%0 Generic
%A Huang, Xuelei
%D 2009
%F heidok:10406
%K Chinese film , Republican China
%R 10.11588/heidok.00010406
%T Commercializing Ideologies : Intellectuals and Cultural Production at the Mingxing (Star) Motion Picture Company, 1922 - 1938
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/10406/
%X This dissertation presents an in-depth look at a pioneering Chinese film company, the Mingxing (Star) Motion Picture Company, and reveals the ways in which intellectual ideas were transformed into part of commercial films as well as the implications of this production in a time of drastic social change in China. This study based on a wide range of primary source materials revises the conventional history of early Chinese cinema in many respects. I challenge the conventional categorization of screenwriters and directors along political or ideological lines and argue that cultural production at the commercial film company facilitated the dissemination of intellectual ideas through a combination of commercial drives and joint efforts of many allegedly radically different groups of filmmakers. With the aim to look into the dynamic process of cultural production at Mingxing, this study is divided into three parts. Part One (Chapter 1) reconstructs the institutional and economic history of Mingxing. Part Two (Chapters 2-4) presents a revisionist analysis of film producers at Mingxing. By unfolding a network of interactions and entanglements between Mingxing?s film directors and screenwriters, I argue that these persons acted as an intermediary that bridged the intellectual world and the film industry. In Part Three (Chapters 5-7), I analyze the narrative and thematic motifs of Mingxing films and show that issues expressed in films generally resonated with the contemporary intellectual discourse on modernity and national salvation. In doing so, I demonstrate that cinema played a largely unrecognized role in China's modern transformation in its specific ways.