Transnational cult paratexts: Exploring audience readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme brand

Recent scholarship on the branding of contemporary cult Asian cinema for Western audiences has frequently drawn on Said’s seminal treatise Orientalism (1978) as a means to critique sensationalist marketing materials. Whilst the excessive character of paratexts produced by film distributors such as Tartan clearly facilitates such readings, in this article I argue that this oft-repeated criticism becomes problematic when employed indiscriminately to theorise, by extension, the audiences for these films. Drawing on a recent empirical study of responses to Asian Extreme cinema and its distribution in the UK and North America, I offer an intervention in this debate by constructing a more nuanced interpretation of the ways in which cult audiences articulate their attraction to cinematic representations of cultural difference.