Somatic intermediality
Bodies, environment and population policies in Chinese children’s science fiction films (1988–1992)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21788560 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ziyang Li (0000-0003-2313-5189, University of California San Diego, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 66-85 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Chinese Cinemas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1750-8061 • E-ISSN: 1750-807X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17508061.2025.2564579 |
| OpenAlex | W4414907178 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This paper combines media studies and ecocriticism to analyze the narratives of children’s transcorporeal connections with energy and pollutants in the science fiction films Wonder Boy, Kiss of Poison and other related works. Contextualizing these films within the transitional period from the 1980s to the early 1990s, the paper explores how children’s bodies serve as contested sites where environmental anxieties and state concerns over population management converge. The state’s concept of ‘population quality’ framed the body as a vessel for biological optimization and progress. In parallel, the resurgence of somatic science in the 1980s emphasized the body’s extrasensory potential, blending ultra-scientific and paranormal powers with the informatic fantasy. Situating children’s bodies within both natural and electromagnetic environments, the paper theorizes a conceptual framework of ‘somatic intermediality’ to reconsider children’s bodies as an eco-medium. Children’s bodies, caught between the pregnancy trope as the idealized, high-quality body and the narrative of environmental vulnerability, become a biosemiotic index of China’s evolving strategies. These strategies intertwine population control, cybernetics, environmental concerns and scientism, reflecting a shifting socio-political landscape during the 1980s and 1990s
Global population · Population · Somatic cell · World population · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
Fear of Seeing
Information Fantasies
Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw
Socialist Cosmopolitanism
The “Missing Girls” of China and the Unintended Consequences of the One Child Policy
Chinese Science Fiction
China’s Population Policy at the Crossroads
Poverty, population and environmental degradation in China
Iron patriotism, xuexing -masculinism, wode -ism
Alimentary Tracts
Voyage into an Unknown Future
Population sex imbalance in China before the One-Child Policy
Attuning to the Chemosphere
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |