Transformation and Identification between Two Generations Shanghai Dreams as a Political Melodrama

Shanghai Dreams (Qinghong青红), directed by Wang Xiaoshuai (王小帅,1966- ), is the first work created by a famed Chinese sixth-generation auteur to deal with the subject of construction of the “third line of defense” by focusing on the aftermath of this movement. This paper puts the movie vis-a-vis the historical experience of China’s change from Maoist socialism to Dengist pragmatism, and suggests that it is the conflicts between the authoritative Dengism and the residual Maoism that constitute the core of this political melodrama. The choice of the object of love and preference by the three protagonists has its allegorical significance related to the competition for the future and the re-structuration of class hierarchy in the post-revolutionary society. An episode of a failed Bildungsroman or the coming-of-age narrative, the film nevertheless fails to give a poignant political diagnosis of the social-political problems exemplified in the story which appears as a tragedy

Make Love and War: Chinese Popular Romance in Greater East Asia, 1937-1945

My dissertation examines Chinese popular romances produced and consumed in the Japanese colonized and occupied regions, including Taiwan, Manchukuo, and Shanghai, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. I investigate the complex relationships between emotion, representation, and consumption vis--vis wartime discourses and sociopolitical turmoil. Through extensive archival research in Taiwan, China and Japan, I (re)discovered and reevaluated five important wartime popular romance writers and their works. In addition to fiction, sequels, film and stage play adaptations, Japanese translation and readers/viewers responses all together create the cultural phenomena of the popular romance genre. In this dissertation I ask the following questions: How are emotion and love articulated vis--vis wartime politics? How does the popular romance genre engage with its environment? How could this genre demarcate, blur, cross or reinforce the boundaries between eroticism and patriotism, the individual and the state, and the private and the public? I argue that even though the wartime politics dictate that private emotions be devoted to the public needs (i.e., the War) and hence individual interests should be subjugated to the collective, Chinese writers and readers pursued individuality through the discourses of romantic love and the devotion to the opposite sex rather than to the nation or to the colonizer. Thus, paradoxically, popular romance, even though a mass production, is a collective channel for reaffirming individual existence under political pressure. Chapter 1 examines Xu Kunquan (1907-1954) and Japanese translation of his novel in colonial Taiwan. This chapter discusses how romantic love story is used to channel the emotions during negotiating between morality and decadence and to seek spiritual transcendence under political pressure. Chapter 2 discusses Wu Mansha (1912-2005), a Chinese alien in colonial Taiwan and how an entertainment genre written in Sinitic languages promoted Japanese Imperialism, as well as how the author used this genre as a tactic to survive wartime politics. Chapter 3 analyzes Mu Rugai (1884-1961) from Manchukuo and how he used the popular romance to vent his political resentment and to deconstruct the Japanese ideology of Manchukuo as utopia. Chapter 4 analyzes the melodramatic imagination of victimhood in wartime Shanghai. The victimization and feminization of the male protagonist in Qin Shouous (1908-1993) novel Begonia and its film and stage play adaptations is on the one hand an allegory of Chinas wartime status. On the other hand, the excessive, sensational depiction of victimhood in a tragic love story releases the repressed energy of the audience in Occupied Shanghai. Chapter 5 discusses Eileen Chang (1920-1995) and the consumption of femininity in wartime Shanghai. The literary persona of Eileen Chang is constructed as the combination of movie star, a new cultural phenomenon in twentieth century China, and courtesan culture from late imperial China. Through imagining their love/hate relationship with this literary star, the audience pursued femininity as opposed the masculine wartime politics

Remappings - the Making of European Narratives

How narratives emerge, unfold and impact across Europe today, and how they contribute to redrawing our maps of Europe

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent ›arthouse‹ productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent 'arthouse' productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story

Revolutionary Melodrama: Tales of Family, Kinship, and the Nation in Modern China

Revolutionary Melodrama: Tales of Family, Kinship, and the Nation in Modern China investigates the seemingly paradoxical pairing of “revolution” and “melodrama” and the vital role the melodramatic mode played in shaping modern aesthetics in China. Where melodrama is commonly understood to disavow revolutionary change and maintain the status quo, I argue that revolutionary melodramas function as emotional pedagogies in which abstract revolutionary ideas and ideals are made emotionally legible, and political solidarities more possible, to the masses. By deploying melodrama as an analytical category, this dissertation focuses on three representative manifestations of revolutionary melodramatic aesthetics at the micro-level of individuals and families. Each chapter of my dissertation draws together different media across three key historical moments in twentieth century China: the iconic May Fourth novel Jia (1933), the music-drama The White-Haired Girl (1945) created in wartime Yan’an, and the model opera film The Red Lantern (1970) produced during the height of the Cultural Revolution. In their reappropriations of the melodramatic mode, these texts deploy the affective trope of family and kinship to articulate alternative affiliations and create a passionate revolutionary collective capable of making socio-political change. Revolutionary Melodrama shows that aesthetic texts can be more than a mere reflection of what people’s thoughts and feelings at a given historical moment; they are also mediated experience of history and modernity that can actively shape the affective meaning of family/kinship and transform existing structures of feeling at the same time. On the other hand, while the melodramatic mode provided a powerful, dichotomized trope that can be mobilized in different historical circumstances for varied ideological purposes, it ultimately failed to transcend these sets of dichotomies. Revolutionary melodrama oscillates between personal si feelings and public/social gong passions, between the particularities of familial and kinship bonds and the universality of the nation-state, and yet is never able to truly transcend such dichotomies

The Eugene O\u27Neill Newsletter vol. 12, nos. 2, 1988

The Eugene O’Neill Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Eugene O’Neill Society, an organization of scholars, theater professionals, and enthusiasts, which began meeting in 1978. This publication, created by Suffolk University Professor Fred Wilkins in 1977, started off as part newsletter and part academic journal. In 1989, the publication name was changed to the Eugene O\u27Neill Review to denote its focus on scholarship. In recent years, the O\u27Neill Society re-started publication of the newsletter. This site includes newsletter issues from 1977-1989. Newer issues are available on the Eugene O\u27Neill Society website: https://www.eugeneoneillsociety.org/newsletters.htmlhttps://dc.suffolk.edu/oneillnews/1035/thumbnail.jp

The Eugene O\u27Neill Newsletter vol. 12, nos. 2, 1988

The Eugene O’Neill Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Eugene O’Neill Society, an organization of scholars, theater professionals, and enthusiasts, which began meeting in 1978. This publication, created by Suffolk University Professor Fred Wilkins in 1977, started off as part newsletter and part academic journal. In 1989, the publication name was changed to the Eugene O\u27Neill Review to denote its focus on scholarship. In recent years, the O\u27Neill Society re-started publication of the newsletter. This site includes newsletter issues from 1977-1989. Newer issues are available on the Eugene O\u27Neill Society website: https://www.eugeneoneillsociety.org/newsletters.htmlhttps://dc.suffolk.edu/oneillnews/1035/thumbnail.jp