Moving Figures: Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
Abstract
This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and class ... More
This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.
Keywords:
Chinese film,
Chinese visual culture,
Jia Zhangke,
Sixth Generation filmmakers,
Film phenomenology,
Aesthetics,
Chinese social change,
Chinese classes,
Reform era,
Maoist visual culture
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781474421614 |
Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2019 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421614.001.0001 |