Caught between China and Hollywood: the transnational journey of Jing Tian in The Great Wall (2016)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the transnational Chinese female stardom in the wake of the changing Sino-Hollywood relations in the 2010s, taking Jing Tian, the Chinese star who plays the female lead in the Sino-Hollywood coproduction The Great Wall (2016), as an illustrative case. It rejects the popular narrative which presents Jing’s failure to attain stardom in Hollywood as her own lack and an individual incident. Rather, it investigates the ways in which the systemic forces in Hollywood and the negotiations between the Chinese film industry and Hollywood in relation to gender, race, and (trans)nationalism may hold at bay her attempt to establish stardom in Hollywood. It examines Jing’s character and her industrial positioning through the lens of postfeminism and intersectionality. It argues that first, her persona as a ‘sinicised’ postfeminist girl hero suggests a failed negotiation between China and Hollywood, and second, her intersectional identities in the Hollywood industry place her at a disadvantage in this Sino-Hollywood collaboration. By deconstructing Jing’s failure, this article also unravels how Chinese stars were used in a disposable way by Hollywood when the box office performance of the Chinese market remained strong in the 2010s.

KEYWORDS:

• Jing Tian
• transnational stardom
• Chinese stars
• Hollywood
• The Great Wall

In the 2010s, the booming Chinese film market attracted increasing interest from the Hollywood film industry. As a strategy to engage with the market, Hollywood cast a growing number of Chinese stars, especially female stars, as a cultural emblem and marketing device in mainstream blockbusters (Yu 2015, p. 104, Su 2016, p. 63). Whilst this industrial practice appeared conducive to promoting Chinese female stars in Hollywood cinema, the roles given to them were predominantly perfunctory and at times cringeworthy, failing to cohere with the narrative. In effect, their characters, bodies, and performances were tailored to take effect on the Chinese market. In this way, Hollywood simply exploited their stardom in China, rather than investing in them (i.e. utilising transnational stardom as a commercial enterprise in the conventional sense). As such, Chinese female stars had limited prospects for establishing transnational stardom in Hollywood by playing these roles. Furthermore, their superfluous presence was constantly mocked by Chinese audiences as ‘huaping’ (flower vases), a cultural perception which negatively impacted their domestic stardom.

Jing Tian was one of these female stars who appeared in Hollywood blockbusters during this time. However, unlike her contemporaries, Jing did not just assume an insignificant role – such as her presence in Kong: Skull Island (2017) – that called into question the feasibility of establishing star status in Hollywood. She also assumed a major role in The Great Wall (2016), and a meaningful, supporting role in Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018). Notably, her role in The Great Wall was a marked exception, compared to those perfunctory roles assigned to other Chinese female stars. The film arguably offered Jing one of the most significant characters and approximately a third of the screen time. Additionally, as the female lead, she played opposite the Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon. Jing was presented with a greater opportunity to establish transnational stardom, as Hollywood seemed to demonstrate a sense of ‘investment’ in her. Despite this, she failed to establish stardom in Hollywood through The Great Wall.

At first glance, the star’s failed venture into Hollywood seems to be an individual incident. In other words, Jing lacks capacity to attain star status in Hollywood. However, this article problematises this narrative of individual failure and explores the ways in which the interplay of gender, race, and Sino-Hollywood negotiations may hold at bay her attempt to attain transnational stardom in Hollywood. Specifically, this article investigates the onscreen and offscreen roles Jing assumed in The Great Wall. First, I examine the narrative and visual construction of her character, including characterisation, narrative function and significance, ideological framing, and visual representation. I explore how Jing’s onscreen image is (re)shaped by the politics of gender and race in contemporary Hollywood and the involvement of the Chinese film industry. In doing so, I focus on the ways in which her character is informed by the representation of the postfeminist girl hero in the West and how it is repurposed to resonate with China’s collectivist heroism. Second, I look at Jing’s positionality in the industry and the cinematic arrangements for her from the production to marketing of The Great Wall. I explore how the multiple identities Jing possesses – as a woman, a racial minority, a Chinese star and a transnational worker – shed light on her positioning within the institutional structure of Hollywood, as well as her employment condition as Hollywood negotiated with the discursive power of the Chinese film industry. This article argues that Jing’s star image and labour in The Great Wall are caught between the Sino-Hollywood industrial negotiations, which are beyond her control as an individual star and a transnational worker. Jing’s transnational journey, including her transnational image and employment condition in The Great Wall, presents a rare but illuminating case to unpack the transnational Chinese female stardom in the wake of the changing Sino-Hollywood relations in the 2010s.

Jing’s multiple identities are crucial to note prior to examining her on- and off-screen roles in The Great Wall. Here, it is useful to employ the concept of intersectionality to unpack the specific conditions she encountered in Hollywood. Coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (1989), intersectionality emerged as a ‘heuristic term’ to address ‘the vexed dynamics of difference and the solidarities of sameness in the context of antidiscrimination and social movement politics’ (Cho et al. 2013, p. 787). It raises questions about the limitations of viewing inequality in a given society through a single axis of social division, as this approach may fail to fully articulate the discriminations experienced by social groups with overlapping identities (Crenshaw 2016, n. p.). Intersectionality highlights that the social inequality is conditioned by ‘many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. […] [B]e it race or gender or class, [it is] shaped by many axes that work together and influence each other’ (Collins and Bilge 2016, p. 2). For example, as Crenshaw observes, black women are discriminated from the workforce as ‘women who are Black and as Blacks who are women’ (Cho et al. 2013, p. 790). A black female, in this sense, possesses intersectional identities as a black and a woman. Her specific situation determines that a single-axed division would not suffice, as she suffers ‘unique and distinct kinds of burdens’ stemming from her dual identities (Crenshaw 2016, n. p.). Intersectionality recognises the complexity of social identities and therefore serves as an analytical tool to examine how the structured intersectional discriminations are operated on those social groups with overlapping identities (Crenshaw 2016, n. p.). While intersectionality originates from a sociological background, it serves as a valuable framework for elucidating Jing’s specific conditions and experiences within Hollywood.

The acknowledgement of the complexity of social identities suggests that the examination of intersectional situations should always be contextually based (Crenshaw 2016, n. p.). Therefore, the examination of Jing’s specific situation necessitates considerations of her gender, race, and her Chinese national background and how these factors collectively shape her filmic persona and employment conditions in Hollywood. On the one hand, as a woman and a racial minority, she will encounter institutionalised oppressions in the structure of the Hollywood film industry. Historically, female stars have been situated and perceived within different frameworks compared to their male counterparts, in which the objectification and sexualisation of female stars remain two dominant concerns (Hollinger 2012, pp. 9–13). Hollywood has also established and perpetuated a cinematic racial order that privileges whiteness through onscreen representations and industrial practices (Denzin 2002). Within this structure, Asian actors have been subject to onscreen racial stereotyping and industrial oppressions relating to role segregation, stratification, and delimitation (Xing 2009). On the other hand, her identity as a Chinese national will complicate the industrial constraints faced by minorities in Hollywood. Specifically, her industrial positioning will be complicated by the discursive power of the Chinese film industry, following Wanda’s acquisition of Legendary in 2016 (Frater 2016) and particularly China’s investment in this film project (McClintock and Galloway 2017). As such, the negotiating power, facilitated by the financial investment of the Chinese film industry and the Chinese market, can contribute to reshaping her on- and off-screen roles which to an extent liberates her from the institutional structures of Hollywood, yet simultaneously such intervention may impose new restraints on her image and career.

The rhetoric of girl power: Jing’s filmic persona in The Great Wall

The Great Wall is an action-adventure-fantasy monster film coproduced by Legendary, Universal, Le Vision and China Film Group Corporation, with China and Hollywood respectively accounting for fifty percent of the investment (McClintock and Galloway 2017). As a coproduction, the film involved large scale of collaboration and negotiation between the two film industries. The coproduction nature determines the complexity in Jing’s role as a Chinese warrior woman, as it needs to align with the interests of Hollywood and China, while also speaking to a global audience (given the global mainstream distribution of the film). In this film, Jing assumes the female lead character Commander Lin Mae, who leads an all-women division within an army, but also engages in battles to combat alien monsters. The role was primarily connected to the rhetoric of girl power and gender equality in the US market (McMillan 2016). The star herself highlighted these two aspects when introducing her character:

She’s a general in this army which is called The Nameless Order, and she’s such a [sic] strong, brave, determined. One of the things that I love the most about the story is the equality between men and women in leadership roles. I think that respect that all of these warriors have for one another regardless of gender is something that I wish we could see more in film and in real life for that matter, so audiences will see this character brings a lot of girl power to the movie.

(Jing, quoted in JoBlo Movie Trailers 2016, my emphasis)

The idea of girl power grew out of the ‘pro-girl’ rhetoric in the 1990s, which coincided with the third wave feminism. It was popularised through one of the feminist movements, Riot Grrrl, which celebrates young women’s agency and empowerment and encourages them to be powerful (Riordan 2001, pp. 279–280). However, while the notion of girl power inspired by Riot Grrrl originally contains a feminist agenda, the process of commodification in media and popular culture has made it a rhetoric of feminist identity, rather than a feminist politics (Riordan 2001, p. 292, Hains 2009, p. 90). Taking the Spice Girls as an example, Riordan argues that the girl group, rather than celebrating diverse representations of women’s bodies, capitalised on a constructed and commodified image of female beauty that conforms to patriarchal standards (2001, pp. 290–291). As the specific brand of girl power represented by the Spice Girls seeks to appeal to the widest audience and maximise profit, the political essence of Riot Grrrl, which calls for structural change for girls and women, is diluted (Riordan 2001, p. 294). In this sense, the rhetoric of girl power in media and popular culture can be understood as speaking to a postfeminist cultural landscape.

To better understand Jing’s onscreen image, it is useful to reflect on postfeminism and how the notion of girl power is associated with it. Postfeminism emerged in the 1980s after the second wave feminist movements. Depending on the ways in which scholars interpret the prefix ‘post’, postfeminism has been endowed with different meanings (Genz and Brabon 2009, pp. 3–4). However, the relationship between postfeminism and feminism has frequently captured scholarly attention. Angela McRobbie (2004) characterises this relationship as a complex entanglement, in which feminism is both recognised as a common sense and met with objection and hostility (p. 256). In other words, this entanglement functions in an ‘acknowledgment/repudiation dynamic that simultaneously includes and excludes, accepts and refutes feminism’ (Genz 2006, p. 335). Given the inclusion of feminist elements in the postfeminist discourse, postfeminism cannot be sufficiently construed as a pure ‘backlash’ against feminism (Gill and Scharff 2011, pp. 3–4). Nonetheless, McRobbie (2004, p. 255, 2009, p. 1) argues that although feminist ideas are included, postfeminism remains, by its nature, an anti-feminist sentiment which would lead to the ‘undoing of feminism’. As she further explains, ‘postfeminism positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasise that it is no longer needed’ (McRobbie 2004, p. 255). Similarly, the commodified notion of girl power, while incorporating feminist elements as it encourages women to strive for success, putatively assumes that gender equality has been achieved, and as such ‘it is just a matter of exercising one’s girl power’ (Stasia 2007, p. 240). Jing’s reference to her character as possessing strong qualities, taking a leadership role, and representing gender equality echoes a postfeminist character construction.

Rosalind Gill proposed to understand postfeminism as a sensibility (Gill 2007), by which the term can be treated as ‘an object of critical analysis’ and therefore ‘can be used analytically’ to examine an increasingly popularising social and cultural landscape particularly in relation to media’s representation of women, femininity and feminism that is postfeminist (Gill and Scharff 2011, p. 4). Gill identifies an array of interrelated themes in popular culture that can help to navigate a postfeminist text, among which ‘a focus on individualism, choice and empowerment’, ‘a sexualisation of culture’ and ‘an emphasis on consumerism and commodification of [sexual] difference’ (Gill 2007, p. 149) bear resemblance to the rhetoric of girl power. According to Anita Harris (2004), girl power has a strong association with discourses of ‘ambition, power, and success’, delivered in ‘a sexy, brash, and individualised’ way which highlights young women’s independence and self-assurance of ‘hav[ing] (or at least buy[ing]) it all’ (p. 17). In The Great Wall, Jing’s character Lin Mae seamlessly mirrors the postfeminist construction of a girl hero in both narrative and visual terms, articulated through the rhetoric of girl power.

Narratively, Lin is depicted as a warrior woman who possesses both physical strength and intellectual prowess. She is situated within a patriarchal structure during the Song Dynasty, under the reign of Emperor Renzong. The kingdom is guarded by the Nameless Order, an army stationed along the Great Wall to defend against the Tao Tei, a kind of voracious monsters in Chinese mythology that emerge every 60 years to attack. The Nameless Order, led by male General Shao, is predominantly male-dominated, with men comprising four-fifths of its forces. The Crane Corps, the one division left, is comprised entirely of women, led by Lin as their commander. Amidst four male commanders and under the leadership of a male general, Lin stands out as the sole female commander tasked with responsibilities identical to those of men – defending the Great Wall and safeguarding the patriarchal kingdom from the threat posed by the alien monsters. As the story progresses, she is appointed as the General of the Nameless Order to lead not only female soldiers but also male soldiers, following the death of the General Shao. She rises to a leadership role within a male-dominated environment and even surpasses male commanders to lead a group of men. The transition of leadership occurs naturally, with no resistance from her male counterparts. In addition to this, Lin’s authority remains unchallenged within the army. In her capacity as a warrior woman, Lin displays her physical strength by eliminating the queen monster (with the assistance from Garin, the male protagonist in the film), ultimately securing the victory of humanity. Her power is not only demonstrated through physical capacity but also her intelligence. She is adept at communicating and translating English, a skill that sets her apart from other commanders and soldiers. In this story world, with her leadership abilities, physical strength, and intellect, Lin sits at the top of the army, experiences no oppression as a female, and thrives in a male-dominated world. It is a character which embodies the rhetoric of girl power.

In the meantime, despite her achievements, as a woman who occupies a position traditionally reserved for men in a patriarchal society, her power is carefully reined in to prevent it from challenging or threatening the authority of men. In the narrative, it is achieved through the reinstatement of her subordinate position and the display of her femininity. First, while she is not discriminated or oppressed in the army, she has a male figure who guides, protects, and/or rewards her. In the first half of the film, General Shao is presented as a quasi-father figure to her. Lin is taught by him, reflected in Shao’s line ‘You grew up in the Nameless Order. I’ve taught you many things, and you have been learning’. She is protected by him; Shao dies as he protects her from the ambush of a Tao Tei. Her general post is given by him on his deathbed. In the latter half of the film, this role is transferred to the emperor, who promotes her to the position of General of Northwest Territory. Throughout the narrative, Lin wields power, but not to a degree that threatens the existing social structure. In addition to this, her power is ultimately employed to safeguard the patriarchal kingdom and uphold the emperor’s reign. Second, despite being powerful, she is not presented killing a monster independently without the protection, or aid from the male characters such as Shao and Garin. Whilst there are scenes indicating that she kills monsters (i.e. she jumps off the Wall with spears and comes back alive in the first battle), when it comes to confronting real monsters, she is either in collaboration with Shao or Garin, or otherwise ensnared by a group of monsters and in need of rescue. Clearly, her power is weakened, especially in comparison with that of men. However, it is worth noting that her collaboration with others is uncommon for typical girl hero protagonists in Hollywood films. This narrative arrangement can be attributed to China’s consideration of avoiding the presentation of individual heroism. In addition to this, it is also linked to the dynamics of transnational star power between Damon and Jing, which I will discuss in the next section. Third, she also displays vulnerability, a trait conventionally associated with femininity in a patriarchal culture. She is the only one who cries emotionally when Shao dies, with tears streaming down her cheeks, while other male commanders merely appear sorrowful. These narrative arrangements are in line with a postfeminist construction of Hollywood’s action heroines in the way that ‘she is softened, not hardened, […] [with her power being contained] within the parameters allowed by patriarchal discourse’ (Stasia 2007, p. 238).

Apart from the narrative, the visual representation of Lin is postfeminist through the way her body is objectified and sexualised to cater to the visual pleasure of male audiences. This is evident in the sartorial emphasis of her fit, feminine and sexualised body. Though she appears in two sets of costume, I will concentrate on the blue combat suit which represents her division, as it is the one that she wears throughout the battles against Tao Tei monsters. This combat suit is designed by Mexican designer Mayes C. Rubeo. According to Rubeo, this design takes into account two primary factors – its utility as an airborne combat suit and its aesthetics as a military uniform (quoted in Haas 2017). For the former, because these female warriors are required to jump off the Wall, it cannot be stiff or bulky (Rubeo, quoted in Haas 2017). Given that mobility is the central concern in the air, both the armour and chainmail adhere to this code; the armour is form-fitting, like a diving suit, with no excess parts that would impede mobility when flying down; the chainmail is scaly shaped, fitting snugly to the body and pliable enough to ensure agility. For the latter, the dominant hue is a colour of blue which resembles the sky, a military strategy which provides camouflage for female soldiers (Rubeo, quoted in Haas 2017). The blue armour, instead of covering her entire body, only enfolds her shoulders, breasts, waist, and part of her arms and legs. Also, whilst the armour and the underlying chainmail envelop her female body, the cobalt blue of the chainmail creates a distinct layer that stands out against the vibrant, shimmering blue of the armour. Consequently, the reflective blue of the armour highlights her breasts, waist, and legs. In other words, although the body is fully concealed under the chainmail, the armour ‘undresses’ her: the brassiere, crooked belt, mini-skirt-like guards covering her outer thighs, and pads surrounding her legs collectively accentuate her feminine body curves, and, through the colour contrast with the chainmail, the armour ‘exposes’ the rest of her body, notably her midriff and groin. It is a tight-fitting, in some way revealing costume that features a fit, sexualised female body.

Furthermore, Lin’s moving body is spectacularised and/or sexualised for the visual pleasure of male audiences. First, her face is well preserved throughout the film to maintain her ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (see Mulvey 1989, p. 19). It remains by and large pristine and is (deliberately) kept away from scarring. Second, when Lin engages in action, her movements are graceful and balletic, adhering to traditional gendered expectations where women abstain from any ‘unladylike’ behaviour (Purse 2011a, p. 82). When she leaps from the Crane rig and executes multiple somersaults before returning to the springboard, her movements are elegant, agile, and pleasing to look at. Although performing these gravity-defying moves demands considerable physical exertion, she maintains her composure, as evidenced by her calm expressions and steady breathing. As noted by Stasia, while the 1980s’ female heroes present a functional body, the body of postfeminist girl heroes is mainly spectacle (2007, p. 243). Furthermore, Lin’s moving body is also sexualised. For example, in the sequence where she skydives down the Wall to confront the monster, the cinematography sexualises her moving body (see Legendary 2016b).¹ It is a sequence featured in both the second trailer and the film. From this angle, her breasts and outstretched arms dominate half of the frame, drawing the primary attention of spectators away from the blurry swarm of monsters and artillery fire. Instead of visualising the danger of her act, the positioning of the camera encourages the (male) audience to seek visual pleasure from her moving, protruding breasts. In this sense, she becomes a ‘sexualised object before subject’ (Stasia 2007, p. 243).

As I have demonstrated, in both narrative and visual terms, Jing’s filmic persona appears to be mainly informed by postfeminist girl heroes Hollywood has produced since the late 1990s. While the action women have appeared on Hollywood screen since the late 1970s, there was a perceived change of representation at the turn of the century, where the action female heroes in the 1980s who possess an androgynous, muscularised body were eclipsed by an ‘explicitly glamorous, sexualised [girl] version’ (Tasker 2015, p. 68). This shift of representation coincided with the advent of a postfeminist culture (Stasia 2007, p. 237). As Sherrie A. Inness argues, the new representation of girl heroes, as progressive and liberating as it may first appear, often bears conservative norms over gender, race, class, and sexuality, hovering within a narrow milieu of prescribed social boundaries (2004, p. 8). At the visual level, they embody the conventional standards of physical beauty and alluring sexuality associated with traditional femininities; they are beautiful, young, slim, shapely, and often-but-not-exclusively white and heterosexual (O’Day 2004, pp. 205–206). When they perform tasks, their appearance often takes precedence over their actions. They often maintain pristine facial features and impervious bodily conditions, executing their actions in a graceful and balletic manner that align with normative femininity (Purse 2011a, 2011b). These girl heroes absorb the male-identified standard, where their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey 1989, p. 19) is prioritised. At the narrative level, these girl heroes are often portrayed as powerful figures who survive and triumph in great style, yet they frequently fall short of interrogating the patriarchal social order or voicing their indignation, resistance, and retaliation against (white) male oppression (O’Day 2004, p. 216). These girl heroes, under the guise of female empowerment, merely rearticulate dominant patriarchal and capitalist values, rather than ‘substantially disrupting power relations’ (Riordan 2001, p. 282). In this sense, the representation of postfeminist girl heroes substitutes a collective feminist politics with an individualist discourse of female empowerment, which rarely includes a critique of patriarchy. As the textual analysis of her character reveals, Hollywood constructs Jing’s filmic persona in a way that is significantly influenced by postfeminist discourses.

Where girl power meets Chinese warrior: industrial negotiations of a transnational star image

To an extent, Jing playing the role of a girl hero can be considered not only a progressive onscreen image but also an industrial arrangement for Chinese actors, as far as the racialised politics in Hollywood is concerned. As one of the producers Peter Loehr commented, ‘there is no mafia guy, there is no triad guy, [and] there is no prostitute’ (quoted in Qin 2016) in this film. Loehr’s statement was in response to the notorious onscreen (mis)representation of the Asian race in Hollywood. The cinematic racial order in the Hollywood film industry has led to discriminatory practices against Asian actors. As Xing observed, Asian actors were often constrained by the limited variety of roles available to them and the lack of depth and complexity in those roles (2009, pp. 133–138). As a result, Asian actors’ characters are confined to a series of generic stereotypes predicated on an overarching discourse of ‘yellow peril’. Noted by Gina Marchetti (1993), the discourse of yellow peril draws upon ‘medieval fears of Genghis Khan and Mongolian invasions of Europe’ and encapsulates ‘racist terror of alien cultures, sexual desires, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East’ (p. 2). The yellow peril, as she contends, ‘rests on a fantasy that projects Euroamerican desires and dreads onto the alien other’ (Marchetti 1993, p. 2).

The desire for, and dread of, the Asian female other has been notoriously coded in cultural representations such as the China Doll, the Madame Butterfly, the Lotus Blossom and the Dragon Lady. In the representations of the China Doll, the Madame Butterfly, and the Lotus Blossom, Chinese women are constructed as servile, submissive, and dainty sex objects (Espiritu 2012, p. 4). By comparison, in the representation of the Dragon Lady, Chinese women are depicted as desirable, deceitful, and dangerous, who ‘could poison a man as easily as she could seduce him’ (Espiritu 2012, p. 10). These two contrasting representations are dominant and enduring types that have informed the Chinese female in Hollywood cinema for decades (Mullings 1994, pp. 279–280). In both stereotypes, the sexuality of Chinese female is exploited; the docile China Doll is often framed as a prostitute to fulfil white males’ desire, whereas the castrating Dragon Lady makes use of her sexuality for her evil scheme. These two one-dimensional caricatures of Asian women perpetuate the representation of ‘sensuous, promiscuous, [and] untrustworthy’ Asian women in Hollywood cinema (Espiritu 2012, p. 10). In this sense, Jing’s image as a girl hero broke away from the stereotypical roles associated with Chinese women that have persisted in Hollywood’s history. Simultaneously, at a cultural moment where Hollywood was actively seeking to engage with the Chinese film market, and more importantly in this specific case where the Chinese film industry was directly involved in the production process, the character’s narrative significance and Jing’s leading role in the film highlighted a sharp contrast to the discriminatory industrial practices that Hollywood has historically imposed on Asian actors.

However, as Jing’s image actively embodies the notion of girl power, her Chinese specificity is erased (as much as it is ‘presented’). At first glance, it appears that her image as a Chinese girl hero is indicative of Hollywood’s investment (i.e. breaking the racialised politics in the structure of Hollywood), as postfeminist girl heroes are usually white by default. However, the inclusion of her Chinese identity cannot be simply understood as an investment in her. As Sarah Banet-Weiser (2018) alerts us, different logics and processes run behind a politics of visibility and an economy of visibility, where in the former visibility is ‘a means to an end’, yet in the latter visibility is ‘the end’ (p. 23). Therefore, the key point is not so much about visibility itself, but ‘how visibility is managed and controlled’ (Banet-Weiser 2018, p. 24, emphasis in original). Just as the idea of feminism and the feminist identity are included in the discourse of postfeminism, the idea of race and the racial identity can also be included and commodified (Banet-Weiser 2007, Butler 2013). From this perspective, the incorporation of Jing’s Chinese identity on screen was not so much an investment in her, but rather an exploitation of her Chinese identity.

It is important to consider that Jing’s girl hero persona was entirely excogitated by a group of white, male screenwriters in Hollywood, including Max Brooks, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who oversaw the story, along with Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro and Tony Gilroy, who penned the script (IMDb 2024b). In this process, Jing’s character was constructed within the structure of the Hollywood film industry, with minimal involvement from China (at least judging from the publicly available information). In this sense, this Chinese girl hero is a conception based on a Western imagination of Chinese women. Her Chinese face, ‘Chinese’ costume, her warrior woman identity and her use of the Chinese language in the film only serve as a series of superficial representations of ‘China’. At the core, Jing’s onscreen image is a formulaic product under the slogan of girl power. In this representation, Hollywood seeks to infuse a Chinese woman’s (Jing’s) body with Western popular cultural elements that may potentially resonate with an American audience, reimagining Chinese femininity within a postfeminist frame.

As much as this is a formulaic, clichéd construction, the postfeminist girl hero has a proven track record of catapulting female actors (if not exclusively white) to Hollywood stardom and career success. In this sense, if Jing’s persona is a replica of the postfeminist girl hero inside out, her failure warrants more investigation into not just the structural issues within Hollywood, but also the involvement of the Chinese film industry and how it was also put in dialogue with the idea of transnational stardom. As a Sino-Hollywood coproduction, the film must respond to the interests of the Chinese film industry. As Chris Homewood (2021) notes, while Hollywood studios sought to engage more with the lucrative Chinese market, China, in turn, capitalised on the global influence of Hollywood to ‘communicate a favourable [national] image to foreign publics and, in so doing, build soft power, especially in the West’ (p. 97). Given the collaborative nature of The Great Wall, this imperative of disseminating a positive image became more evident. This ideological undertone was reflected in the narrative through the staunch belief of Chinese soldiers in patriotism, altruism, and collectivism; and in action it was manifested in their bravery in fighting flesh-eating monsters, making sacrifice for the greater good, and defending the kingdom.

The need to reflect Chinese values suggests that as the most highlighted Chinese character in the film, Jing’s role is also expected to convey something Chinese that is discursively meaningful to audiences more than just her Chinese face, body, and Mandarin. In a cross-cultural context, her words and actions serve as more effective means than her bodily traits in the meaning-making process of incorporating Chinese ethos and values. The film responded to the Chinese film industry’s need for a positive national image through a dedicated scene where Lin lectures Garin, the self-interested, greedy mercenary who fights for money rather than honour, about the notion of ‘xinren’ (trust) on the Wall. The notion of xinren encompasses Chinese ethos and ideologies of nationalism, collectivism, patriotism, and altruism. Lin says, ‘in this army, we fight for more than food or money. We give our lives to something more. Xinren is our flag. Trust in each other, in all ways, at all times’. These lines not only educate Garin but also communicate to audiences in cinemas, that Chinese soldiers, and by extension China, fight for the good of others, honour, and the country. It emphasises the importance of collective interests and cooperation. In this sense, Jing’s role emerges as the incarnation of these ethos and values China upholds and transmits a positive image of China as a nation to a global audience via the powerful distribution pipelines of Hollywood.

However, the need to sinicise the girl hero to bear collective features runs counter to the individualistic core of the postfeminist girl power in this character. It creates a split in Jing’s character and further impinges on the way she behaves in the narrative. As I have demonstrated earlier, she is never presented killing monsters on her own. Instead, she is presented in collaboration with General Shao, her fellow soldiers, or Garin while doing so. Even in the scene where she appears alone when jumping off the Wall, the presence of loop and straps attached to her body always reminds us of collaboration, as another fellow soldier is there to pull her up. This incoherence is particularly visible in the scene where she kills the queen monster, which is the climax of the film. Despite her assertion that ‘I’ve trained for this my whole life’, she does not act alone. Instead, she collaborates with Garin, who throws a magnet to immobilise the monsters surrounding the queen, which consequently allows her to take a clear shot at the queen monster. While it is her who delivers the final blow and clinches the victory of humanity, it is not her individual triumph as a girl hero. While this narrative arrangement could be interpreted as containing the power of the girl hero, the girl hero protagonist in a traditional Hollywood film would commonly tackle challenges as such by herself, because that is her moment and the ultimate confirmation of her girl power. Simultaneously, the narrative that arranges Garin and Lin working together results in confusion and debates on the narrative significance of the two characters. Based on the various hints in the plot, it has been Garin who demonstrates more capacity in doing this. By presenting this vital moment in a Chinese way, the heroic moment which typically glorifies individual heroism was downplayed. This cinematic arrangement blurred the ownership of this moment between Garin and Lin and by extension between Damon and Jing as individual stars. Consequently, while constructed as a postfeminist girl hero in a Western framework, Jing’s character did not entirely adhere to an individualistic rhetoric. While playing this character, Jing’s body and performance were embroiled in, and constrained by, the broader industrial negotiations between the two industries. In this light, her failure to attain transnational stardom through this complicated character should not be viewed as an individual incident, but rather a result of systemic issues linked to the failed negotiations between China and Hollywood.

(In)visibility off screen: seeking transnational stardom in Hollywood

A key feature that differentiates Jing’s role from other postfeminist girl heroes in Hollywood cinema is her secondary position to the male protagonist Garin (Damon). Lin’s secondary position (and by extension Jing’s) is reflected in the narrative in two major ways. Firstly, the storyline is revolved around Damon’s role Garin, rather than Jing’s Lin. The story unfolds from the perspective of Garin, a European mercenary who travels to ancient China searching for a deadly weapon (gunpowder). As he familiarises himself with China’s cultures and values, Jing’s role serves as his translator, moral guide, and his potential romantic interest. Garin’s primary narrative significance was also confirmed by one of the film’s producers Peter Loehr, who commented that ‘he drives the plot’ (quoted in Qin 2016). Secondly, the display of competence (action stunt) is skewed to put more emphasis on Damon’s role, rather than that of Jing. The film allocates four dedicated scenes for Garin to demonstrate his exceptional archery skills (the first battle, the dining hall, the second battle, and the third/final battle scenes); three of these scenes involve significant confrontations with monsters, except for the dining hall scene. Whereas for Jing’s role, this depiction of her competence as a female soldier is significantly shorter, with a total action exhibition limited to merely two to three minutes. In addition to this, her action stunt is presented with less violence. Clearly, the film does not give enough attention and narrative space for Jing’s role to fully display and exercise her girl power. Unlike the stories of her postfeminist predecessors, which often focus primarily on the girls’ growing and maturing, Lin (the Chinese star/transnational performer Jing) is eclipsed by the male protagonist Garin (the Hollywood/transnational star Damon) in The Great Wall. Jing/Lin’s particular situation – as a postfeminist girl hero in a secondary position – is illuminating in terms of how Hollywood’s postfeminist gender and racial politics are intertwined with the industry’s considerations of transnational stardom.

Apart from the filmic arrangements I have demonstrated above, Jing was not promoted as a star by the industry. Browsing through the American mainstream trade press such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, it is not difficult to discover that the headlines in relation to The Great Wall have been commonly associated with Matt Damon, and occasionally Zhang Yimou, whose auteur status may be familiar to some American audiences: ‘[…] Matt Damon Epic “The Great Wall”’ (Brzeski 2016), ‘Matt Damon’s “The Great Wall” […]’ (Faughnder and Meyers 2016, McNary 2016), ‘Damon […] on The Great Wall’ (Sims 2016), and ‘Zhang Yimou […] with The Great Wall’ (Wong 2016), to list but a few. In contrast, Jing (as well as other Chinese stars in the cast) is often sidelined in these articles, despite her prominent role in the film. To foreground Damon, according to the director Zhang Yimou, is a marketing strategy ‘to pander to viewers outside China’, based on ‘the way the market is right now’ (quoted in Qin 2017).

The hierarchical order can also be revealed in The Great Wall’s poster in the US market, on which Damon is emphasised in three ways: a) his name is the only one billed at the top; b) his figure occupies the largest proportion in the composition; and c) his character’s talent for archery is prominently highlighted. In comparison, Jing’s figure is half the size of that of Damon, occupying the same space as the other three supporting cast (Pedro Pascal, Zhang Hanyu, and Willem Dafoe). Apart from her blue armour, she receives much less attention as the female lead. From the poster, she is more likely to be considered a supporting role rather than a leading role. The two official trailers in the US market also downplay her importance. In the first trailer (Legendary 2016a), the emphasis is put on the Great Wall (by presenting title cards), the mythological monster (a fleeting silhouette, a green claw, and a roar) and Garin (who narrates the story in the first person), whereas Jing’s name appears in the end, together with other cast members. In the second trailer (Legendary 2016b), while scenes featuring Jing are included, Damon’s scenes still predominate. In both trailers, only Damon’s and Zhang’s names appear in captions between the scenes, and Jing’s name appears in the end, indistinguishable and unidentifiable. In this sense, for general viewers, it is difficult to establish a connection between her name and her appearance. Apparently, it is mutually ‘beneficial’ for both Hollywood and the Chinese film industry to highlight Damon (and to a lesser extent Zhang Yimou) in marketing this film in the US. It is evident that the film primarily relies on Damon’s star power for ticket sales in the US and other international film markets.

This lack of attention to Jing’s character and herself as a star emerging from the Chinese film industry is also evident in the critical reviews of The Great Wall in the US, where Jing’s presence and performance are largely sidelined or neglected. The focus in American reviews tended to be put on Damon and his performance in the film. Jing, on the other hand, was mentioned only in passing. Moreover, what came to the fore in these reviews was her feminine beauty, rather than her ‘girl power’, with critics describing Jing as ‘gorgeous’ (Fetters 2017), ‘photogenic’ (Turan 2017), and ‘comely’ (Zacharek 2017). This skewed focus on her appearance may be attributed to the generic expectation of a postfeminist girl hero, where her appearance takes precedence over her actions. However, it is more plausible that Jing’s presence was rendered secondary, as the film centralised Damon’s stardom and character, which consequently led to a lack of attention to her in American critical reception.²

To some extent, given Jing’s lack of transnational star power, it makes sense that she was not taken as the selling point of the film in the US. However, rather than putting the female lead alongside Damon in the marketing process in the US, the strategy which downplayed Jing’s off-screen presence positions her in an inconsequential status in the Hollywood industry and American reception. It suggests that Hollywood spares very little effort in introducing her as an individual star, or even the co-star, to the American public. In other words, Hollywood shows no clear intention to invest in her, assimilate her, or develop a transnational star out of her, but uses her in a disposable way. It is useful here to briefly bring in the transnational Chinese female star Zhang Ziyi, who rose to stardom in Hollywood in the early 2000s, as a comparative example to illustrate how the sense of ‘investment’ from the Hollywood film industry was lost in the 2010s. The commercial success of the indiewood film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) propelled her to American mainstream audience. Despite the fact that she was lesser known in the American film industry and played a supporting role in this film, Zhang was arguably introduced as a star in the film, alongside the established transnational stars Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh. Noticeably, she was introduced by her name, in addition to her character’s name, in the film’s trailer, making up one of the three names that appeared in the voice over: ‘Sony Pictures Classics proudly presents Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi … ’ (IMDb 2024a). In the case of Zhang, the sense of investment was evident, as the industry sought to employ the idea of transnational stardom as a commercial enterprise through developing her as a transnational star. In contrast, such investment was lost in the case of Jing. For the Hollywood industry, Jing was used, in a disposable way, to embody the rhetoric of girl power (in a sinicised version) and serve Hollywood’s commercial interests in its domestic market and international markets, particularly the Chinese market.

Conclusion

Compared to her contemporaries, Jing stood out as a rather complex star figure in the 2010s, as her transnational journey included playing not only perfunctory but also meaningful and major roles in Hollywood blockbusters. She failed to cross over to Hollywood, despite being presented with a seemingly golden opportunity – playing the female lead in The Great Wall. Through an examination of her onscreen and offscreen roles in this cinematic collaboration between China and Hollywood, this article uncovered the systemic forces at play which inhibited her from establishing transnational stardom in Hollywood. On screen, Hollywood recycled a readily available postfeminist girl hero template to construct a Chinese warrior woman. In its negotiation with the Chinese film industry, Hollywood perfunctorily overlaid the girl hero with Chinese elements, particularly Chinese ethos and values, rendering Jing’s filmic image a sinicised postfeminist girl hero that inherently lacks coherence at its core. In the industry, Jing was not viewed as a potential asset worthy of investment by Hollywood. As such, she was used in a disposable way to engage with the Chinese film industry and market.

Ultimately, it was an amalgamation of the failed negotiations between the two film industries and Hollywood’s disinterest in developing transnational stardom as a commercial enterprise that inhibited Jing from attaining stardom in Hollywood. These forces, which were generated at the structural level, were beyond Jing’s own control as an individual star and a transnational worker. Ironically, ‘empowered’ as her character is in The Great Wall, Jing is ultimately disempowered by the systemic constraints stemming from the Chinese film industry and Hollywood. Whether it is Jing or her contemporaries who assume insignificant roles, their failure arguably boils down to Hollywood’s lack of (interest in) investment in them in the 2010s. In this regard, although Jing appeared to be used differently from her contemporaries, she was also caught in this broader industrial and market conditions that define the transnational journey of Chinese stars. Without the Hollywood industry’s interest in assimilating Chinese stars into its own system, it comes as no surprise that few Chinese stars successfully established transnational stardom in Hollywood during this time.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Sarah Thomas and Dr Katherine Whitehurst for their constructive feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yixuan Feng

Yixuan Feng received her PhD from the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her research explores transnational Chinese female stardom in the context of changing Sino-Hollywood relations in the 2010s.

Notes

1. The sequence capturing female soldiers leaping off the Wall occurs between 00:54 and 00:57 in the trailer.

2. In the sparse number of reviews that did comment on her acting, her performance was accused of being ‘wooden’ and ‘expressionless’ in her exchange with Damon (Lee 2016). However, such a perspective remains open to debate, especially considering the ways in which a transnational performance such as hers should be appraised, as it straddles two performing cultures, styles, and aesthetics (see Yu 2014).