Jia Zhangke is praised as the most internationally prominent and celebrated figure of the Six-Generation of Chinese filmmakers. This book provides an examination the content and forms of Jias featured films and analyzes their merits and faults.
Jias films often narrate the lives of ordinary Chinese people against the backdrop of the political-economic changes. The author conducts an in-depth analysis of how this change have ferociously impinged upon the characters living conditions since China integrated itself with the world economy in the high tide of accelerated globalization since the 1970s. The author focuses on discussing the politics of dignity expressed by Jias allegorical renditions to explore the directors political unconsciousness and cultural-political notions.
This book maps ten of Jia Zhangkes films onto three major themes: Jias filmmaking and China in the market society; truth claims and political unconscious; post-socialist modernity in the age of globalization. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese film studies, as well as other disciplines, such as political science, sociology, anthropology, etc.
Contents. List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction A
Lyricist of China's "Postsocialist Modernity" in the Age of Neoliberal
Transformation Part I
Chapter One Recording Human Affection within Social
Transmutation: Portrayal of Early Reform China in Platform (2000)
Chapter Two
Morality and Love in Post-Revolutionary China: A Pickpockets Being and
Nothingness in Xiao Wu (1997)
Chapter Three Hedonism, Nihilism and Roaming in
the Consumerist Wasteland: Unknown pleasures (2002) as a Fable of Drifters in
the Era of Globalization Part Two
Chapter Four Post-Modern Paradise or
Post-Socialist Fantasy? New Proletariat and the Commodity World of Alienation
in The World (2002)
Chapter Five Revolutionary Realism or Socialist Realism?
Chinese Goodman in Jia Zhangkes Still Life (2006)
Chapter Six Contradictions
of Contemporary China from An Elite s Perspective: Sound and Fury in A Touch
of Sin (2012) Part Three
Chapter Seven Orchestrating Workers Memories and
Chinese National History: The Narrative Strategy and Aesthetics of 24 City
(2008)
Chapter Eight A Postmodern Style of Historical Fragments and Elitist
Historicism: Fiction and Reality in I Wish I Knew (2010)
Chapter Nine "China
Consciousness" in the Age of Globalization and Its Shortage: Mountains May
Depart (2014) as a Postmodern Film. Conclusion. The Cultural Politics of the
"Poetics of Vanishing". References. Appendix. Index
Xiaoping Wang is Chair Professor of Chinese studies at Huaqiao University and adjunct professor of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Shanghai Jiaotong University. His research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture and critical theory.
