Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Regional Cultural Enterprises and Cultural Markets in Early Republican China: The Motion Picture as Case Study

Regional Cultural Enterprises and Cultural Markets in Early Republican China: The Motion Picture... ABSTRACT: The transition of the motion picture from foreign amusement to local enterprise was primarily the result of transnational commercial activity linking investors, entrepreneurs, and entertainment professionals. Amid the ongoing urbanization of China’s early Republican period, the enterprises emerging from this activity became increasingly profitable and, as a result, film production and exhibition became regularized phenomena, rooted in identifiable genres and standardized approaches to engaging audiences within the immersive space of the theater. By the early 1920s, those closest to the nascent industry were eager to legitimize its power by portraying the medium as a tool for political and social reform. However, commercial strategies and aesthetics remained relatively undisturbed despite this progressive rhetoric. In geographic terms, motion picture–related enterprises and culture remained strongly regional: affected and constrained by the non-Chinese national industries operating in politically divided China, by competing forms of local popular culture, and by existing geographies of exchange and infrastructure. The early Republican “experimental” period in Chinese cinema was, from an enterprise-centered perspective, one of numerous coexisting subnational cultural centers and zones. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review University of Hawai'I Press

Regional Cultural Enterprises and Cultural Markets in Early Republican China: The Motion Picture as Case Study

Download PDF
36 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-hawai-i-press/regional-cultural-enterprises-and-cultural-markets-in-early-republican-EmaoJJDoFu

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea University
ISSN
2158-9674
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The transition of the motion picture from foreign amusement to local enterprise was primarily the result of transnational commercial activity linking investors, entrepreneurs, and entertainment professionals. Amid the ongoing urbanization of China’s early Republican period, the enterprises emerging from this activity became increasingly profitable and, as a result, film production and exhibition became regularized phenomena, rooted in identifiable genres and standardized approaches to engaging audiences within the immersive space of the theater. By the early 1920s, those closest to the nascent industry were eager to legitimize its power by portraying the medium as a tool for political and social reform. However, commercial strategies and aesthetics remained relatively undisturbed despite this progressive rhetoric. In geographic terms, motion picture–related enterprises and culture remained strongly regional: affected and constrained by the non-Chinese national industries operating in politically divided China, by competing forms of local popular culture, and by existing geographies of exchange and infrastructure. The early Republican “experimental” period in Chinese cinema was, from an enterprise-centered perspective, one of numerous coexisting subnational cultural centers and zones.

Journal

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Dec 16, 2015

There are no references for this article.