Anna May Wong

Despite her scandalous lifestyle and transgressions of traditional Chinese femininity, the Chinese American actress Anna May Wong is remembered, perhaps more so than any other Chinese actress in Western film history.

Similar to the fandom of Rose Hobart, Anna May Wong has her own fan-club in contemporary society. Youtube channels such as Anna May Wong Society and Madame Miaow (Chinese British comedian who explores the life of Anna May Wong) make videos out of snippets of images and films in order to encapsulate their fascination with her. Videos such as:

This is a satirical stand up comedy about Anna May Wong by the Chinese British comedian Anna Chen.  It may look like an anti-fan video but it actually takes you through an analysis of all the imposing social and political factors back then that made Anna May Wong who she was (on screen). One interesting thing noted in this video was that in one of her films, she supposedly married a white man (who later abandoned her and their child) and had a child. This child was played by a Caucasian baby, with no Asian characteristics whatsoever. This child was later adopted by a white couple while Anna May Wong'd character suicided in the ocean. The video also talks about how Anna suffered with her Asian eyes during school years and wanted desperately to transform her appearance.


Another fan video:

This is a semi-professional documentary on Anna May Wong's journey to China in 1936. It is in Chinese and created by a Chinese fan club. This video is interesting because it speaks of Anna in the exact opposite light to those made by Westerners. Being able to understand Mandarin myself, I found this documentary conflicting with the views presented by articles and other writings on her. Whilst doing research for my presentation, the majority of the writing labelled her as an outcast in China and hated by the Chinese nation. This video describes her as a star in China and someone who was very much welcomed when she visited Shanghai. The video shows footage of her going on the set of Chinese film, meeting and conversing with Chinese actors (apparently she picked up Mandarin very fast when she visited), and giving Hollywood advise to the Chinese film industry. Evidently, she was not despised by her nation at all.

Perhaps Anna's reputation was tainted by her misogynistic and exotic roles in the Western world. Her identity was replaced by the evil characters she played. This makes me question whether she was actually 'hated' or not. Did she fit in with the American crowd and was she accepted by her own kind? 

I think she was both assimilated in America and accepted in China. I feel that scholars writing about Anna may have let social and political contexts bound them in their views. Anna was everywhere, she was very much the Hollywood star, both in America and China.

Anna starred in fashion magazines, was photographed regularly, and was a hot topic in the tabloids. Was this all because she was so transgressive and problematic or was it because she was worshipped like every other white Hollywood actress?   

Going through Google images, I see photographs of a much-loved star, not a socially condemned racial 'other'. Sure, her photographs were 'oriental' and different to that of the typical white actress, but that does not mean that they are not beautiful or unworthy of fandom. 

Anna May Wong had an identity, she was the transatlantic female who belonged to two places and was accepted in both. The characters given to her in films may have been conforming to racial and political thought at the time but her identity, as a real person was not a product of that.

The Exclusive World of a Film

Perhaps it is because I am so brainwashed and bounded by the constraints of Hollywood narration but I find it extremely hard to relate or be immersed into a film that does not follow the conventional plot of linear movement. The films we have been viewing in the past weeks were all fragmented films for they contain a mix of unrelated images that constitute a whole. Watching Rose Hobart, Berlin, and Man with a Movie Camera makes me very conscious of the fact that I am actually watching a film that is made from technicalities and is edited to be like so. I feel distant from the images because I am aware of my role as the viewer, I am completely conscious of the fact that I am watching this film and seeing all its purposes through the techniques and camera works. This is a strange experience for me because my usual experiences with film watching are complete and total enmeshment into the filmic world that I am seeing. My criterion of judgement for a good film is usually: “did it make me forget who I am and where I was at the time of viewing?”


My own emotional and subjective involvement is integral to my film viewing experience, I prefer to live the film and get to know the protagonist personally through that experience: this is what I have always understood as the ‘experience’ that is required for any film.


The reason behind my disconnection with the films studied recently is, I think, due to the fact that they have no plot or narrative. They were not personalised stories about humans or human experiences, they had other purposes. From one of the readings we had early on it was mentioned that we are extremely visual beings for we live in a visual world of fragmented sequences of images. There are elements of the visual no matter where we go (even the back of bathroom doors!). Although our world is filled with fragmented images, I feel that our perceptions of them are not. I tend to narrate in my own head all the images that I see, I thread them into a linear narrative, a narrative of my day and the contextual elements of those sequential images. Films that contain narratives (not necessarily linear, but ‘explained’ plots) paint for themselves a world of their own. As the viewer I am able to live in that world because of it.

One film that I am particularly immersed in every time I watch it is Amelie. There’s something about French films, or foreign films in general. They require more concentration and engagement because you are an outside trying desperately to see and grasp every meaning. Amelie is a whole world of its own: it’s dark sepia tones, its almost surrealist surroundings and occasional scenes of inanimate objects coming to life, all these constitute the world of Amelie. It’s all very Amelie-ish to me. I feel that I can connect with the protagonist; her desires, her trivial pursuits in life and her results. I see how things happen, why things happen and the consequences. This is probably one of my favourite films because it has such a unique and relatable world of its own. (Creepy American voice over in the trailer, that’s so creepy!)


Maybe I’m just a biased conformist, or have not seen enough avant-gardist films, but this is why I prefer films with an understandable narrative.

Man with the Movie Camera, Camera & Sight

After watching Man with the Movie Camera I had a sudden epiphany of the incredibly abstract and strange experience it is to sit in a cinema and view the lives and experiences of complete strangers. We have completely naturalised this experience into something that feels absolutely natural and acceptable. We are able to intrude into the lives of someone we have never met or heard of, we are able to witness the most intimate moments with manipulated romanticism and affect. This all resulted from the invention of the camera, and this, I feel, is what is being explored and utilised in the film Man with the Movie Camera.

This film questions the notion and experience of watching a reel of film being rolled in a dark room. The strange feelings of intrusion as a group of people sit silently watching the public and private everyday lives of the people living in Odessa. This is the first thing that flashed in my mind as I watched Man with the Movie Camera: the camera acting as a human eye intruding on the lives of people. This was introduced to me in the very first scene of the film (past all the introductions of the actual cinema, orchestra and viewers, which seems almost a cliché technique of showing a film within a film), the scene of the young woman in her bedroom, getting up in the morning. Vertov used the camera as a tool to document a universal language of everyday life. This purpose also adds to the intrusive feeling as the secondary audience (as we were introduced as the audience watching another audience in the cinema); we are essentially watching someone being watched. The beginning montage of the sequential shots of the comparison between private and public life of the city seems intrusive and almost pornographic in the detail that it exposes about the everyday life of a city. The woman (who is revisited throughout the film) getting out of bed, the homeless sleeping on the streets, the small details of the city and its structures, the babies in the hospital, the mannequin, the shop displays, these all seem overexposed as we are forced into a detailed visual narrative of the objects and figures of everyday life. This is consistent throughout the rest of the film, we revisit some of these subjects, we are introduced to new ones, we see a woman giving birth, and we ride on a carriage with a laughing lady.

The camera allows the detail that is unnoticed and naturalised to the city’s inhabitants, these things are integral to the everyday city life but they are not what you see on big screens and photography. Through Vertov’s camera we are able to see the naked city, the parts which constitute this city and the public and private spheres of the city that is fascinatingly detailed and personal. These sequential collections of random parts of Odessa allow us as the viewer to interpret our own structural whole. We create a city as we engage with these objects and subjects. 

Perhaps this is what Vertov was trying to do. In showing all the technicalities of camera and film (later in the film) he is allowing us the control of interpretation. By exposing the city and its inhabitants he allows the viewer to piece together our own view of this city. He does not attempt to narrate a story from dusk till dawn, nor does he manipulate our senses with dramatisations and aestheticization of these images made into film. The mood is set by the rhythmic music but he allows us to be distanced from its effect through his showing of the mechanical processes of film.

Ultimately, the camera becomes our eyes, Vertov aligns our subjective sight intimately with the sight of his ‘faithful’ camera. Vertov wants us to see the everyday life of Odessa with the naked eye of the camera, to see it like an observatory eye, allowing us to become the flanuers viewing the past from the future.

Sophia.