ABSTRACT
What is often discussed is a nation’s cinema, but very seldom do we speak of a nation’s cinema of class. Namely, how a national cinema socialises the class structures that inform the nation’s broader narrative of social organisation. Studies of Chinese cinema to date are not excluded from this predicament. While one can draw general assumptions in hindsight about the role that Chinese cinema played in socialising class in the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, hereafter referred to as “China”) during 1949–1976, in part because class rhetoric was so prominent in the establishment of the modern Chinese nation state, the relationship between film consumption and the socialisation of class among Chinese audiences in contemporary China has been largely overlooked – not only in terms of how filmmakers portray narratives about class for the big screen, but how one film narrative may take on unique meanings when consumed by audiences through different class lenses, and what implications this may have for everyday life in socially stratified China. China’s cinema of class emerges in this book through textual analyses of five commercially distributed and exhibited films across the country during 2010–2011: Let the Bullets Fly ≪让子弹飞≫(Jiang: 2011), Lost on Journey ≪人在囧途≫(Yip: 2010), Go Lala Go! ≪杜拉拉升职记≫ (Xu: 2010), House Mania ≪房不剩防≫ (Sun: 2011) and The Piano in a Factory ≪钢的 琴≫ (Zhang: 2011); and their receptions gathered through discussion groups with Chinese audiences of varying classes in Beijing, Hangzhou, Lanzhou, Nanjing and Taiyuan.
