| My dissertation re-constructs the history of Hollywood movies in 1920s Shanghai through archival work in both China and the United States. Before that decade, film exhibition in China was little more than a novelty with limited social influence. The 1920s saw a boom in American film production and attempts to develop foreign markets for it. Consequently, Hollywood films flooded into China, just ahead of the development of the local national film industry in the late 1920s, and hence shaped the environment for that development. As heralds of a new medium with unprecedented capacity for shaping people's perceptions, beliefs, and viewpoints, American films were received and interpreted by Chinese audiences in a transnational context.;My research is mostly based on rarely or never used primary sources both in the United States and China, mainly in archives including the U.S. official documents of the Department of State located at the National Archives, the special collection of the United Artists at the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library, indexed New York Times, and D.W. Griffith's unpublished documents such as D.W. Griffith Papers 1897-1954, 1927 Yearbook of Chinese Cinema, 1920s fan magazines such as The Movie Guide, The China Film Pictorial, The Stage and Screen, The Photoplay World, Photoplay Pictorial, The Movie Magazine, and Cineograph, a collection of film plot sheets, and local popular magazines such as The Good Companion.;Through my dissertation, I have found that the promotion and consumption of American films in 1920s Shanghai did not result in a homogeneous American culture as the Chinese re-deployed, re-invented, and appropriated American films for local political, cultural, and social discourses. During that turbulent decade, Hollywood films played into the Chinese political discourse of nationalism and modernity. The modernity discourse was prominent in the Chinese filmic texts and extra-textual filmic spheres. Hollywood's impact on China can be examined by the reaction of the Chinese film industry toward American films, the changing lifestyle of Chinese locals, and their perception of American people and values. |
