Mapping Regional Ambivalence and Anxieties in They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong

Abstract

They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong (Bobby A. Suarez, 1978) has been contextualized within film scholarship as a transnational text, a cult product, a canonical text of exploitation cinema and a key work within the Asian spy genre. This chapter argues that the film contributes to the ways in which popular culture negotiated political and economic tensions surrounding the development and presence of ASEAN since it was founded in 1967. One such tension revolved around striking a delicate balance between regional cooperation and the recognition of national sovereignty. Using Kristin Thompson’s framework of cinematic excess, I argue that the film imagines and images this tension by positioning Wong as the force which reifies the primacy of ASEAN, while the film’s representation of landscapes foregrounds and privileges national specificity.