Sonic Mobilities: Producing Worlds in Southern China

Abstract

Second World War and, after 1945, civil war and hyperinflation further marginalized Hollywood’s influence. But it was not until the start of the Korean War that the Communist government fully committed to the nationalization of the film industry along Soviet lines. As chapter three shows, post-1949 plans for a Beijing Cinema Village – a centralized production site along the lines of a Hollywood back lot – were only officially quashed in October 1952, while local audiences were initially ambivalent about watching Soviet and Soviet-style cinema. Even after the industry pivoted fully to a socialist model, Hollywood lived on through the shadow archives of “internal reference films” – foreign movies amassed for elite private viewing – the influence of which is explored in chapter four. If the first half of Hollywood in China is, broadly speaking, a studio history, the second focuses on policy shifts, individuals and significant films. Chapters five and six discuss the PRC’s co-option of Hollywood imports to stimulate the domestic industry during its transition to a market-driven model in the 1990s; the revival of concerns about resisting Hollywood in the run-up to WTO accession; and the subsequent growth of, and battle for dominance over, the Chinese domestic market after 2001 – a battle in which collaboration and resistance were intimately entwined. Chapter seven shifts to popular Chinese film genres of the 2010s, mapping how the rise of New Year films, leitmotif blockbusters and comic franchises like Xu Zheng’s Lost in... series helped limit Hollywood’s incursions into the domestic box office. Chapter eight then considers both the Chinese film industry’s investments in Hollywood, and the challenges posed to these investments by the re-politicization of the cinematic relationship in the Xi–Trump era. The final chapter takes stock of the present, asking whether we are really seeing a Sino-Hollywood decoupling while identifying what Zhu considers will be the relationship’s key impediments in the near future. With its focus on the longue durée, this book effectively contextualizes current dynamics in relation to longer trends. While focusing primarily on policy, production and distribution, it also considers questions of exhibition and reception. Its later, contemporary sections are inevitably less focused than its earlier chapters, reflecting the difficulty of assessing present-day volatility. Nonetheless, Hollywood in China folds an unusually broad range of industry data into an overarching historical narrative: as a one-stop shop for facts and figures about the Chinese film market, and Hollywood’s presence therein – about what happened, where and when – it is therefore invaluable.