Cinema, colonialism, and contact zone
The movie theater and city governance in early-twentieth-century Shanghai
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20209863 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qiliang He (0000-0001-7730-2603, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, corresponding author), Jie Tan (0000-0002-0909-2904) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 591-609 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1479-5914 • E-ISSN: 1479-5922 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1479591421000346 |
| OpenAlex | W3196787659 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 18 |
Moving away from the text-centered paradigm in film studies, the present research explores the relationship between the growing popularity of the film in Shanghai during the first two decades of the twentieth century and city governance in the International Settlement. It argues that the rise of movie halls contributed to creating a new kind of crowd that blended Chinese moviegoers with non-Chinese viewers. The emergence of the cinema as a space where people of different racial and ethnic origins encountered impelled the Shanghai Municipal Council – the governing body of the International Settlement in Shanghai – to respond by implementing new measures of public safety and altering its decades-long unspoken rules of segregation in the realm of everyday life. For Chinese enlightenment intellectuals and government officials, meanwhile, anxiety over their fellow Chinese's lack of basic decorum in public spaces arose with the intense intermingling of Chinese and non-Chinese filmgoers under the same roof. Thus, the cinema became a “contact zone” – a space of asymmetrical relations resulting not necessarily from colonists' exercise of colonial power but from the Chinese elite's wrapping of the discussion of movie theater etiquette reform within a political and ideological framework of modernization, patriotism, and anti-imperialism
Art · Art history · Colonialism · Drama · Enlightenment · Ideology · Media studies · Movie theater · Political science · Politics · Public space · Sociology · Visual arts · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
English Lessons
Imperial Eyes
Native Place, City, and Nation
Imperial Eyes
Cinema and the City in History and Theory
Fiery Cinema
Shanghai Modern
Shaping Modern Shanghai
Twentieth Century Colonialism and China
Spectacular Death
Cine
The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Scotland, 1896-1950
Movie House Etiquette Reform in Early-Twentieth-Century China
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |