On the Margins of Realism

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by Ting Luo

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > China

Keywords

China, realism

Publishing date

2025 (March 31, 2025)

Publisher

Routledge

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 196 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-032-81571-8

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Book Presentation:
Realism has been endowed with a certain orthodox status as the aesthetic counterpart of China’s modernization, and studies of Chinese film history have largely accepted a master narrative of realism as the guiding aesthetic of mainland Chinese cinema. This book argues, however, that alternative aesthetics to realism have always existed in Chinese cinema throughout its history, from the early silent era to the new century.

The alternative aesthetics are closely linked to the indigenous Chinese ontology of cinema, namely, shadowplay (yingxi 影戲). The author presents an alternative account through a close examination of four distinct visual, narrative, and stylistic devices or themes that recur in different periods of Chinese film history: the dream representation, the doubling of characters, the device of self-reflexivity, and the allegorical construction of space. By considering specific films and scenes as problematic sites where history, politics, and aesthetics collide, this book also seeks to elucidate the relationship between cinema and the multifaceted experiences of Chinese modernity with respect to subjectivity, ideology, identity, and nationality.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese cinemas, realism, and modernism.

About the Author:
Ting Luo is an assistant professor in the College of Media and International Culture and a research fellow at the Center for Digital Communication Studies, Zhejiang University. She holds a PhD from the University of Auckland. Her research interests include Chinese film, Asian cinema, and media studies.

See the publisher website: Routledge