Cinema and cinemagoing in early-twentieth-century Shanghai = 二十世紀早期上海的電影與觀影
Project title
Cinema and cinemagoing in early-twentieth-century Shanghai = 二十世紀早期上海的電影與觀影
Principal Investigator
Department
Grant Awarding Body
Research Grants Council
Grant Type
Faculty Development Scheme
Project Code
UGC/FDS15/H01/23
Amount awarded
HK$969,826
Funding Year
2023-2024
Duration of the Project
24 months
Status
On-going
Abstract
The present research project investigates the introduction of film in Shanghai and its impact on city governance in the first three decades of the twentieth century. The arrival of cinema as a major pastime in the early twentieth century fascinated a wide spectrum of urban residents and thereby created a new type of crowd—filmgoers—despite the audiences’ diverse racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds. The blending of people of differing social standings in newly constructed movie theaters posed a challenge to the local authorities in Shanghai, who were impelled to respond to the rise of film—the most cutting-edge technology and a novel form of entertainment. In consequence, Shanghai’s colonial authorities—the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) and Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP)— enacted new architectural codes and fire prevention rules, tightened up anti-crime and anti-prostitution measures, and, finally, established a censorial system to make films containing obscene and subversive elements inaccessible to the viewing public.
While the existing scholarship on films and film exhibitions in early-twentieth-century China focuses mainly on how the motion picture managed to make inroads into the city dwellers’ everyday life, lent experiences of modernity, and elicited modern sensibilities, scholars have paid scant attention to cinema’s role in reshaping a city. Likewise, students of urban history in modern China usually view the popularization of the motion picture as mere evidence of the triumph of modernism and cosmopolitanism but fall short of understanding it as a key player that refashioned the physical, administrative, legal/political, and cultural aspects of Chinese cities. Thus, this proposed study is inherently interdisciplinary as it stitches together two formerly disparate academic traditions—film and urban studies—to explore the dyadic relationship between cinema and city in the early decades of the twentieth century.
By exploring the legislative and reform efforts made by the local authorities in Shanghai in response to the dominance of the motion picture in the first three decades of the twentieth century, the present research project attempts to demonstrate how cinema and city were mutually constitutive: On the other hand, the prevalence of cinemagoing as a new pastime prompted the political authorities in Shanghai to reformulate their agendas of city administration by devising new urban plans, maintaining public safety, diminishing racial segregation, resolving racial/national conflicts, and achieving political stability. On the other hand, moral anxiety and political expediency caused by pervasive fears for the display of scenes of crimes and revolutions on the silver screen cultivated a preference for movies about family, romantic love, and the destinies of individuals that masked intense racial, national, and class clashes in the external world, resulting in the market success of melodramatic films, particularly those of D. W. Griffith (1875-1948), throughout the 1920s.
While the existing scholarship on films and film exhibitions in early-twentieth-century China focuses mainly on how the motion picture managed to make inroads into the city dwellers’ everyday life, lent experiences of modernity, and elicited modern sensibilities, scholars have paid scant attention to cinema’s role in reshaping a city. Likewise, students of urban history in modern China usually view the popularization of the motion picture as mere evidence of the triumph of modernism and cosmopolitanism but fall short of understanding it as a key player that refashioned the physical, administrative, legal/political, and cultural aspects of Chinese cities. Thus, this proposed study is inherently interdisciplinary as it stitches together two formerly disparate academic traditions—film and urban studies—to explore the dyadic relationship between cinema and city in the early decades of the twentieth century.
By exploring the legislative and reform efforts made by the local authorities in Shanghai in response to the dominance of the motion picture in the first three decades of the twentieth century, the present research project attempts to demonstrate how cinema and city were mutually constitutive: On the other hand, the prevalence of cinemagoing as a new pastime prompted the political authorities in Shanghai to reformulate their agendas of city administration by devising new urban plans, maintaining public safety, diminishing racial segregation, resolving racial/national conflicts, and achieving political stability. On the other hand, moral anxiety and political expediency caused by pervasive fears for the display of scenes of crimes and revolutions on the silver screen cultivated a preference for movies about family, romantic love, and the destinies of individuals that masked intense racial, national, and class clashes in the external world, resulting in the market success of melodramatic films, particularly those of D. W. Griffith (1875-1948), throughout the 1920s.