The Proximity of Other Skins

"In The Proximity of Other Skins, Celine Parreñas Shimizu offers a powerful model of ethical intimacy that demands a global understanding of cinema, sexuality, and otherness. Through a series of insightful and passionate readings, she challenges us to see movies -- and ourselves -- with greater rigor and political complexity. As with her other books, I come away from this one with a finer grasp of how cinema, seen through her illuminating vision, can provoke and unsettle in the best ways." -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winner The Sympathizer "Contemporary Asian and world cinemas are replete with narratives of self-shattering encounters with otherness. In this fascinating study, Celine Parreñas Shimizu illuminates the fraught intimacies conjured by the movies, revealing their ethico-political insights into some of our era's murkiest dilemmas." -- José B. Capino , author of Martial Law Melodrama: Lino Brocka's Cinema Politics "This thought-provoking book examines efforts by contemporary filmmakers from the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere to portray inequality within scenes of intimacy in ways designed to make viewers uncomfortable. Her highly original study grapples impressively with the challenges of forging empathy, compassion, and understanding across borders, and offers fresh insight into how film can illuminate the dynamics of power, privilege, and pleasure in global contexts." -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin , Stanford University "Dr. Shimizu's work has always been attuned to the potential of cinema to not only represent the social, but produce it. The Proximity of Other Skins is no exception and constitutes a profound and necessary continuation of her ongoing feminist inquiry. In this timely and vital text, Shimizu ambitions beyond the sensorial gridlock of the Western cinematic apparatus toward another way of seeing and living under the neocolonial visual regime." -- Alok Vaid-Menon