| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 267 pages). |
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text file |
| Series |
Global Chinese culture
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Global Chinese culture.
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| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Trouble with Naming: Middle-Class Culture, Petty-Bourgeois Sensibility, and Zhuang ( ) -- 1. Dirty Fashion: Ma Ke's Fashion Exhibit Useless (2007), Jia Zhangke's Documentary Film Useless (2007), and Cognitive Mapping -- 2. The High-Quality Suit, Class Struggle, and Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Consumption in Xie Tieli's Film Never Forget (1964) -- 3. "Mao's Children Are Wearing Fashion!" Romantic Love, Fashion Consumption, and Modernization Politics in Huang Zumo's Film Romance on Lu Mountain (1980) |
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4. Imag(in)ing the Chinese Middle-Class Culture: White-Collar Work, Romantic Love, and Fashion Consumption -- 5. Between Production and Consumption: Chinese Migrant Factory Workers in Documentary Films and Ethnographic Works -- 6. The Psychic Life of Rubbish: On Wang Jiuliang's Documentary Film Beijing Besieged by Waste (2010) -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index |
| Summary |
"Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People's Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China's unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China's changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker's desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual's longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman's craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption-exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal-revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Consumption (Economics) -- China.
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Consumption (Economics) |
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China. |
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Fashion -- Social aspects -- China.
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Fashion -- Social aspects. |
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Middle class -- China.
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Middle class. |
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Consumption (Economics) in motion pictures.
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Consumption (Economics) in motion pictures. |
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Fashion in motion pictures.
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Fashion in motion pictures. |
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Middle class in motion pictures.
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Middle class in motion pictures. |
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Documentary films -- China -- History and criticism.
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Documentary films. |
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China -- Economic conditions -- 1976-2000.
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Economic conditions. |
| Chronological Term |
1976-2000 |
| Subject |
China -- Economic conditions -- 2000-
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| Chronological Term |
2000- |
| Subject |
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies. |
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Economic history. |
| Chronological Term |
Since 1976 |
| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Hui, Calvin. The art of useless New York : Columbia University Press, [2021] 9780231192484 (DLC) 2020057649 |
| ISBN |
9780231549837 electronic book |
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0231549830 electronic book |
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9780231192484 hardcover |
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9780231192491 paperback |
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