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In China, unlike in Western cinema, documentary film, rather than fiction film, has been the dominant mode since 1949. In recent years, documentary TV programmes have experienced a meteoric rise. Arguing that there is a gradual process of 'democratization' in the media, in which documentaries play a significant role, this book discusses various types of Chinese documentaries, under both the planned and the market economy. It especially explores the relationship between documentaries and society, showing how, under the market economy, although the government continues to use the genre as propaganda to promote its ideologies and policies, documentaries are being used as a medium where public concerns and alternative voices can be heard.
This book explores the political, economic, and cultural forces, locally and globally that have shaped the evolution of Chinese primetime television dramas, and the way that these dramas in turn have actively engaged in the major intellectual and policy debates concerning the path, steps, and speed of China’s economic and political modernization during the post-Deng Xiaoping era. It intertwines the evolution of Chinese television drama particularly with the ascendance of the Chinese New Left that favors a recentralization of state authority and an alternative path towards China’s modernization and China’s current administration’s call for building a "harmonious society." Two types of...
This book analyzes the relationship between political power and the media in a range of nation states in East and Southeast Asia, focusing in particular on the place of the media in authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes. It discusses the centrality of media in sustaining repressive regimes, and the key role of the media in the transformation and collapse of such regimes. It questions in particular the widely held beliefs, that the state can have complete control over the media consumption of its citizens, that commercialization of the media necessarily leads to democratization, and that the transnational, liberal dimensions of western media are crucial for democratic movements in Asia. Countries covered include Burma, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
This book traces the emergence of the modern Chinese press from its origins in the western Christian missionary press in the late nineteenth century. It shows how the western missionaries and their evangelical/educational newspapers changed the long-standing traditional practices, styles, content, print culture and printing technology of Chinese newspapers and, in the process, introduced some of the key ideas of western modernity which were to have a profound effect on Chinese society. Xiantao Zhang demonstrates how missionary publications reshaped print journalism, rather indirectly, from a centuries-long monopoly by the state - the Imperial press - into a pluralized, modernizing and freque...
Paradoxically, if nature has always been a source of fear, civilisation – its other and at the same time the epitome of progress and order – has not only doubled fear itself, but also added its new sister, anxiety. In effect, the notions of civilisation, fear and anxiety can hardly be separated. Fear – either linked with anxiety or distinct from it – lies at the foundation of civilisation, which as much promises to shelter us from these afflictions as it does proliferate them. Confronted no longer with the adversary powers of nature, humans have to face now the adversary powers produced by their own endeavours and ideologies. Each effort aimed at attaining an equilibrium results in n...
This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communit...
HIV/AIDS is an increasingly serious problem in China, with an increasing number of new cases every year. As a result, HIV organizations have boomed, with both state and non-governmental organisations responding to the threat with campaigns to increase public awareness of the disease, utilising the media as the primary tool to reshape citizens’ understandings and views of HIV/AIDS. This book explores how HIV/AIDS is portrayed in China’s media. It argues that, despite increasing education campaigns, media coverage and social and academic openness towards HIV/AIDS, many Chinese of the majority Han ethnic group regard infection as a distant possibility, believing themselves to be immune and ...
Infernal Affairs has received journalistic, popular and corporate notice but little vigorous critical attention. In this book, Gina Marchetti explores the way this example of Hong Kong's cinematic eclecticism has crossed borders as a story, a commercial product and a work of art; and has had an undeniable impact on current Hong Kong cinema. Moreover, she uses this trilogy to highlight the way Hong Kong cinema continues to be inextricably intertwined with global film culture and the transnational movie market. Infernal Affairs served as the source for the Academy Award-winning film The Departed (2006). The Martin Scorsese-directed film won Oscars for best motion picture, director, adapted screenplay and film editing. This is the first time that an American film based on a Hong Kong production swept the Academy Awards by winning four top prizes.
With 25 essays that embrace a wide spectrum of topics and perspectives including intertextuality, transnationality, gender representation, repetition, the use of music, color, and sound, depiction of time and space in human affairs, and Wong’s highly original portrayal of violence, A Companion to Wong Kar-Wai is a singular examination of the prestigious filmmaker known around the world for the innovation, beauty, and passion he brings to filmmaking. Brings together the most cutting edge, in-depth, and interesting scholarship on arguably the greatest living Asian filmmaker, from a multinational group of established and rising film scholars and critics Covers a huge breadth of topics such as...
Since 2003, Hong Kong has witnessed a series of large-scale protests which have constituted the core of a reinvigorated pro-democracy movement. What drove tens of thousands of citizens to the street on a yearly basis to protest? What were the social and organizational bases of the protest movement? How did media and public discourses affect the protests' formation and mobilization? How did the protesters understand their own actions and the political environment? This book tackles such questions by using a wide range of methods, including population and protest onsite surveys, media content.