Transnational cult paratexts: Exploring audience readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme brand

TY - JOUR

T1 - Transnational cult paratexts

T2 - Exploring audience readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme brand

AU - Pett, Emma Jane

N1 - © 2016 The Author(s).

PY - 2016/11/28

Y1 - 2016/11/28

N2 - Recent scholarship on the branding of contemporary cult Asian cinema for western audiences has frequently drawn on Said’s seminal treatise Orientalism as a means to critique sensationalist marketing materials. Whilst the excessive character of paratexts produced by film distributors such as Tartan clearly facilitates such readings, in this article I argue that this oft-repeated criticism becomes problematic when employed indiscriminately to theorise, by extension, the audiences for these films. Drawing on a recent empirical study of responses to Asian Extreme cinema and its distribution in the UK and North America, I offer an intervention in this debate by constructing a more nuanced interpretation of the ways in which cult audiences articulate their attraction to cinematic representations of cultural difference

AB - Recent scholarship on the branding of contemporary cult Asian cinema for western audiences has frequently drawn on Said’s seminal treatise Orientalism as a means to critique sensationalist marketing materials. Whilst the excessive character of paratexts produced by film distributors such as Tartan clearly facilitates such readings, in this article I argue that this oft-repeated criticism becomes problematic when employed indiscriminately to theorise, by extension, the audiences for these films. Drawing on a recent empirical study of responses to Asian Extreme cinema and its distribution in the UK and North America, I offer an intervention in this debate by constructing a more nuanced interpretation of the ways in which cult audiences articulate their attraction to cinematic representations of cultural difference

U2 - 10.1080/20403526.2016.1251679

DO - 10.1080/20403526.2016.1251679

M3 - Article

SN - 2040-3526

VL - 8

SP - 35

EP - 48

JO - Transnational Cinemas

JF - Transnational Cinemas

IS - 1

ER -