The Sky is the Limit: Feng Xiaoning’s Leitmotif Cinema, Chinese Soft Power, and Ideological Fantasy

Frederik H. Green

No fzyx7, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This article explores the intersection of politics and popular entertainment in contemporary Chinese leitmotiv cinema (zhuxuanlü dianying), a genre that conflates political didacticism with Hollywood-style entertainment. Through my reading of three movies by Feng Xiaoning – the hero-epos Qingzang xian/A Railway in the Clouds (2006) about the building of a rail link to Tibet, the disaster movie Chaoqiang taifeng/Super Typhoon (2008) about a Chinese metropolis hit by a storm, and the war-action movie Jiawu dahaizhan/Naval Battle (2012) about the Sino-Japanese naval conflict of 1895 – I will illustrate how leitmotiv cinema negotiates demands for doctrinal orthodoxy with expectations for box-office success. Feng’s cinematic aesthetics are thus symptomatic of the discursive complexity of post-socialist Chinese Cinema where multiple temporalities and modes of production coexist in a climate of state-enforced ideological hegemony and revenue-driven market economics.

Date: 2015-11-30
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:fzyx7

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/fzyx7

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