Document Type
Article
Version
Final Published Version
Publication Title
liquid blackness
Volume
5
Publication Date
2021
Abstract
In Cinema 1, Deleuze proposes the “color‐image,” a type of film image with an “absorbent characteristic” that does not refer to a particular object but seizes all that happens within its range. Like color‐images, racial categories have an absorbent, seizing quality: they assert “color” at the expense of the object of representation. Deleuze does not address the potential applications of his concept to race, but they are especially illuminating when applied to early color‐process cinema. This essay approaches The Toll of the Sea (dir. Chester M. Franklin, 1922), starring Anna May Wong and set in China, the first Technicolor film to be widely distributed in general release, as a feature‐length “China Girl” and feature‐length color‐image, in Deleuze's sense. It further shows how Wong and her world are virtualized in this film under the rubric of a fictional orientalist palette.
Citation
King, H. 2021. "Anna May Wong and the Color Image." liquid blackness 5.2: 59–73.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1215/26923874-9272782
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.