ABSTRACT
Film stars, as spokespeople for the films in which they appear, provide tangible links between film texts and extra-textual discourses and thus play key roles in enabling or discounting particular cultural readings of films. As an illustration of this relationship and the political ramifications of contemporary Chinese cinema, consider an extra-textual event surrounding the historical martial arts film Hero. In an interview published before the film’s release, Hero co-star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai alluded to the film’s “message of peace and human kindness”, then expressed support for the contemporary Chinese government’s 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators, claiming that “what the Chinese government did was right – to maintain stability, which was good for everybody”. Hong Kong human rights activists subsequently criticised Leung, and in a later interview the night of Hero’s Hong Kong premiere, he tried to contextualize his remarks:
I’m just an actor. My interest is in making movies, not politics. When I was doing the interview, I was trying to talk from the perspective of [Hero character] Broken Sword. It was not my personal viewpoint.
