SOURCE: Galperin, William. “‘Bad for the Glass’: Representation and Filmic Deconstruction in Chinatown and Chan Is Missing.” Modern Language Notes 102, no. 5 (December 1987): 1151-70.

In the following essay, Galperin explores how the image of “Chinatown” is used as a physical entity and as a symbol of cultural confusion in Chinatown and Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing. Galperin argues that both films conform to the conventions of specific Hollywood film genres while simultaneously deconstructing certain Hollywood cinematic traditions.

It is often maintained that foreign directors who come to America become “Hollywood” directors. Examples include the Germans Fritz Lang, Douglas Sirk, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder; Hitchcock and John Boorman from England; and even French director Jean Renoir. More recently there have been the emigrés from East Europe, notably Milos Forman and Ivan Passer. Part of the reason for this transformation has obviously to do with the pervasiveness of the...