Affective Assemblages of Material Culture: Qi Pao, Mahjong and Performance in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution

Abstract

Using Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007), this article illustrates how an affective mode of address is encouraged when one attends to the ways in which on-screen cinematic audio-visual spectacles are produced through the interaction of different bodies on-screen. Affective cinematic encounters open up other ways of understanding the female body as productive assemblages of everyday affective interactions and relationalities with other bodies within material culture. Particularly, I demonstrate an affective mode of address that attends to the interaction of cinematic objects and how they are constructed, arranged, and engaged with on-screen to reveal hidden dynamics to characters’ relationship and overarching narratives off-screen.

Keywords

• material culture
• consumer culture
• assemblage theory
• Asian cinemas
• affect
• object-oriented