Publication |
2014.
|
Summary/Abstract |
Adopting an historical approach, this essay reexamines the national minority films produced between 1949 and 1966 in socialist China with a focus on its role in the Chinese Communist Party's political project of building an ideal socialist citizenry. Shifting the critical anchoring of the national minority film from questions of representation to those of performance and spectatorship, it points out that cross-ethnic performance embedded within film narrative and discerned by historically situated audiences simultaneously constructs and deconstructs ethnicity, thus encouraging a transformative recognition across the ethnic boundary. Ultimately the national minority film models fraternity of citizenship essential to creating socialist subjectivity.
|