Villain stardom in socialist China

Chen Qiang and the cultural politics of affect

Bibliographic Data

ID5817042
AuthorsXiaoning Lu (0000-0002-5600-4866, SOAS University of London, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume9
Issue3
Pages223-238
Publication date2015-05-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Chinese Cinemas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-8061 • E-ISSN: 1750-807X
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17508061.2015.1040287
OpenAlexW1885239675
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

Despite playing various kinds of roles across genres from 1949 to 1965, Chen Qiang acquired stardom mainly due to his remarkable screen performance as villainous landlords in socialist China. His villain stardom is an aberrant case, compared to the majority of film stars in Chinese socialist cinema who encouraged identification and emulation and helped propagate socialist ideology to reform Chinese citizens. Paying special attention to socio-historically specific film exhibition practices and the actor's own reflections on his villain performance, this article argues that Chen's stardom functioned as an important affective technology within a wider and complex Communist propaganda enterprise in that it helped cultivate class hatred necessary for the Communist revolution and socialist land reform campaigns. Through this case study, the article suggests that close engagement with both cultural-historical specificities of cinema and recent critical theories of affect open up a space for researching the diversified star phenomena in contemporary China

Affect · Cinema and Media Studies · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Geographies of human-animal interactions

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