Mediasphere Shanghai : the aesthetics of cultural production

The Resource Mediasphere Shanghai : the aesthetics of cultural production

Label

Mediasphere Shanghai : the aesthetics of cultural production

Title remainder

the aesthetics of cultural production

Statement of responsibility

Alexander Des Forges

Language

eng

Summary

For many in the west, "Shanghai" is the quintessence of East Asian modernity, whether imagined as glamorous and exciting, corrupt and impoverishing, or a complex synthesis of the good, the bad, and the ugly. How did "Shanghai" acquire this power? How did people across China and around the world decide that Shanghai was the place to be?Mediasphere Shanghai shows that partial answers to these questions can be found in the products of Shanghai's media industry, particularly the Shanghai novel, a distinctive genre of installment fiction that flourished from the 1890s to the 1930s. Shanghai fiction supplies not only the imagery that we now consider typical of the city, but, more significantly, the very forms--simultaneity, interruption, mediation, and excess--through which the city could be experienced as a business and entertainment center and envisioned as the focal point of a mediasphere with a national and transnational reach. Existing paradigms of Shanghai culture tend to explain the city's distinctive literary and visual aesthetics as merely the predictable result of economic conditions and social processes, but Alexander Des Forges maintains that literary texts and other cultural products themselves constitute a conceptual foundation for the city and construct the frame through which it is perceived. Working from a wide range of sources, including installment fiction, photographs, lithographic illustrations, maps, guidebooks, newspapers, and film, Des Forges demonstrates the significant social effects of aesthetic forms and practices. Mediasphere Shanghai offers a new perspective on the cultural history of the city and on the literature and culture of modern China in general

Action

digitized

Cataloging source

N$T

Illustrations

illustrations
maps

Index

index present

Language note

In English

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries
bibliography

Series statement

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Context

Context of Mediasphere Shanghai : the aesthetics of cultural production

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