Third-culture Huàllywood: or, 'Chimerica' the cinematic return

Abstract

Recognising that ‘Chinese cinema(s)’ have spearheaded calls for a ‘critical transnationalism’ I here take the recent neologism Huallywood on its word—but not its tone—to posit an alternative ‘third culture’ “Hàullywood” (from huà (化) drawing in associations with change and transformation) model that helps us understand the making and marketing of mega-budget and mega-revenue transborder films produced in-between what we might call global Hollywood and transnational Huallywood. Seeing Huallywood as a multi-faceted assemblage, I also harnesses the mythical figure of the chimera as a conceptual guide, which in turn becomes articulated to discussion of a cinematic ‘return’ of the economic behemoth that the historian Niall Ferguson’s and economist Moritz Schularick christened Chimerica. Films such as The Great Wall, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story serve as illustrative examples of what a Chimerican or Hàullywood cinema looks like today: this being neither Hollywood or Huallywood, but rather composed of bits and pieces of each. By building its critical arguments through a consideration of news texts and cinematic paratexts, this essay also highlights the importance of studying extra-cinematic media commonly threatened by problems of ‘paratextual ephemerality’; which all the same play an important role in producing cinematic discourses.