and how these meanings articulate Chineseness and Chinese nationalist sentiments. I show that white superiority is simultaneously reinforced and contested in the two films. While doing so, I will also highlight Western cultural theories’ lack of analytical power in explaining how white superiority in cultural discourse transforms across different geographical locations.