ABSTRACT
Sometime in the mid-1990s, while pondering on the reception of Hong Kong genre films in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, I was miffed at the way in which the local cine-cognoscenti turned martial arts and ghost films into zany and inscrutable objects from a distant and wacky culture-objects that they loved, and loved to lampoon. Knowledge of these “cult” films was cul tural capital in these cine-subcultures, raising the hipster quotient of their unofficial members. In a mild fit of Asianist outrage, I noted that martial arts films were typically described as “cool”—a glib designation that was ulti mately dismissive “of the reality of Hong Kong, of the lived experiences and sensibilities of its people.”1 An urban, and largely urbane, North American audience fondly ascribed cult value to these “foreign” films through, ironically, a process of cultural devaluation. Similar poles of fascination and disdain would come into play over the next decade with respect to “Bollywood musicals,” as these self-styled cosmopolitan audiences discov ered and learned to love and laugh at yet another alien culture industry.
