Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture, in a way an auteur study, investigates the subject of culture in the context of globalization. Wendy Larson's landmark analysis is definitely not a survey of Zhang Yimou as a praised or vilified Chinese film director who often provokes heated debates and discussions domestically and internationally. Rather, Larson delves into nine of Zhang's films, either controversial or understudied, to argue strongly that these films “center on the significance, potential, and limitations” of the cultural in “postsocialist China” (p. 2). The films themselves are explorations into the way culture is working in China when confronted by tremendous pressure from the ongoing rapid changes related to globalization, consumerism, capitalism, and an information society. Larson shifts our attention from “various forms of cultural difference or anything that could be called Chinese culture” to the way in which literature and film can theorize and pinpoint...

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