Cinema of Class: Audience Engagement and Social Change in Contemporary China

Abstract

Chinese cinema is usually analysed in terms of either its production or portrayals of the nation. What is little discussed is that it also contributes to the socialisation of class structures and class identities in contemporary China. To date, popular Chinese cinema that targets its domestic audience has flourished with little attention given to the industry’s content or what consumption of these films entail for Chinese society. Indeed, China’s film industry has gained notable cultural traction and commercial power in its domestic market despite the competition that Hollywood imports pose at the box office. While the social sciences have published a broad array of literature on social change and the class structuration of contemporary Chinese society, minimal attention has been given to how cultural products, such as mainstream cinema, contribute to this very socialisation of China’s class society – produced as “life stories” for entertainment purposes and seemingly separate to the Party-state’s social engineering activities. This thesis aims to fill this gap of scholarship by examining five commercially produced, distributed and exhibited Chinese films from 2010-2011, and how Chinese nationals from varying class dispositions engage with these same films. It shows that China’s commercial film industry is a “cinema of class”, which socialises notions of class privilege and underprivilege as cultural difference, and portrays political inclusion and exclusion, differences in individual “value” (suzhi), social histories and gender, as the justification for why inequalities exist between Chinese people – and thus, what options the Chinese have to better their class positions (if at all). For observers of China, this thesis provides considerations for present social and political change in China. For filmmakers wishing to capitalise on co-production opportunities with China’s film industry, this thesis provides an insight into the objectives and trends in storytelling that exists in the Chinese film industry today as reflective of the political and social environment by which the films are produced. Lastly, this thesis serves as an introduction to the complexities of understanding who are China’s filmgoing audience.