Kendall, P. 2025. Forthcoming. The City as Marginalized Space: A History of the Urban in Chinese Socialist Animation (1950s-80s). in: Feng, Lin (ed.) Film History and Screen Culture in and beyond Greater China London Routledge.
| Chapter title | The City as Marginalized Space: A History of the Urban in Chinese Socialist Animation (1950s-80s) |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kendall, P. |
| Editors | Feng, Lin |
| Abstract | In popular discourse, big cities are often celebrated as dynamic places where the coming-together of peoples, finance, institutions and ideas makes things happen. At the same time, a counter discourse has critiqued big cities as places of moral corruption. Classic Disney animation tended towards this latter discourse, with stories set either in fairylands unsullied by contemporary urbanization or in cities of squalor and inequity. This chapter extends the historical study of urban representation and animation by examining the marginalized status of cities in Chinese animation from the 1950s to the 1980s. During the Mao years, Chinese animation reflected an unusual combination of Disney, Soviet and Maoist influences, with predominantly rural settings that at times featured cute animals and magical happenings and at other times showcased socialist modernisation. Those few cities which did feature in Mao-era animations were usually the products of capitalism. Animators critiqued these cities as dynamic but corrupt, associating their skyscrapers, traffic, and jazz music with the exploitation, segregation, and decadence of capitalism. After the Mao era, animations of the 1980s continued to either omit cities or treat them with suspicion, indicating certain continuities of animative representation across the commonly conceptualised Mao-Reform era divide. |
| Keywords | animation |
| Chinese studies | |
| urban space | |
| periodisation | |
| Book title | Film History and Screen Culture in and beyond Greater China |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Place of publication | London |
| ISBN | 9781032458151 |
| 9781032458168 |