Can East Asian Cinema Save Area Studies?
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, New York University This paper examines some of the basic terms of discussions on East Asian cinema and the critical assumptions underlying them. The emergence of East Asian cinema as a desired object of academic conferences and research is certainly a result of real changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of films in the East Asian region since the 1990s. At the same time, hardly a simple reflection of the new socio-cultural reality engendered by East Asian cinema, it is closely tied to the transformation of the university and the end of an intellectual paradigm based on the centrality of the nation-state. Nevertheless, for the most part, the study of East Asian cinema has not been able either to articulate distinct intellectual agendas or to make a case for its own critical relevancy, and such key concepts as globalization, transnational flows, a shared popular cultural sphere, a regional aesthetic style, and cross-cultural comparison are often u
