What was cinema in modern China? It was, this book tells us, a dynamic entity, not strictly tied to one media technology, one mode of operation, or one system of aesthetic code. It was, in Weihong Bao’s term, an affective medium, a distinct notion of the medium as mediating environment with the power to stir passions, frame perception, and mold experience. In Fiery Cinema, Bao traces the permutations of this affective medium from the early through the mid-twentieth century, exploring its role in aesthetics, politics, and social institutions.
Mapping the changing identity of cinema in China in relation to Republican-era print media, theatrical performance, radio broadcasting, television, and architecture, Bao has created an archaeology of Chinese media culture. Within this context, she grounds the question of spectatorial affect and media technology in China’s experience of mechanized warfare, colonial modernity, and the shaping of the public into consumers, national citizens, and a revolutionary collective subject. Carrying on a close conversation with transnational media theory and history, she teases out the tension and affinity between vernacular, political modernist, and propagandistic articulations of mass culture in China’s varied participation in modernity.
Fiery Cinema advances a radical rethinking of affect and medium as a key insight into the relationship of cinema to the public sphere and the making of the masses. By centering media politics in her inquiry of the forgotten future of cinema, Bao makes a major intervention into the theory and history of media.
0 有用 周方怡 2022-12-31 14:21:43 加拿大
从media study theory和cinema studies来看历史就还挺有意思的。commercial or political 不都是propaganda吗
0 有用 常务副momo 2023-07-05 04:35:01 美国
Ch6 very useful yet not fitting well into the cinematic narrative.
16 有用 Alan 2015-12-18 10:12:01
重写中国电影史的力作:(1)依靠媒介谱系学打开电影的“跨媒介性”,比如第二章讲灵视/无线传输技术在2、30年代形塑对电影媒介性的理解,第四章讲左翼电影和上海现代主义建筑在“透明性”美学上的共鸣,阐述电影作为一种技术在中国的(媒介/技术)现代性中的中心角色。(2)依靠情感/情动研究重新绘制电影的美学谱系,抓住“火/燃烧”这一关键元素,它代表一种美学意象、一种理解技术的诗学想象、一种媒介原型、一种政治... 重写中国电影史的力作:(1)依靠媒介谱系学打开电影的“跨媒介性”,比如第二章讲灵视/无线传输技术在2、30年代形塑对电影媒介性的理解,第四章讲左翼电影和上海现代主义建筑在“透明性”美学上的共鸣,阐述电影作为一种技术在中国的(媒介/技术)现代性中的中心角色。(2)依靠情感/情动研究重新绘制电影的美学谱系,抓住“火/燃烧”这一关键元素,它代表一种美学意象、一种理解技术的诗学想象、一种媒介原型、一种政治能量的隐喻...组织了三部六个章节,大大复杂化了对于中国电影美学和政治的探讨。(3)在前面两根主轴建立的体系里,照顾到了许多之前少有触及的对象,比如“火烧片”的新英雄主义、战时重庆的国策片的美学试验,战时重庆、上海、香港影视生产的联系和互文等等,打破左翼/非左翼的传统视角。 (展开)
3 有用 春日妙子 2020-02-27 22:36:20
陪伴我开始电影史研究的案头书,写不同章节不断地读,终于有机会一次读完。本书关注电影与其他媒介互动的跨媒介视角,以及突破白话现代主义概念忽略政治维度,提出政治现代主义——左翼的透明美学与抗战时期重庆的宣传理论的尝试,确为电影史研究打开了广阔的视角。但是affective medium关联自然、物质、社会、感官多个层面,这样的理论架构会不会太过开阔,乃至于在丰富诠释之外缺乏内在的连贯性?
1 有用 Cass Phang 2022-10-16 13:41:27 美国
看的时候忍不住想到D提到过的,你付出的精力越多,你的读者需要付出的精力就越少,深以为然。