title: Caught between Success and Failure: Jing Tian and the (Trans)national Chinese Female Stardom in the Wake of the Changing Sino-Hollywood Relations in the 2010s
Creators: name: Feng, Yixuan
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2525

description: Chinese female star Jing Tian is a figure surrounded by a series of narratives of failure. Despite having a markedly high-profile career in both the Chinese film industry and Hollywood, she failed to attain popular acclaim in both contexts. Subsequently, she was given an epithet ‘the star who can’t be made famous’ (‘peng bu hong’) by the Chinese public. The narrative of peng bu hong, in a way, serves as a shorthand for her failed attempts to achieve (trans)national stardom in China and Hollywood between 2011 and 2016.

This narrative of failed stardom has seemingly positioned Jing as underserving of scholarly scrutiny. However, in taking Jing as its central focus, this thesis problematises this framing of failure surrounding her and redefines her as a star caught between success and failure, and between the structures of two competing film industries. It recognises the contradiction between the production and reception of her stardom – the perceived continuous industrial practices to ‘make her a star’ pose a stark contrast to the ongoing failures to attain popular acclaim – and takes it as a productive site to explore the changing Sino-Hollywood relations in the 2010s. It rejects an individualistic perspective which blames these failures on her alone and positions her image and career within broader cultural and industrial contexts. It centrally argues that her ‘failure’ has been shaped by the ongoing negotiations between the Chinese film industry, the Chinese film market and Hollywood. 

This thesis adopts a mixed methodology which combines textual analysis and industrial analysis. It concentrates on her onscreen persona and industrial positionality within Huallywood and Hollywood, her screen performance in the Sino-Hollywood coproduction The Great Wall (2016), her self-presentation on the national social media platform Weibo, and her agency in navigating and negotiating her image and labour in national, transnational, and Hollywood contexts. In so doing, it examines her intersected identity performances as a star, an actor, a celebrity, a woman, and a worker. This thesis demonstrates the value of Jing’s stardom in revealing the competitive and concessional transnationalisms (Lim, 2019, pp. 2-4) embraced by China and Hollywood in the 2010s.

Disparate from mainstream star studies which often attends to major, established stars, my research directs the attention to a less defined, seemingly insignificant star figure with a shorter career, primarily characterised by failure. In so doing, this thesis demonstrates how an understanding of Jing’s image, career and public reception can provide insights into the Sino-Hollywood dynamics in the 2010s and reveal how this relationship between China and Hollywood shaped the idea of transnational Chinese stardom during this period. This thesis consequently underlines the potential and significance of studying ‘small’ stars in understanding (female) stardom, transnationalism, and the film industry.