Abstract
This chapter uses two cinematic retrievals of craziness, one by Huang Bo in 2018 with his mini film Crazy Twins and the other by Ning Hao in 2019 with his film Crazy Alien, to both indicate the twelve-plus-year duration of this episode of cinematic craziness and use the discussion of the two films to summarize some common artistic features of the films produced in this episode. The first retrieval allows one to understand the character type created by Huang in the episode and the retrieval illustrates how an established actor feels the need to be crazy to remove the doldrums in his career. To be crazy is to rejuvenate. The second retrieval leads one to see how Ning Hao works on his story and script, how he retains his earlier “low-budget” styles of craziness in this expensive film, how he emphasizes his film being “postmodern,” and how the monkey image becomes important in his filmmaking.
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Notes
- 1.
Frank Ochieng is one of the nine critics quoted by the website Rotten Tomatoes in rating The Island . https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_island_2018 (accessed May 21, 2019).
- 2.
The film’s fictional C Guo (C Country) refers to the United States of America. The English subtitle of the film translates it into “Amerika.”
- 3.
Although Ning Hao is not referring to him but to Yang Jiang’s use of it, Taiwanese cultural critic Bo Yang is the person who focused popular attention on the “soy-sauce-jar culture.” The title of Bo’s most controversial book of 1985, The Ugly Chinaman, speaks for his approach of self-mockery. The quote from Bo here is taken from Wei Ming Dariotis and Eileen Fung, “Breaking the Soy Sauce Jar: Diaspora and Displacement in the Films of Ang Lee” in Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, ed. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), 187.
References
Chinese Language Sources
Chen Xiaonao. 2017. Huai houzi gongbu piandan: Ning Hao chongqi fengkuang xilie (Dirty Monkeys Publicize Film List: Ning Hao Reinitiate Crazy Series). Film News, Tengxun entertainment, posted June 20, 2017. http://ent.qq.com/a/20170620/010300.htm. Accessed 19 Jan 2019.
Zhang Wei. 2019. Fengkuang de waixing ren: chuangzao zhongguo dianying de dute secai: Ninghao fangtan (Creating Idiosyncrasy in Chinese Film: An Interview with Ning Hao on Crazy Alien). Dianying yishu (Film Arts) 2: 97–102.
English Language Sources
Ehrlich, David. 2018. ‘The Island’ Review: China’s Latest Mega-Hit Proves that American Comedies Are Playing Things Too Safe. Posted Aug 24, 2018. https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/the-island-review-huang-bo-shu-qi-1201997399/. Accessed 21 May 2019.
Hutcheon, Linda. 2002. The Politics of Postmodernism. 2nd ed. London/New York: Routledge.
Siskel, Gene, and Roger Ebert. 1995. Pulp Faction: The Tarantino Generation. Pulp Fiction DVD. Burbank: Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
Ning Hao
Crazy Stone (Fengkuang de shitou, 2006)
Crazy Racer/Silver Medalist (Fengkuang de saiche, 2009)
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Kuoshu, H.H. (2021). Dual Retrieval of Cinematic Craziness: A Coda. In: Craziness and Carnival in Neo-Noir Chinese Cinema. Chinese Literature and Culture in the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73081-9_5
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