1.3 CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER DESIGN
This dissertation is organized in terms of promotion, exhibition, and critical reception, using case studies in different time periods to present a comprehensive picture of Hollywood films in 1920s Shanghai. In doing so, my dissertation is divided into nine chapters, following a narrative arc from Hollywood to China, from production in Hollywood to Chinese reception of American films and their impacts upon Chinese culture.
In the first chapter, I examine reasons why Hollywood was interested in the international market, with a specific focus upon China. This chapter aims to answer these questions: What are the motives for Hollywood’s majors to open up branch offices in China? What was the level of consciousness of China among American film producers? What were representations of China
and Chinese in American films?59 In answering these questions, such primary sources as Hollywood studios’ papers were examined, one of which is “United Artists Corporation Records, 1919-1961.”60
The second chapter, following the narrative thread of the first chapter, focuses upon the activities of Hollywood branch offices in China, with an emphasis upon Shanghai. Based upon such primary sources as the United Artists records and 1927 China Cinema Yearbook, this chapter investigates the location of Hollywood major’s branch offices in Shanghai, their daily activities and functions.
Legal records, executive records, and financial records of the United Artists in the 1920s related to its export of films in China were investigated to reconstruct an information flow between the parent company and its branch offices in China, the relationship of the parent company to its Chinese subsidiaries, and its overall corporate policy in the international market.
61
In the third chapter, I give a historical account of Shanghai theatrical performances before the big influx of Hollywood in early 1920s. In doing this, first, I provide a background description of the city of Shanghai in the late 1910s: its international settlements, French concessions, and Chinese territory;62
59 Ruth Vasey, “Foreign Parts: Hollywood’s Global Distribution and the Representation of Ethnicity,” American Quarterly 44, no. 4, Special issue: Hollywood, Censorship, and American Culture (December 1992): 617-642. See also her The World according to Hollywood, 1918-1939 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997). Also see W.V. Strauss’s “Foreign Distribution of American Films,” Harvard Business Review 8 (April 1930): 307-15. While these works are helpful in providing a broad picture of Hollywood’s global strategies, they do not specifically focus upon Chinese market.
second, I discuss performances of Chinese operas in 1920s
60 United Artists Corporation Records (referred to as UAC in the following footnotes), Series 2A: O’Brien Legal File, 1919-1951, Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society.
61 Zhiwei Xiao. “Hollywood in China, 1897-1950: A Preliminary Survey,” Chinese Historical Review 12:1 (Spring 2005): 71-96. In his article, Xiao mentions that “these offices served multiple purposes that included dealing with local censors, providing feedback to headquarters in New York about the performance of American films, collecting data about China’s film market, supervising Chinese theaters contracted to show American films, handling the profits” (77). My research in this chapter will use specific examples that focus upon Shanghai offices.
62 Frederic Wakeman and Wen-hsin Yeh, eds., Shanghai Sojourners. Also see Meng Yue, Shanghai and the Edges of Empires. Also see Yingjin Zhang, The City in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time, and Gender (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University of Press, 1996). Also see Zhang’s An Amorous History.
Shanghai stages as well as their potential audience;63
In the fourth chapter, I study the advertising of American films as well as advertising in general in print media in 1920s Shanghai.
then, I discuss locations of theaters in the city and the structure of Chinese traditional theaters and their daily practices.
64 In doing this, I aim to answer these questions: how were American films promoted? How were other American products promoted, such as cigarettes and soaps?65 Were there any similarities or differences in advertisements of Hollywood films and other American products?66
In Chapter Five, using Shen Bao and North China Daily News as major primary sources, I show how American comedy was promoted in a Chinese theatrical tradition. Advertisements of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!
What did these similarities or differences mean in a trans-national context?
67 in both the Chinese daily and English daily will be analyzed to demonstrate how the American comedy film was promoted in a Shanghai style “huaji”
tradition.68
63 One major primary source for this subject is Shenbao’s daily theater page in late 1910s, on which Chinese operas were advertised, previewed, and reviewed.
64 Christopher Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004).
65 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream. Also see Lears, Fables of Abundance; Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
66 Cinema Pressbooks from the Original Studio Collections (microfilm) (Woodbridge, Conn.,: Primary Sources Microfilm, 2001).
67 Safety Last was first shown at Apollo Theater on October 7, 1923, six months later than its American premiere in April, 1923. See Shen Bao, October 5, 1923, 1, November 26; 1923, 1; North China Daily News, October 15, 1923, 16.
68 Huaji originates from Shi Ji, or Annals of History written by Shi Maqian. Huaji is the name of a court clown who serves an emperor. He can talk boldly but in a joking way about bad decisions an emperor made with the purpose of pointing out the ridiculousness of the decisions. But he does it in such an artistic and funny way that the emperor will laugh and sometimes change the decisions instead of getting angry and kill him. Its role is similar to that of fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Huaji gradually becomes a metonym for being funny in Chinese. Starting from the early twentieth century, it also refers to a dramatic genre in the Shanghai area.
In Chapter Six, advertisements of D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East are analyzed to show how American melodrama69 was promoted in a Chinese dramatic tradition of romance.70 I focus upon D.W. Griffith’s films because many of his major melodrama films were shown in 1920s Shanghai (e.g., Broken Blossoms, Orphans of the Storm, Mammy’s Boy, and The White Rose).
Among all of Griffith’s films that were shown in Shanghai, Way Down East was the most popular one—not only was it exhibited for weeks at different theaters in Shanghai,71 but also a Chinese film was made especially to explain the American film to Chinese audience.72
In the seventh chapter, using Shen Bao, North China Daily News, and 1927 Yearbook of Chinese Cinema, and other primary sources, I reconstruct exhibition pattern of Hollywood films in 1920s Shanghai, such as the names and locations of the first-run, the second-run, and the third-run movie theaters as well as the changing ownership of these movie theaters over a decade.
73
69 Lee Grieveson and Peter Kramer, eds., The Silent Cinema Reader (London, New York: Routledge, 2004); John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, American Cinema and Hollywood: Critical Approaches (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000); Richard Abel, ed., Silent Film (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996); Jane Gaines, Classical Hollywood Narrative: The Paradigm Wars (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992); Gerald Mast, Cohen Marshall, and Leo Braudy, Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992); Robert Lang, American Film Melodrama: Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
70 As to Chinese dramatic tradition, see: William Dolby, A History of Chinese Drama (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1976); Adolphe Clarence Scott, An Introduction to the Chinese Theater (Singapore: D. Moore, 1958); idem, The Classical Theater of China (New York: Macmillan, 1957); idem, Actors Are Madmen: Notebook of a
Theatergoer in China (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theater: From Its Origins to the Present Day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983); Adolf Eduard Zucker, The Chinese Theater (Boston: Little, Brown, 1925); Cecilia S. L. Zung, Secrets of the Chinese Drama: A Complete Explanatory Guide to Actions and Symbols as Seen in the Performance of Chinese Dramas (New York: B. Blom, 1964).
71 Way Down East was shown was shown at Athena Theater in Shanghai for ten days, three times a day, starting from November 9, 1923. Its Chinese title is called Lai Hun, or “Tampering with Marriage.” Shen Bao; November 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 16, 1923, pp.1, 1, 1, 1, 1, and 17.
72 Shen Bao, November 11, 1923, 1.
73 The Second Series of Shanghai Study Materials, or Shanghai Yanjiu Zilian Xuji (Shanghai Tongxun, ed, 1985), 536.
The eighth chapter summons fan magazines in 1920s Shanghai,74 to examine fandom of Hollywood films in Shanghai. This chapter addresses these questions: how were American fans of a Hollywood star different from or same as his/her Chinese fans?75 What did the different readings and perceptions indicate in a transnational scenario?76 The major stars I have examined include: Charlie Chaplin,77 Harold Lloyd,78 and Lillian Gish.79
In Chapter Nine, I discuss the critical reception of American films using the fan magazines, but other materials as well, like published memoirs, contemporary newspaper reviews, and what can be discerned from the corpus of Chinese-produced films reacting to American ones. Despite the fact that articles and comment might not perfectly represent general readers’ view, they were representative of film critics’ viewpoints which, as Nina Baym has argued for criticism of American novels, partake in a common discourse shared by critics and non-critics alike. She calls the shared discourse the “cultural concept of novel” reviews,
80
74 The Movie Guide, The Stage and Screen, Photoplay World, Photoplay Pictorial, Photoplay Times, The Story World, The Movie Magazine, Cineography.
or “the
75 In An Amorous History, 354, Zhang mentions Xuan Jinglin, a Chinese actress’ allusion to Lillian Gish. Xuan, formerly a prostitute, changed her name to Xuan Jinglin, alluding to Lillian Gish (Gan Lixu in Chinese
transliteration). This examples shows Lillian Gish’s innocent image in Chinese perception.
76 Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, Transnational Cinema: the Film Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 2006); Matt Hills, Fan Cultures (London; New York: Routledge, 2002); Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown; Charles Ponce de Leon, Self-exposure: Human-interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Jeremy Butler, ed., Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991); Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986); Lucy Fischer and Marcia Landy, ed., Stars: The Film Reader (New York:
Routledge, 2004).
77 Andre Bazin, Essays on Chaplin (New Haven, Conn.: University of New Haven Press, 1985); Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Wes D. Gehring, Charlie Chaplin’s World of Comedy (Muncie Ind.: Ball State University, 1980); John Kimber, The Art of Charlie Chaplin (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); Kenneth Lynn, Charlie Chaplin and His Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
78 William Cahn, Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964); Annette
D’Agostino, Harold Lloyd: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994); Tom Dardis, The Man on the Clock (New York: Viking Press, 1983); Jeffrey Vance & Susan Lloyd, Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002).
79 Charles Affron, Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life, New York: Scribner, 2001; Lillian Gish and Ann Pinchot, Lillian Gish: the Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
80 Baym, 1984, 8.
general sense of the genre that guided writing and reading in the two decades before the Civil War.”81 By using film comment and reviews in fan magazines, I set forth the “cultural concept of film reviews” and give a comprehensive picture of critical reviews of American films in Shanghai, which might affect (or reflect) their popular reception.82
In the conclusion of my dissertation, I try to answer these questions: How did Hollywood film play into the Chinese New Cultural Movement? How did American films in China play into Chinese national discourse? Obviously, the promotion and consumption of American films in 1920s Shanghai did not result in a homogenous American culture as local people appropriated American films for local political, cultural and social discourse. One point emerges from the language used in inter-titles: was vernacular Chinese used or was classic Chinese used? In light of this, how was film used to reinforce national identity?83 My research will contribute to the scholarship of post-colonialism and trans-nationalism in the aspects of inter-relationships among identity formation, construction of worldviews, and transnational cultural consumption.
81 William L. Hedges, “Review,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40:1 (Jun., 1985): 105-108.
82 Robert Darnton, “First Steps Toward a History of Reading,” in Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 2001): 160-79; Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretative Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980); Linda Docherty,
“Women as Readers: Visual Interpretations,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 107, pt. 2 (1997):
335-388; Steven Mailloux, Interpretative Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1982); Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Everyday Ideas: Socio-Literary Experience Among Antebellum New Englanders (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).
83 Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim, China’s Quest for National Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993);
Keith Schoppa, The Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002).
2.0 CHAPTER ONE: IS CHINESE FILM MARKET ONLY A HALF LOAF OF