Chinese looks
Subtitle: fashion, performance, race
By: Sean Metzger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9780253012470; 9780253012562
Subjects: Fashion design; Social life and customs; Race relations; Fashion; Popular culture; Chinese in motion pictures
Description: From yellow-face performance in the 19th century to Jackie Chan in the 21st, Chinese Looks examines articles of clothing and modes of adornment as a window on how American views of China have changed in the past 150 years. Sean Metzger provides a cultural history of three iconic objects in theatrical and cinematic performance: the queue, or man's hair braid; the woman's suit known as the qipao; and the Mao suit. Each object emerges at a pivotal moment in US-China relations, indexing shifts in the balance of power between the two nations. Metzger shows how aesthetics, gender, politics, economics, and race are interwoven and argues that close examination of particular forms of dress can help us think anew about gender and modernity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-286) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: pt. 1 THE QUEUE; title: 1.Charles Parsloe's Chinese Fetish; title: 2.Screening Tails; title: pt. 2 THE QIPAO; title: 3.Anna May Wong and the Qipao's American Debut; title: 4.Exoticus Eroticus, or the Silhouette of Suzie's Slits during the Cold War; title: 5.Cut from Memory: Wong Kar-Wai's Fashionable Homage; title: pt. 3 THE MAO SUIT; title: 6.An Unsightly Vision; title: 7.Uniform Beliefs?; title: 8.Mao Fun Suits.