While the actor Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973) is perhaps best known
today for his Oscar-nominated turn as a Japanese military officer
in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), in the early twentieth
century he was an internationally renowned silent film star, as
recognizable as Charlie Chaplin or Douglas Fairbanks. In this
critical study of Hayakawa's stardom, Daisuke Miyao reconstructs
the Japanese actor's remarkable career, from the films that
preceded his meteoric rise to fame as the star of Cecil B.
DeMille's The Cheat (1915) through his reign as a matinee idol and
the subsequent decline and resurrection of his Hollywood
fortunes.Drawing on early-twentieth-century sources in both English
and Japanese, including Japanese-language newspapers in the United
States, Miyao illuminates the construction and reception of
Hayakawa's stardom as an ongoing process of cross-cultural
negotiation. Hayakawa's early work included short films about Japan
that were popular with American audiences as well as spy films that
played upon anxieties about Japanese nationalism. The Jesse L.
Lasky production company sought to shape Hayakawa's image by
emphasizing the actor's Japanese traits while portraying him as
safely assimilated into U.S. culture. Hayakawa himself struggled to
maintain his sympathetic persona while creating more complex
Japanese characters that would appeal to both American and Japanese
audiences. The star's initial success with U.S. audiences created
ambivalence in Japan, where some described him as traitorously
Americanized and others as a positive icon of modernized Japan.
This unique history of transnational silent-film stardom focuses
attention on the ways that race, ethnicity, and nationality
influenced the early development of the global film industry.
General
Imprint: |
Duke University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
A John Hope Franklin Center Book |
Release date: |
March 2007 |
First published: |
May 2007 |
Authors: |
Daisuke Miyao
|
Dimensions: |
226 x 156 x 25mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
400 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8223-3969-4 |
Categories: |
Books >
Arts & Architecture >
Performing arts >
Films, cinema >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8223-3969-2 |
Barcode: |
9780822339694 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!