East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/6207

Browse

Browsing East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Asian studies"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Cinematic realism and independent filmmaking in China
    (University of Oregon, 2011-06) Yang, Mei
    Independent filmmaking in China, with the directors' reiteration of literary and cinematic realism carried on from May Fourth, reflects the nation's social uneasiness triggered by the enlarging division between the enlightenment indenture and the unidirectional modernization project. Resisting the national allegories and Hollywood-style big budget fantasies made by the Fifth Generation, independent filmmakers bring back to the screen the unadorned life of city inhabitants. The meaning of "independent" and "alternative" does not exclusively lie in the production and distribution venues but is galvanized by film directors' perception and cinematic depiction of what constitutes the social realities of contemporary China. The locality of hometown and the corporeality of the filmed subjects help to sustain a legitimate image-space for the socially underrepresented, at a time when the Party co-opts the discourse of nation-state to renew their regime. Directors employ the politics of sexuality, where body is the only thing remaining in their control, to usher in a redefinition of the Party and reassure the agency of Chinese intellectuals who were betrayed during the June Fourth massacre. The exegesis of the independent generation extends to the digital video (DV) filmmakers, whose cinematic language features the increased sense of interrogation between the camera and the characters. For the directors' claims of neither representing the people nor wrestling against the Party, nonetheless, DV films retreat to a safe but enclosed space, in which the aggrandized size of the body on screen displays a fractioned and diminished self cutting off from the outside world and falling short of its full potential. Independent filmmaking in China derives its policy-shaping capacity from its increasing participants (domestic audiences, amateur filmmakers, critics, and scholars) and multiplying operative channels (film funds, online forums, and non-official archives), collectively converting filmmaking from a privilege exclusive to the state apparatus and its elite delegates to a right of self-expression belonging to each individual.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    In the Heat of Sentiments: Nationalism, Postsocialism, and Popular Culture in China, 1988-2007
    (University of Oregon, 2010-06) Shen, Yipeng
    My dissertation delves into the recent articulation of popular nationalism in Mainland China, with particular emphasis on the changes that globalization and transnationalism have brought about to the representation of the Chinese nation in sentimental terms. Complementing the rich existing literature of Chinese nationalism that focuses mainly on the pre-1949 period, my study explores the less-treaded contemporary era characterized by the new historical condition of postsocialism, which features a residual of the socialist past as well as its reinvention under new overwhelming trends of globalization. Postsocialism and its consequences-the deepening of a neoliberalist economic refonn, the state-intellectual promotion of cultural economy, the emergence of a dominant consumer culture, etc.-have produced new issues existing scholarship on Chinese nationalism has yet to address. One such issue is how the paradoxical entity of the "nation" in time and space has been fragmented by the accretion of diversified voices from a wide spectrum of Chinese society. In postsocialist China, the agents imagining the nation include not only regulars like the state and intellectuals, but also new players like mass-media elites and netizens (wangmin). I argue that these voices of different social forces that break up the hegemony of the state in representing the nation-the result of which being not that the state is excluded from this enterprise but that it now tells only part of the story-become expressed as modes of national sentiments (minzu qinggan) when the nation is imagined under the historical condition of postsocialism. My study then explores in detail the fashioning and refashioning of contemporary Chinese subjectivity, as it relates through the joining of national sentiments to the literal and figurative body of the nation and the social power structure, by analyzing these specific voices in a broad range of popular texts from TV, film, and the Internet. The detailed examination includes four chapters dealing with specific modes of national sentiments articulated by the intellectuals, the state, the mass-media elites, and the netizens, respectively.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Space In-Between: Masumura Yasuzo, Japanese New Wave, and Mass Culture Cinema
    (University of Oregon, 2011-06) Terry, Patrick Alan, 1984-
    During the early stage of Japan's High Economic Growth Period (1955-1970), a group of directors and films, labeled the Japanese New Wave, emerged to strong critical acclaim and scholarly pursuit. Over time, Japanese New Wave Cinema has come to occupy a central position within the narrative history of Japanese film studies. This position has helped introduce many significant films while inadvertently ostracizing or ignoring the much broader landscape of film at this time. This thesis seeks to complexify the New Wave's central position through the career of Daiei Studios' director, Masumura Yasuzo. Masumura signifies a "space in-between" the cultural elite represented by the New Wave and the box office focus of mass culture cinema. Utilizing available English language and rare Japanese sources, this thesis will re-examine Masumura's position on the periphery of film studies while highlighting the larger film environment of this dynamic period.