Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This is a study of Chinese road films which emerged at the beginning of twentieth-first century, a period corresponding with significant infrastructural transformation hallmarked by the development of the national highway system and wide ownership of cars. These situations produced a new context of mobility in both spatial and, symbolically, social terms. As a generic hybrid genre, Chinese road films use geographical and cultural displacements as a means to engage in multiple subjects such social and cultural critiques, identity, self-transformation, and home-returning. Like the highway system that connects all peripheral and border regions into a unified national landscape/space, road films remap those remote villages, mid-western and western regions, and mountainous areas into a national story of modernity and unified space of diversities, and film those local folks to represent authentic Chinese experiences. While focusing on individuals on the move, these films map out social mobility in geographic terms; the roads then become a site to construct mobility as a new and dynamic Chinese identity and social/cultural phenomenon. However, as a popular genre that emphasizes entertainment values, these films’ critical cutting edge is often blunted by their eventual confirmation of the mainstream cultural values, ironically leaving some marginalized groups, particularly women, still marginalized, thus reconfirming the road films as a gendered genre.

Presenters

Jie Lu
Professor of Chinese Studies & Film Studies, Department of Mondern Language & Literature, University of the Pacific, California, United States