Lee stated that studies of modern Chinese cinema in American academia have been concerned due to the lack of exploration in the cultural context of Chinese films. It had led to the phenomenon where Chinese films were often shown in second-run houses of lesser grandeur. Although Hollywood movies inspired Chinese filmmakers at first, Chinese movies eventually emerged through consumerism and commodification in Shanghai. According to Lee, one significant difference between Hollywood and Shanghai at that time was “fashionable femininity”, which was conveyed in Chinese magazines, thus creating unique aesthetic of the feminine by comparing to the “rampant body fetishism” in

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Modern Chinese cinema always has been considered a window to the modern Chiense culture and mass media, yet the research on them are often discontinuous and limited. In The Urban Milieu of Shanghai Cinema, 1930-40: Some Explorations of Film Audience, Film Culture, and Narrative Conventions, Lee also points out that Western approach to Chineses cinema “have largely been concerned with textual readings of individual films,” rather than identifying the overlying consensus or similarities between the films. To compensate that, Lee explores the historical and cultural background of 1930s’ Shanghai, providing in-depth exploration into how the Chinese cinema was received to

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This piece from Leo Ou-fan Lee‘s Shanghai Modern illustrated and specified the term ‘aesthetic localization’ for me to understand by telling the story of how film, an imported medium of entertainment, was integrated into the lives of Shanghai people at that time and how the locals embraced and indigenized it. During the 1930s, Shanghai was highly modernizing and industrializing. People pursued high-density architecture as public event spaces, and most of them advocated cinema. Leo said, ‘More theatres were built up and amusement halls were deconstructed though the native film industry has not prospered’. It represented how crazy they were to chase after this

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In Lee’s description of the 1930s Shanghai cinema, the term “compromise” can summarize the audience behaviors, the evolution of film culture, and the native filmmakers’ methodologies. Film magazines of the time provided guidelines for movie tastes and listed appropriate behaviors when visiting the cinema, projecting a social background in which western lifestyles and etiquette were sought after. The upper-class ladies of Shanghai, especially, seem to have forsaken their individuality. The cultural authenticity of the early Chinese cinema stood fragile in the crevice between Hollywood’s grand productions and a puppetized audience. In contrast, adaptations of western film language also had to

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“In this new world of modern woman, clothes and fashion occupy a central place, and Chinese female film stars looked to be the very embodiment of modernity.” Lee Ou Fan writes. To realise that the rise of celebrity influence in China was ignited by the start of cinema was enlightening as it never crossed my mind to question where our current culture of celebrity idolisation came from. This initial obsession with female stars of course came hand in hand with the fetishisation of women. Actresses were portrayed in media to cater to the male gaze of different societies, in Hollywood

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According to Zhen Zhang, the 1922 short film “Laborer’s Love” indicated the transformation of early Chinese cinema from attraction cinema to complex narrative cinema, during which the mode of film production and the venue of projection changed dramatically, while the audience for cinema began to increase. It is the tea house that all these transformations revolve around and extend cinema to national entertainment. Most importantly, perhaps teahouses and restaurants, and especially teahouses themselves, occupy the emotional structure of the Chinese people; in my opinion, they were first, and foremost places of consumption and social entertainment, and the fact that films

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