Cultural Imagination of the Other: Representation of Chinese Actresses in Hollywood Movies

Images of Chinese women in Hollywood movies are the embodiment of Western cultural imagination of the East since the representation is a complex, meaningful, and concrete symbol signifying communication between different cultures. In the Hollywood imagination, the Chinese female is the Other who not only stands for exotic female images but also Chinese culture. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: How do Chinese women tend to be portrayed in Hollywood movies? Which characters do these Chinese actresses play? What is the aesthetic difference between East and West, and what is the connection between Chinese culture’s self-recognition and the Western representation of Chinese culture? By conducting visual and textual analysis, I will undertake a comparative examination of the depictions of Chinese women in four movies: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), X-men: Days of Future Past (2012), and I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016), spanning the years 2000-2020 (two from America and two from China). This investigation will specifically center on the portrayal of two Chinese actresses, namely Ziyi Zhang and Bingbing Fan, both of whom have attained prominence within the realms of both Chinese and American cinema.