Hi all, I'm a frequent lurker here on the site (although you may have heard from Douglas Wulf that I'm hot on the trail of whatever Chinese-language Chan films there are still extant in China). But I'm a long time Chan-fan, and academic trying to genuinely appreciate the dense cultural matrix of our venerable detective. I just posted a media version of an article that will be (boringly, ha ha) published in print form early next year. I thought some of you may enjoy reading it (beware: it's long, is designed for the somewhat uninitiated and will cover some things you all already know, is a bit heavy on academic language, and will take a good while to read---but, I'm hoping that the narrative that emerges is finally interesting, sensitive, and worthwhile). Anyway, here it is:
http://rjohnwilliams.wordpress.com/media/
Thank you so much!
~John Williams
(Dept. of English, Yale University)
What a treat to take a first skim through your very lengthy and image-filled article! I will take a much closer look later, but, would like to thank you (so much!) for sharing this with us. If, when the final version is completed, you would allow us to presented it here at this humble site, we would be most appreciative and honored...
Thanks, Rush! I feel like I already know you, having seen all those dvd special features, ha ha. In any case, after the journal I've contracted with to publish the article has it circulating, I'm sure I can work out a way to get the article on this site as well.
I hope the article gives people a sense of how fascinating, complicated, and creatively brilliant these films were.
